In episode 114, we talked about Marketing Wedding Services on Pinterest. In that episode, we covered how to set up your profile, set up your boards, and keyword target your ideal audience. Today we’re going to be diving even further into Pinterest marketing for wedding professionals, talking all about how to craft a daily/monthly pinning schedule to capture the seasonal traffic that weddings bring.
Wedding clients don’t (typically) repeat, so you have to capture them at the exact right moment!
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The Garter Girl
I have Julianne of The Garter Girl here on the podcast with me today. Julianne has been designing and creating stylish handmade heirloom garters since 2008. In that time period, she’s witnessed the ebb and flow of the wedding industry online. Julianne straddles the line between e-commerce and handmade products. She is also a blogger so she brings content creation experience to the table as well.
Her background is in politics and media/PR. She’s used her blog and shop to tell her story on her own terms. Julianne actually uses the Simple Pin Planner (which you can get for free when you sign up for the Wednesday email). But she hacks it to make it work for wedding “seasons”.
Julianne’s blog served as the foundation for selling her products. She loved it because there was no one to tell her “no” or edit how she was promoting or selling.
She first started using Pinterest back in the “invite only” days. Pinterest has always been effective for her because it’s the only third-party site that is truly interested in sending traffic to your site. The platform’s purpose is to match creators with the users who are searching for their great ideas. In this way, Pinterest is different than other social media platforms.
Pinterest Marketing for Wedding Professionals: Crafting a Strategy
Using a Scheduling Tool
Tailwind was a game changer for Julianne. Before using it, she had hired someone to sit and pin for ten minutes at the beginning of every hour throughout the day. Tailwind has allowed Julianne to have a strategy that helps her to not waste time.
She has 1,500 pins scheduled in her Tailwind queue. Scheduling those pins only takes her 20 minutes to an hour. This helps her to be super effective on Pinterest without consuming her time weekly or monthly.
Related: Manual Pinning vs. Scheduled Pinning: Which One Gets Better Results?
Answering The Client’s Questions
An effective content creator creates content that solves the problems of their audience before they even know they have a problem. For The Garter Girl, the blog is the foundation of everything Julianne does. She uses her blog in 3 different ways:
- to show that she’s open for business
- to solve her client’s problems
- to demonstrate that she can actually deliver the information that the readers need.
Julianne creates blog posts based on all of her frequently asked questions — questions like:
“What leg do you wear a wedding garter on?”
Or
“How high should I wear my wedding garter?”
She looks at her analytics to see what questions are leading people to her blog and creates content based on those questions.
You want to be helpful to your potential client and give them the answer that they’re looking for. Don’t assume that people can get their answers elsewhere and use that as an excuse to not create content. Put your spin and your voice on the answers. Prove yourself to be the expert on the given topic.
If you have the answer to a client question, write a blog post answering that question. You will be able to re-use that blog post over and over again because the questions are the same almost every time. Keep in mind that the best bloggers out there focus more time and attention on their old content rather than their new content.
The most powerful tool you have is what’s in your archives.
– Darren Rowse, Pro Blogger
Strategy for Product Photography
Brand photography can be easy if you allow it to be. Photography really does matter. Julianne has someone come to her house once a week and take photos of her work. She invested in photos of her work from the very beginning.
The product photos are what sell her products. The quality of the images need to match the quality of the product. Investing in product photography makes a huge difference.
Lots of people think you should invest money on your website first. But your website can’t be effective unless you have beautiful product images to use on it.
This is a great example of doing things in the right order in your business. Two books that Julianne recommends on this topic are Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine and Clockwork: Designing Your Business to Run Itself.
Pinning At the Right Time
We have the standard yearly calendar that we all live in, but there’s also a separate wedding season calendar. Over 70% of couples get engaged between Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day.
Most couples take about a year to plan their wedding. As a wedding professional, you need to think about what your couple’s focus is during the span of that year.
In December, January and February, couples are getting engaged and enjoying the very early stages of wedding planning, which usually just involves setting a budget. During this time, you should be pinning anything engagement-related –engagement parties, engagement photo shoots, how to tell your friends/family/coworkers that you got engaged, etc.
If you’re not in the wedding industry, consider creating wedding-related gift guides. Some ideas include:
- Holiday gifts for couples
- Holiday gifts for the bride-to-be
- Engagement gift guides.
It’s also a great time to pin anything budget-related. A budget checklist or guide will be super helpful to the newly engaged couple. Pinning wedding planners or binders is a great idea as well.
Another great topic to pin on during the winter months is last-minute spring wedding ideas. At that point, couples are no longer picking a venue or photographer or dress (they’ve already nailed all of that down). But they might need to DIY some wedding favors.
Regional and Locational Importance
The cost of a wedding in New York City is totally different from the cost of a wedding in Dallas. The big wedding websites can be misleading when it comes to wedding cost estimates. Anything you can do to make your content regional-specific will benefit you.
Create a board of all the wedding locations you have worked at or aspire to work at. The first thing that newly-engaged couples people need to pin down is a wedding location/venue. They will be searching for images from weddings that have taken place in these specific locations.
This will help move them into the second stage of wedding planning – picking a caterer, using a specific photographer, deciding on the ceremony details.
The more detailed you are in your keywords, the more helpful you will be.
Rounding Out the Year
The months of June, July, and August constitute the slow phase of the wedding planning calendar. The big things have been booked and couples usually want a bit of a break from wedding planning. They typically take this time to plan their honeymoon. During the slow phase, they also tend to get their wedding registry set up, (another great gift guide opportunity).
September, October, and early November are the months to pin any proposal-related content (think how to propose, where to propose and engagement rings). If the couple is already engaged, it’s a great time to pin last-minute content for the couple who is already engaged, such as:
- wedding welcome gifts
- favor ideas
- bridal showers
- bachelor/bachelorette parties
- rehearsal dinner.
There’s no shortage of information on the internet about the actual wedding, but there’s room for you to create lots of awesome content on bridal showers or rehearsal dinners. Those topics aren’t quite as saturated as the actual wedding day. You can have a lot of success by posting about those topics.
Need content ideas? Go to Pinterest and search the topic and see how many pins you find.
There are certain things you should be pinning all year long:
- Destination weddings
- Anything regional and location-based
- How to save money.
Any advice you have on budgeting and saving money will definitely do well. Remember that Pinterest likes content with numbers like “How to Spend Less than $10K on Your Wedding.” Consider posts like this smart and helpful clickbait.
The biggest takeaway from this is, no matter what your niche is, the key to a great strategy for marketing weddings on Pinterest is creating great content. Jot down all your ideas that are exploding in your head and write about them!
Be sure to check out Julianne’s fabulous products over at The Garter Girl. If you’re a bride, you definitely want to download her free Ultimate Bridal Fashion Timeline. And don’t forget to follow her on Instagram!
Wedding professionals — check out these other helpful podcast episodes:
- Converting Pinterest Traffic to Sales
- How to Market Your Shopify Store on Pinterest
- How to Pin Strategically on Pinterest
Time Stamp:
2:30 – The Garter Girl
7:38 – Inserting Pinterest Into the Business
16:45 – Using a Scheduling Tool
19:33 – Answering The Client’s Questions
30:10 – Strategy for Product Photography
37:20 – Pinning At the Right Time
43:52 – Regional and Locational Importance
50:39 – Rounding Out the Year
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Good Information!!
Where can I find the document referenced in this podcast that has ideas for each quarter for weeding professionals?
Hi Ted, There isn’t a document. What we referenced are the ideas outlined in this blog post.
This is so good. Thanks!!
I’m glad you enjoyed it!
QUESTION: When you are saying that couples are in the slow phase of their planning in June, July, and August, are you recommending that we Pin topics relevant to the slow phase during those months? I just ask because previously I had learned on your podcast to pin at least 3 months in advance of something. So does that mean we should be pinning in Jan, Feb, March with the hopes that our pins gain traction by June, July, August? Thanks for your help!
Love the podcast!
Hi Anna,
Thanks for your comment! It never hurts to pin in advance, since Pinterest is a platform for planners! We recommend pinning your seasonal content 45 days in advance of the event. Therefore you could start pinning for the slow phase in mid-April, and carry it out through August. While it is important to get ahead of Pinners, there is a bit more flexibility with wedding content since each couples’ timeline for planning varies. You could experiment with pinning some content in advance and some in the heart of the season, and see how traffic flows for each method.