How to Book More Weddings With Clients You Love

Transcript: How to Book More Weddings With Clients You Love

Heidi Thompson:

Today is the day when you learn how to clone your best clients. 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.

Today is the episode I have been building toward for the last four weeks. We’ve talked about the booking problem that most wedding pros have but can’t quite name. We’ve looked at the data showing that the solutions people keep reaching for aren’t fixing it. We’ve dug into why bride is not an identity and why the ideal client avatar exercise is really just an exercise in guessing and not a strategy. And today I want to show you what happens on the other side, what it actually looks like when you do this work and it clicks with real people and real results.

And then I wanna hand you the system because today is the day. My book, Clone Your Best Clients, the updated edition is available right now. But before we get there, I want you to hear from some real wedding pros who did the work because what happened to them is exactly what’s possible for you. Your best clients actually hold the key to your best marketing strategy.

I know that might sound simple, maybe too simple, but sit with it for a second. Think about your best clients, the ones you would clone if you could, the ones who made you absolutely love your job, who trusted you completely, who didn’t flinch at your prices, who couldn’t say enough good things about working with you. Those people didn’t find you by accident. Something in your marketing spoke to them. Something about the way you present yourself and the way you work told them that you were exactly what they were looking for.

But most wedding pros have no idea what that thing is. They couldn’t tell you why their best clients choose them over everyone else because they never asked. They took the booking, they did incredible work, they delivered for their clients, and they moved on. But that information, why your best clients found and chose you, what made them so certain you were the right choice, the actual words they use to describe what they were looking for That is the foundation of a marketing strategy that works Not a strategy you have to guess at or hope is going to be right but a strategy built entirely from real data about real people who already prove they’re willing to hire you and absolutely love what you do. That’s the system, and I want to show you what it produces.

Let’s start with Elizabeth. She is a reader of Clone Your Best Clients, who sat down and interviewed 20 of her past favorite clients. 20. You don’t have to do 20. You don’t have to have 20. But she wanted to do this. She didn’t rush it. She took her time. She really listened. And here’s what she told me after.

She said, I have now interviewed 20 of my past favorite clients. The insights I got gave me so many lightbulb moments, not to mention a wealth of copy to use straight from the horse’s mouth. I thought of a new tagline for my brand and started gearing all of my content toward it. And I just got an inquiry from an amazing dream client. She didn’t change her service. She didn’t change her prices. She didn’t redo her whole website. She didn’t sign up for a new social media platform or start posting way more.

She talked to her best clients and she listened. And her marketing became magnetic as a result. It really is the closest thing to magic words you can have in marketing.

Because they’re not words you made up. They’re the exact words your ideal clients use to describe what they’re looking for.

And when those people read them on your website or in an Instagram caption or in your email, they feel like you’re in their head. They feel like you already know them. And that feeling makes them want to work with you.

Now, let me tell you about Mercy. You heard a little bit about Mercy Ibarra last week. She’s the bilingual Latina interspiritual minister in LA.

She works primarily with first-generation Latino couples whose families are more traditionally Catholic, but because they’re first-generation American, they’re more spiritual. They’re a little more loosey-goosey with it. They’re more culturally Catholic. And they wanted a ceremony that honored that part of them without being, you know, a complete Catholic mass. And for a long time, Those couples were around and they didn’t know she existed. She was putting herself out there. She was marketing herself, but her marketing wasn’t speaking directly to them. It wasn’t using their language. It wasn’t reflecting their specific situation back at them.

And when she rebuilt her marketing around those specific people using their words, their values their specific needs wants and desires everything clicked into place Couples started reaching out to her certain that they wanted to work with her It was just a matter of if she was available And when they wrote to her, they used her literal marketing messages verbatim to describe what they wanted. She told me, it’s like reading my own marketing message in an email from them. When that person finds me, their reaction is, oh my God, I didn’t know you were here and you are absolutely the one I want. It’s not even a question to them. They don’t compare me to other officiants.

Notice she didn’t do this by posting more on social media. She didn’t do this by spending more on advertising. She did this by finding the right message and putting it in front of the right person. And price stopped being the determining factor.

Now, let me tell you about Heidi Nielsen. Yes, another Heidi. She is a live wedding painter, also based in Los Angeles, and she had been trying to build her event painting business for about two and a half years. And in all that time, not a single stranger had ever reached out to hire her. Every bit of work she had came through people that already knew her personally. So friends, family, people in her immediate circle and people they knew.

Zero cold inquiries, no strangers finding her website and reaching out.

And that went on for two and a half years. Six months after joining the Wedding Business Collective and doing the work that we’ve been talking about in this series to really focus in on your ideal client, strangers started reaching out to her regularly. Her website was finally generating inquiries.

Her networking was converting into actual bookings, and she was on track to hit her yearly revenue goals and started to think about how her business needed to fit the life that she actually wanted. She told me in a previous episode I could not have imagined I’d be at this inflection point that I am now. I couldn’t have even imagined this for myself. She went through two and a half years of silence, six months to the right foundation. That’s the difference. And notice her networking is also converting into actual bookings because getting really clear on your ideal client, who you work with, what they care about, the problem you solve for them also makes you way more referable.

And we talk about that in the conversation I had with her on the podcast. another side benefit of following the clone your best clients process. And then there’s Katie. You heard about Katie Sauter last week. She started with one client, and within a month of getting clear on who her ideal client was, who she really wanted to work with, she had booked five of them And by the end of her first year she booked 29 weddings already had 28 on the books for the year after and has built out a team of five She said to me I finally have a marketing system that works for me and I not constantly second guessing myself anymore She didn’t work harder. She didn’t hustle more. She didn’t put more effort into it.

She just had better direction because of who she was focusing on. So how did all these people get here?

They did one simple thing. They stopped guessing at who their ideal client was and started finding out. They went to their best past clients. They asked the right questions. They listened carefully and they used what they learned to build marketing that spoke directly to the person they wanted to work with most. They used the Clone Your Best Client system. And today, the updated edition of the Clone Your Best Clients book is available. Clone Your Best Clients walks you through exactly how to identify your best clients, how to interview them to uncover what actually made them choose you, how to use their actual words in your marketing, and how to create what I call your perfect fit statement. That single sentence that makes the right person land on your website and immediately think, this is exactly who I’ve been looking for within five seconds or less, because that’s all you got. Because here’s the truth about your website right now.

Your ideal client has 20 tabs open. You and every one of your competitors, and they can’t tell you apart. You all look and sound the same. Your perfect fit statement changes that. It’s what makes them close the other 19 tabs. The book is now available in PDF and EPUB format, instant download. It’s $9. You can grab it right now at evolveyourweddingbusiness.com slash book.

If you are more of a listener, there is also an audiobook option at checkout where I walk through each chapter with my own commentary, including extra stories, deeper dives, things that didn’t make it into the book itself on top of the actual audiobook content. And if you buy before June 9th at 11.59 p.m. Pacific, you will also get access to a live bonus training I’m running on June 17th, and it’s called Craft Your Perfect Fit Statement. In this training, I am going to walk you through building your perfect fit statement live. And it is so important. We’re going to focus on this because that one sentence is where so much of this work clicks into place and tells your ideal client, hi, it’s me. I’m the one you want to work with. Plus, we’ll have a live Q&A where you can bring your questions and get real feedback. And of course, a recording will be available if you can’t make it live. So go get your copy of Clone Your Best Clients over at evolveyourweddingbusiness.com slash book. Here’s what I want you to take away from this episode and from the whole four-part series. Your best clients already exist. They’ve already chosen you, and they already hold everything you need to build marketing that works inside their heads.

You just have to learn how to unlock it. The booking problem you’re experiencing right now, whatever version of it has a solution, and it doesn’t require you to work harder or be on more platforms or spend more on advertising or post more content.

It just requires you to get clearer about who you’re actually talking to and build everything around that. Elizabeth talked to 20 clients and her marketing became magnetic. I have plenty of other clients who have talked to one, two, three clients and have done the same thing Mercy rebuilt her messaging around a specific person and couples started to reach out that were already sold They already knew she was the one Heidi went from two and a half years without a single cold inquiry to strangers finding her every week, and Katie went from one client to 29 booked in a single year, and none of them did it by working harder.

They did it by finally having the right foundation. Your best clients hold the key to your best marketing strategy. We just have to pull it out of their heads. And in order to do that, go get the book at evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/clone. Buy it before June 9th at 11:59 p.m. Pacific, and I will see you live for our bonus training on June 17th. Let’s get cloning your best clients.