The Booking Problem Every Wedding Pro Has (Whether They Know It Or Not)

Transcript: The Booking Problem Every Wedding Pro Has (Whether They Know It Or Not)

Heidi Thompson:

The booking problem every wedding pro has, whether they know it or not.

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. This is the Evolve Your Wedding Business podcast.

Here is your host, Heidi Thompson. Hey there, welcome back to the Evolve Your Wedding Business podcast. I am your host, Heidi Thompson, and I’m so glad you’re here with me today because this episode is kicking off something I’ve been building toward for a while now, and I think it’s going to hit pretty close to home for a lot of you. Over the next few weeks, I am going to be talking about something that I believe is behind almost every booking struggle I’ve ever seen in this industry. And I mean every single one. Not enough leads, too many leads that ghost, price shoppers who waste your time, inquiries that never convert, the feeling that you’re doing everything right and working so hard and still not booking the clients you actually want. All of it has the same root cause. Today, I want to start by making sure you actually recognize your problem in what I’m about to describe. Because here’s what I’ve noticed after 14 years of working with Wedding Pros.

Most people know something is wrong when it comes to their bookings, but they don’t know exactly what. And when you don’t know what the actual problem is, you keep reaching for solutions that don’t fix it. So let’s start there. Picture this, you are at your desk, coffee in hand, and you see it. A new inquiry notification. Your stomach does that thing, you know, that little jump of excitement because maybe this is a great fit. Maybe this is a couple who gets it, who absolutely loves your work, who’s going to book you without blinking. You open it, you read it, it sounds promising. You write back immediately because you have heard fast response times matter and you’re staying on top of it. You put real thought into it and you hit send. And then you wait. Day one, nothing. Okay, fine. People are busy. Day two, still nothing. You check your sent folder to make sure it actually went through. And it did. Day three, maybe you send a follow up. something friendly, not pushy, just checking in, nothing. Poof, they’re gone.

A person who took the time to find your website explore your work fill out your inquiry form and hit submit just gone No we went with someone else or we not ready yet Just silence And here the thing that makes that so uniquely maddening They came to you You didn’t cold call them. You didn’t show up uninvited in their inbox. They raised their hand and said, I’m interested. And then they disappeared like the conversation never happened. If you’ve experienced this, I want you to know something. You are not alone. Not even a little bit. This is one of the most common things I hear from wedding pros, and it is one of the most demoralizing experiences in this business, because there’s nothing you can even point to as the reason. They just sort of left.

Let me go even deeper on ghosting because I think this ghosting experience deserves more than a quick mention here. When you get ghosted, your brain immediately jumps to, what did I do wrong? Was my pricing too high? Was my response too slow? Was I too eager? Or maybe I wasn’t eager enough. Did my website look bad on mobile? Was my email too long? Did I overwhelm them, you start second-guessing absolutely everything you did. You rewrite your inquiry response template. You read articles about follow-up sequences. You download some email script someone is selling that promises to convert more leads. You try to plug the hole, which is smart. But here’s what I found. For most wedding pros, at least the ones who are following up, ghosting is not a follow-up problem. It’s not an email template problem. It’s not a response time problem. It’s that the person who ghosted you wasn’t your person. And the reason they found you in the first place is because your marketing is casting too wide a net. And they didn’t realize that until after they reached out. Your marketing net is reaching everyone who’s getting married in your area within your budget range. And most of those people, when they actually read your pricing or your process or your about page, realize pretty quickly that you’re not exactly what they’re looking for. So they move on without saying anything.

Because I mean, let’s be real, they don’t owe you a response and they know it. And that’s not comfortable to hear, but it is the truth. And it means the fix isn’t a better follow-up sequence. It’s making sure the right people are the ones finding you and inquiring in the first place. Now, for some of you, getting ghosted isn’t your biggest issue.

You’re getting something different that is its own special kind of exhausting. You put your minimum investment right there on your website, clear as day.

you know it’s $5,000 it’s $2,000 whatever it is no surprises and someone inquires anyway you do the call you go through your process you answer their questions you show them your work You talk about their vision You build the connection And then they say it Well, we really love you, but we can’t go above 4,000, even though you know.

They just read on your website that your minimum is five. You smile. You say you understand. You wish them all the best. And then you hang up and groan like Tina Belcher staring at the ceiling because you’ve just spent an hour with someone who knew from the start they couldn’t afford you. Or who thought that, I don’t know, maybe they could negotiate you down.

Or who genuinely didn’t even read your website carefully and wasted both of your time. This happens over and over. And the instinct is to think, I need to be clearer about my pricing.

I need a better way to pre-qualify leads. Maybe I need a questionnaire that screens people out before we get on the call.

And sure, those things can help, but they’re treating the symptom, not the cause. The real reason price shoppers keep finding you is the same reason people keep ghosting you. Your marketing is talking to everyone. And when you talk to everyone, you attract everyone, including people who are going to bulk at your prices, question your value, and make you feel like you have to justify every dollar you charge. The clients who don’t flinch at your prices aren’t doing so because they have more money necessarily. They’re doing it because you’re their person. Your marketing spoke so directly to them that price stopped being the only deciding factor. They decided you were their person before they ever saw a number. And for those people, the number, while it’s important, we all have budgets we’re working within, but it’s almost beside the point. And then there’s a third version of this that I want to name, because if I don’t, some of you are going to feel like this episode isn’t for you.

Some of you would take a price shopper right now. Some of you would take a ghost, because at least then it’s an inquiry. It’s a sign of life. At least that means someone found you.

Maybe your inbox is quiet. Not dramatically quiet, not zero for months kind of quiet, but quieter than you feel like it should be given how hard you’ve been working.

You’re posting on social media. You’re showing up at networking events. You might be paying for a directory or two. You’re doing all the things. And the leads just aren’t coming in at the rate you need them to.

And every week you’re not getting inquiries is a week you’re watching your calendar for next season and feeling that knot tie up in your stomach and it tighten just a little bit more. This one is maybe the hardest to sit with because it’s the most invisible.

With ghosting and price shoppers, at least something is happening. There is an inquiry to point to. There’s a conversation that started. But when nothing is coming in there no clear feedback You don know if your website is the problem or your social media or your SEO or your photos or your pricing or your niche or all of it So you try everything naturally You post more You sign up for another directory You redo your Instagram bio. You read another article about what’s working in the wedding industry right now. And still, regardless of how hard you work, the needle barely moves.

Three different booking problems. Three different things to keep you up at night and frustrate the hell out of you.

But here’s what I want you to hear. Whether you’re getting ghosted, dealing with price shoppers, or staring at a quiet inbox. These are not three different problems. They are three symptoms of the same thing.

your marketing isn’t speaking specifically enough to the right person. When your marketing speaks to everyone, you attract everyone. Some of those people are going to ghost you because they were never really your person to begin with. Some of them price shop you because your marketing didn’t make them feel like you were the obvious choice and that you were worth that. Some of them don’t find you at all because your message is too generic to stand out to anyone in particular, and it just blends in. The fix is not more marketing. The fix is more targeted marketing. Marketing built around a specific human being who is your ideal client, not a demographic, not brides between the ages of 20 and 35, not one of those ideal client avatar exercises. I’m talking an actual person with actual values and actual reasons for choosing the vendors they choose. Because when you get that right, something shifts. And it shifts quickly.

The ghosting slows down because the wrong people stop reaching out. The price shoppers disappear because the right people don’t lead with price. And the quiet inbox gets louder and louder because your message is finally cutting through to the exact person it was written for. Let me tell you about Carolyn Kolb, a florist and member of the Wedding Business Collective. When Carolyn joined the Wedding Business Collective, she was spending about 10 hours a week on her marketing. 10 hours on top of, you know, running her actual business, whether that was in floral design or she was also floral farming at the time. She was on WeddingWire. She was on The Knot. She was running paid ads. She was posting on social media. She was networking. She was doing everything the industry tells you to do. But it wasn’t getting her the clients she wanted. Every lead felt like kind of a gamble. She had no idea which ones would convert or which ones would ghost her or which ones would balk at her pricing. The whole thing felt like a slot machine.

Put time in, pull the lever, hope something comes out. After she made a shift, getting really specific about who she was trying to reach and what would make that specific person choose her, everything changed. She went from spending 10 hours a week on marketing and it not working to less than two hours a week. And when she did that, you would think, oh, she’s spending less time on marketing. No. She was able to bring in inquiries for a high-end service, a five-figure starting price, and booked 100% of them. 100%. Not because she got lucky. Not because she found some secret platform somewhere on the internet or cracked some algorithm. Because she stopped marketing to everyone and started speaking directly to the specific person she actually wanted to work with. She told me, I do a little bit of marketing now, but it’s really not a heavy lift. Everything is a lot easier. And that’s what clarity does. It doesn’t just improve your bookings. It makes your entire business feel different, feel lighter.

The slot machine becomes an actual system you can rely on. Now, I’m not going to go into exactly how Carolyn did that today. That’s what the next few weeks are for on the podcast, but I want to leave you with this. Whatever version of the booking problem you’re experiencing right now, whether that’s ghosting, price shoppers, just crickets in the inbox, it almost certainly traces back to the same place and we can solve those problems by fixing one thing Your marketing isn’t speaking specifically enough to the right person And the instinct to fix that by doing more right Creating more content posting more on social media, advertising more, getting on more platforms, spending more time, that is not going to solve it. You can be the loudest person in the room and still not be talking to the right person. Next week, I’m going to share some data that is going to make you look at your marketing completely differently. I surveyed over 640 wedding pros and asked them what they think would fix their booking problem. And what they said is not great.

And I mean that with love, which is why I’m going to address this. So if you know someone who’s struggling with their bookings right now. Share this episode with them. Let them know that all of these problems they’re having, they aren’t the real problem. They’re symptoms to a different problem. This is the conversation I think our whole industry needs to have, and I’m really excited to continue digging into in the next episode. I would love to hear from you if you’re having any light bulb moments, if you’re thinking, oh my god, yes, this is what’s happening to me, shoot me a DM over on Instagram. You can find me over there. I’m @EvolveYourWeddingBusiness, and I will be sure to link to the show notes in the description of this podcast. I’ll speak to you again very soon.