How To Use Wedding Ads To Get More Bookings (Without Wasting Money) With Whitney Hodges & Daniela Justus

Thinking about running wedding ads but worried about wasting money? You’re not alone!

So many wedding pros jump into Google or Meta ads hoping for a flood of leads, only to see their budget disappear with little to show for it. The truth is, ads can work but only if you have the right strategy in place.

In this episode, I’m joined by Daniela and Whitney from Wedding Industry Ads to break down how to actually use wedding ads to get more bookings. We’re covering how to know when you’re ready for ads, the biggest mistakes that drain your budget, and how to make sure your ads attract your ideal clients (instead of price shoppers).

If you’ve been wondering if wedding ads are worth it, or how to run them profitably, this episode is for you!

In this episode we’ll cover:

• When wedding ads actually work and how to know if you’re ready
• The biggest money-wasting mistakes wedding pros make with ads
• The key differences between Google Ads and Meta Ads
• How to target the right couples so you get high-quality leads
• Why a layered ad strategy is more effective than a single ad campaign
• What types of content work best for wedding ads
• How to track your results and improve your ad performance

How To Use Wedding Ads To Get More Bookings (Without Wasting Money) With Whitney Hodges & Daniela Justus

0:00:00 – Heidi Thompson
This is the Evolve your Wedding Business Podcast, episode number 302. How to use wedding ads to get more bookings without wasting money.

0:00:11 – Intro
In a world where wedding professionals are struggling to market and grow their businesses, one podcast brings together top experts and actionable strategies to help you build the wedding business of your dreams.

0:00:32 – Heidi Thompson
This is the Evolve Your Wedding Business Podcast. Here is your host, Heidi Thompson. Hey there, my friend. Welcome to the podcast. I am your host, Heidi Thompson, and I help wedding professionals, just like you, book more weddings with the clients you love by making your marketing way easier and building a business that gives you freedom and flexibility, so you’re not working all the damn time.

And one of the questions I get quite often is is it worth it to advertise here? Is it worth it to advertise there and in our industry? A lot of times, what people are talking about are advertising on directory sites like the Knot, weddingwire, zola, these sorts of places, but there’s this whole other world of paid advertising that you can get into with Meta, with Facebook and Instagram ads and with Google ads, and it is completely different. You have way more control. There’s so much more you can do with it and there are so many more ways that you can use them to generate leads, nurture leads and book weddings, and today we are going to dive into that with Daniela Justus and Whitney Hodges from Wedding Industry Ads.

We get into so much in this episode everything from are your ads working, why might they not be working, the fact that they’re not a quick fix, that you can’t just slap up some ads and call it a day, and what to do instead, how these platforms work and how to use a layered ad strategy to get better results and the kind of results that they are seeing with their clients and what to actually include in your ads and how to turn these people who are coming to your business from these ads into clients, because it’s all wasted money if you’re just putting a bunch of money into advertising and then they never inquire, or they inquire and then they ghost you or they inquire and then you move things down the road, it seems like they’re going to book but they don’t book. Then it’s just money that you have wasted and we definitely don’t want that. So we talk about that entire pipeline from someone discovering you to being interested in you, to them becoming a lead, you nurturing them and them booking you all with paid advertising. I hope you’re excited about this because there are so many opportunities here and there’s just so much that you can do with these platforms. So let’s get into this conversation with Daniela and Whitney.

Today. I am joined by Daniela and Whitney of Wedding Industry Ads, which, if you’re not familiar, is a boutique advertising agency specializing in paid lead generation on both Google and Meta for wedding pros and wedding pros specifically. And I’m so happy to have them here today because I get asked a lot of questions about advertising, about what makes the most sense, about how to know if you’re ready. So thank you both for taking the time to be here.

0:04:21 – Daniela Justus
Of course we’re excited to contribute. Thank you so much for having us, Heidi. Of course we’re excited to contribute.

0:04:25 – Heidi Thompson
Thank you so much for having us, Heidi. Yeah, yeah, I’m really curious. When you have a wedding pro get in touch with you, what is your kind of filtering qualifying mechanism for? Is this person a good fit for doing paid ads to generate leads, or maybe are they not ready for that?

0:04:50 – Whitney Hodges
Great question.

So usually we’re going to be looking for, you know, the foundations of their marketing right and for those things to really be in place prior to them being ready to invest in ads.

So some pretty good indicators for us are going to be checking out their website as well, as, you know, checking out their social media if those are different platforms where they’re active, and from that we’re really able to kind of gather. You know, is this wedding pro kind of in touch with who their ideal client is? Are they already really kind of speaking to them directly? We also like to get a feel for, you know, if they really kind of already have a sales funnel that’s in place. Are they currently making sales? Do they have a process to where they know how to speak directly to who their ideal couples are and, you know, sell them and make sales from that? Because until those foundations are really in place, it sell them and make sales from that. Because until those foundations are really in place, it doesn’t quite make sense to be investing in ads for that additional visibility and awareness.

0:05:55 – Heidi Thompson
That makes a lot of sense. I see a lot of people who kind of look at ads as this, like bandaid or this cure-all that’s going to fix everything that’s going on in the business. That isn’t working. But I think a more effective way to think about it is like pouring gas on a fire, and if you don’t already have something to pour gas on, it’s not really going to do a whole lot. You’re just going to spend money and I’m sure you see that it’s not really going to do a whole lot.

0:06:26 – Daniela Justus
You’re just going to spend money, and I’m sure you see that. Yeah, you’re exactly right, Heidi. I mean, we say all the time that ads don’t work in isolation. They are a piece of this bigger picture marketing system and really they only work as well as all of the other pieces, and how they work together. We do see people kind of you know, it’s common for people to think, well, I just need more eyes, or I just need ads running and that’ll solve my problem. And the truth is that ads are not going to solve a sales issue. That’s a deeper problem, and more visibility is just going to make it a more expensive problem. And so that’s why we really do take the time to look at what you already have in place before we move into a working relationship with anybody.

0:07:11 – Heidi Thompson
What types of wedding businesses do the two of you typically work with?

0:07:18 – Whitney Hodges
So our client roster includes a lot of venues, a lot of wedding planners. We worked with DJs, a lot of wedding planners. We worked with DJs, photographers, florists, officiants. Really, you know, if you’re in the wedding industry we can definitely help you with, you know, lead generation If you have kind of those foundational pieces in place, because we really kind of understand the right targeting to get the right kind of high intent leads on your business and how to really speak to the brides and what is going to resonate with them and what works from. You know more of like the sales funnel perspective. So for clients who come to us that maybe don’t have all of the foundational pieces already in place to be ready for starting ads, that’s when we can kind of, you know, consult a little bit more about, okay, what does a great sales funnel, what does the foundations for running ads really sort of look like, and then also help them with setting that piece up.

0:08:19 – Heidi Thompson
I absolutely love that you do that as well, because I’m sure a lot of people are like I don’t know, I might be ready, I might not be ready, and if I’m not ready, I’m not sure exactly what I need to do, and just having you say like no, not ready, like not super helpful, what exactly do I need to have in place? So that’s really cool that you guys do that. You mentioned targeting, and this is something I talked about a little while back when I was doing research on people’s experiences with The Knot & WeddingWire who have been like the big kahunas in the industry for just about ever, and the really strange thing to me about that method of advertising is the lack of targeting. About that method of advertising is the lack of targeting. So can you tell us a little bit about what is possible in terms of targeting, both with meta ads and Google ads?

0:09:16 – Daniela Justus
That’s a really interesting question to think about. Targeting in contrast or comparison to a directory listing, and I think that it’s funny to me that people think of listings and directories as advertising, because to me it’s such a different strategy where, on the Knot or on WeddingWire, you’re really relying on their marketing efforts and really what their existing audiences look like or what their traffic patterns are, whereas when you are running your own advertising campaigns, you have so much more control over who it is that you’re showing your listing to and how you’re communicating with them and what stories you’re choosing to share. The different touch points can be so much more intentional and so much more curated and you can really bring in a lot of dialed in high intent traffic that it’s to me just like an apples to oranges comparison. But I’m sure as a business owner, you’re looking at your different options and of course, those are going to be cards on the table. Whitney, I think maybe you can speak a little bit more about the specific strategies when it comes to advertising and targeting in particular.

0:10:31 – Whitney Hodges
Absolutely so. On, google search campaigns is what we recommend, right? We want to get in front of people who are searching for your venue or searching for your services. So those campaigns, of course, are going to be built around keywords, the keywords, the search terms that you are wanting to show up for, right? But beyond just kind of selecting the right keywords for your campaigns, we can also set up you know, not only who is searching for those keywords, but dial it in even further, right? So if you would only like your ads to show up for women, for brides, that is an option for you. If you would like to get specific in terms of the age ranges of who is going to be seeing your ads on Google, that’s a possibility as well. There are also other sort of indicators that are even deeper that you can layer into Google. One of the things that we like to do is targeting people who have recently been, you know, shopping for, you know, engagement rings online or searching for other sort of like wedding related things. We can, uh, different incomes, right? So, you know, for some of our clients who sometimes will have like a lead quality sort of issue in their market, then we may also layer in. Okay, we only want these ads to show up for the top 20% of household incomes. So that’s an option on the Google side of things.

On the Meta side of things, it can get even more specific when it comes to your targeting, because Meta collects so much data on us, right? They really understand what we are doing all over the internet. So we actually can target on Meta people who have visited The Knot or WeddingWire recently. Those are two of the really common wedding-based interests that we like to target.

There are also interests for just weddings in general, or wedding reception, wedding planner, wedding photographer so many different things that can kind of be layered in there. And, of course, you can get specific in terms of gender and age. And for both Google and Meta, there’s location-based targeting as well, right? So we don’t want your ads to show up all over the entire United States if you are only servicing a particular area of your state or city. On. Meta is where retargeting can come into play as well. So custom audiences that can be created based on pixel data, so based on the meta code that can be installed on your website so that you can retarget people who have visited your website recently or retarget people who have engaged with you on Facebook and Instagram within actually up to the past year.

0:13:26 – Daniela Justus
So I think something interesting to share for someone who’s brand new to ads or who maybe, you know, doesn’t have familiarity with these platforms like we do.

One of the things that we’ve definitely learned and experienced is that the perception is that there’s one way to run ads, and you’re either running ads or you’re not, or the main focus is truly just lead generation, getting people from point A to point B on your website, on your inquiry page. And the truth is, and really what we see as being more effective is having layered strategies where you’re running simultaneous campaigns that each serve a different objective. So effectively you’re building a funnel of ads in a sense, so it’s not just like a one-trick pony. There are so many different ways that ads can be leveraged and it’s a combination of strategic targeting with strategic campaign objectives and choosing which platforms you’re putting your budget into and breaking down the campaigns into almost a system in and of itself. I think once people can kind of start thinking in terms of strategy that way, it makes ads feel a lot more approachable, because it’s not just this all or nothing sort of strategy or component of your marketing.

0:14:37 – Heidi Thompson
I’m really glad you brought that up, Daniela, because something I see a lot of people think is like there is this one right way or I just run an ad and I’m kind of like dumping people on my website. But can you walk us through a little bit more of what a layered ad strategy looks like, or maybe an example?

0:15:02 – Whitney Hodges
I can for sure. So of course, we’ve got, you know, google. So Google is going to capture people who are searching, and we’re trying to capture people who are searching with high intent, right. So from the Google ads, they may then land on your website or a dedicated landing page, and that’s great, that’s wonderful. You know, that’s the beginning of starting the customer journey with them, right? But we often know that people aren’t going to take action the first time that they land on their page. So that’s why we love to be running meta ads in conjunction with Google ads, because that’s going to capture some of that retargeting, right. We can make sure that the meta ads are showing up for people who recently visited your website. But on the meta side of things, because there are so many different types of objectives on that platform everything from video views to driving more traffic to your website or landing page, to actual conversion campaigns, where the goal of that is to get more inquiries, get people actually filling out your inquiry form that’s where we can get super layered over on that platform.

So we love to run what we call client attraction campaigns, which are video views, campaigns that go out to completely cold audiences, people who have never heard of you before and are just getting more eyes on your business. That way, we can then follow up with other retargeting ads further down the funnel. Direct response ads are going to be very important, right. Those are going to be the types of ads that are asking people to inquire with you or book a tour with you or get on a call, right, and so oftentimes that’s what we see that people are just running in isolation, maybe like one direct response ad, whereas with the clients that we work with, we’re actually usually running anywhere from five to 15 different creatives at any given time.

And that’s twofold, right, because we want to be testing different types of ads, different creatives.

But we also want people who are in your world, in your audience, to not be seeing the exact same ad over and over and over. We want them to be seeing different pieces of content to really help nurture them and move them along the customer journey. So that’s kind of the final component of our meta ads funnel, our nurture retargeting ads, so ads that are really only being directed towards people who are your warm audience. So they’ve either visited your website or they’ve engaged with you on social media recently and you know it’s really simple like dollar a day ads. Oftentimes it’s pieces of your organic content, like an Instagram post or a reel, that we’re just repurposing and putting some ad spend behind to make sure that you are consistently getting eyes on that great piece of content, right? It’s not just being posted on your grid to then be buried and never seen again, or only seen by somebody who’s really kind of purging all of your content. It can consistently be reaching new people every day.

0:18:04 – Heidi Thompson
I think that’s a really interesting point and something a lot of people probably don’t think about, because we know empirically, like just deep down, we know the chances of someone landing on your website for the very first time, submitting an inquiry, booking a consult and paying you all in kind of one fell swoop is low, to say the least.

We need to see things multiple times, we need to be reminded, we need to think about things, we need to hear about them in different ways. So I think it’s really helpful to think about, like you said, the kind of ads ecosystem that you’re building really is like that sales funnel of okay, here are different ways that they can discover you and either interact with that whether that’s watching a video or going to that website or going to a specific page and then, based on whether they do that activity or not, what’s the next step you want them to take. And that makes it, in my mind, much more doable, because you’re not trying to kind of boil the ocean with a single ad. You get these multiple chances, you get these multiple steps along the way that you can make use of and make sure that you’re kind of ushering people through this process.

0:19:34 – Daniela Justus
Totally and I think you know, acknowledging also that every buyer behaves differently, right Like people need different pieces of information in order to solidify in their minds that they’re ready to make that next move.

And what’s so powerful about the meta platforms in particular, you know, facebook and Instagram advertising is that you get to share your story, you get to showcase client testimonials, you get to sort of build that relationship. Even if the conversation is one sided at first, it really does help build a lot of trust and create a sense of reassurance that you are the right service provider for this particular lead, for this particular couple. What we’re seeing in the industry these days is that there’s a lot more kind of behind the scenes research happening before a couple really moves forward, even through the inquiry process, and then, once they are inquiring, they’re typically inquiring with, you know, multiple vendors for the same service, and so this is just a way that you can really stay top of mind and continue to show up in their news feeds, you know, regardless of what step of the process you’re in with information. That really doesn’t feel like advertising. It just feels like great content.

0:20:42 – Heidi Thompson
Yeah, you’re just making sure the right people see it at the right time, which is, I think, definitely a different approach for a lot of people in the wedding industry who maybe think about advertising as this more one size fits all sort of thing. So you guys had mentioned like using different types of content, repurposing existing content. Can you share a little bit about, like, what are some of the types of content that you’re using in ads, so people can maybe visualize this a little bit better?

0:21:15 – Whitney Hodges
For sure. So for client attraction ads, we usually like to run video views campaigns, so a video there is going to be important. Oftentimes we will find, you know, reels of our clients that we can take and then repurpose into those client attraction ads. The way that I like to think of this is because it is it’s reaching completely cold audiences, right, it’s somebody who has never heard of you before. So if you had one piece of content that you could use to introduce someone to your brand and kind of tell them in a nutshell you know what you’re all about, without it feeling salesy or there being like an ask on the back end of it, because really all we’re trying to do at this point is just to get people to engage with you, engage with your brand. But what would that type of piece of content look like, right? So for a venue, for example, it may be kind of like snippets of you know a virtual tour or, um, you know clips from a recent wedding where a wedding videographer got not just really great shots of, like, the couple or the decor, but it really showcases the venue as a whole, right? Or for a wedding planner, more kind of sharing, um, what they’re all about what they stand for, right.

Like we want to make sure that you and your brand are at the forefront of these client attraction ads and that it’s not just a piece of content that they could see anywhere or from anyone. We also like to make sure it’s not just very like sort of general tips that could be helpful for anyone to consume. We want it to be about your brand resonating with these people that are seeing it right. You know, what we’ll see from some clients is that they’ll have a piece of content that went viral that they’re really excited about and that’s very cool for them, right?

But oftentimes these pieces of content that go viral well, first of all, they’re not reaching who your ideal clients are. In this sort of virality, you don’t have any control over who’s seeing it, but it’s oftentimes something that, yes, it was a really cool thing that happened at one of your weddings, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t have that much to do with what you do as a wedding service provider, right? So pushing that content out to more people isn’t necessarily going to serve you. Other pieces of content that we like to see further down the funnel can be things that take couples more kind of behind the scenes, share more about your process, answer frequently asked questions, overcome objections, sharing testimonials Any sort of piece of content like that could really easily be repurposed into a great ad.

0:24:17 – Heidi Thompson
I like the way you’ve broken this up and that you pointed out that organic virality does not necessarily mean it’s going to be a great fit for an ad. If you’re trying to gauge whether this person is interested in who you are and what you do, you know those could be two completely different things and I think that’s really important because you know we all get excited when we see really big numbers on something and it’s easy to think like, oh okay, what if I just put some ad spend behind this? Like how many more people could it reach? But that’s a really good reminder that it needs to be reaching the right people and they need to be seeing it and at least be, you know, somewhat interested in who you are, what you do, who you do it for, and that that’s really clear.

I would think a lot of people could get hung up on this about like so what do I need to make? Like some sort of like little commercial for myself, some little, like you know, cheesy sales video. I can absolutely imagine like some like local carpet company having, like you know, some goofy little sales video, like local carpet company having, like you know, some goofy little sales video. But I like that you pointed out, like this can be a tour. What sorts of things do you see for people who don’t have that specificity of location like a venue does? What sorts of things are they sharing in the lead gen stage?

0:25:57 – Whitney Hodges
So clips from real weddings always work really well. So I would say, you know, having that layered in there in some component, but you want to make sure that there’s messaging that’s tied into that as well, right? So you know, sometimes we’ll see from clients that they have this really great sort of like B-roll footage from a real wedding. You know that’s been posted as a real and it’s beautiful, but there’s a missed opportunity there, right? Because you can be adding copy onto your real, right. So it’s a matter of pairing really wonderful imagery, you know, images and video with the right message at the same time, and not just relying on that messaging to be in the ad copy, the ad text, but also on the creative itself.

0:26:48 – Heidi Thompson
That is such a good point about the missed opportunity of the text in the video and we see that so much when we’re, you know, scrolling. But yeah, I could see a lot of people just thinking like, well, here’s this gorgeous wedding and I talk about it in the caption, but, you know, only a certain number of people are actually going to get to that caption, so we can’t necessarily count on that doing all of the heavy lifting. That’s a really good tip in what to use in terms of the creative for real weddings. Is there anything other than real weddings that you see? Danielle, I’m curious if you’ve seen anything like really stand out in terms of like the type of content, if you’ve seen any patterns there.

0:27:37 – Daniela Justus
Yeah, you know, and it’s the thing that I think a lot of people get really uncomfortable with.

But face to cam video is always great to have.

Just starting to use your voice, the way that you articulate things, the way that you share about your process or just share your thought leadership in the space, that’s going to align you with people who share your values.

And if you can really lead with your values in the space that’s going to align you with people who share your values, and if you can really lead with your values, with your mission, with your purpose, why it is that you do this work, what you love about it, those are the things that make you different and, at the end of the day, your clients are hiring you because they want to work with you and what it is that you bring to the table.

And so that’s the other piece that I would say we see works really well. Top, middle, bottom of funnel is when you are just showing up as yourself and not trying to be what it is that you think your clients want to see, but really leading with truly who you are, and that’s going to just naturally align you with people who see that and who want it Because your marketing is doing two jobs. You want it to attract people who see the potential of working with you, and you also want it to turn people away who are not going to be a great fit. And the only way that you can do that is by showing up as who you truly are.

0:28:55 – Heidi Thompson
That’s a really good point. Yep, it has to do both, or it’s not gonna do anything, it’s just gonna be neutral, it’s gonna fall flat and not speak to anyone, and that’s the worst position to be in the generalist content, it just really it doesn’t work.

0:29:13 – Daniela Justus
And kind of like what Whitney was saying you might have this beautiful picture just like incredible moment during an event, but if you can find a way to tie it back into your intention behind creating that moment, that can then sort of speak to the process of the work and sort of how you made that moment possible. I would encourage business owners in this space, and service providers particularly, not to shy away from what it is that they did to contribute to that picture being possible. So if you’re really not comfortable being face to cam, there’s no reason why you still can’t lead with your values, your mission, your purpose and kind of how those small things that you do behind the scenes contribute to the event as a whole and the couple’s story that behind the scenes stuff is always so impactful too, and I think it’s because, you know, when we get right down to it, we’re all just nosy.

0:30:12 – Heidi Thompson
We just want to know what’s you know going on behind the scenes. You mentioned something that made me think we should probably clarify the difference in the difference in function between Google ads and meta ads, Like what are they each best suited for? Where do they each fit within the funnel and why do you, I was going to say, insist, and maybe you do insist, but why do you suggest that people are running them simultaneously?

0:30:51 – Whitney Hodges
So yeah, great question.

0:30:53 – Daniela Justus
Great question. They serve really different purposes, I will say, and there are a lot more ways to use Google ads and meta ads than we might even suggest, right. So with Google ads, there are search campaigns, there are display campaigns, there are other ways that you can kind of leverage that tool. We think that for the wedding industry, the best use of Google ads truly is with search campaigns. So people who are going to Google, who are typing in specific keywords, looking for a service provider in their area who can meet a specific need, kind of starting that process of finding providers, that’s a perfect kind of way to bridge the gap from somebody who’s kind of actively putting in search terms to be able to find you. Meta, on the other hand, is also an extremely robust platform. There are so many different ways that you can approach advertising on that platform, with different campaign objectives, with different targeting options and even just with different messaging in your ads themselves. Right? So they serve different purposes, but with meta, the sort of special thing that it allows you to do is to use more visual elements, more video or time-based media, to really be able to start sharing stories, sharing testimonials, rather than it being a little bit more just keyword based and slightly more, you know, results page clicks. Like that the Google path is a little bit more straightforward in some ways, but once that initial contact has been made, meta ads are where you can really start building a relationship, and so having the two together, they just they work very well together.

I think we had mentioned earlier that, you know, I think the kind of common knowledge or old knowledge, is that it takes seven points of contact to make a sale, and a recent Google study actually showed that it’s closer to 200. And I don’t I’m not suggesting that we, you know, try to make 200 different pieces of content for, like, supporting these funnels, but what we see with our clients and you know, what we really see in this industry is that having more than one touch point really staying top of mind, it just helps you narrow in and connect with the right people for your business, and it happens in a way that feels a lot more fluid than just seeing an ad that’s like, hey, buy my thing now. It’s just, it feels better on both sides, and so that’s why I think it’s a little bit more effective.

0:33:27 – Heidi Thompson
Well, let me ask you because I’m sure you run into this, Danielle, when you’re talking to wedding pros where, okay, now we’re talking about two platforms, Now we’re talking about two platforms, Now we’re talking about multiple ads, I can see in their mind it possibly being like oh, that’s going to be two times, five times, 10 times the cost. What does the cost of running these sorts of campaigns actually look like? And I fully realize this is basically like asking you how long is a piece of string, but let’s try to give some context.

0:34:02 – Daniela Justus
Yeah, well, to your point. You know different businesses have different budgets and different goals, and so that’s part of our process, as well as just kind of uncovering you know what is the current context that we’re working within and how can we make a strategy that’s customized to meet you where you’re at. There are some clients who come to us with really amazing existing organic content, and so it’s really easy to just take some of that and put it into a meta ad system and just start amplifying what they’re doing in a low budget capacity. There are other clients who really don’t show up on social as much, but they have a high converting website, and so for them maybe starting off on Google makes more sense. And then there are other clients who come to us with really big, ambitious goals and growth KPIs that they’re trying to meet, and that’s where we can help them work through a more aggressive strategy that has higher spend and that’s leveraging multiple platforms. So a lot of it, as much as I hate to say it depends. That really is kind of my answer, but there are some sort of like minimums that we often suggest, depending on where you’re getting started, because ads are not going to be a quick solution or something that’s just immediately going to result in clients.

It’s a process, right, and it’s something that works when you work it. But typically, I would say on Google, it doesn’t make sense to really start running a search campaign unless you have, you know, $500 a month to dedicate to that platform potentially even $1,000, you know would get you better data faster. And then, on meta, you know, if you’re running, there are ways that you can amplify content in certain capacities. You know, with as little as a dollar a day behind each ad and the way that you layer them with the different campaign objectives can definitely meet a budget there. That’s closer to like $300 to $500 a month. But really, where we’re seeing more consistent results in terms of lead generation, leading through a funnel system and a process on the back end, you know those clients are realistically spending closer to $1,000 on each platform simultaneously, if not a little bit more.

0:36:26 – Heidi Thompson
And for the person listening if they’re just like oh, that’s more than I thought. Let’s talk about return on investment. You’re seeing with your clients. So return on investment you’re seeing with your clients, so you know. Let’s say they are spending $1,000 on each platform a month. I fully understand that that can feel big, that if you’re not used to doing this, and I know like this is by no means a guarantee. But I’m curious what sort of ranges of return on investment are you seeing for that ad spend?

0:37:02 – Daniela Justus
Yeah, I think the first thing I would consider is you know what is a client worth to you. If your contracts are, you know, $1,500, then it might make perfect sense to spend $300 to acquire that client. If your packages are $10,000, then putting 10% of that into advertising is the same as what a sales commission might be that you would invest to acquire that client. So I do think that, coming into it, it helps to have some clarity around. Really what is the client worth to you and how much are you willing to invest to acquire a new one? But we do have a client and, whitney, I actually would I’m going to pass the torch to you to talk about that a case study that we’ve been recently mapping out that may be able to give a little bit more of a specific sort of use case and results.

0:38:01 – Whitney Hodges
Sure, yeah. So we have a wedding venue client, for example, who has been working with us about five months or so and their returns that they are seeing are amazing. They’re advertising on both Google and Meta. They’re using our sales funnel platform as well, and we’re seeing close to like a 13 X return on ad spend for them. So that’s phenomenal.

But you know, that’s not necessarily the case for everybody, right? There are actually probably other clients where, if we really like, dug in and did the data that they probably have even a higher returns than that. Um, and then others who you know are more consistently seeing like a three X, a four X return on ad spend. And then also, you know, it really depends on what what are your goals with advertising, right? Um, we have a wedding planner who we’re working with who she is a brand new business owner, like she launched ads as she was launching her business. So she’s in a very different position than somebody who is, you know, an established business owner who’s been doing this for for 10 years. She more kind of like wanted to put in the money in the beginning to invest, to be getting her first clients Right, and so that, then, is more of like a break-even sort of situation.

You know there are other clients that we work with who you know they want to run Google ads because they want to break into a new market that they’re serving. Right. With SEO, it’s very hard to start showing up in the search results for a city that you’re not, you know, haven’t been based in for a long time, right, and so I would say, when you’re going into starting to run ads, what we like to know, and what you should be thinking about as well, is why are you wanting to run these ads? What are ultimately the goals for you? And then that’s going to help us determine what success looks like with advertising specific to your business.

0:40:04 – Heidi Thompson
That’s really helpful to think about. You know the objective and even though, like, yeah, the objective for most people is going to be to get bookings, but the context around that is different. Like you said, whether you’re new or you’re established, whether you’re trying to break into a new market or this is somewhere that you are already very strongly known, you’re probably going to find different return on investment. But you know, for breaking into a new market or getting established, like that pays dividends later on. So you can be thinking about it in those terms. When you did mention the sales process that you guys are using, and I know you have a system that you’ve developed for helping people once, okay, we get the lead, now what? So tell us a little bit about that.

0:40:59 – Whitney Hodges
Sure, yeah, so we have a platform called LeadLock that we offer currently to our full service clients, but perhaps in the future we may be expanding it beyond just that. But it really is kind of your full sales funnel, right? So it can start as early as a landing page. So what we often see is that paid ads will perform better when the traffic is being sent to a dedicated long form landing page as opposed to sending them to your full blown website. So there is a landing page builder component within LeadLock, so things start there. But then there’s also forms. So on that landing page, right, people need a way to inquire, and so they can fill out a customized form and then from there it can kick off a series of different automations text as well as email automation. So we like to do usually about like a five-part email nurture sequence with the goal being to get people to take the next step beyond just inquiring. Right, we want them to actually get a tour on your calendar or a sales consultation or whatever that next step looks like with you.

And we also know that in today’s day and age and today’s market, that our inboxes are more chaotic than ever before, and this kind of newer, gen Z really does appreciate and you know, even some of us millennials and older text messages. So the system also has SMS capabilities to where, immediately when you receive a lead, an email is going to go out to them and a few minutes later there’s also going to be a text message that goes out to them of something to the effect of hi, thank you so much for your inquiry. We’ve sent some more information to your inbox. Check it out. By the way, would you like to set up a consultation? And so it really just kind of opens up that line of communication immediately, also kind of serves as a reminder to this person right Of oh okay, I got that in my email, I need to check it, I need to consume it, but also kind of meets that instant gratification that I think today’s buyers are really looking for.

Right, you know, if you’re still manually responding to every lead, or you know, maybe you have an automation in place, but it’s something super generic that’s just like hey, we got your email and we’ll respond within 48 hours.

That’s way less appealing to a prospect than an email that tells more about you and your story and includes a link to some pricing or some packages or reviews or something that they can kind of consume right to kind of meet that immediate need of the additional information that they’re looking for at that point. And you know this system, it’s not meant to make all of your sales for you or replace personal touch points Nothing can kind of replace that but it’s meant to take some of the pressure off right. Like you know that a lead has come through, they are immediately being responded to and have the opportunity to then, you know, reach back out to you and you’re going to be, you know, made aware of that. But it also keeps track of all of these leads in a really organized fashion for you all. Inside of you know, one place, a dashboard, where you can start to see, you know, conversion rates and at what stage all of your leads are within the process.

0:44:49 – Heidi Thompson
I’m curious, having worked on this with your full service clients, what kind of impact are you seeing text having? Because I feel like it’s something we’ve heard over the last few years like, yeah, this is really important to start weaving into your follow up process, because, I mean, we’re also scattered, we’re also all over the place and our inboxes are just bursting at the seams. But I’m curious, on like a, like brass tacks being in it and seeing it for your clients, what sorts of impact are you having?

0:45:23 – Whitney Hodges
They’re definitely seeing that leads are more responsive and more open to communicating via text. Right? So I have the ability to go inside all of my different clients’ accounts and really see the conversations that are happening behind the scenes. What’s really nice is that it kind of gives you a breakdown of like, okay, at this day and time they received this email and they responded here. And then they received this text and they responded here, and I can tell you across the board that these leads are responding via text. It’s not emails that are going back and forth. When they have the ability and the opportunity to just send really simple text back and forth, they are taking advantage of it. So that then lends the question of OK, if you’re not giving leads the opportunity to text back and forth with you and you know they’re not responding to you via email, if you had given them that opportunity to text you and have a conversation with you that way, you know how much more business could you be really capturing.

0:46:34 – Heidi Thompson
Yeah, and it sounds like, from the way you’ve described it, all of that messaging is being managed in one central place. So we’re not getting into that position where I feel like we all tried to push away from about 10 years ago of like getting a text message to your personal phone at 1030 at night and feeling like you have to respond to it right then and there.

0:46:58 – Whitney Hodges
Exactly, yeah, so they don’t have your personal phone number, right, they have a more kind of general business phone number. It’s your lead lock phone number. That’s within the system. So the clients, the prospects, they’re getting the text straight to their phone, but on your end the texts are coming more into this lead generation system where you can respond, you know, from there, really at any time.

0:47:24 – Heidi Thompson
I love that and I think that really it deals with that fear that I think a lot of people have when it comes to communicating via text, because, I mean, it hasn’t really been until the past couple of years that the tools have been there to be able to manage that all in one place, to be able to, you know, easily refer back to messages like balls aren’t getting dropped, you aren’t getting messages, you know pinging your personal phone. So I think it’s really exciting. We’re at a point where we can do this, we can meet people where they are and we can do it in a sustainable way that isn’t going to burn people out.

0:48:07 – Daniela Justus
Yeah, we’d love to see you know our clients starting to embrace these automations that are available to them, Because, especially if your goal is to grow as a business, at a certain point you have to start paying attention to those numbers, to those conversion rates, to kind of, how many leads are you getting, how many of those are turning into sales conversations, what’s my closing rate from each consultation call that we’re having or each tour? And then, especially, you know, as you start to build a team around that and having some support whether it’s an assistant or you know whatever that looks like for each business owner. Having these systems just really helps facilitate all of that growth and it’s really empowering as a business owner to be able to start measuring that data and tap into it and have it all in one centralized app that you can access when you’re working, but then you can also turn off when you need to sort of have that space and know that those automations are taking care of your new leads in real time, even if you’re not on it.

0:49:10 – Heidi Thompson
Yes, yeah, yeah, you’re good. So you know, danielle, you just made a really good point about conversion rates and I just want to underscore that. Where you know, we think about like oh yeah, you want to know your booking rate, like that’s helpful information to know. No, when you get into ads, a really cool thing happens where, if you know your conversion rates, if you know, okay, I get this many leads, then this many turn into inquiries, this many turn into tours or consultations, this many turn into sales. It becomes so much easier to reverse engineer, like, okay, what if I wanted to double that? What would I need to do? And you know the exact numbers you need to hit to do it. It becomes a much more like simple process than just like I don’t know. I hope we can grow.

0:50:09 – Daniela Justus
Yeah, exactly, I mean, it just becomes more or less abstract and every business is different, right. Each you know each of our clients we were talking about this in our team meeting this week that we’re noticing across the industry, and even just different specialized services, that it’s a really different cost per lead, and that’s great, right. It’s good that we’re able to tap into that information and track it. And so I think, as a business owner, just knowing that at a certain point, yes, you can look at these benchmarks, you can look at different parameters, but really your numbers are your own and the only way that you can start to learn what your KPIs are is by starting to track it and starting to pay attention. And so the more that these systems can support you and not having to do that manually, the more you’re really able to stay in your lane in terms of like area of expertise and doing the things that only you can do.

0:50:59 – Heidi Thompson
That’s a great point, that you can’t measure yourself by someone else’s conversion rate, someone else’s KPI. All that really matters is yours. And then, once you’re familiar with that, you can look at okay, how do I increase that by 5%, 10%, 50%? You know, whatever you want to do. It becomes more of an equation than, okay, I’ll just throw some random stuff out there and kind of hope for the best, which I don’t know about you, but I absolutely love having that, you know, baseline of some not certainty, but I mean as close as you can kind of get in business right.

0:51:40 – Daniela Justus
Yeah, and it’s. You know it’s. It’s fun to track because you have that tangible, quantifiable element of it. But then you know, the creative problem solving aspect is is what comes into play when you do start trying to hone in on okay, how do we make this 5% better? You know it’s. What are we saying in that moment? How can we be more clear, more specific on who it is that we want to serve? A lot of times it’s specificity that we’re seeing really move the needle and it’s just amazing how some really small tweaks can be incredibly powerful but you wouldn’t be able to see that if you’re not tracking it.

0:52:19 – Heidi Thompson
Yeah, it really is incredible and sometimes it feels like I know in my own business it’s like that feels like a cheat code it just made such a small adjustment and it made such a big difference. But that’s what happens. When you have that kind of information, you can make a really intentional decision about what you’re doing and not kind of just throw everything at the wall. That’s a position I love to see wedding pros get into, because then it’s a much less scattered and frantic kind of space when it comes to their marketing and sales. You guys, I could talk to you about this all day. I’m sure I could nerd out in like a million different ways. I have like a page and a half of notes right in front of me here that I will definitely include in the show notes. But if the listener wants to learn more about you, more about what you do, more about how they can work with you, what is the best place for them to go to?

0:53:23 – Whitney Hodges
Definitely give us a follow at Wedding Industry Ads on Instagram. We’re pretty active on that platform. Send us a DM with any questions, but follow along there and then, if you’d like to learn more about what we do or, you know, get on a call to talk more about ads, you can go to weddingindustryadscom and book a consultation there.

0:53:42 – Heidi Thompson
Thank you so much, both of you for being here. This has been really interesting and I’m super curious to hear you know what the person listening is thinking and where they’re at, because you make it sound doable and I absolutely love that. Thank you so much for being here.

0:54:01 – Daniela Justus
Thanks for having us. It’s always a joy for us to get to share our experience and kind of open people’s eyes to what’s possible with ads. So we appreciate the platform and thank you so much for having us.

0:54:14 – Heidi Thompson
I don’t know about you, but some of that return on investment we talked about is really, really exciting. Like that venue getting a 13 times return on ad spend. If you could give me a machine that I could put a dollar in and it would turn it into 13, I would sit there all day and do that. That’s incredible. I will link to everything we talked about in the show notes for this episode so you can learn more from Daniela and Whitney, if you would like to.

And you can find those show notes over at evolveyourweddingbusinesscom, slash 302. I would love to hear from you. Did you learn something from this episode? Is there something you’re going to implement? Is there something you’re going to look more into or test or try for yourself? Shoot me a DM on Instagram. I am evolveyourweddingbusiness and I always love hearing from listeners of the podcast. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in today and I will speak to you again very soon.

Transcribed by https://podium.page

About Whitney & Daniela

Wedding Industry Ads is a boutique advertising agency specializing in paid lead generation on Google & Meta for wedding pros. Co-founders Whitney Hodges and Daniela Justus are also the creators of LeadLock, a lead management system designed for wedding pros to track their leads, leverage automations, and increase marketing ROI.

Whitney is a former luxury catering sales pro based in the Austin, TX area. Daniela is an artist and entrepreneur in Lubbock, TX. Whitney & Daniela met in 2020 as they were both entering the online world of Facebook Ads Management and have been biz besties ever since. In addition to partnering on WIA, they’ve worked together inside DEJA, Daniela’s agency serving online coaches and course creators. Together, their mission is to make digital advertising more accessible to wedding pros through education & our done-for-you services.

Website: www.weddingindustryads.com
Instagram: @weddingindustryads

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Links & Resources:

The Wedding Business Collective
Get More Leads With Wedding Venue & Wedding Vendor Advertising With Mark Chapman
Episode 239: Where Should I Advertise My Wedding Business?

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