As wedding professionals we have often worked many years developing our skills, becoming masters of the art or service we offer. Then when we finally feel we are competent to provide our service for payment and proceed to open our own wedding business … we promptly change careers. We go from developing mastery of our art or service to needing to be an almost full time marketer.
When I opened my business, I thought that to grow my business was the same as growing my skills. If I upgraded my equipment, learned new skills, increased my mastery of my service then my business and income would automatically also increase. What was I thinking? I was so wrong. Looking back I now realize that the moment you open your own business you switch from pursuing mastery to pursuing marketing. This is why so many wedding related businesses struggle to survive as more than a hobby, rather than providing the comfortable income they should provide. They may have a marketing plan, but they don’t develop their marking skills.
Here is a rule of thumb, for every moment that you spend on a client task you need to spend an equal time attracting new clients. At minimum you need to spend 50% of your time with simply marketing your business. In fact you should have only two tasks, providing service to existing clients and attracting new clients. Anything else is potential clutter which needs to be examined, perhaps outsourced or even discontinued.
Most of our initial marketing plans are fairly simple and expensive. It consists mostly of advertising; putting one or more ads in wedding guides, attending a couple of bridal shows, and of course have cards and brochures printed. Fills in the squares but does not really focus on attracting clients. Fortunately you can develop marketing skills to attract clients and increase your return on marketing investment.
Here are a few specific points:
- Establish your marketing budget in terms of 1) your time spent, 2) money invested and most importantly 3) your required return on investment (ROI). Your marketing efforts need to have at least a 10 to 1 ROI. Saying that you get one sale from a bridal show is good, is no longer good enough.
- Look at your target market, and brand your service’s message to your target market emotional needs. Stay on message in all your communication. Both text and graphical
- Learn how to convert leads to sales. Strive for a conversion ratio of ten percent. Many successful businesses have that or better.
- Communicate constantly. Then repeat. Communications and marketing researchers have discovered that your message needs to be presented at least 7 times before it gains full consideration. Fortunately, certain types of direct email marketing can achieve this for an affordable cost.
- Be personal. Share emotion. Use a blog to share information and about you and your services. Some wedding professionals have replaced most, or all, of their website with a blog.
So Mastery versus Marketing … which “wins”? If you are a new business and you know what you are doing, marketing is your new imperative. Targeted, budgeted, consistent, persistent marketing.
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