How To Stand Out & Get Booked This Engagement Season

Engagement season is on the horizon, couples are scouring websites, and amidst the avalanche of choices, one critical factor often seals the deal—standing out.

Join me as I reveal the hidden strategies to create that ‘Oh my God, this is the one’ moment for your clients.

Imagine captivating your ideal client before they’ve even checked your prices or packages, solely because you resonate with them in a way no one else does.

It’s not about reinventing the wheel; it’s about that magical transformation, just like in your favorite rom-com.

In this episode we’ll cover:

• Why so many wedding professionals fail to stand out from their competitors
• How not standing out attracts price shoppers
• Why you need to show your ideal client that you are the perfect fit for them and not rely on them to figure it out
• How to attract clients who don’t care about price
• Why you’re struggling to book clients
• The importance of creating that OMG moment
• How to embrace your inner Elle Woods
• How to get the step-by-step to stand out & get booked this engagement season

How To Stand Out & Get Booked This Engagement Season

Hello there, my friend. I am your host as always, Heidi Thompson, here helping wedding professionals of all different kinds book more of the clients they really want to be working with following a simple roadmap and building businesses that give you the freedom and flexibility that you’re after.

Now as I’m recording this, we are at the beginning of engagement season, and based on the data that I’ve seen, we’re expecting a pretty good, pretty healthy engagement season from the looks of it. I have been coming across a very common issue among wedding businesses that I want to address, and it’s really getting in the way of them being able to book, and I’m seeing this across vendor types, I’m seeing this across markets, across cities, countries, and the problem is this sea of sameness.

So something I do in my membership, The Wedding Business Collective is I review one member’s website each month. I record my screen. I go through it page by page and I make recommendations as to what they can change to get more people that are coming to their website to actually inquire and book with them.

So we’ve built up a pretty big catalog of reviews that I’ve done, and they’re available to all of the members to watch on demand whenever they’d like. If you’re not a member, you can learn more about The Wedding Business Collective at https://evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/wedding-biz-collective but the problem that I see come up time and time and time again is I can’t tell your business from someone else’s.

And that is not just an aesthetic problem. That’s not just a branding problem. That’s a massive problem when it comes to attracting and booking during engagement season. Because what you have are couples who are doing their research. They’re spending, in some data, it says hundreds of hours doing their research to put their wedding together.

They’re seeing a lot of your competitors’ websites and let me tell you, most of them look and sound exactly the same. That’s a really big problem because if you don’t stand out, if you don’t give people that, “Oh my God, this is the person for me moment.” Well, A. they’re probably not going to book you, and B. they’re going to have to find another way to compare you to your competitors.

If nobody stands out as the perfect go-to person, they’re going to have to default to comparing you based on price and based on, you know, like the nuts and bolts of what’s included in a given package and overall value. And we can’t really get mad at people for doing this if we’re not giving them anything else to go on.

So not standing out means not booking. It means losing bookings and that OMG moment I mentioned is really important to give people and you may have had this experience with people that you’ve worked with. Companies that you’ve bought things from. Brands that you love. You just have this feeling like, “Oh, yes, this is exactly what I’ve been looking for. This is exactly the person for me.”

So to give you an example from my own business, my own life. I had this experience when I was looking for a brand photographer the last time I took brand photos. So the issue I was finding is all the photographers in my area. I’m in San Diego. They’re all very light and airy and I get it. We live in this beautiful place where you know you can do things outside all year round. It’s fantastic.

But that’s not what I was looking for and they all felt very similar in the way that they were talking about their work, the copy on their website. It was all very similar. I could not tell the difference between these different photographers.

Then I found the photographer that I wound up working with and the instant I landed on her website. I had that, “oh my god, this is exactly who I not just want to work with, I NEED to work with.” I had made that decision before I looked at her prices, before I looked at her packages, before I looked at her availability, and I actually wound up reaching out quite a ways in advance because I wanted to make sure that this was the person that I got to work with.

I was totally fine with paying more than I could have paid with other people because she was giving me the solution that I wanted. She was giving me, in this case, the look that I wanted. She showed me that she’s very confident with bold colors and using them in the ways that I really wanted to use them for my brand.

That is not something I saw other brand photographers doing. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong. It’s just I was looking for a solution to something and I wasn’t finding it. I was finding the same light and airy photos the same way of talking about packages and her approach was just different. And it wasn’t wildly different.

That’s the thing that’s really interesting. It wasn’t like she was reinventing the very idea of photography. No, she was still, you know, selling brand photography. She just had a different approach to her style, her look, and the way she talked about the work.

Another thing was she had just put together a posing guide for plus-size clients, which is something I hadn’t seen anybody else do before.

And I was like, okay, well, I know I’m going to be positioned in a way where I look good. So that gave me a lot of confidence. With all of this, I had decided to work with her before I found out what she charged. And she would have had to charge a really, really exponential price for me to back down from that.

That is the feeling that you want to create. And it’s not hard. You just have to know the steps to do it. You just have to make yourself. So if you think about any rom-com, there is this trope that exists where typically the girl, let’s use Legally Blonde, for example, you know, Warren breaks up with Elle because he wants to date a Harvard girl.

He wants to date another law student and he perceives her as not being smart enough, even though she clearly is, because she nails her LSAT. She had better on her LSAT than I did. She gets into Harvard and she becomes what he wanted. Now, as with many rom-coms, she then discovers herself, and there’s this whole other story.

But the point is, is that she focused in on, “Okay, this is what he wants. I am this. I just need to bring out these parts of me, and show him that I am the perfect fit.” Now, that’s completely toxic. I’m not saying you should do that but what I’m saying is that rom-coms are this great modality for looking at making yourself the perfect fit for your ideal client because Elle was already smart.

She was incredibly smart. She was hard-working. She just wasn’t emphasizing those parts of herself. Not that Warren was worth it, if you ask me or pretty much anybody that seen Legally Blonde. She just had to bring those out more in order to, in her eyes, become the person that he wanted. Now, she’s a perfect person anyway, I’m not saying at all that is the approach you should take to your personal life.

But when we’re looking at becoming the perfect fit for our ideal clients, we want that Elle Woods moment. We want to have the, you know, montage of transformation and becoming, not even becoming, but showing that we are the absolute perfect fit for our ideal clients. That’s how you stand out.

That’s how you create those “Oh my God, this is exactly who I need to work with” moments. And that is how you get booked this engagement season.

Now if you’re like “Heidi, how the hell do I do that?” Well, I am so glad you asked my friend because next week, starting December 4th, I am going to be guiding you through a free 5 day challenge all about standing out and getting booked each day.

I’m going to give you a super short compact thing that you can do. Give me 20 minutes each day and you will be standing out and getting booked this engagement season.

So if that sounds like something you need, head over to https://evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/challenge.

Alternatively, you can go over to the show notes for this episode and you will be able to see the link for that.

Or you can comment on any of my Instagram posts with the word challenge and I will send you the info you need so you can get your free spot for this challenge and you can actually stand out from your competition and create those moments of like, “yes, this is my person, I don’t even care what they charge.”

We’ve all had. those moments. We’ve all had those times where we found just the right person we want to work with, just the right service, just the right product, just the right piece of clothing. And it doesn’t even matter how much it costs. This is how you get around competing on price.

You have to stand out. And my friend, almost nobody is doing this. People who are doing really well are doing this, but I can tell you, I’ve looked at a lot of websites and if I can’t tell you apart from another officiant, or planner, or caterer, or DJ, then how is someone who is brand new to this supposed to tell you apart and know why they should work with you instead of someone else?

So come on over to https://evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/challenge and grab your free spot for the challenge. I cannot wait to work with you on this and help you stand out and get booked this engagement season!

Links & Resources:

Get your FREE ticket to The Stand Out & Get Booked Challenge
The Wedding Business Collective
Episode 187: What To Do If Your Wedding Business Is Attracting Price Shoppers

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