The Impact of Client Experience on Your Marketing
A winning client experience is every wedding professional’s goal, but it goes far beyond earning an exuberant “thank you” from a couple as they embark on their honeymoon. In a heavily service-based industry, providing an impeccable client experience leads to better reviews and stronger referrals. In turn, such glowing social proof makes it easy to market your wedding brand and attract the couples you love to work with most.
As Seth Godin notes in his book, Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable, “remarkable marketing is the art of building things worth noticing right into your product or service.” To put it simply, all of the shiny social media ads and press features do little if your offering isn’t worth it. Otherwise, you’ll end up with disappointed clients who feel like they were sold a false bill of goods.
Professional event services are considered a high-ticket offer, so a thoughtful and unique experience is an integral part of appealing to your ideal clients. Keep reading to learn how to harness an unforgettable client experience to elevate your marketing.
Speak to benefits over features
Changing the language of your brand messaging is a subtle yet powerful way to shift your business’s perception in the marketplace. When you speak to the benefits to your clients rather than reeling off a list of the features of your offerings, you highlight the transformation your prospects will experience from working with you. Here’s an example:
Feature: “I will meet with you for a timeline planning call six months before your wedding to draft a timeline for your wedding day.”
Benefit: “We will begin planning your day-of timeline several months ahead to guarantee we capture the photos you want, all while ensuring you can maximize the time you have to celebrate with loved ones.”
While the “feature” statement is about you and what you offer, the “benefit” statement places the focus on the couple and how they’ll have an incredible experience. When your messaging revolves around the benefits of your brand experience, you’ll begin speaking to your ideal clients with intentionality. Instead of hustling to reach any and all newly engaged couples in a sea of competitors, you can tailor your marketing to be more persuasive and engaging to the people you most want to book.
Step into your role as an educator
For many wedding professionals, marketing is a matter of posting on social media, writing blog posts, and sending email blasts — all for the sake of creating content. But without intention, marketing falls flat.
As an expert in the wedding industry, you have a wealth of knowledge your clients don’t, which you can share to make the planning process easier. Understanding the importance of the client experience, you can become a trusted resource simply by educating them and providing solutions for their pain points.
Leverage your online reviews
Reviews are very persuasive for potential clients, so don’t forget to showcase positive feedback! Your past clients provide the exact language to highlight the benefits they experienced working with you, so let them sing your praises and serve as social proof.
As you receive positive reviews, add them to your website and share them across your social media profiles. A good practice is to post them to your Instagram Stories and save them as a highlight to compile all of your amazing testimonials. Then, when ideal clients land on your page, there is already plenty of powerful reviews waiting for them.
Encourage referrals
With personal referrals, it’s as if your past clients are doing the marketing for you. Newly engaged couples are far more likely to listen to friends’ suggestions than book through a Google search (or almost any other form of marketing), talk about an easy win!
Making your current couples feel overwhelmingly supported and delivering a memorable experience will make them shout your name from the rooftops, so you can land new clients without lifting a finger. Don’t be afraid to ask couples to keep your business in mind when their friends get married. You may even consider incentivizing them with a small referral bonus to show your appreciation!
When a couple is planning their wedding, they care more about how you can help them than what you do on paper. The nitty-gritty details are important, but in terms of marketing, your couples’ emotions, experiences, and aspirations matter most! Speak to them through transformational language, valuable education, and meaningful social proof that builds trust and demonstrates why and how you’ll make their lives easier.
Lynne Reznick is an educator-turned-photographer whose own love story and marriage inspires her to document the love of other soulmates. She finds joy in supporting her couples and connecting with industry peers. Always an educator at heart, Lynne is committed to building opportunities for connection and learning within the wedding industry and beyond. She’s the creator of the online course The Wedding Client Experience Academy and enjoys mentoring and coaching new wedding pros one-on-one and in hands-on workshops.
