This is the Transcript of the #WeddingMarket Chat on February 13th, 2013 with Sonny Ganguly from WeddingWire. The answers were made on Twitter so responses will appear different.
Sonny Ganguly, Chief Marketing Officer, WeddingWire
Sonny leads WeddingWire’s marketing strategy, customer acquisition, and business development. In less than five years, Sonny has grown WeddingWire into the #1 wedding network in the U.S. with over 11,000,000 visitors per month. Prior to joining WeddingWire, Sonny was in a management program at Wal-Mart where he led marketing, sales, and retail strategy development. Before this experience, Sonny spent four years at Kraft Foods where he managed numerous consumer brands, including the JELL-O business with P&L responsibility for over $800 Million. During his tenure, his brands’ reached record volume, revenue, and profitability levels.
Sonny holds a B.A. in Economics with a focus in Management and Marketing from The University of Pennsylvania and holds an M.B.A from Harvard Business School where he served as President of the Marketing Club.
Learn more about Sonny Ganguly at http://www.weddingwire.com
Join Our Wedding Market Chats For Wedding Professionals Every Wednesday at 10:00PST, 1:00EST, and 6:00GMT (UK time) with the #WeddingMarket Hashmark On Twitter. Learn something new to help your business grow every week. The chats are hosted by Wedding Market editor Julie Albaugh (@juliealbaugh).
Q1: How did you get started at @WeddingWire?
A1: I’ve been here since we first founded @WeddingWire. I was able to meet Tim, our CEO, through business school connections. More than six years later, we have grown to over 200 employees. We love developing new technologies for the wedding industry And most importantly, we enjoy working with amazing wedding professionals from across the country and the world.
Q2: What is your first marketing resolution?
A2: #1 Strengthen Your Brand – Create consistent branding across all consumer touchpoints, including your site, listings & biz cards. Remember that your logo isn’t your brand. Look at your marketing materials without your logo. Does it still look unique? Building your brand equity is important because purchase intent amongst consumers is maximized at 7 exposures. Be seen! You need to make sure your marketing strategies are specific to your needs so they flow easily with your business. You may want to check out websites such as https://bmmagazine.co.uk/business/3-things-small-businesses-can-learn-from-casino-marketing-strategies/ to see what you can do with this and how you can be supported.
Q3: What is your second marketing resolution?
A3: Use Google’s Three Free Tools – It is important to set up Google Alerts, Analytics, and Webmaster Tools for your biz. They’re free! Google Alerts is the easiest way to let the news come to you. Set up alerts for your name, your business name, competition, etc. Google Analytics is a great way to measure your traffic. Get to know your seasonal/geographical trends for visits & pageviews Webmaster Tools lets you see how Google sees your website.
Know when issues arise and all the places that link to you!
Q4: What is your third marketing resolution?
A4: Find the Right Keywords – Google’s keyword tool makes it simple to search for keywords that have high traffic & low competition. Focus on improving your ranking for 10 keywords. Typically you’ll include geography & category (i.e. Boston Wedding Florist) Also, build links to your website that align with your keywords. For example, in press releases hyperlink keywords to your site. If you’re unsure how to do this, you may need help from a company such as oneseo who are experts in this field.
Q5: What is your fourth marketing resolution?
A5: Create Unique Content – Blogs are the best ways to create good content. My favorite platforms are WordPress and Blogger. If you have less time, try capturing photos through Instagram or publishing all types of media through a Tumblr blog. Remember content can be about the journey and not just the final result. Share stories & photos of the process of what you do.
Q6: What is your fifth marketing resolution?
A6: Get ‘Likes’ for Your Site – Place the facebook ‘Like’ button prominently on your homepage. Get it at developers.facebook.com Having the ‘Like’ button on your site pushes your URL into facebook’s timeline and also improves SEO rankings on Google!
Q7: What is your sixth marketing resolution?
A7: Makeover Your Social Profiles – Your facebook page, Twitter profile, Youtube channel, etc should feel similar to your main site. We created a new tool called our Facebook Page Designer. It allows you to design a great page http://wed.li/XAbGIS
Q8: What is your seventh marketing resolution?
A8: You-Pin-Face – My favorite social sites for reaching engaged couples efficiently are Youtube, Pinterest and Facebook…for now We forget that Youtube is the #2 search engine in the US. More people search for videos on Youtube than for anything on Yahoo! Pinterest was the fastest growing social network last year, from 4 million monthly visitors to 40 million…but the growth has slowed. Facebook continues to dominate with over 1 billion people. Did you know it is the 3rd largest country and 3x the US population? Twitter continues to grow, especially valuable for B2B.
Q9: What is your eighth marketing resolution?
A9: Create Video Content – Outside of videographers, most wedding professionals don’t have good video content to share. We think we watch a lot of videos online already, but video consumption will increase +150% in the next two years. Our Video Builder is a simple way to create high-quality videos. Simply choose photos, pick a song & voilà http://wed.li/IrrhDC
Q10: What is your ninth marketing resolution?
A10: Don’t Become SPAM – Email marketing can be very effective, but focus on CRA principles: Consistency, Relevancy and Activity. Consistency is making sure all your emails feel similar. You want your users to get used to your style and messages for best results.
Relevancy is ensuring your content is sent at the right time. We won’t send an email to Book a Venue 2 weeks before a wedding J Activity is about finding people who want to hear from you. We remove users from our lists if they have been inactive for 90 days. This will enable you to reach the people who are more likely to use your product or service in the foreseeable future. As a result, you may need to replace these people with new customers, so checking out somewhere like Lead Lists can help you to reach different people through email, enabling you to be successful going forward. If you’re looking for a good email platform, many pros use Constant Contact & Vertical Response. I like Mail Chimp as well!
Q11: What is your tenth marketing resolution?
A11: Get 1 Review Every Month – High quantity/quality reviews are important, but you also want to make sure they are recent! 72% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations…Getting reviews should be part of sales cycle. We recently updated our Review Collector tool, which makes it easy to get reviews from all your newlywedshttp://wed.li/XAk1fB . I always say its best to let others sing your praises!
Q12: What is your eleventh marketing resolution?
A12: Mobilize Your Website – By 2014, more traffic will access the internet from mobile devices than from desktops & laptops Yet only 1% of small businesses have optimized their website for mobile. You’re not creating a new site, just a simpler version. My favorite tool at @WeddingWire is our Mobile Site Creator. Mobilize your own website in seconds! http://wed.li/XAll25 A scary fact: 7 billion people in the world…Currently, 4.8 billion active mobile subscriptions & 4.2 billion active toothbrushes!
Q13: What is your twelfth marketing resolution?
A13: Accept Mobile Payments – This year we will spend $860 billion through our mobile devices. Phones will soon become our wallets! You can walk into Starbucks and buy a Latte with your phone. If a customer wants to pay, you should be ready anytime, anywhere! So this weekend, I highly suggest getting a device to accept mobile payments, whether square, paypal, etc.https://squareup.com/
Q14: What did you take away from this #WeddingMarketChat ?” ¨
A14: I love a quote from Gretzky: ‘A good hockey player plays where the puck is, a great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be” Similarly, I like to say a GREAT wedding business plays where the customer is going to be in the future We covered 12 resolutions…some you may have tried or currently practice. Hopefully, you can add 1-2 new strategies to your mktg plan!
#WeddingMarket Chat Question: What is the best way to get inbound links to your site?
A: The best way to get links is to create great content 🙂 Plus listings in online sites provide strong links.
#WeddingMarket Chat Question: How does one determine an ‘active’ toothbrush?
A: We have a lot that sit in our closets…active means currently being used 🙂
#WeddingMarket Chat Comment: This is an EXCEPTIONAL place to go get your website “graded” & has tips to improve it! http://marketing.grader.com
A: It gives a good quick overview. In SEO, the two most important things are Consistency and Patience.
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