Weddings are a beautiful thing, aren’t they? They bring loved ones together and they remind us of the most precious thing – to love and feel loved. Much wedding planning is necessary on your part so that you can create a beautiful ceremony that is also within the couple’s budget.
While the weddings happen once in a while, your clients are depending on you to make their day as memorable as can be. Your primary goal is that the wedding couple’s wishes have been met and that joy on this day is the main objective of the event.
All your efforts as a professional wedding planner are to make sure your clients especially the groom and the bride stay calm and relaxed, knowing you are taking care of everything, and to do that you need a plan that will lay down everything for you and make you successful in your wedding planning business.
Set those wedding planning goals
Start with goals that are not too high that will be hard to achieve right away. Complex goals are likely to make you lose motivation once you find out that you can not accomplish them in the time frame that you have set.
Simple but strategic goals that will get you started on the right track are what we are looking for. They should be practical and achievable. The general rule of thumb is setting goals that are SMART- Specific Measurable Attainable Relevant and Time-bound.
You may need to prioritize your goals so you know which ones will require more spending on your part, ensure to also assign due dates on all your goals making sure you are being honest and reasonable with yourself and what you can achieve during that time frame.
To learn more about setting goals for your wedding planning business click here
Goal 1-Niche down
One of the worst mistakes wedding planners make is to try to do everything. This is a setup for failure because you will lose clients when they find someone who really has the specifics they are looking for, it also makes you look more professional and experienced in that area.
Niching down makes wedding planning less stressful because you have one specific checklist you are working with and you just need to make it fit with any specific client’s desires.
Another reason you should niche down is to cut off any generalized competitors. To do this you need to find the right clients, which brings us to the next goal.
Goal 2-Target the right Audience
Get to research about your buyer’s persona- the exact example of a person who is most likely to purchase your services.
This buyer persona should include all the demographics of your potential wedding planning client. This includes their age, location, careers, devices they use, social media platforms they are most likely to use, sex, and interests.
Targeting the right audience will save you a ton of money when you are creating ads that need your buyer’s persona demographics.
To learn more about setting up a buyer’s persona click here
Goal 3- Increase brand awareness;
Website Optimization and Development
This can be accomplished through starting a website, it should illustrate all the services you offer for wedding planning.
This website should be user-friendly, optimized, and fast so that potential leads don’t get frustrated and bounce right off before taking any action like making an appointment.
This website should provide online guest lists and wedding registries, it should also have a lot of enticing imagery. Most Clients looking for wedding planners already have an imagined wedding in mind, try as much as possible to show them images of weddings, chances are some of the images will align with what they are already looking for or better.
Once your website is up and running, ensure to update it at least once a month with new content such as blog articles and photos.
Content Creation
Occasionally post blogs on this website providing information that will be useful to your clients, some of the topics you can blog about are;
- How soon to start planning a wedding
- How to make wedding planning less stressful
- Types of wedding planner services
- How much does it cost to plan a wedding
- Wedding planning on a budget
The articles you write have to have helpful information and should also include updated services you are offering. Getting your potential clients to visit your website will increase your brand awareness more and will help you retarget past clients
The content you create needs to be;
- readable, we are talking 8th grade English, do not complicate, try not to write paragraphs that have more than 5 lines.
- use more bulleted texts and use more imagery
To know more about writing content for your blog articles you can check out this site called backlinko
Wedding Planning Clients Testimonials
Your website should also include testimonials of couples for who you have planned a wedding so that your potential clients can feel confident in your services.
In this section, your past clients will talk about how you performed at their weddings and how they felt about your services. Of course, you want to get those clients who will give you the best reviews.
Provide a Wedding Panning Brochure
A free online wedding brochure acts as a digital marketing tool for your wedding planning business. Your clients will have a very clear picture of what your services look like and you get to give them new ideas of what they want for their wedding.
This brochure should include your name, business hours, phone number, email address, and a call to action. It should also be downloadable and emailable.
If you would like to know more about making wedding planning brochures click here
Increase brand awareness using Search engine Optimization
This will help you rank on the top of a search page when potential clients are looking for your services. Because if you are not on that first page, the chances of your clients finding you are very slim.
mobile-friendly website
Most of the clients looking for wedding planning use their phones to search for your services so It is very important to optimize your webpage for phone users as well.
relevant keyword usage
Use keywords that clients are already using to look for wedding planning services. You can find keywords on tools like; answer the public, keywords everywhere, and also semrush.
Optimize your URLs
Optimizing URLs is a process under which we optimize the URL structure of a website/blog page in order to make web pages more understandable by the search engine crawlers and by the web page visitors.
to learn more about optimizing URLs click here
Google My business
Another way to Increase brand awareness can also be done by creating an account on google my business. This tool helps clients to find you when they type in words like “Wedding Planner near me”.
You can use it to tell your clients about what you do, provide an email address, contact information, and a location where your business can be found. You can answer any questions and concerns they have.
Ensure to always log in to your account at least three times a day, so you can engage with clients and all the issues they may have concerning your wedding planning. Google my business outranks WeddingWire or The Knot every time. And that’s why it’s so vital that you join it today.
Creating hashtags for your wedding planning business
It takes into consideration names, nicknames, wedding day, wedding city, and many other factors to generate a wedding hashtag.
Hashtags can be used as a digital marketing tool to promote your brand and content across multiple digital marketing platforms. To know more about using hashtags for your business click here. you can also find Unique hashtags for your business using wedding wire
Social media presence
- You can increase your business presence on those social media platforms that are used by the targeted audience.
- The digital marketing platforms that have proved effective for digital marketing wedding planning business are Facebook, Instagram, and Pin interest.
- Ensure to schedule and automate your posts on these digital marketing platforms to make it easier for them to increase awareness for your wedding planning business.
- Some of the guidelines on using these platforms include;
- Facebook-Post your ads and content around 3pm every day and on weekends.
- Instagram -This platform has a visual appeal which makes it the best platform to show the beautiful decorations and amazing wedding celebrations you planned for your guests. You can post in the evenings every weekday and on the weekends
- Pinterest-It comes with a wedding category to showcase your amazing wedding services. Posting between 8-11 am gets you the most clicks. Peak time is 9 am. On Friday, and Saturday
Goal 4-Better business networking
Look for other businesses that are similar to your wedding planning business. For example, to plan a wedding you will need decorators, caterers, sometimes landscapers, make-up artists, photographers, and so on and so forth.
Check out these businesses and find out what their clients are and what they complain about, but most importantly start a relationship with them because chances are their clients are going to need your services as well.
Go ahead and backlink to each other on your blogs and articles to increase awareness for your businesses. These backlinks also help improve search engine optimization on your website.
Goal 5- Research other wedding planners near you
Look at the wedding planner businesses near you and find out as much as you can. The more you look, the more likely you are to find holes that you will use to improve your wedding planning business. For example, look for specific services that they are not offering that your target audience will need and work with that.
Here are some of the tips to help with your competitor research;
- List the services they offer
- Go to their websites just see how fast they are, if they are navigable and user-friendly, check to see if they are optimized.
- The keywords they are using to rank their website
- check the reviews and any complaints that their clients are making about their services.
Goal 6-Build and price wedding planning packages
This is a very important goal because it clearly shows you are willing to work around your clients’ budget for their wedding. Set up different packages with different services that align with what the clients are willing to spend. You can use labels like;
- silver wedding package
- Platinum wedding package
- Gold wedding package
And split them further into labels like sunset weddings, Good Morning weddings, and so on and so forth. Ensure to split up the prices for each package as well.
All these packages and their prices should be clearly posted and explained on your website.
Goal 7-Digital Marketing Tools to use
- Using Google ads as a digital marketing tool
Google ads are a great way to get clients, you can easily target your audience online, control who and where you want your ad to show up. Remember the demographics of your buyer’s persona when using google ads.
One of the cons with this tool is it’s not free, you will have to pay a fee each time your ad is clicked.
When done right, The Cost Per Lead and Cost Per Acquisition you can accomplish with a professionally set up Google Ads account is much lower than you will most likely accomplish with wedding directories like WeddingWire and The Knot.
- Using the Facebook Business manager
Set up an account with the Facebook business manager so you can start running ads on Facebook=. This tool is very effective at targeting audiences but also retargeting the same clients that you have worked for.
You get to use the same demographics we talked about to target your potential clients with ads. These like google ads are measurable and you will know exactly if your ads are working or if you are wasting money on the ads campaigns that you are running. We will talk more about measuring your metrics later.
After setting these goals make sure to regularly review and update based on new learnings and opportunities and make sure the plan is accessible to all team members. If you have been in the wedding planning business for quite some time, start with measuring the methods you have been using and assess if they are in alignment with the current goals that you have set.
Goal 8-Measure success
We can do all we can to market our services but if we can’t measure our success then we still have a blind spot.
Using tools like google analytics, Facebook ads manager, and Hubspot can help you measure your digital marketing metrics and KPI’s analyze your strategies and show you areas that are providing you with better ROIs.
Here are some of the digital marketing metrics you can use for your wedding planning business;
- return on investment- measures the ability of marketing campaigns to increase revenue.
- Brand awareness- this tracks how potential leads are knowing about your business.
- Cost per lead- measures the cost-effectiveness of your campaigns while generating new leads.
- Returning visitors- this shows you how effective your website is at retargeting and building an audience.
- Online conversion rates- measures the percentage of visitors to your website that complete a desired goal (a conversion) out of the total number of visitors.
- Click thru rate-measures how often your website entices customers to click and navigate to your page.
- cost per acquisition- measures the amount of money used towards driving campaigns and conversions.
- bounce rate-measure amount of visitors that arrive on your website and leave right off without taking any action or navigating to other pages.
Effective metrics are important in understanding the performance and health of your business which will help you adjust your digital marketing plan to accomplish your strategic goals.
Goal 9-Monitoring Digital marketing efforts
This is the last step in your digital marketing plan for your wedding planning business. It will help you keep ahead of any kinks that come up, you will get to know what is working and what is keeping you stagnant.
To be successful you will need to choose the right digital marketing tools for your business, research your target audience, establish your main KPIs, Look at the data and track your performance on a regular basis.
If you would like to know more about digital marketing planning for your wedding planning business, Contact us at the International Institute Of Digital Marketing™
References
https://www.google.com/search?
https://www.eventdrive.com/en/ressources/blog/top-10-kpis-for-next-event
https://www.klipfolio.com/resources/kpi-examples/digital-marketing
https://blog.wishpond.com/post/62253333766/3-key-hashtag-strategies-how-to-market-your-business
https://blog.splitpixel.co.uk/seven-best-tools-measuring-success-digital-plan
https://smallbusiness.chron.com/brochure-wording-bridal-business-76111.html
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/blog/goal-setting-for-event-planners-ds0
Written by Rebecca Nkabirwa, A Digital Marketing Analyst at the International Institute Of Digital Marketing™
Email: rebeccankabirwa@gmail.com