Sharon McGukin

Smithers-Oasis North America Design Director Sharon McGukin, AIFD, AAF, PFCI enjoys sharing floral tips and techniques for celebrating life with flowers.

“Weddings are a fascinating area of digital marketing,” suggests Renato Sogueco AAF, PFCI, BloomNet’s Vice President of Digital Strategy. “It’s a very specific search.”

When planning a wedding, engaged couples, their moms, and wedding planners often search specifically for flowers online. “Your main strategy should focus on your website.” Create a separate wedding website to drive traffic to your business. Unlike your everyday retail site that's meant to convert visitors into sales, a wedding website is meant to convert people into consultations.

“What you really need is to have a good conversation with couples and brides,” suggests Renato. “This consultation website, allows you to capture them in their “wow” excited moment.”

Photo courtesy: Renato Sogueco AAF, PFCI

Create a Separate Wedding Website

Having a separate wedding website, allows you to:

• Create and share your brand story
• Convey your expertise as a wedding florist
• Load the pages with inspiring photos
• Post a variety of popular trends, colors, and styles
• Offer helpful tips and seasonal flower information
• Share weddings that you've designed in the past
• Post reviews from past clients
 
Seek guidance from Google Analytics:

• Grow your site using data
• Set up a free account
• Log into Google Analytics
• Go to the behavior section
• Search site content
• Discover what is popular
• Place those items on your front page
• Ask clients to post Google reviews

Photo courtesy: Renato Sogueco AAF, PFCI

Every website should be pre-configured to accommodate Google Analytics data. If you’re unsure of how to access this information, work with the people who set up your website to uncover the data.

Establish a Pinterest Presence

After setting up your wedding website, consider adding Pinterest to your digital strategy. The number one feature of Pinterest is search. This works to your advantage.

• Start by setting up a Pinterest account
• Create pins from photos on your website
• Load them onto categorized Pinterest boards
• Segment the boards to focus on style, color, or trend
• Build boards for ceremony, reception or rehearsal flowers
• Post pages for cascades, hand-tieds, freeform, or round bouquets

If pink bouquets are popular, post a page of various styles and hues of pink bouquets. “When a bride types in pink bouquet, guess who's going to pop up? Your board. And, that pin has your link in it. When they click on it, guess where it's going go? Back to your website,” explains Renato.

You’ve drawn a potential client to your website and link clicks do wonders for your SEO. “Great SEO, contributes directly to the rank that gets us to number one,” adds Renato.

“It's all about conversion,” he explains. “Install a simple form on your website. Name, email, phone number, location and date of wedding.”

When you make contact, you can ask the second series of questions like caterer, venue, etc. The most important step is making the initial contact because those few seconds can make a big difference.

Video Your Network of Venues

Photo courtesy: Renato Sogueco AAF, PFCI

Be proactive. Build a powerful presence by reaching out to vendors you work with. Anytime you design flowers at a venue, work with a caterer, or photographer tag their Facebook and Instagram pages. Ask them to do the same.
 
Visit venues in your area to video their space. In the video, explain how flower decor can be used there. Include suggestions of places where flowers aren't typically used. After a few brides decorate those spaces, flowers placed there becomes the expectation.

Ask the venue director to join you in making suggestions for wedding set-ups at their location.
 
• Add photos of your most beautiful weddings in that space.
• Post the video on your website and social media.
• Tag the venues. Provide them with the video.
• Suggest they add it to their website and social pages.

Share with them the opportunity to showcase their space decorated with flowers. Wedding couples searching for a venue will see your video online; encouraging them to consider hiring both you and the venue.
 
Create similar videos with your network of local caterers, cake bakers, formalwear shops, photographers, or videographers. Film the informative ‘shorts’ (short videos) in their workspace or yours. Add photos of on-trend selections created for previous weddings.
 
Initiate an active tag/hashtag tagging approach to build a network digital presence. Retroactively tag favorite old Facebook posts. Ask your event network friends to do the same. If someone in your network isn’t particularly tech-savvy, help them learn so they can continue to contribute.
 
Be respectful. This is someone's private life or work. Always get written permission from the wedding couple and photographer before you share their photos.

What's Next?

“What about embedding videos in your emails?” Asks Renato. Emails have been around a long time, but what’s missing from email is video. No one wants to read a long email. You have their attention for literally two seconds. They read the subject, maybe the first couple of sentences, then make the decision to delete or read on. “If you embed a video in the email, they can click on it, watch the video, and you can deliver a thousand words in a few seconds,” adds Renato. A quick and easy way to connect personally with wedding couples.
 
Your main digital marketing strategy for weddings should be a focus on your wedding website. Use your social pages, Pinterest, photos and videos to capture couples in the “wow” moments of their wedding plans. This initial contact can lead to a productive a personal and productive wedding consultation.
 
What wedding digital marketing ideas can you share with us?