GOAL SETTING SERIES: Evaluating Your Marketing at Your Bridal Store

What makes your marketing ‘stick’?

Marketing can sometimes feel like throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks, which is kind of true. Setting clear goals of what you want to accomplish from marketing your bridal store will help you determine if what you are doing is successful.

Every store is different based on location, inventory, demographic you are talking to, price points, so here are a three things you can look at based on your previous marketing efforts and track before wasting a bunch of pasta this year.

If back is just not in the cards for you, or if you aren’t a Poppy user, you can always try these marketing suggestions moving forward.

#1: How are bridal customers hearing about your bridal store?

The different ways customers find out about your bridal store are what we refer to as your ‘marketing methods’.

If you are not using Poppy, you can track the return on your marketing investment for each marketing method by creating a spreadsheet listing all the different ways you attract customers. These could be things like online ads, Google listing, local radio spots, bridal shows, local ads, newsletters, promotional emails, etc. Within your spreadsheet, enter how much you’ve spent, their closing ratios, and all the sale amounts from each conversion per marketing method. From here, you will be able to gather what your average sale is per method.

Now ask yourself: Based on the information you’ve collected, are the marketing methods and strategies you’ve been using at your bridal store, so far, something you want to keep putting time and money into?

As a Poppy user, you can view the How Heard- Evaluation Report.

#2: Where should you invest in marketing for your bridal store?

Do you know the closing ratio and average sale by zip code? Do certain zip codes underperform?

Depending on where you want to attract more bridal customers from, this data will help you decide where you should be putting more of your time and effort. Whether your store is in a large metro area or a small rural town, targeting by zip code or city can help boost traffic to your store and your appointment calendar.

For Example:

If you are seeing bridal customers travel from 50 miles away to your store, but you are only investing in local marketing? It may be time to shift your budget to attract more out-of-town customers.

As a Poppy user, you can look at the the Zip Code – Evaluation Report to help you make these decisions each month!

#3: When should you invest in marketing from your bridal store?

Knowing when to spend is just as important as where and how to spend. If you are investing in social media or online advertising, you have the ability to adjust your spend by both day and time-of-day.

If you aren’t using a bridal software, like Poppy, or an online booking tool, you can track which days perform the best for booking appointments manually by making a spreadsheet of what day each bridal customer booked and which day they requested for their appointment.

Now, look at your appointment data as a whole, which days are brides booking on? Are you seeing most of your customers book on Monday or Tuesdays or on the weekends? Knowing when brides are doing their planning can help you adjust your spend and marketing message to send more traffic to your site, online appointment calendar or directly to your store.

As a Poppy user, you can view the Appointment Count – Day of the Week and Appointment Report – By Month reports to find the best booking days to invest in.

Want to dig into your data a little deeper? You can look at your Google Analytics data from your website (if you don’t already have this implemented, we suggest doing it — it’s free!) and your social media accounts’ impressions to see your highest trafficked pages, days, locations and referral sources. You can then use this information along with your appointment booking findings to really understand how, what and when your marketing is working for you and how you should make adjustments to optimize your return on investment.