Five Ways to Prep your Bridal Store for Engagement Season

‘Tis the season for someone in love to drop to a knee… or two and pop the age old question “Will you marry me?”. As of 2022, Thanksgiving to Valentines Day, still proves to record the highest number of engagements each year. With December accounting for 19% of all engagements during the year. 

With this much love and excitement in the air, it’s no surprise a bride’s first stop is often to pick out the perfect wedding dress or pants suit. Here are five ways to prepare your bridal store and boost your online presence to attract these new brides-to-be.

1. Review your Website

• Update your web page titles and metadata descriptions. Ensure newly engaged brides can find your business when they are using search engines like Google. You’ll want to do this for each page on your website as different keywords you use can return your site in a search. 

• Enable internet ‘crawling’ on your webpages. All website builders should have a setting to enable or disable crawling a web page by the internet, which is just a fancy way of saying making it available to be searched. 

• Update your website with your most current content, updates, and images.  This can be done with blogs, adding new bridal testimonials, or highlighting your newest bridal gowns or accessories. 

• Connect your social accounts. Adding your social media accounts to your website gives visitors another way to engage with you. Young brides use their social accounts more often to communicate than picking up a phone, so why not break down that barrier?

2. Spruce up your Social Accounts

• Align your branding. You want the same bridal experience across all your platforms, such as Tiktok, Instagram or Facebook, to ensure a consistent bridal experience. This means maintaining the same fonts, images, colors, voice, and vibes wherever a bride-to-be can find you online. 

• Clean up old posts and images. Keeping your posts and image style consistent from social to website is important to maintain your brand integrity and professionalism. 

• Review your hashtags. No matter what the younger generation says, hashtags are still relevant. However each platform may utilize them differently. Determine how you want to use them for your business, for organization of posts, for search-ability, SEO, ect. See these resources for more insight on how to use hashtags on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. 

• Showcase your store’s style and vibe. Are you all frills and tulle or sleek and modern? Show it off, let potential bridal customers see the experience they will get when visiting your bridal business.

• Don’t forget about Pinterest! Many brides still get ideas for their big day from Pinterest. Try adding the ability to share your images from your website to Pinterest or adding your store items, styled shoot photos or blogs to your Pinterest account (don’t forget to add keywords to your pins!). This can help drive traffic to your website and enable brides to share and save your pins.

3. Set Up Online Booking

• Book appointments on your website 24/7. It’s no secret most appointments are booked after business hours, so enabling your website to be ‘open for business’ even when your storefront isn’t can significantly boost your leads.

• Time is Money. When using online booking on your website or social media, you have the ability to send automated appointment reminders and waitlist, or create booking fees and cancellation fees. Overall, this can help decrease the number of no-shows. Time is a resource we can’t get more of, so make sure you are being paid for yours when there are last minute cancellations.

4. Consider Advertising

• Local businesses can benefit from social media ads and/or Google ads. Advertising can help drive leads and appointments or boost your brand awareness.

• Use keywords and location parameters that are relevant to your niche or business. If you carry boho bridal dresses, use it to your advantage as a keyword to attract those brides looking for that bridal vibe. If you are located in Houston, make sure your geographic range is set to where you want to attract brides from.

• See how to get started with How Google Ads Work tutorial. Social media ads can be done a couple different ways, you can boost an existing post or create an entirely new ad with a specific goal in mind.

5. Collaborate with your Network

• The bridal industry network is a powerful one. From the florist, photographers, and bakers to the venue owner and makeup artists, each business plays a significant role in the bridal experience. So why not share each others services and talents with your bridal customers that visit you?

Looking for a way to help your bridal store run a bit more effortlessly? Book a demo with our Poppy Team to see the latest bridal store software on the market.

image from https://whenbusinessinspire.com