As a wedding professional, it is a safe bet to say that you are extremely good at organizing, planning, and thinking ahead. However, most of us in the industry are great at handling any future scenarios that might arise for clients, but we don’t necessarily apply those same skills to our own businesses. The current lull in operations is your opportunity to take the actions now your future self will thank you for.
Build a marketing funnel that will incorporate stability into your profit-generation. Creating a system where one activity flows into another and not just using ad hoc strategies will help you automate your lead generation efforts and bounce back more effectively.
Just like how your clients don’t typically get married after just meeting, winning new business is a multi-stage process. The best way to illustrate the steps to getting more customers is a marketing funnel - a tool that will help you turn strangers into customers and it has three parts: a top, middle, and a bottom. Make the commitment to yourself and your business now by picking the tactics you will implement at each stage to create a powerful marketing machine.
Top-Of-Funnel: Choose a Method to Attract Your Ideal Customer
You need to have a way to continuously captivate potential clients who have never heard of you. The goal is to bring them into your audience so that you can nurture the relationship and nudge towards the sale. The best way to do this is to go where your customer hangs out.
The biggest marketing mistake that makes wedding pros frustrated is thinking that posting on their own social media accounts will get a slew of people banging on their doors to work with them. If your future customer doesn’t know about you yet, they will not be spending any time on your social media accounts, and it is very unlikely that they will discover you on their feeds through a hashtag. You may get lucky and experience a few conversions via social media posting, but they will not be enough to rely on when it is time to pay your bills.
Some of the top ways to get the attention of people you would love to work with are:
Promote a free, valuable piece of information via digital advertising. Running a Facebook ad to “The Ultimate Wedding Planning Guide for the Modern Chic Couple” would be an example of how to grow your email list.
Showcase your work at expos and tradeshows (when we can do that again). Make sure you have a streamlined method for capturing email addresses and following up in a timely manner.
Participate in relevant podcasts. Scoring a spot as an interviewee on a show like The Big Wedding Planning Podcast or Hue I Do will give you great exposure and allow listeners to get to know your personality.
You will become irresistible if you help solve your ideal customer’s problems and guide them towards their image of success. Whatever method you choose, the key is to get organized and keep at it. You should always be feeding your marketing funnel with new prospects to create a steady stream of clients.
Middle-of-Funnel: Consistently Build Relationships
Once you have added a lead to your audience, preferably your email list, it’s time to get to know each other. When people are looking to plan their wedding, they are primarily focused on finding an organized, personable professional who can bring their big day to life on time, under budget, and with minimal drama. Use weekly emails and daily social media postings to highlight the many facets of the wedding planning experience and how you are exactly the planner they need.
A prospect truly joins your squad when they sign up for our email list. That means you have access to interact with them on a regular basis and they are looking forward to hearing from you. You should send them an email approximately once per week. The best part is that you can create a series of 3-5 automated emails that your newbie will receive when they join to build a sense of familiarity without having to lift a finger after the initial creation. These emails should invite them to take baby steps towards a stronger bond, like reading a blog post on your website, watching a video, or following you on social media.
When you are posting on social media, choose 3-5 broad topics that you want to be known for and rotate posts that highlight them. For example, if you want to work with affluent African-American couples, you may pick topics such as the often overlooked but magical details of luxury weddings, incorporating African-American culture and traditions from a modern perspective, and the full gamut of hairstyling and grooming inspiration. Make sure that the majority of your captions include a call-to-action, such as getting a quote or scheduling a call.
Bottom-Of-Funnel: Develop a Promotion Strategy to Close the Deal
Promotions work best when they proactively move your business forward and are not used to combat a stall in your cash flow. Start with your sales goals for the next 12 months and then break them down by the number of events, services, or products you will need to reach those goals each month. Don’t forget to take seasonality, staffing, and the availability of capital into account. When you are planning for 2021, you may also develop stretch goals that compensate for the lack of revenue in 2020.
The best people to promote to are those who are on your email list. Having an active, nurtured list allows you to generate revenue on demand. When the industry opens up again, your hottest leads will be those who have gotten to know you and trust your expertise. Plan out your promotions on a monthly calendar to take charge of your income streams.
Think beyond the go-to promotion of discounting your services. Instead, consider what extra value you could add or how can you partner with a complementary business to offer a bundle. As we can start holding events, a great promotion would be a free webinar for only “VIPs” on your email list to give the finer points of planning a post-COVID ceremony and what they should be taking into account.
The beautiful thing about crises is that they inevitably come to an end. By choosing how you will attract, convert, and close business now you will be able to focus on serving new clients and growing your bank account simultaneously without as much stress.
Aleya Harris, an award-winning marketer and former chef and catering company owner, is the Owner of Flourish Marketing, an agency that provides marketing education, strategy, and tools to help wedding, catering, and event professionals get and keep a consistent stream of clients. Aleya is a StoryBrand Certified Guide and she uses that narrative-based framework to develop clear, engaging, and highly converting marketing assets, like websites and social media solutions, for her clients. Aleya is the current Marketing Committee Chair for NACE and a top speaker at conferences and events like Catersource and The Special Event.