To Advertise or Not to Advertise That is the Question (2 of ...)


The next business lesson we are going to review today (class) is the power of advertising. We are by no means experts in the realm of marketing our company...in fact it is hard for us to even find ourselves in a google search! However, we feel that paying for advertising on a few premium sites has changed our business tremendously. I'm not going to lie, looking at a monthly advertising bill was scary...we did not know if we should be committing our hard earned money (see previous post) for so long (most sites require a year long committment). This decision, like the majority of our fist attempts, ended up being one of those errors in the ole' Trial and Error business model we tend to assume!

Lesson 2: Advertising can be good when research has been done!

We were victims...but no court of law would hear our case because we were mainly victimized by ourselves! One day, one of us ...dana...was contacted by a wedding advertising site about C and D possibly advertising with them. They gave us some number of brides in the Raleigh area that used their site and explained some of the perks that went along with their paid advertising campaign. The sales person basically sang the sweetest song and Dana wanted to follow this person to the edge of the cliff...the advertising cliff that is. Best of all, it was a super inexpensive yearly rate...something that even C and D at the time could afford. Well we paid our upfront fee and got our information to their site and we were super excited about the possibilities! And...nothing...nothing...and more nothing. I think we had 2 messages from the site that whole entire year about a bride looking for planners in the Raleigh area when we tried to contact those alleged brides, the e-mails bounced back and the numbers were disconnected. Furthermore, they automatically renewed the next year and we had to fight with them to get our money back! It goes along with that old adage "You get what you pay for."



Lemming aka C & D Events


We currently advertise with three different sites; The Knot, My Raleigh Wedding, and Forever Bridal. Each of them cost quite a bit more than our original site did but each of them generate multiple inquiries per month and have been well worth the monthly cost. We always say we wished we would have done it sooner! Our best advice to those starting out in this industry or any for that matter is to research good advertising sites/companies for your niche and invest in your future clients even if it looks a little scary!...Advertising dollars are dollars well spent!