The Social Media Playbook for Bridal Retailers

Since the pandemic, global Instagram usage has never been so high.  Over 90% of Generation Z has an Instagram account.  They use it to document their lives for friends and followers, stay up-to-date on world events, promote social causes, and discover new interests. 

Social media has become a critical component of driving appointments for bridal shops.  

Today, we are going to review the bridal shops’ recipe for driving appointments using Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. By the end of this article, you are going to know:

1. What exactly you should be doing on Pinterest
2. How to take advantage of retargeting ads
3. What stage of the process brides start using Instagram
4. The role of Facebook/Instagram advertising
5. What types of content performs best on Instagram
6. How to streamline your posts
7. The power of Instagram Stories

Let’s dive in. 

Pinterest

Pinterest is one of the first platforms newly engaged brides use to build and curate inspiration.  Many of you have seen this in action — How many brides do you see on a regular basis who have a Pinterest board for their wedding to share with you? Since Pinterest is among the earliest stages of the process for these brides your efforts might not directly lead to appointments, but that does not mean you should in any way neglect it. 

In the last year, Pinterest has made a resurgence when it comes to SEO.  Whether it be changes they made on their platform, or changes to Google’s algorithm — The end result is the same: More potential brides finding themselves on pinterest as they are researching for their wedding.  For you this provides you the ability to get brides in the early stage of the process into your remarketing funnel. 

Remarketing: The ability to target and serve ads to people that have visited your website. 

How might you accomplish this? Simple. Pin all of your dresses from your website to Pinterest and make sure you are linking back to your website. 

Pinning all of your dresses will allow you to link back to your website, and start remarketing any brides that come over to your site.  This can be a powerful move for branding, as the bride will continue to be reminded of your brand throughout the inspiration/dream phase of the process.  

Instagram

Now, let’s change the topic over to Instagram.  Instagram is a powerful tool for engaging with your brides due to its widespread availability and activity.  Facebook/Instagram’s algorithms are also able to detect when someone is ‘recently-engaged’ so it can be a powerful tool for marketing to new brides in the market for their wedding gowns. 

As far as paid advertising, we recommend budgeting about 20% of your total ad spend for Instagram ads specifically for events. Why? We believe that Google is the superior place to place general awareness campaigns because of the intention of people searching.  In general, if someone searches for ‘wedding dresses near me’ on google, they are actively searching for an appointment.  That is to say the bride searching a term like this has a very high appointment intention.  

That being said, brides do not typically search for terms like ‘sample sales’ and ‘trunk shows.’ In fact, many brides are not even familiar with these terms.  Therefore, Instagram can be a very effective way for you to add additional appointments to your trunk-shows, and get more traffic for your sample sales, because you can present the event with imagery,video, and text in a way that is engaging. Make sure that you are only targeting ‘newly engaged’ women when creating your ad so that your ad spend is only used for qualified women in your area.  You should use the Business Manager in Facebook so that you have more control over the types of ads you run on Instagram. (buiness.facebook.com). 

Now that we understand the most effective ads to run on Instagram, let’s talk about the organic posts.  

Organic post: A non-paid post to your Facebook/Instagram feed 

It is very important that you carefully curate your posts on Instagram.  You really want to make sure that your profile’s posts are very consistent in the colors, and styles, so that you have a strong aesthetic. You can use apps like VSCO to apply specific filters to your posts so that you maintain your branding’s aesthetic. 

There are a few types of posts that we recommend — Remember, you are selling more than a dress. You are selling a lifestyle.  You want to avoid posting imagery of dresses on mannequins and instead focus on real bride/styled shoot imagery.  Here’s three types of imagery that we see success with:

1. Real Bride Imagery
2. Styled Shoot Imagery
3. Designer Editorial Imagery

There are three tools that are free, or inexpensive, that can help you plan out your posts and monitor your feed’s aesthetic:

1. Later
2. Planoly
3. SkedSocial

You can use these tools to schedule out your posts in advance and some of them even allow you to schedule out your stories. 

Stories

Instagram stories are another very important aspect of the Gram that you have to stay on top of.  Stories are the first place your brides are going to look when visiting your page.  They are also at the top of their home screen each time they visit the app, so it’s important to have a steady stream of stories to stay top of mind with your brides. 

Stories can be very casual, and are meant to be ‘fun.’ You can host contests, provide some BTS (behind the scenes) views of the store. The main point is to be very active and consistent.  Your brides today want to see that you’re up to date and on the cutting edge, and stories are a great way to establish that. 

photos courtesy of  of @somethingnewboutique

So let’s recap with some ‘quick-hits’:

• What exactly you should be doing on Pinterest
• • • Pinning your dresses and linking back to your website to get your brides in your ‘Remarketing Funnel’

• How to take advantage of retargeting ads
• • • Run retargeting ads through Google, and set them up only target brides that have visited your website but have not visited your appointment page. 

• What stage of the process brides start using Instagram
• • • Brides can immediately be categorized as ‘newly-engaged’ from Facebook/Instagram’s algorithms the moment they make their announcement on Instagram. This will give you the ability to target them with your ads. 

• The role of Facebook/Instagram advertising
• • • Use Facebook/Instagram to market your trunk shows/sample sales. 

• What types of content performs best on Instagram
• • • Real Bride imagery, Styled-shoot Imagery, Designer editorial imagery. 
• How to streamline your posts
• • • Use third party tools like ‘Later’, ‘Planoly’, and ‘Sked Social’
• The power of Instagram Stories
• • Brides want to see that you are active on stories. They are the first area your brides look at on your profile, and they show up at the top of your followers’ homescreen.  Be very active on stories. 

Remember, there is a chain of events that leads a bride from ‘Engagement’ to ‘Appointment’ and social media is a major piece of the chain.  It is important that you use the tools the modern day has provided to engage with your brides, and you will see more appointments as a result of it.

SYVO works with 300 bridal shops and focuses on driving appointments through modern techniques. Contact us today to see how we can help your shop!