The Lazy Girl’s Guide To Marketing Your Wedding Business

Ready to unlock the secrets to stress-free wedding marketing? In this episode, I’ll introduce you to the “Lazy Girl’s Guide to Wedding Marketing.” This no-nonsense approach is all about getting more out of your wedding business marketing while doing less.

We’ll dive into a revolutionary approach that simplifies your marketing without sacrificing results. In fact, this lazy approach will get you BETTER results! You’ll also hear real-life success stories from wedding pros who have transformed their businesses with these strategies.

Discover how taking the lazy girl approach can help you raise your prices, attract your ideal clients, and keep overwhelm at bay. Don’t miss this chance to simplify your marketing and boost your business!

In this episode we’ll cover:

• How doing less in your marketing will help you book more weddings
• Why marketing your wedding business feels overwhelming and what to do about it
• How you can stop creating overwhelm in your wedding business
• Why you can’t copy someone else’s marketing plan
• How to stop overloading yourself and overcommitting so you can take more time off
• How to do more of what works to market your wedding business
• How to quit or park what isn’t working to market your wedding business
• How taking the lazy girl’s approach to marketing will get you more bookings and take less time
• How to look at the ROI of your marketing like the CEO that you are

Why You Aren’t Getting Enough Good Leads (And What To Do About It)

Hello, my friend, welcome to the podcast. I am your host, as always, Heidi Thompson, and I am all about helping you book more weddings with the clients that you really love working with, while also building a wedding business that gives you freedom and flexibility. I am also a lazy girl. I will always find the easiest, simplest, most streamlined way to do a thing, and I will say that loud and proud. Yeah, I’m lazy and I’m efficient as fuck because of it. So today I want to talk to you about the lazy girl’s guide to actually marketing your business, because most people overcomplicate this.

Most people do too much, and you can actually do less in your marketing and have that help you book more weddings, which I get is very counterintuitive, and the way that I like to look at marketing is like a buffet, right. So most people treat that marketing buffet like an absolute nutcase.

They go back to the buffet over and over again, always adding things to their plate, and it’s like a mountain. It’s an uncontrollable mess, and if you do this, you’re certainly not alone. This is how most people treat marketing. I got to do this, I have to add this, I got to do this other thing and then, after piling on, more and more and more. They wonder why they’re overwhelmed and wonder why they can’t seem to get anything done. Now, you wouldn’t do this at a buffet, so don’t do it with your marketing.

Something you can do right now, something you can do today, is take stock of what you’re actually doing to market your business right now. Just brain, dump it all out. Where are all the places you’re showing up, all of the tasks you’re doing, all of the activities you’re doing? I think you will be surprised just how much that you’re doing.

Once you have that in front of you, I want you to do three things Circle the ones that don’t have a strategy or a plan behind them and, if you’re like most wedding pros, that’s most of them. Put an X next to the ones that, quite honestly, you are half-assing and put a heart next to the ones that you enjoy. Just so you can have this, just so you can take stock of where you are with this, because most people don’t realize just how much they have on their plate and then they keep adding on and adding on and adding on, and that just leads to absolute overwhelm. Okay, so once you know what you have on your plate, we need to clean your plate. You have on your plate. We need to clean your plate.

We have to first look at capacity and recognize that reality gives us constraints. You can do anything, but you can’t do everything. You can’t do it all. You can’t do it all at once. Your plate should only have three marketing channels at any given time and one optional experiment if you have the time for it.

Now, when I say marketing channel, what do I mean? This could be Instagram, this could be Pinterest, this could be networking, this could be SEO. It’s basically a channel, an avenue that you are using to market your business. Sometimes it’s social media, sometimes it’s in person, sometimes it’s something like SEO, but you should only have three of these on your plate at any given time, and then you get one optional experiment, and what I mean by that is I really approach business and marketing from the perspective of a scientist.

I have this hunch, I have this hypothesis, this thing I think I can make happen. So I’m going to test it and then I’m going to look at the results and then I’m going to make some decisions. This is the basic scientific method that we learned in seventh grade science. We all had to fill out those worksheets about our experiments. It’s the same thing. So your one optional experiment? It’s the same thing.

So your one optional experiment is something like I want to see if I really focus on Pinterest or I really focus on generating referrals over the next 90 days. I want to see what I can get out of that. I think I can improve the number of bookings I get from that. I think I can improve the number of bookings I get from that. So I am going to plan out an experiment of what I’m going to do in order to test that you get one of those per 90 day period.

And I want you to keep busy seasons in mind, because if you are in a place that is heavily, heavily, heavily seasonal not all locations are like this, but some are like oh my God, all the weddings are in this short span of time and then the rest of the year you don’t have very many weddings going on. I don’t want you to have three marketing channels and an experiment going on during those busy times. It’s too much. It’s just too much for you to manage.

This is part of why we do 90 day planning in The Wedding Business Collective, because we all instinctively think we have more capacity than we do. We’re like I can do this, I can make this work, I can squeeze this in. No, you can’t. All of us get to that point where it’s like, why did I think I could possibly cram this in? And we wind up working these crazy hours you know, 60 hour weeks, 80 hour weeks and it’s like a prison of our own design because we’ve committed to all of these additional things.

So once your plate only has three marketing channels at any given time in one experiment, you really want to assess what’s working. Now this sounds logical, right? Most people don’t do this. Most people don’t pay enough attention to what’s already working. They pay attention to the things that are broken. It’s like that phrase: the squeaky wheel gets the oil. We want to do the opposite.

So what is currently working in your marketing? How can we make the most of this? How can we do more of this? How can we get you know 20% more out of this? You really don’t have to reinvent the wheel, but when you pay attention to what’s already working, it is such a shortcut. What’s working is the most important marketing work that you can do, and tweaking that to see what changes you can make feels like a cheat because it doesn’t take a ton of time, it doesn’t take a ton of work, it doesn’t take a ton of energy. But if you can take something that’s already working and get it to work just a little bit better for you, you’re going to get more bookings from it, and that is amazing.

It’s such a beautifully lazy way to approach your marketing.

You want to do more of what’s working, but what does that mean? So let’s say, referrals are really working for you and maybe you really haven’t had a strategy or a plan behind this. You’ve just gotten referrals. Well, a way that you could do more of what’s working for you is make a plan around this. You could use some of the referral strategies that we have in The Wedding Business Collective and in Referrals Made Easy, so you can get actually strategic about something that’s already working because it makes logical sense.

Hey, if it’s already working, if I add a little bit of strategy, if I add a little bit of intention, if I am actively going to certain networking groups that I wasn’t before, you’re going to get better results. You can look at what kinds of posts are performing really well and do more of that Instead of continuing to try to come up with new ideas. You can take what’s working and just create things that are like that, because the platform has already shown you this is going to work for you. So why wouldn’t you do more of that? Maybe it means increasing your posting frequency, maybe not, but the whole idea is, we want to put an ounce of strategy behind this, an ounce of intention behind this, so you know what you’re doing, in order to get more out of what is already working. So that’s what’s working. Then we have the pieces that aren’t working or aren’t working well.

So I want you to look at what is just not working in your marketing. Maybe you are paying for advertising somewhere. Maybe you’re paying for The Knot or WeddingWire or another platform like that, and it’s not working for you. I want you to ask yourself a really important question here. Is it not working because there’s no strategy? You just kind of made that decision on a whim? Is it not working because you’re half assing it? Or is it not working because it’s a bad fit? A lot of people I meet are, you know, paying for advertising and it turns out that it’s a bad fit for their ideal client. Their ideal clients are not in the spaces where they’re paying for this advertising. They’re not against paying for advertising. It’s amazing when it works well, but when it’s not working, it’s often because it’s a bad fit.

If Instagram isn’t working for you, it might be because it’s a bad fit, but more than likely it’s because there’s either no strategy or you’re half-assing it. So you get to decide which of these marketing strategies need to go in the parking lot. Which of these marketing strategies need to go in the parking lot? Which of these marketing strategies do you just not have the bandwidth for right now? Maybe you realize yeah, I am half-assing Instagram. I really need to get more strategic and more intentional and put a plan behind that. Right now, I don’t have the bandwidth for that. That needs to go in the parking lot.

You can park them for later. You don’t have to do everything, nor should you strive to, because the goal isn’t to do as many things as possible. Quite frankly, the goal is to do as few things as possible and get the best results, if we’re taking the lazy approach, which I highly recommend. So your parking lot can just simply be a Google Doc where you put these things that you want to work on. Later you want to come back to, but right now is not the time, and then you can revisit that on a quarterly basis. We do that in The Wedding Business Collective.

When we do our 90-day planning, we look at okay, what are those things that you said you wanted to do? You wanted to get more intentional about, you wanted to create a plan for, create a strategy for, and you just didn’t have time at the moment. What’s, you know? Maybe one thing we can pluck out of the parking lot. It’s not going anywhere, it’s okay to leave things there, but we don’t want to spend all of our time half-assing a bunch of things because we’re going to get half-assed results. So I would much rather see someone be very intentional and have a plan behind two marketing channels than half-ass three or four or five, because you’re going to get better results by being intentional, by having a strategy, by creating a plan for what it is that you’re doing, even if you’re creating less content, even if you’re showing up in fewer places.

And I think a lot of people struggle with that, because we have this mentality that we always need to be doing more and we need to be here and we need to be there, and it’s really not true. A lot of times it just takes up your time and you have nothing to show for it. So then you need to make the decision, Are you going to get strategic about it or are you going to put it in the parking lot? Those are really your only options. I guess another would be you’re just in a holding pattern for the moment.

You’re continuing to do what you’re doing, but I wouldn’t say like just throw more time at it, which is what a lot of people do. They see something isn’t working, so they throw more time at it. They throw more effort at it. They throw more time at it. They throw more effort at it. Really, we need to throw more strategy at it, throw more planning at it, to make sure that we’re making decisions that actually make sense and lead to results, which usually, when I have people come into The Wedding Business Collective, they’re not going to, they’re doing a million things, and usually when they go through and they create their marketing plan, they pare that down.

One of the questions I ask when they submit their marketing plan is what are you going to quit and what are you putting in your parking lot? There is always an answer to that there is always something that they’re doing that is eating up their time, eating up their energy and not getting them results. And we have to think about this and the return on investment mindset. You are putting the time, you are putting the energy, you’re putting the effort, you’re putting the finances into this. If you’re not getting a return, you need to change something, not just do it harder, right? So some of these things you’re going to quit.

If it’s not a fit for your ideal client or your business, quit it. Do you really need to be the person doing this? Can someone else do it? Can you hire it out? So you as a business, you aren’t quitting this, but you personally are quitting this activity because someone else is taking care of it. Is it just not working? No matter what you tweak within your strategy, that is a sign that it’s time to quit, and quitting is a beautiful thing. It’s one more thing. You get to cross off your list and say I don’t have to worry about this, I don’t have to do this. This is one less thing on my to-do list. This is one less thing on my to-do list.

So I want you to ask yourself how will you do more of what works for you and what works for you and what works for someone else is different. This is the interesting thing that always comes up in The Wedding Business Collective when people are working on their marketing plans, at first they think they need to do what other people are doing, but then, when they go through the marketing plan course, they realize that your marketing plan has to be created for your unique ideal client, your unique business, and it’s not going to look the same as anybody else’s. And that’s the point.

I also want you to ask yourself what are you going to quit, or what are you going to park, and where are you going to park it? You really need to get down to three marketing channels tops and one experiment per quarter. Why? How is this going to change your business?

Let me tell you about a few wedding pros that I’ve worked with that I’ve seen have dramatic changes as a result of taking this approach. So Liz Grimes, an officiant, said to me I’m no longer overwhelmed by marketing, which is like my favorite thing in the world to hear. She says we’ve been able to more than double our prices, work fewer weddings and make more than we ever have. We’re the most expensive officiants in our area and we easily attract our ideal clients. Many of them even come back a few weeks after booking to book our marriage education package. I give having a solid marketing plan in place a lot of credit for this. Thank you for helping us make this happen.

She took what she learned in The Wedding Business Collective and ran with it.

We have Kay Northrup, who you’ve heard from on the podcast. She is a wedding planner and was a member of The Wedding Business Collective and says here what I hear from a lot of people. I was flying by the seat of my pants without any marketing strategy and knew, if I was serious about hitting some major goals, that I needed to be more intentional with business planning and marketing.

Since joining The Wedding Business Collective, I’ve created a marketing strategy that made my social media presence intentional. I think I’ve used that word about a million times in this podcast. It is so important. She continues my Instagram, finally started doing work for me and has started bringing in inquiries from my ideal clients. I’ve been checking things off my list quicker than I ever would have hoped. I’ve never had my shit together this much.

Kerri, a celebrant from Australia, says I’m less overwhelmed now. I’m still a sucker for FOMO and shiny things, but I now have my pileup zone where, if it’s absolutely something that I want to try or don’t want to miss out on, I’ll add it to this area Instead of forgetting about things. I’ve added half an hour to my week to review my pileup zone and identify one just one, to add for the next week, to look into or to eliminate.

I feel like I have more direction since joining The Wedding Business Collective and I know I have an amazing support system I can reach out to. Heidi and the other members have got my back. The last quarterly planning session made me realize that I can’t do it all and I need to break everything down into baby steps and determine how much time I can actually allocate to each task. It’s such a relief seeing that my next quarter looks a lot more realistic instead of overwhelming. So if that sounds familiar, you are certainly not alone.

And Carolyn, a floral designer, said I knew nothing about marketing weddings and although I had done weddings and had bookings, I wasn’t sure how to best market to my ideal client. I also wasn’t getting consistent or quality leads and I was paying for advertising that was not worth the ROI. I was barely paying myself. With my rebrand, I got really clear on who my ideal client is. Then I engineered everything my website, inquiry process, booking process and marketing plan around that person. Now I get consistent and much better quality leads, somehow only book truly wonderful clients, and I’m booking 100% of my inquiries and this is for a high price service that starts somewhere between $8,000 and $12,000.

So what’s going to happen when you start taking the lazy girl’s approach to marketing? Well, your marketing should get easier and easier over time, because you’re doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t, and if that’s not happening, it’s time to make some changes.

And if you need some help with that, I invite you to come join us in The Wedding Business Collective. You can find out about that. You can DM me on Instagram the letters WBC and it will send you a direct link. You can find this on my website. You can go to www.theweddingbusinesscollective com, but you can come and join us and learn exactly how to do this.

My whole philosophy and everything that is part of The Wedding Business Collective, is that it’s not about doing more. Our goal should never be doing more. It’s about getting more out of what you do and only spending your time on things that get you results, because building a six-figure wedding business that gives you freedom and flexibility does not need to be constantly overwhelming and stressful and it doesn’t require 60 and 80 hour weeks.

We need to take more of a CEO approach and we talk about this a lot in The Wedding Business Collective. Of looking at where our time is going and looking at the return on investment we’re getting for that time, because not all tasks are created equal and simply by doing more marketing you’re not going to get more clients. You’re just going to do more marketing. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to work. Most likely it’s not going to if it doesn’t have any sort of strategy or alignment with your ideal client. So instead, I love helping people pare down what they’re doing.

What are the few things we can really focus on that get you results that we can get even better results from, and if you’re adding something new, in making sure that you’re only adding in one experiment at a time, because things get really, really messy when you start piling on this platform and that platform and I’m going to try this, I’m going to try that. That is a recipe for disaster and it’s what I see most wedding professionals do, and it’s why they constantly feel pulled in a million different directions. They feel like their business and their life is chaos. Because it is.

Because there is no plan or strategy behind it, which is why everything I teach is so rooted in that. And it’s not just having a plan for the sake of having a plan. It’s having a plan because it allows you to get better results. It allows you to make your marketing easier and less overwhelming for yourself and it allows you to spend less time. It allows you to actually do less to market your business and get better results. And that makes my lazy little heart so happy to hear and so happy to see happen in other wedding professionals businesses.

So if you would like help with that, you can find the link in the show notes. I will have that at www.evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/280. You can also go to www.theweddingbusinesscollective com and I would love to help you get just a little bit lazier and more strategic with your marketing and your business.

If this has sparked any ideas from you, if you’re like I’m going to go do this particular thing after I finish this episode, I would love to hear from you. So shoot me a DM on Instagram. I’m always excited to talk to people who listen to the podcast, so you’re definitely not intruding. Shoot me a DM. I am @evolveyourweddingbusiness and I can’t wait to hear from you.

Links & Resources:

The Wedding Business Collective
Episode 245: Think Not Having Enough Time Is Your Problem? Think Again.

Want more? To subscribe to the podcast, please use the links below and be sure to leave a review:

Click Here to Subscribe via Apple Podcasts

Click Here to Subscribe via Spotify

And please take 2 minutes to leave me an honest rating and review on Apple Podcasts by clicking here. It will help the show and its ranking immensely! Thank you – I appreciate it!