4 Hot Tips to Boost Your Bridal Biz

 With bridal season in full swing, now is the time to capture the increase in business. Stephanie Brinkerhoff, BTC’s Resident Bridal Expert and author of Elegant Upstyles for Today’s Bride, shares 4 powerful marketing tips below to help your business cash in on the ‘I do’s’! With over 5 million Pinterest followers, Steph is the most famous upstyling and wedding specialist in the social media world. Add the 700K Facebook fans, 150K on Instagram, and you can bet she is booked solid and helping make memories this time of year.

In Undoing the Updo, her first 90 minute BTC Webinar that brought cheers from the audience, Steph shares 4 tips on how to network and cross promote with other professional vendors in the bridal industry to boost your exposure and referral business:

1. Reach out to other wedding vendors, especially photographers. After you research their work to make sure they reflect the level of quality that matches yours, offer to help promote each other’s business. When you work together on a bridal party booking, be sure to cross promote on each other’s websites. “While connecting with wedding vendors is important, connecting with photographers is probably even more important. Your work will make their work look even better, and their work will make yours look even better, so it’s a win-win situation. Photographers are also very likely to send their clients your way because the more put together their clients look, the easier their job will be,” notes Steph.

2. Tag each other‘s photos and link to each other on your social media pages. You can’t buy advertising like this! Your bridal work will reach a larger audience when you get on as many other sites as possible.  In addition to photographers, you can also cross promote with other wedding service vendors such as dress designers and boutiques, florists and jewelers. “Tagging and linking to each other as wedding vendors will expose your business to a whole new audience that otherwise might not know how to find you,” advises Steph. “Getting exposure to each other’s following is as easy as adding a tag or a link, and it’s super effective.”

3. Participate in wedding vendor spotlights. Sites such as My Inspired Wedding offers a list of vendor spotlight events in different regions of the country. Google wedding vendor events for your city or region to locate where and when they take place. You gain face to face exposure with brides and have the opportunity to showcase your work with printed photography, computer images and you may even consider having hair models as part of your spotlight to showcase your work in person. “Doing a vendor spotlight or having a preferred vendor section on your website is a great way to let people know who you trust,” notes Steph. “On top of that, it’s very flattering to other wedding vendors to know that you think so highly of them, and they will be a lot more likely to send clients your way, and list you as a preferred vendor as well.”

4. Write guest posts for bigger blogs and submit your work. You can find a variety of blogs on this site, such as Style Me Pretty, and choose the ones that match your style of work. http://www.weddingblogs100.com/. “When you lend your expertise as a hairstylist to a well-known wedding blog, it will immediately make potential clients trust you as a professional who knows what they are doing,” says Steph. “Write up a blog post complete with pictures about something related to wedding hair and contact some blogs to see if they want to post it, always link back to your site. It will give you more exposure and more credibility.”

It is worth reminding that you should make arrangements before the wedding with the bride and photographer to have approval to access and use the photos. Steph offers to credit the photographer in exchange for using the shots. Get the best light for your photos–step outside to get a clear photo, if needed. Be mindful of what is in the background of your photos. Keep your station clean and don’t have food or beverage items in the shot.  In her first webinar with BTC, Steph expands on how to go beyond social media to partner with local vendors, as an added way to create buzz about her work in the community.

In her webinar, Undoing the Updo, Steph takes us through the most popular wedding looks of the season, 2 step-by-steps, how to make your portfolio stand out, utilizing social media to grow your business, and how to network and cross promote with other wedding businesses. Click here to order the webinar, Undoing the Updo. 

It’s not too late to learn some beautiful, easy-to-do bridal upstyles for your summer business surge in Stephanie’s book, Elegant Upstyles for Today’s Bride. You’ll find over 100 bridal and upstyling images, along with step-by-steps for 15 modern, popular looks. Available now in the BTC Bookstore.