Are bridal shows worth my time?

We’ve been talking a lot about bridal shows and expos at The Bridal Team.  A question that frequently comes up among my artists and the partners that we collaborate with is, should I spend thousands of dollars to participate in these shows?

Before I was an agent, I worked in advertising, and the one thing that came up in every meeting with our clients was ROI, return on investment.  ROI is what marketers use to test the effectiveness of their marketing programs.  In many companies it’s the number they use to decide if an advertisement or promotion was worth the money and if they should do it again. 

The formula for ROI is simple, and as long as you are tracking where your sales come from (that’s a post for another day), you can easily calculate ROI for all your advertising and promotions.  The formula is:

ROI = (gross profit – costs)

costs

For example, if you spend $4000 to attend a bridal show and your gross profit (amount you made after your expenses) from sales from brides you met at the show was $6000, then your ROI is .5 or 50%.  Is that good or bad?  

Some marketers will tell you that a positive ROI is the sign of an effective program, others will tell you that it has to be x% to be effective.  I believe that the best way to judge if your ROI is good is to compare it to the other marketing programs you have done. That way you are spending your money on the most effective promotions. If every other event or promotion you’ve done you’ve had an ROI of 90% then I would suggest spending your money on those programs, and skipping the bridal shows. If you’ve never had an ROI above 20% then you should be spending every weekend at the bridal shows (assuming you have the same results from each show).

Now, let’s get back to my original question, are Bridal Shows worth it?  For my area of business they were not worth the money. We’ve done two shows in the last year and we ended up with a negative ROI on both of them. In the future, I will be focusing on other ways to reach brides that are more cost effective. However, if this post has taught you anything, I hope you learned that because something didn’t work for one vendor doesn’t mean it’s not going to work for you.  You have to do your own ROI on a bridal show to be able to answer that question.  

Top 5 Things to Consider When Creating a Portfolio

Portfolios are an area of the business that is near and dear to my heart.  As a businessperson, I use my resume to showcase my skills and talents to prospective employers.  I have one or two pages of white, or off white, paper to explain what it is I do for a living and why I would be the right fit for a certain job.  As an artist you have a portfolio. 

So what is a portfolio?  What does it look like?  These days a portfolio is anything that showcases your work.  It can be a website, an iPad, a printed book of samples, it can be boxes of past invitations you’ve created or a coffee table book of past weddings you’ve shot.  It can be three things, or it can be 100 things.  There is no “right” or “wrong” way to create a portfolio.  There is however some guidelines that I think should be followed here are my:

Top 5 Things to Considering When Creating a Portfolio

1) Less is more
 Just because you’ve shot 1000 weddings or done makeup on 500 brides does not mean I need to see all of it.  Quantity is not important, quality is.  Clients would rather see 10 of your best images, or samples, than 50 mediocre examples.  Your portfolio is a chance for you to show me what you are capable of and your strongest work, not everything you’ve ever done.

2) Presentation matters
How you showcase your work is as important as what you showcase.  If you are using a printed portfolio, the book itself should be well made, I suggest a leather portfolio.  You can find some great ones at House of Portfolios.  The prints should be high quality photographic prints, not something you printed at your local drugstore.  If you are using an iPad or laptop, make sure that the program is easy for your client to flip through, and that the images are all formatted correctly.  The last thing I want to have to do is look at a laptop sideways because you forgot to change the orientation of an image.

3) Make sure it flows

Every portfolio should have a logical progression.  It can be in chronological order or you can match the background colors of your images.  Another option is to group similar styles of images together.  How you organize your portfolio doesn’t matter, what matters is that you do organize it and that it takes your customer on a journey through your work.

4) Customize to your audience

I think this is the most important tip; you want the portfolio to speak to your clients.  If you are meeting with a bride that dreams of a soft and romantic wedding, then show her images of other wedding you’ve done in that same style.  By creating a custom presentation for your customer it tells them that you have the same vision as they do for their wedding day, and that you have the experience to make that vision a reality.

5) Variety is key

You don’t want a portfolio of all the same type of images or samples, it should show a range of your work.  You should have some “safe” or traditional images or samples, and some samples that push the envelope. But don’t go overboard on the creative images.  I always tell my artists it’s OK to show your creative side in one image, but you don’t have to showcase ALL of your creative ideas in that same image.

Article in CS Brides

I was lucky enough to be featured in CS Brides for their Spring 5th Anniversary Edition.  They wrote a great article about what we are doing over at The Bridal Team.  Here is the article!

The Beginning

Almost a year ago I launched a brand called The Bridal Team, a division of Stewart Talent in Chicago.  It was during this process that I realized how much I love the wedding industry.  I know it sounds crazy, how can you “love the wedding industry”, well just like when I fell in love with my husband, I can’t explain how it happened, it just did.  Working with brides, at The Bridal Team, brought me back to my wedding and the happiness I felt the day I married my best friend.  I have found such joy in helping others plan a part of their special day.

In the last year of running The Bridal Team I’ve learned so much about the wedding industry and the people that make up this wonderful community.  While a bride plans her wedding one time (hopefully), these people live and breathe weddings every day.  Most of them are small businesses that have a passion for weddings and they do all they can to help create each brides dream wedding. 

Many of the wedding professionals I’ve met are artists first, from the invitation designers to the people that bake and decorate beautiful cakes, to the hair and makeup artists and the photographers.  These talented people create something special and unique for every wedding.  But many of them are creative people first and they have had to learn, some by trial and error, the business side.  I, on the other hand, am business first, and while I love coming up with creative and unique ideas, I would not consider myself an artist (ask any of the makeup artists I represent).

For the last 4 years I’ve worked with artists, as an account manager at an ad agency and as a talent agent at an artists agency.  I work with photographers, makeup artists, hair stylists, wardrobe stylists and fashion stylists on a daily basis. I help manage their careers, I create their individual marking plans for the year, I help them choose images for their portfolios, I promote them to clients and I negotiate their fees and contracts.  I help them with the business side of things so that they can focus on the creative side. It really is a wonderful job, I help people do what they love and let them follow their dreams everyday.

So enough about me, the point of Bridal by Breanne is not to tell my life story, the point is to share with you what I’ve learned, and what I am learning about the bridal industry.  It is to address the business side of weddings so that you can focus on the creative side and bringing a couples dream wedding to life.   I hope that I can share with you information that you find useful and that together we can explore another side of the wedding industry. I look forward to taking this journey with you!