By Sonny Ganguly, WeddingWire CMO, Washington, D.C.Finding the right channels to grow your marketing footprint is often the biggest challenge in driving growth. However, there are three marketing tools that can help you book more couples and drive long-term success. They are: the megaphone, the magnet, and the measuring cup. While these tools may not be what you expected, to understand their far-reaching impact it’s important to know that modern marketing is segmented into two categories: outbound marketing and inbound marketing. Outbound marketing is the megaphone that broadcasts your business to the world, helping you reach potential clients where they’re spending their time. Inbound marketing is the magnet, drawing in potential customers who have already shown interest in your business. To determine the effectiveness of these channels, measure your marketing success. The measuring cup is all about making sure that the marketing recipe you’ve created is successful.1. The Megaphone - Key Outbound Marketing TacticsOutbound marketing involves advertising, online listings, public relations, emails, events, and marketing collateral. Here’s a closer look at some important outbound tactics:Advertising— Today’s couples are technologically savvy and spend their time wedding planning and searching for professionals online and on-the-go. Target your dollars to online local listings that are mobile-friendly, versus traditional print ads or television and radio spots that cost a large amount of money without consistent coverage. Remember, you’re targeting only 1.3 percent of the currently engaged U.S. population, so let’s make sure your ad dollars go toward that target!Public relations—Spread the word about your business by sharing industry awards, showcasing great reviews, getting quoted in media, or displaying your talent through a Real Wedding feature. These build your credibility and expand your reach. Get started by collecting great reviews from past clients to earn industry awards such as WeddingWire Rated™ or Couples Choice Awards®, or submit a real wedding at www.realweds.com, on popular blogs, or to a wedding publication.Email—Follow the CPR principle: Stay Consistent in your designs, Personalize your messages, and ensure that your message is Relevant to the audience. Sixty-five percent of the emails WeddingWire sends to engaged couples are opened on mobile devices; this means having mobile-friendly emails is critical to reaching your clients! Keep mobile emails simple by cutting content to one column and one call-to-action. Mail Chimp is a great email platform with mobile templates.2. The Magnet—Key Inbound Marketing TacticsInbound marketing includes websites, blogs, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), social media, videos, and reviews. A closer look at some of these tactics shows how they apply to your business:Website—Give a great first impression to potential clients and include easily identifiable contact information. Measure your website’s effectiveness by improving your conversion rates. One way to measure these is to divide the number of contact forms completed by the number of visitors to the contact form page on your site. This quickly shows whether your most important page is working. Remember, the less information you ask for, the more you get, so keep contact forms between two to five total fields.Search Engine Optimization (SEO)—Optimizing your website and blog for search engines is crucial to getting found online. Keywords are your most important SEO item. Make sure yours are relevant to your business and local area, and think about what your clients may be searching when looking for a professional like you. Google’s Keyword Planner is a great resource.Social media—Establish a presence on top social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest—and commit to posting regularly. Facebook is critical to success, but choose at least two additional social media channels on which to focus. Tools like the WeddingWire Social Media Manager and HootSuite are available to help pre-schedule and track your social impact.3. The Measuring Cup—Measurement ToolsHow can you measure the success of your inbound and outbound marketing tactics? By reviewing analytics, web metrics, and social media insight, including:Google’s Free Tools—Google Analytics helps you understand your website traffic, see page visits, and review performance. Track basic metrics each week to see how your visits perform over time and what drives the most traffic to your site. Use Google Webmaster Tools to understand how Google sees your website. It’s free and allows you to know when issues arise and how to improve your SEO links and visibility.Social Media Insights—Take advantage of insights built into your business pages on social sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest to know your reach and find out what posts perform best. Each platform gives you data to understand who is visiting your page, along with a report card on your activity.WeddingWire—WeddingWire recently launched AnalyticsBeta to give visibility to storefront and website clicks from WeddingWire. It gives our businesses the ability to determine how a listing is performing against the local competition. Visit www.vendors.weddingwire.com to learn more.Following these three Ms to marketing success means your business will continue to grow for years to come!Interested in learning more about WeddingWire?Association of Bridal Consultant (ABC) members can access a special discount on select premium memberships! Learn more at wed.li/WW-ABC.