Valley PR Blog

The power of brides online

By Charlotte Risch on July 26th, 2008 In Marketing

Ever since an engagement ring was slipped on my finger, I have been consumed with wedding plans (plus a massive client workload). There are hundreds of options for receptions, gifts, cakes, flowers and of course, wedding gowns. But as I was faced with making appointments to try on dresses, I discovered that bridal boutiques really need to brush up on their Word of Mouth Marketing Skills. Even if the shop has a PR or Marketing plan (beyond the bridal magazines and expos), WOMM should be at the top of their promotion priorities.

Because girls TALK!

No matter if their experience was good or bad, they want to tell others about it. I had a bridesmaid share a disastrous experience at a popular boutique in town and I have no desire to go there even though I had admired some of their designers. Another gal raved about her dress at another and I made an appointment to look at dresses there immediately.

I don’t know if its because brides are on budgets and need to comparison shop, but shops have got to realize how damaging word of mouth can be when customer service isn’t up to par. I’ve also heard about managers refusing to give a style number or ripping out the label on the dress so a shopper won’t go to another store or shop online. Will I go to that place, no matter if its twisted truth? Nope. Sure, you’re gonna have some cheap girls, but amazing customer service can sell a $2k gown when the bride was only budgeted for $1k. And when the bride feels and looks like Cinderella at the ball, she will be singing the praises of your shop to everyone.

I think shops need to not assume every girl is Bridezilla and start viewing her as a referral down the road when her friends and family get married. She’s only wearing that dress once, but the experiences she had getting to it won’t be kept mum.

Statistics show weddings as a $50 billion dollar industry. Lots of brides seek info through the web, too. Brides are hungry for online content and reviews. I see more hits on a post from my blog about my Save the Date cards than I do for any other topic I’ve written. There are numerous message boards and blogs for brides and they will post every tiny detail about their vendor experiences. Some of it is scathing, some of it is over the top gushing, but either way, its out there for other brides to see. If you’ve never given birth and want to know what its like, do you ask a guy…or do you ask your best friend who just had a baby? My fiance and I met with a DJ who said he’s heard of other vendors threatening to sue The Knot because of reviews that angry brides posted. Sorry, guys, but you should be looking at that as a lesson in overcoming bad experiences and using that negative review to improve your process or business practice. Its the power of the internet these days and brides are a niche audience. To only focus your attention on promoting to them in wedding expos and magazines and not realize you need to continuously be practicing WOMM is dangerous.

I continuously work on ways to build WOMM into my client’s PR plans because it is so important and so powerful. How is WOMM working for your clients? Do you offer tips and advice to your clients about the power of Word of Mouth?

Comments

What’s the saying: A person with a good experience tells three people. A person with a bad experience tells three thousand people.

That’s especially true for the bridal industry because there’s so much pressure on vendors to provide perfection and contribute to “The Dream,” if you will.

On thing I like to advise my clients to do is to use some of the media they get and turn it into WOMM. I tell them to send those on-line clips or video links to friends and send those around. It’s likely that the article will talk about a positive aspect of their business (I hope) and by passing it on to the right audience, exponentially increases the number of people who have heard about a good experience.

Sometimes press on its own is enough to move the dial noticably, but it moves more when the business owner goes into action and makes that media they received part of a tiny WOMM campaign.

There’s a great new book on this by Pete Blackshaw - “Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends. Angry Customers Tell 3,000″ with multiple examples. He gives this a new name - Consumer Generated Media - CGM.

On Dell’s customer service revolt in 2005: “A swarm of digital termites ended up eating away at the reputation Dell had spent countless millions of dollars to create.”

Companies cannot afford to ignore the power of word of mouth. In the past, it spread person to person but now a consumer’s rant gets magnified and can spread very quickly. I just finished reading Pete Blackshaw’s book mentioned in the comment by Pat Elliott and I would highly recommend it. It is well written with lots of examples to illustrate his points.

Check the wedding expert on WOM:
http://www.celebrateintimateweddings.com/

Speaking of revies on the knot.

I met with a photographer friend for lunch yesterday. He told me of a wedding photographer he knew of from, an online forum. She’s in CA, pretty busy and decently good. (but way under priced. $500 or so)

Her BF left her so she blew off her weekend wedding as she “needed a vacation”…Didn’t even tell the bride or think of consequences. Now she’s asking how to removed or deal with negative reviews…. hello?!!

Speaking of wedding photographers, you should check out this guy {video link) Do you like his sales presentation?

Charlotte your post could not ring more true. As a fellow “Knottie” (love your bio BTW - ha!), I have stressed so often the importance of these types of forums for many of my clients, making sure to remind their satisfied customers that the best compliment they can pay is a “rave” on a blog, forum, etc. Wedding-based or related businesses are especially dependent on referrals and WOM since they don’t get “repeat buyers” (or least hopefully they don’t!)

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