Episode 244: The #1 Reason You Aren’t Booking More Weddings (it’s not what you think)

One of the most common things wedding pros ask me about is how to book more weddings.

In my 10+ years of helping wedding pros grow their businesses, I’ve come upon the number one reason why you aren’t booking more weddings. It is definitely not what you think because most wedding professionals that I meet think that they need to do more.

They think that they need to do more marketing work harder, they need to hustle, they need to be busy all the time, and that really leads to this feeling of just complete overwhelm and exhaustion.

You don’t actually need to do more marketing. You just need to market strategically.

In this episode, I’m breaking down the #1 reason why you aren’t booking more weddings and I can promise you, it’s not what you think.

In this episode we’ll cover:

• The most common question wedding pros ask me
• Why you’re not booking more weddings (and it’s not what you think)
• How to avoid falling into the stationary bike trap
• Why marketing has to be different for each business in order to work
• How you can actually do less marketing and book more weddings
• How to make the time to create a marketing strategy that works for you

The #1 Reason You Aren’t Booking More Weddings (it’s not what you think)

One of the most common things wedding pros ask me about is how to book more weddings.

In my 10+ years of helping wedding pros grow their businesses, I’ve come upon the number one reason why you aren’t booking more weddings. It is definitely not what you think because most wedding professionals that I meet think that they need to do more.

They think that they need to do more marketing work harder, they need to hustle, they need to be busy all the time, and that really leads to this feeling of just complete overwhelm and exhaustion.

You don’t actually need to do more marketing. You just need to market strategically. What I see a lot of wedding pros do is sort of like pedaling a stationary bike like you are working up a sweat. Those wheels are spinning, but you are not getting anywhere.

And I think this is because a lot of people confuse consistency with strategy. Cause we all know we need to show up. We need to show up regularly to attract and book the people that we wanna book. But it really doesn’t matter how consistent you are if it’s not strategic.

Think about your favorite writer, your favorite author. It would be like them just sitting down and typing words on a page day in, day out, and assuming that consistency is going to produce a compelling story, but obviously without a strategic plot, without well-developed characters, without, you know, a clear narrative, all the things that make writing good, their writing is going to lack coherence. It’s going to fail to engage readers.

It’s not about the doing itself. It’s not about spinning the wheels. It’s not about writing words on a page. It’s not about the marketing itself. It’s about the strategy behind the doing.

And the number one reason why you aren’t booking more weddings is you aren’t making the time to create a strategy that works to reliably and consistently attract and book your ideal clients.

What does that mean? It means that everything you do needs to be designed to be a magnet for your specific ideal client. Note who you serve is different from who anybody else listening to this serves.

Every business is different. Every market is different. Every ideal client is different. We’re all serving different human beings, so our marketing needs to make sure that it’s a magnet for our specific people for how they think, for what they want, for what they care about, and not just what we assume they care about.

And the really cool thing about this, other than it working to help you book more clients, is it actually results in wedding pros having to do a lot less marketing because they aren’t just striving to market. They’re doing the things that work, and you can do less things when they actually work.

That really helps relieve that overwhelm and exhaustion because when you’re winging it in your business, and I would say most wedding professionals are winging it when it comes to marketing, it can feel like you’re just treading water, which is exhausting, and it can feel really overwhelming.

It’s like you are always trying to catch up. You’re always trying to get ahead. It’s just never enough. This is what solves that problem.

I also see a lot of wedding pros who feel confused. Just kind of swirling around not knowing which way to turn next, and that is a surefire way I know that person doesn’t have a strategy. Again, like most wedding pros don’t. That’s why I’m here.

But this doesn’t happen to you when you have a strategy, because that strategy allows you to see exactly what you need to do. Your strategy is your compass. That’s why it’s the number one reason you aren’t booking weddings.

It’s not because you aren’t doing enough. In fact, you’re probably doing too much and none of it, or very little of it is working. It’s the simple fact that you aren’t making the time to create a strategy that works for you, your business, your brand, and your ideal client.

That strategy is different for everybody, and it’s really interesting to see in The Wedding Business Collective how different, people’s strategies, people’s marketing plans are. Even if they are both photographers, or both planners, or both DJs they can often have very, very different marketing strategies because the people that they’re marketing to are different.

We have to think about the psychology of the people that we’re marketing to because that’s how you decide to spend your money. It’s a choice that’s based on psychology. It’s based on our values. It’s based on the things we want to get more of and the things we wanna get away from.

The other interesting thing a strategy does is it gives you a direction so you know exactly what path to follow. I recently spoke to a whole bunch of different wedding pros, all different types of businesses, all different locations, just doing research, asking questions.

I found overwhelmingly people were saying, my biggest problem is not knowing what I’m supposed to do next. Not knowing where to go when I finish checking my emails, when I finish having my morning coffee, and then like prioritizing that over everything because that’s the only thing I feel like I know I’m supposed to do.

Most wedding pros I talk to tell me that they feel like they’re floundering, they feel scattered, they feel pulled in a dozen different directions that they’re winging it. That they don’t have a clear map for what they need to do to grow their business. They’re just shooting from the hip and crossing their fingers and hoping that it would work.

They’re often being very reactive as opposed to being proactive with a lot of things during the day. Like, all right, let’s just deal with whatever comes in. We’ll just get as much done as possible and there’s not as much foresight or thought into what you’re actually doing.

There’s that idea again, let’s get as much done as possible. You are right back on that stationary bike, spinning your wheels. You are working and you are working hard, but you aren’t getting anywhere.

And that’s why things can feel like a total crapshoot and it’s just being completely random whether you get clients or not. And if you feel this way, I want you to know that the vast, vast majority of wedding professionals also feel this way, even if you know everything looks perfect on their Instagram feed.

I can tell you, because I’ve talked to a lot of people, that this is the way most wedding pros are feeling. And if you’re like most of these wedding pros, I know that because you are so busy, because you are just, you know, working, working and working, you don’t have time to create the strategy, and therein lies the problem.

Where do we get the time to do this? I can’t tell you how many people told me that, you know, they felt just so busy and that was so overwhelming. And the great thing about having a strategy is you get to do less. You get to actually work less. So it really does lighten that load.

But how do you actually make the time to create the strategy? That’s something I’ve been thinking about for the past couple of weeks, and I’ve got a solution for you. It’s called The Out of Overwhelm Challenge: Reclaim 5+ Hours Per Week, and it is going to run for two weeks to give you plenty of time to participate. It’s going to run from June 19th to June 30th.

Now, each day during that first week, you’ll go through a short lesson and have a short task to complete. During the second week, you’re gonna get access to an all-new super short training about protecting your time and setting boundaries along with a short task to complete so that you’re actually making progress on this during the challenge, and I’ll be posting in the group to encourage you and nudge you and hold you accountable.

Then we’re going to have a live coaching call on June 28th, and of course, you’ll be able to submit questions if you can’t make it live. But we’re doing this so that you leave this challenge knowing exactly what it is that you need to do to free up more time and get out of overwhelm, because we cannot just sit and exist in this space of spinning our wheels on the stationary bike and just feeling constantly overwhelmed.

We have to get out of that space if we want to be able to reach our goals, if, quite frankly, we wanna have a better quality of life because nobody likes to feel stressed out and overwhelmed all the time. I know I certainly don’t. I hate that feeling so much.

And at the end of the challenge, you can submit your challenge assignments and you’ll have a chance to win a prize.

So this challenge, like I said is happening from June 19th to 30th and it is exclusively available to members of The Wedding Business Collective because some of the content we’re gonna be using is in The Wedding Business Collective. So come join us at https://www.theweddingbusinesscollective.com and as a member, you are going to get full access to this.

By the end of this challenge, you will have freed up at least five hours per week. Think about how incredible that would be. That is at least 260 hours per year. That’s almost 11 full days. Imagine getting that kind of time back!

Then you will have the time to create the strategy you need to attract and book your ideal clients consistently with ease knowing the exact path that you need to follow and without all the overwhelm and stress that you’re currently feeling.

So if that sounds like something you need, come join us at https://www.theweddingbusinesscollective.com/ and we are going to kick off this challenge on June 19th.

I am so excited about this because I know the biggest thing getting in people’s way of actually creating the strategy is the time aspect. Maybe they see that this is the path out but how do you actually make the time to do this? We’re gonna show you exactly how to do that.

And not just that, we’re gonna do it together so that there’s some accountability, so that there is support if you need it so if you have questions, if you’re not sure how a particular thing applies to your unique situation you’ll have help.

And by the end of this two-week period, you will have freed up at least 5 hours per week in your business. You will feel that overwhelm start to lift as you carve out more time for yourself so that you can create a strategy, you can create a marketing plan that brings in those bookings.

If you don’t have time to do that, I mean, you don’t have time to run a business. So we have to make the time to do this because it is the thing that allows you to actually book more weddings.

And interestingly, like I said, that strategy is different for everyone. I’m not going to tell you that in order to book more weddings, you have to post three reels on Instagram every week and you have to do this and this and this.

That is not how any of this works. I teach you very specifically how to figure out a strategy that is going to work for you, for your business, for your brand, and for your unique ideal client.

And like I said, that varies a lot. Your strategy is going to look different to someone else’s. This is not a one size fits all kind of thing. And that’s the point because we want to attract the people that you want to work with, not the people that someone else wants to work with.

So I hope you are as excited as I am to be getting five hours or more a week back on your schedule.

Be sure to come join us at https://www.theweddingbusinesscollective.com/ and we will be kicking this off June 19th. Of course, if you have any questions at all about this, you can shoot me an email or you can DM me on Instagram.

I can’t wait to see you for this challenge so that you can finally start booking more weddings.

Links & Resources:

The Wedding Business Collective
Episode 227: What 4 Wedding Pros Have Gotten Out Of The Wedding Business Collective

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