What's the best way to reach customers

[blazeandshade]

I do wedding stationery and I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on how to effectively reach my customers and turn their enquiries into orders.

[publicityheaven]

I met someone on a Business Link course who did wedding stationary. 90% of her sales came from exhibiting at every wedding fair in the area.

They're expensive, but you get couples ready to buy

[Red Creative]

Try:

a basic website - say 1 to 3 pages, with a keyword rich domain (very important) eg: www.weddingstationary' (which no doubt has gone already!);

Get the site optimised - eg: it is easily found when search for organicly - if you concentrate a geographical area this will be fairly easy for a good web designer to do. (a site is MUCH for than visual content, if a search engine cannot find you on the first 2 pages, no-one will know you exist).

Advertise locally for at least 3 months, longer if necessary, in local publications, @£50 per ad is possibel for a beer mat size;

[Stationery-Direct]

Im getting married in 2007 and my partner is mad for everything to do with weddings at the moment including designing her own wedding invitations.

She looks in all Wedding magazines and visits all Wedding fayres, with the NEC being one of the best.

See if you can get some samples in local wedding dress shops etc give them a small % of each order put your way or advertise their services on your website. I would have thought that the Yellow Pages might be worth an ad (FREE ad if anything), use your website address as your business name so that this is displayed eg WeddingStationery.co.uk (already gone though im afraid)

Im sure some others will have some ideas.

Good luck

[Greg]

Perhaps a press release, targeting wedding magazines (I count 38 so far), publications for event organisers and venues, and the lifestyle press, etc.

'The perfect invites for your summer 06 wedding'

[Bizgifts]

I would suggest visiting local hotels and wedding venues. Show them your products and ask for referals.

It is highly likely that a venue will be booked before the stationery is ordered, alliances like this can generate a good stream of clients.
Other non competing businesses could include bridal gowns, florists etc.

Mark

[MorethanWords]

All these are great suggestions. Get in touch with local newspapers too as they often run a wedding supplement as the season looms. PR is a good way to gain recognition and all the bridal mags will be interested.

Try For the Bride and Bliss for Brides as they would be up for running some kind of offer/comp although the editor has just joined so don't know whether she's as laid back about such things.

Also try contacting local bridal wear shops to see if they'd display your wares and a few leaflets - Hayles on here has a wedding shop so sound her out and see if she thinks she could help or knows someone who could.

Wedding planners are also becoming increasingly popular, so try approaching them.

Finally, how about approaching a whole new market? Civil Partnerships are so new, it is a relatively untapped market. Approach www.gay-friendly-wedding-venues.com, magazines like Attitude and G3 and see if they're planning any wedding type features!!

Now there's original.

[10 Yetis]

watcha... as usual all good advice so far.

At this stage if you are just starting out then I would not go for PR just yet as the magazines will be saturated with companies like yours, i imagine.

Instead I would look at creating a brand presence by attending the fayre's (is that the right word? :D ) and doing quirky things to get your products noticed and seen by the right people.

Once you think people from your industry have got to know your brand, then go for a PR approach as reporters from the mags will be more receptive to your messages rather than just going in cold.

More Than is spot on with competitions, I know that the GWR group have a wedding prize competition at least once a year in one of its stations. Why not try and get involved with one of those?

Hope this helps

[daveashton]

Not sure a 3 page word rich website will do anything but as long as you follow the golden rule of marketing you will be fine.

Try most of the above

Monitor cost (including your time) and do a small trial. Compare methods and expand the ones that work.

It is very easy to spend money and waste lots of time on lead generation, so how you test market will be a key facture in your success.

Good luck

[fridayteam]

Hello blazeandshade

How about creating a portfolio of designs, creating some order forms and then ask a local stationers to promote for you, in return for a small commission?

To the retailer its another product on the shelf and they can never have too many of those!

Bridal hire shops too, but I guess you might have brain stormed that one already..

Good luck!

[blazeandshade]

Thank you so much for all the suggestions. I'll certainly be trying some of the ideas.

Ruth

[Pebble Communications]

I agree with Andy at 10 Yetis, don't waste time on press releases to the Bridal mags at the moment. They won't be the slightest bit interested in providing free advertising for yet another supplier. Press releases just saying 'here we are and this is what we do' have little effect. There needs to be a news story to go with them or an angle of some sort - 'we're the the first, it's made of green cheese, we all work naked' sort of thing! Where you see fairly straightforward product pics and mentions you can be sure someone has been working extremely hard to get it in there, probably over months. It won't happen from one press release.

There are exceptions to this rule, of course, but it takes someone with experience to spot them. I turn away most companies who want a release like this as I know it won't work for them and I'd rather wait until we can do something effective. Finding an angle is an art!

Fiona Bailey
www.pebblecommunications.co.uk

[Rachael]

Make friends with wedding planners!!! We are always looking for quality suppliers especially ones who offer a commission!

Also are you going to:
http://www.nationalweddingshow.co.uk/

[DarrenC]

Whilst I agree that a keyword rich website will assist in marketing, to get this new domain ranking for competitive keywords in Google is going to take you max 12 months (hopefully less)

Yahoo and MSN you can have a site bringing in traffic pretty quickly, BUT in comparison to Google this will be low.

Visit http://www.weddingsndreams.com/ and contact Adam, tell him Darren @ Worldwide Holiday Homes, referred you to him. He might be able to help you - he sets up themes for weddings, so will have some contacts.

Darren