Episode #254: The Success Of Your 2024 Booking Season Depends On What You Do Now

Today we’re going to focus on the actions you can take right now that are going to impact your next booking season and three big things that will come as a result of that.

Now is absolutely the time to focus on this because engagement season is right around the corner. And if you don’t have your marketing on point, you’re going to miss out.

Wedding pros that don’t know how to strategically market are struggling hard right now.

And that is going to continue.

So you need to go into the 2024 booking season assuming this is going to continue. You need a strategy and a plan.

Want to know how to get that strategy & plan? Listen to this episode to find out!

In this episode we’ll cover:

• The patterns that are happening right now that will impact your 2024 booking season
• The reason why some wedding pros are booking right now and others aren’t
• The 3 things that you’ll get as a result of preparing for the 2024 booking season
• How to get more financial and time freedom in your business
• Why you should actually be doing less in your marketing
• How to avoid missing out on bookings during engagement season

The Success Of Your 2024 Booking Season Depends On What You Do Now

I want to talk to you about the actions you can take now that are going to impact your next booking season and three big things that will come as a result of that.

Now is absolutely the time to focus on this because engagement season is right around the corner. And if you don’t have your marketing on point, you’re going to miss out.

We have absolutely seen some people in the industry be quite slow this year. And some people have talked about an engagement slump.

Now I have been talking to all sorts of different types of wedding pros. And seeing, you know, where things slow for them, normal, busier, the responses really range from people who were much busier than usual to those who were much slower. And I got really curious about those patterns. I expected there to be patterns in vendor type and location in the market.

And there wasn’t. That really, really surprised me.

We’re definitely seeing that couples are taking longer to book. The time between an inquiry and a booking has definitely extended, so your lead nurturing has to respond to that. And you’ll get some help with that during Book More Wedding Summit. So be sure to grab your free ticket to that if you haven’t already.

It’s coming up from August 21st through the 25th, and you can get your free ticket at www.bookmoreweddingsummit.com.

I found that wedding pros who traditionally relied on couples finding them or getting referred to them were the ones that struggled the most. The group of wedding pros that I saw having the hardest time didn’t have any strategy or plan to attract their ideal clients.

So they’re just kind of left sitting on the sidelines, waiting for leads to come. And because there’s no strategy involved, they have no power or control to change how things are going. They just have to hope.

And a lot of people in this group are feeling frustrated, which I completely understand. I would too.

The wedding pros that I talked to who made themselves the go-to person for their ideal client and had a marketing plan that they were executing strategically had a much, much higher chance of being busier right now than others having a way to stand out and a marketing plan clearly makes a substantial difference.

And it matters right now more than ever.

Some people who did this, they made themselves the go-to person for their ideal client. They had a marketing plan that they executed. They still saw a slowdown in their specific market, but because they were thinking strategically, they weren’t just sitting on the sidelines, hoping and waiting for things to get better.

Instead, they’ve been able to adapt and pivot, and they’re still doing quite well. I went into that thinking that I would find those patterns in the type of vendor and location. And what I really found was a pattern in mindset and marketing skills.

Wedding pros that don’t know how to strategically market are struggling hard right now.

And that is going to continue. Those that do know how to strategically market and are in markets, even where things are slow, have that strategic mindset and know how they need in order to be able to adapt and diversify and remain profitable. Those people are seeing success.

So you need to go into the 2024 booking season assuming this is going to continue, you need a strategy and a plan. That’s where Book More Wedding Summit can definitely help you so get your free ticket at www.bookmoreweddingsummit.com.

Now I know we all want to have a great booking season but I want to dig into why for a second. The number one reason I see is the financial freedom from booking clients that aren’t focused on your price.

I see a lot of changes in businesses when this starts to happen when you’re able to start attracting the kinds of people who don’t just want a planner, don’t just want a videographer, don’t just want a DJ, they want YOU.

They focus so much less on price and this allows you to raise your prices. It allows you to make so much more and give yourself the financial freedom you always wanted from your business.

Floral designer and speaker at Book More Wedding Summit, Carolyn Kulb is absolutely one of those people.

When I first met her, she was still flower farming and she was just starting to try to market to couples and do weddings, but she didn’t know how and quite honestly most wedding professionals don’t know how nobody teaches us this. (Unless you’re me then that’s kind of all I talk about.)

She wasn’t getting consistent and quality leads she was paying for advertising that wasn’t worth the return on investment she was getting like I’m sure many of you have and she was barely paying herself. Then she changed her focus to Really attracting and booking the client she wanted to work with and she created a marketing plan in order to do this.

She told me that after joining my membership, The Wedding Business Collective, she felt like she got an MBA in six months. Her pricing now starts anywhere from $12k-$18k. She has 100% booking rate on the inquiries that are prequalified through her system and come in. She managed to book a wedding with a $35,000 floral spend and she’s been able to outsource and start teaching.

That’s why she’s been able to come join us as a speaker during Book More Wedding Summit.

Neal McFarlane is very similar. He’s a DJ and when I met him, he was a solopreneur. He wasn’t getting enough of his ideal clients and he has completely transformed his business into a multi person business because Neal realized he didn’t want to have to work every weekend until 3am.

So for the past couple of years, he’s been bringing on associate DJs and training them in his particular way of doing things so that all of his clients get the same great experience, no matter which DJ is working their wedding day. Now he has the financial freedom of much more revenue coming into the business and the time freedom to focus on other aspects of the company, as well as teach young DJs, which is something that absolutely loves to do.

So that’s the financial component.

I talked to a lot of wedding professionals who the thing that motivates them and the thing that motivates me. Freedom is number two here, which is freedom to spend more time with family, with friends and to travel more. So you might be in a situation like officiant Erin Goodman was where you have a lot on your plate.

She has a full-time job. She has a growing wedding business. She has two kids. She has older kids that are in high school and Erin made the conscious decision that she didn’t want to work every weekend and instead have weekends where she can just hang out with her kids at the beach because pretty soon they’re going to be at college. They’re going to be off on their own. And she’s not going to have the opportunity to just do that.

I meet a lot of wedding professionals like Emily Foster, who’s a stationer. She has two young kids and a stationery business. Her youngest will be starting school in about a year.

At that point, she’ll have a lot more time to dedicate to her business, but she has been super focused during the limited time she has right now by really focusing on her marketing and creating this streamlined marketing plan that hardly takes her any time to execute and setting herself up to be able to start outsourcing.

She’s been able to do that because she works in a less chaotic manner now. We’ll be talking a bit about that during Book More Wedding Summit. She’s doing fewer things, but she’s doing more impactful things. I am going to be speaking on this, about how actually doing less marketing can help you book more weddings.

And I see this time and time again. Emily is a great example. She is doing fewer things and getting more bookings and being able to have the time to spend with her kids. You know, she has to get one to school. She has to get one ready for school. She has to pick one kid up. She has to take care of her other one during the day.

So she has constraints, many of us do but that’s okay because you don’t need to be working constantly.

A lot of wedding pros I know want to travel more. I’m a big fan of that myself. Kay Northrup is a planner who, when she joined The Wedding Business Collective and she attended her first Book More Wedding Summi she was doing what most people do and that’s what I call random acts of marketing.

She was just like throwing things out there, seeing if anything was going to work. Once she learned exactly what she needed to do and started attracting and booking her ideal clients. She started to get to plan destination weddings all around the world and get paid to travel, which is her favorite thing to do.

But that all starts with who you book and you have to have a plan for attracting and booking your ideal clients. It’s not just going to randomly happen.

The third big thing, having a however you deem it, “successful” booking season is going to give you is a different outlook. It’s going to give you a certain feeling because when business is doing good, you feel proud.

You feel proud. You feel confident. You feel like, okay, I’m actually doing this. I’m a legit business owner. And when your friend or your mom asks you how business is going, you can feel the sense of pride that you’re getting to live out your dreams of being a photographer or DJ or a planner or a cake maker and you’re making a great living from it.

Emily mentioned in a panel that we did about The Wedding Business Collective that she felt, finally, like a legitimate business owner. She was no longer flying by the seat of her pants and that’s something I hear from a lot of wedding professionals. They just feel like…there’s no plan. They’re absolutely flying by the seat of their pants, and I want you to know it doesn’t have to be that way.

Christy Hunter, who is a photographer who is, I know, a huge fan of our summits, and will be at Book More Wedding Summit, was a member of The Wedding Business Collective. She said in that same panel, that after she went through the Create Your Overwhelm Squashing Marketing Plan course that I have inside the Wedding Business Collective, which by the way, when you join us during Book More Wedding Summit, you’re going to get access to a full 30 days of the Wedding Business Collective for just a dollar.

That is open to anyone who joins us for Book More Wedding Summit to grab. So she said that after going through the Create Your Overwhelm Squashing Marketing Plan course that’s inside The Wedding Business Collective that you can get access to for less than a soda.

She told her husband that she felt like she took a whole freaking semester of business school in this course, and she walked away feeling so confident and in control. And isn’t that something we all want? You know, that there are so many unknowns, there are so many uncontrollable variables in our business.

But to have that feeling that like, I got this. I love that so much. She now says that she feels like a legitimate business owner before she was trying to do, you know, all the things, but she wasn’t having any intention behind a lot of her decisions and now she has a really good grip on that. She’s only doing the things that are going to get her an impact.

And that’s absolutely a pattern among all of these people. They get to do less and have the feeling of having it all under control. And like I said, this is something I am going to be speaking about at Book More Wedding Summit. And this is something you’ll hear echoed in a lot of our speakers, because we are not here to give you more to do.

Nobody wants more work to do. Let’s be honest. We want to be able to experience, you know, all of these amazing things that our businesses can give us. This time freedom, the financial freedom, that feeling of pride and confidence and knowing that you’ve got things under control.

But sometimes you have to make some changes in order to get there.

And we are going to be presenting you with a buffet of things that you can pick and choose from, from over 25, really amazing people in the wedding industry who have so much to give, so much to teach. I’ve seen these presentations. They’re wonderful. You do not wanna miss them, and you can attend this fully online conference totally free.

So why not come grab your free ticket over at www.bookmoreweddingsummit.com? If it’s easier for you, you can send me a DM on Instagram. I am @evolveyourweddingbusiness over there. Just send me a DM with the word “summit” and it will trigger a series that will get you your ticket right there in the Instagram DMs.

So I hope that you will join me for the Book More Wedding Summit and all these incredible speakers because what you decide you’re going to do right now and what you decide you’re not going to do right now is the thing that’s going to determine how well this next engagement and booking season goes for you.

And if this year is any indication, we’re definitely seeing a split between the wedding professionals who really have their marketing together that really know what they’re doing with it have invested the time, the money, the energy,y and learning and those that haven’t. And I want to present you with this free opportunity to get some of that education.

And then, as I said, you can join me in The Wedding Business Collective for $1. I wanted to make this as accessible as humanly possible because I know everybody is in a different situation.

But the truth of the matter is, you are not going to be able to attract and book the people that you want to attract and book this engagement and booking season if you don’t focus on this.

That’s why we’re doing this in August and we’re not doing it in November so be sure to grab your free ticket to Book More Weddings Summit at www.bookmoreweddingsummit.com. You can also DM me on Instagram at @evolveyourweddingbusiness with the word “summit” and my little HeidiBot will take over and get you your free ticket.

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Links & Resources:

The Wedding Business Collective
Book More Weddings Summit (get your free ticket!)

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