8 Reasons Why Having A Wedding Business Marketing Plan Will Make Your Life Easier
Do you have a marketing plan for your wedding business? I’m not talking about a general idea of what you’ll do to market your wedding business, I mean an actual concrete plan. A marketing plan for wedding business owners may sound like a boring topic but I can assure you that it can be very exciting.
Imagine being able to market in a way that you KNOW will get you results (those ideal clients you LOVE working with!).
Imagine feeling calm and in control and not overwhelmed for once.
Imagine marketing your business in a way that took up less time, worked better, and felt less overwhelming.
THAT is what creating a marketing plan for your wedding business can do.
Not so boring after all is it?
I think that a lot of wedding business owners think of a marketing plan as yet another tedious to-do item that doesn’t actually have any real world application but the way that I teach it is different. I want a marketing plan to be very actionable for you. I want it to be very tactical and something that you can apply on a daily basis. Otherwise, what’s the point?
This isn’t just pie in the sky kind of thinking about your marketing in a theoretically way. Instead, this kind of a marketing plan for wedding business owners is something that you can take and run with and it is something that can actually make your life a hell of a lot easier.
So why is it that having a marketing plan will make your life easier? I’ve got 8 reasons to share with you and you’re going to love all of them!
1. Focus
A wedding business marketing plan will help you focus on what it is that you should be doing. And what I mean by that is you decide ahead of time, what it is that you are going to be doing, what channels you’re going to be doing it on in terms of your marketing, so that when those shiny objects do come along, it’s a lot easier to recognize them for what they are and save them for later.
Here’s the truth: you don’t have to do all the things and you don’t have to do all the things right now. There is always an option to do that next quarter, the second half of the year, next year, you don’t have to do all the things anyway. I want you to know that because too many wedding professionals feel like they have to do everything and they have to be everywhere. I think that’s actually really bad marketing advice so if you need permission to stop doing it, here you go.
2. Reduce Overwhelm
If you’ve ever felt like, “Oh my god, I have all these things to do and I have to post here and I have to do this here and I have to run these ads!” you’re not alone. You do not need to do all of those things. Your plan functions as your compass and it shows you where you should be focusing and help you stay laser focused on that.
Imagine what it would feel like to sit down for a few hours and decide exactly what you’re going to do to market your wedding business for the next 90 days? You’d simply have to execute your plan. No additional decisions. No debating where to put your focus. You make your decisions in advance in CEO mode and then simply follow your plan. Easy peasy!
3. Clarity & Certainty
Have you ever felt like you need to market your business, but you don’t know what to do? There are so many options for you that you don’t really have any clarity about what’s going to work best for you. I get questions about this sort of thing all the time. So many wedding business owners ask me things like…
“Should I advertise on WeddingWire? What about The Knot?”
“Should I spend my money on Facebook ads?”
“Should I spend time on Pinterest?”
“Should I spend more time on Instagram?”
The answer to all of those questions is it depends a lot on who your ideal client is. It also depends on what your goals are and what you’ve decided in your marketing plan. Of course, if you don’t have a marketing plan to fall back on, that’s going to be a lot more difficult for you and you’re not going to have that level of clarity. Let’s be real, running a wedding business can be hard so why make it harder than it needs to be?
4. Do More Of What Works & Less Of What Doesn’t
This is something that gets overlooked a lot in marketing for wedding businesses and other creative businesses. I think this is largely because wedding business owners haven’t been trained to measure what is and isn’t working. That’s why so many wedding professionals get stuck doing random marketing tactics and hoping something will work for them. When you measure what works for you, you can do more of that and less of what doesn’t. That’s right, you get to STOP doing some things!
If you’ve narrowed down which tactics you’ll use in your marketing plan then you aren’t just scattershot throwing anything you can at the wall to see what will stick. This allows you to measure and see what is working for you. You can simply double down on the things that work and say goodbye to the things that don’t work as well, because I will say it again, and I’ll probably say it a million times, you don’t have to do everything.
Repeat after me: I do not have to do it all.
5. Be Proactive & Organized
When you plan your marketing in advance it allows you to be proactive and organized as opposed to marketing being a knee-jerk reaction. You know exactly what you need to do before you ever sit down at your desk to do it. You’re not seeing a competitor doing something and suddenly feel like you have to do the same right now.
If it’s not in your marketing plan, you don’t do it for the next 90 days. That you won’t feel pulled in a million different directions. I don’t know about you, but I hate that feeling and it really stresses me out. Anything that can prevent that feeling is my BFF.
6. Stand Out From Your Competition
You want to stand out from your competitors so you don’t have to compete on price alone, but how do you do that? It’s very hard to do things like figure out your USP (unique selling proposition) or who your ideal client is and how to attract them when you are moving a million miles an hour. When you actually press pause and take a moment to plan to build out this marketing plan, you have a path to follow. It really allows you to be intentional about how it is that you are going to differentiate yourself and your business.
It’s impossible to differentiate yourself from your competition if you don’t take the time to strategically review what they’re doing and where opportunities lie. You may find that all of your competitors are so focused on Instagram that they’re neglecting Pinterest and that could be a great marketing opportunity for you to capitalize on. You may also find that not very many of them are actually targeting your ideal client so in reality, they aren’t your direct competitors. This process will help you refine your messaging and marketing so it stands out compared all of your other competitors, even the not so obvious ones you may be missing.
If you don’t know how you are differentiating yourself and the messaging that you should be using, you’re going to struggle. At that point, most people fall back to scattershot marketing where they’re just throwing everything at the wall and hoping that something sticks. Here’s the hard truth though: it probably won’t because you’re not aiming at anything.
7. Avoid Shiny Object Syndrome
It’s so incredibly easy to be distracted by shiny objects. As a wedding business owner, you’re a creative person and you have a ton of ideas but sometimes those ideas can be distractions that take you away from what matters most to your business. A good marketing plan for your wedding business will help you put structures in place that help you avoid shiny object syndrome. It’ll also give you a place to store them and a habit of planning every 90 days so you don’t feel like you’re missing out on anything.
8. Removes In The Moment Decisions
When you sit down to create your wedding business marketing plan, you’re in CEO mode. This is the strategic thinking mode you need to be in to make these plans and decisions about your business. When you’re doing your day-to-day work, you’re in worker bee mode.
Worker bee mode is all about executing on the plans that you set out for yourself while you were in CEO mode. When you don’t separate these modes, making decisions about your marketing becomes difficult and overwhelming. By making your decisions up front while you create your marketing plan, you make your day-to-day worker bee life so much easier because all you have to do is execute on the plan. This is so much easier than trying to decide everything in the moment!
Create Your Wedding Business Marketing Plan
Now that you know why a marketing plan is so important for your wedding business, discover how to create your own plan in my free webinar called How To Make Marketing Your Wedding Business Easier & More Effective. In this free training, you’ll learn exactly what your wedding business marketing plan should contain and how it all comes together into a cohesive plan. Click here to register for the training!
