WHAT WE BELIEVE
Marketing Is The Foundation Of Your Business
We believe that you actually own a marketing company and your product just happens to be wedding planning or cake baking or floristry or whatever it is that you do in the wedding industry.
While that may sound like a strange comment, we assure you that there is a lot of solid advice here! We are truly an industry of creatives. We work with amazingly talented individuals. Heck, we are probably those exact amazingly talented individuals! And that’s great – we should embrace our creativity and use this as a catalyst that pushes our businesses forward and leads to not just having really happy clients but raving fans.
A Marketing Mindset
But at the end of the day, we still own a business. And businesses have to make money, and pay taxes, and have websites, and a whole host of other things that I’m sure we’d rather not even deal with. But it doesn’t change the fact that it’s true. We may be an industry of creative’s but we are still an industry of business people! And business people need to understand marketing. Because if you can understand marketing then you will be a whole lot more successful in your business. And if you understand how to market one product you can market just about any product.
If you will commit to changing your mindset on this one thing for your business – that you are truly a marketing company and happen to have ________ as your product – then you will see your business transformed.
We will even go so far as to say you will see your life transformed!
The Struggle Is Real
We work with a lot of different wedding professionals to help them do better in their businesses, build better websites, have better SEO, refine their sales techniques, and more. But the very basis of everything that we do still goes back to marketing.
I’m going to have a really hard time teaching you how to do better in sales if your marketing stinks. And it’s going to be really tough to develop better SEO for your website if your marketing stinks. You have to get this one thing right for everything else to fall in the place.
If this is wrong, then the struggle is real folks. The struggle is real! Because that’s all you will do, is struggle, to connect to your potential ideal client.
Who Is Your Ideal Client
The cornerstone of our entire business is built on understanding your true ideal client.
And we think the cornerstone of every single business out there should be built on understanding your true ideal client.
This is the absolute foundation of your marketing plan.
You must know and truly understand who your ideal client is and how to speak to them. This is your marketing, folks! You can have fancy labels or a fancy website or really pretty business cards that wow your friends and family, but if you don’t know who your true ideal client is then how do you know they even care about any of that?
Every single word that’s on your website, every single picture that you use in your business, the clothes you wear to a meeting, the places you meet your clients, will be determined by who your true ideal client is.
If my true ideal client is the luxury bride that has a budget of $100K plus then I’m certainly not going to put a bunch of DIY flower suggestions on my website, right? Because the true luxury bride and groom are not swayed or influenced by DIY flowers. And if my true ideal client is the DIY couple, then it makes no sense for me to have photos of lavish weddings and floral by Preston Bailey. Because the DIY couple will see all of these images on your website and will never call you because they’ll feel that you are work is unattainable and that they would never be able to hire you with a budget that they have.
Now understand, this is not a bad thing. It’s natural for people to gravitate toward what they feel comfortable with. As business owners we do it too! It’s human nature. My point with the last comments is to simply help you understand that your marketing should specifically reach out to and speak to your true ideal client and no one else.
Exclusion Is Good
We have a phrase for that and our office – “Exclude to Include”.
It simply means that we’re excluding certain groups of clients so that we can include only those that we want to work with. Yep, this seems a little harsh. It’s not so touchy-feely to specifically exclude certain groups of people. But this is how your business should be run. And let me tell you how this is going to change your business and your life.
How frustrating is it for you when the phone rings and you spend 30 min. talking to potential client about all the wonderful things they want for their wedding day only to find out at the end that their budget is so low they could never attain any of the things they’ve asked you for? Or the style that they want for their wedding isn’t even close to something you fill comfortable doing?
I’ll tell you – it’s frustrating as hell!
And here’s something – none of this was their fault. It was all yours.
It is 100% your fault because what you portrayed in your marketing did not mesh with the type of client you were trying to attract.
Why You Will Be Scared
And this is where people get really scared in business. Once they determine who their ideal client is and adjust their marketing to start speaking to only that particular client, their phone stops ringing.
Yes, that’s right, the phone stops ringing!
When Shea and I got really real with who our ideal client was and started marketing to only them, with our own business, we didn’t book a client for nearly 3 months. And I started to get really really nervous. To the point where I thought that I might be in the wrong line of work or that I had made a terrible mistake or a whole host of other things that I was freaking out about. And then one day my phone did ring.
And over the next four days I booked seven clients that were our true ideal client!
Those seven clients accounted for nearly 8 months of living and business expenses.
What I realized was that it takes about a three month period for new brides and grooms to make it into the next sales cycle. The couples that had already seen my marketing weren’t coming back to it but the new brides – the right brides – saw my new marketing (that was speaking directly to them) and they started booking us, because they connected with us and what we had to say.
Your Phone Will Ring Less And You Will Be Happier
When you get your marketing right, your phone will naturally ring less. Because when you’re truly marketing to the right person you weed out all the people that used to call you or email you, that would never have booked in the first place, the price shoppers, and the people that don’t connect with your style or ability.
Don’t you want to spend most of your time on the people that truly are interested in working with you?
And wouldn’t it be great if you could reduce the time you spend on price shoppers and lookie loos?
How Not To Compete On Price – An Example
I’ll give you an example – if you and another wedding planner in town have a website that has fairly similar pictures, fairly similar service packages, and fairly similar copywriting, you guys are definitely competitors, as you have nothing else to compete on but price. What’s happening here is that neither one of you are setting yourself apart in any special way so all you’re doing is treating your business like a commodity.
What would happen if you redesigned your website to only show photos of work you had done for Indian weddings and the other planner in town redesigned their website to only show photos of work they had done for weddings that were held on private ranches? Do you think you would only have price to compete on? Absolutely not! For sure your phone would start ringing off the hook for people looking for your assistance in planning Indian weddings and the other planners phone was start ringing with people that are more interested in farm style private ranch weddings.
Even if your pricing were hundreds or even thousands of dollars more than the other planners pricing, I would be willing to place a bet on you having less price-sensitive clients because you offer something special that they don’t feel the other planner offers. And the same could be said for the other planner. If someone is having a private ranch wedding and loves the styling of the other planner, they’re probably not going to be interested in you because you are primarily showing your Indian wedding work. In this case the other planner could charge more for her work without any issue because you guys simply are attracting two different kinds of clients.
Eliminating Competitors
Folks, you just flipped the script! You’re no longer competitors, your allies in this game. Instead of being in a situation where you feel that you need to compete with other planners on pricing alone, or worse, putting someone else down, you are now and it situation where you can build one another up. You each have your own client base and each attract a unique and special type of client.
If this appeals to you, then just remember what Shea always says –
“You really own a marketing company that just happens to have ____________ as your product!”
Marketing is the foundation of your business. Spend your time getting really great at marketing and no matter what your product or service is, you will not have a competitor.
Great marketing turns competitors into allies!
Are You Ready To Own A marketing Company?
If you’re fed up having to compete on price and are ready to turn your average wedding business into a real marketing company, then now is the time to take action. Follow the button below and let’s get started!
