Before you know it, we will again have busier days for invitation sales. In January, with the bulk of all engagements coming to fruition between Christmas and Valentine’s Day and most weddings taking place April, May, June, September and October, all invitation businesses will increase from the slow days of summer, the temporary, mild resurrection of the fall and the distraction of the holiday season.
The time to strategize is now, taking larger four color ads in bridal magazines to be noticed rather than be dwarfed and not noticed by taking a small ad and only doing so if you have an attractive, functional web site. Reallocating advertising budgets away from yellow pages and newspaper to the internet, where almost all invitation customers are researching is important. If you want local customers to buy from you, you have to be found amid the web sites that are tempting consumers to buy online with invitations easily found at many invitation retailers, while retailers are more likely to offer a selection of upscale invitations that are not as easily found online.
In the July/August issue of Greetings Etc. Magazine, an article was published by shop.org, a division of the National Retail Federation, that concludes based on “The State of Retailing Online Study,” that “search engine marketing is the most effective way to reach new customers.”
I was ahead of the curve on this, implementing search marketing for my wife’s invitation store two years and in January forming Local Traffic Builder in partnership with a very talented web designer who became professionally certified by Google to master the power of this program and offer an advanced, intricately developed program for invitation retailers that would take an individual months to understand and implement. While being cost prohibitive to approach a general internet marketing firm to create to the extent we did for our industry.
Having this program implemented for your business by December would be ideal to capitalize on making your busy season much busier. Check out Local Traffic Builder carefully and keep it on your radar screen.