Today’s brides are not the same from when you first started your business, so how you work with them shouldn’t be the same either. This means that the ways in which you market and communicate to your brides cannot be the same as a decade or two ago.

Most brides are not looking in their mailbox to see what flyers and postcards will be sent to them, they are looking online and using social media to connect with their friends, strangers, brands, businesses and potential wedding vendors.

To stay relevant and be where brides are, you need to not only have a social media account but understand how, when and why you should use it. And you also need to keep in mind that you have less time and more competition than you did five, ten or thirty years ago.

Read More: How to Deal With Problematic Customers in Your Bridal Shop

The increase of technology and immediate gratification has caused new generations’ attention spans to decrease at a dramatic rate. The average attention span of a millennial to Gen Z bride is five to twelve seconds. For comparison’s sake, a goldfish has an attention span of nine seconds. Once upon a time, you had up to thirty seconds, but those days are long gone.

Plus, you are not just competing with other brands, you are competing with everything else that is vying for your bride’s attention. Your social media posts, stories, ads and other content is right alongside her best friend’s vacation photos, her work wife’s new project post, and her roomie’s Instagram story about her dog.

Read More: The Best Way to Bring in More Brides

So, what can you do to target new millennial brides?

Catch Her Attention

You need to be able to catch her attention and hold it long enough for her to engage with you. This means more than just a heart emoji or a one-word comment of “Nice” on her post or photo.

Study Her Online

You actually need to do a bit of stalking online (not real stalking though!). This will help you know who your target bride is, where she eats, shops, gets coffee, has brunch, etc. Does she like dogs, cats, plants, boats, fashion, or maybe she loves sports. You need to be willing to engage with strangers who could be your next client.

Understand Her

Millennials want to know you “get them” and if your feed, stories, posts and comments are things they would like regardless of them getting married, you are doing a good job.

Read More: Improving Your Social Media Strategy

Marketing to millennials is much more involved than yesteryear of creating a good-looking ad and paying for it to be in a magazine or on the internet. Brides now require more from their wedding vendors and those who don’t step up will be swept aside.

It is extremely important to take this time to re-evaluate your business and the “why” behind it. Understand who your target bride is, craft your brand’s story and experiences, and dedicate time to social media engagement.

Can you answer these questions?

• Why do you have your business for brides versus a regular everyday consumer?
• Who is your target bride and is there a large enough quantity of your target bride in your geographic market area to sustain your business and meet your personal and professional financial goals?
• What is your brand’s story? How do brides get to experience your brand/product/service? What is their response after that experience?
• How much time do you dedicate to social media? Do you have a strategy or just post when you get a chance? Are you at a loss of what to say when you post and which photos to use? Do you know the best times to post for your target bride to see what you are posting?

Read More: 10 PR Tips for Your Bridal Business

This new way of doing business can seem overwhelming and confusing – you are not alone! One of the reasons we created The Bridal Masterclass is because of the multitude of stories from wedding professionals and bridal retailers about how the business and marketing advice they were finding online seemed to be too general or too complex and not tailored to the wedding industry.

This is why we created a wedding business education platform with online courses to help you invigorate your bridal business and take it to the next level so you are not left behind.

We have two courses coming up starting May 8th – one is Millennial Mind-Reading and the other is Social Media 101. Our Social Media 201 and Selling Strategies for Millennial Brides will be starting in June and more courses are getting ready to be released as well.

The great thing about the online courses is that you can do it on your own time and have opportunities to ask questions to the instructor and other students to get the most out of the class as possible.

For more information about The Bridal Masterclass visit their website here.