Did you know that the wedding industry in the UK is worth over 10 billion British Pound (GBP)? What’s more, an increasing number of Chinese brides order their custom-made wedding dresses online via UK-based websites. You may think, well, I’m not in the wedding business, so why bother to read this. If you understand the importance of standing out to generate leads, this is for you!
Zhao Ning – a Chinese business manager of the brand VERUO- says:
“custom-made bridal dresses on the internet have gained popularity due to their cheaper price tags and diverse styles”.
Now, imagine that you are a British shop owner who wants to earn a business selling bridal dresses. What would be a smart strategy to earn more revenue online?
First and foremost: to be successful in any business, you need to genuinely understand your customers or clients.
As Brian Clark explains in Three Steps to Creating Audience Archetypes for Smarter Content Marketing, there are 3 key questions to attract quality leads and earn their trust:
- Know your customer’s ordinary world;
- Identify the problems they face, and the desire that keeps them going;
- Address every common objection and aspect of resistance they may have;
Join me while we discover the ordinary world of women in love.
Pay attention to the beliefs of women who shop for bridal gowns!
“92% of online users first use search engines to look for products and services”, says HubSpot. And amazingly, “75% of those users never scroll past the first page of search results!”
So, appearing on the first page of Google is critical. Let me give you an example:
What words will brides use to search for wedding dresses?
Let’s start with “wedding dress”. You can use Google Keyword tool to analyze this keyword. It’s accurate and free! In this example, we’ll look at the results generated by my ninja tool: Market Samurai.
The keyword wedding dress generates a massive list with search phrases, like “affordable wedding dress”, “backless wedding dress”, “bridal dress”, “budget wedding dress”, “custom made wedding dress” and “lace wedding dress”. To watch all 748 keywords, click quality traffic keywords.
How do you decide which keywords to use for your content marketing strategy?
First of all: who are you targeting?
Define the needs of the people you serve. Think about the bride for a minute.
Is this person someone with a tight budget, a woman who wants the latest design or someone who does not truly know what she wants?
Is she confident enough to buy her bridal gown online? Who does she trust most to make her final decision?
Second, use keywords with enough search traffic.
The phrase “wedding dress” generates 60,164 daily searches (broad match) for UK related sites or about 1.8 million searches per month! To learn more on broad, phrase and exact match, go to Support Google Adwords.
Third, include keywords with low or weak competition.
Let’s dig deeper in the results.
According to Zhao “ordering custom-made bridal dresses on the internet is a new trend, which appears to have a promising future” (source: Want China Times)
So, you might think “wedding dress online” could be your winner keyword phrase.
Let’s see which 3 competitors show up for the UK market, by entering “wedding dress online” in Google’s search engine:
- Rank number 1: WeddingDressOnlineShop, Professional online shop, many fashion styles of wedding dresses and gowns, bridesmaid dresses, prom dresses, evening dresses and accessories…
- Rank number 2: DressesOnlineSale, Buy UK bridal gowns, evening dresses, prom dresses, party dresses, bridesmaid dresses and flower girls dresses from our online shop, 50% Discount Wedding …
- Rank number 3: InDesignGown, IndesignGown | The #1 wedding dress online store for discounted bridal dresses, low price bridal gowns, flower girl dresses,cheap wedding accessories…
To get a rough estimate of the monthly US-based web traffic for these 3 websites, I used Site Analytics by Compete.
Here, are the results for May 2012:
- WeddingDressOnlineShop 4,276 unique visitors (US data only);
- DressesOnlineSale 562 unique visitors (US data only);
- InDesignGown less than 500 unique visitors (US data only);
Let’s assume that you are just starting to build your bridal gown business. You want to set up a website with an online shop. How are you going to attract some of this traffic to your site? Probably not by bidding on the keyword phrase “wedding dress online” for your Google ads. This keyword is extremely expensive! So, what to do next?
Generate organic traffic
Use specific niche keywords and include a social media marketing strategy to drive organic traffic to your web shop. I’ll give you a quick example in a sec.
But first let the following words by Brian Clark imprint on your mind:
“Marketing and brand storytelling is about reminding people what they wanted in the first place”.
Now, let’s get creative with two examples: the phrase “wedding dress” shows us two fascinating results for the UK market.
Kate Middleton Wedding Dresses (low competition, 49,500 global and 14,800 local searches (per month);
Vera Wang Wedding Dresses (medium competition, 165,000 global and 22,200 local searches (per month);
A quick background info:
“Kate Middleton (now Princess Catherine) picked a breathtaking Alexander McQueen gown for her royal wedding dress”, see Lauren Turner on PopSugar .
“The Vera Wang brand reflects her vision to create a lifestyle that goes beyond core bridal and ready-to-wear, and into publishing, fragrance, beauty, accessories and home”, source Vera Wang.
Use smart marketing
Let’s combine a bit of your creativity and smart marketing.
You could use these two keyword phrases –Kate Middleton Wedding Dresses and Vera Wang Wedding Dresses– to create outstanding blog posts to cater to the needs of women who soon are “newly weds”.
Maybe they can not afford to buy an Alexander McQueen or Vera Wang wedding dress, but they certainly want to look like Kate Middleton on their wedding day!
Create compelling content, inspired by these keyword phrases and spread the word via various social platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest.
Come back next week to learn more on how to identify the problems these brides face, and the desire that keeps these women going. Plus how to address every common objection and aspect of resistance they might have for not choosing your bridal gowns!
Takeaway: if you ever consider starting your business in the wedding industry, make sure you “pay attention to the beliefs of the people who aspire to get married”. Know what they actually want. From there watch your competitors, study them, talk to people in the wedding business and create a smart content strategy to stand out.
It takes a lot of smart work, a bit of hard work and consistency to build your online business. Work with people who know what they are doing and start with the fundamentals: keyword research to understand your customer’s ordinary world. See you next week!
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