How to Book More Weddings: More Marketing Isn’t the Answer

How to Book More Weddings: More Marketing Isn’t the Answer

Heidi Thompson:

In this episode, I’m going to break down why you can be doing all of the right marketing things and still not be getting wedding bookings.

So let me ask you something. Are you posting on Instagram? Probably yes, even if sporadically. Are you networking with venues and other vendors? You probably are, or you’re trying. Maybe you’ve paid for The Knot or WeddingWire or Zola. Maybe you’ve dabbled in SEO. You started a blog. You’ve messed around with Pinterest a little bit, you’re doing the things. You’re showing up. And yet bookings still feel like a complete crapshoot. Some months are fine. Other months, you’re refreshing your inbox like a crazy person wondering where everyone went. If that’s you, I need you to hear this first.

You’re not alone. And you’re probably not doing anything wrong in particular. This is the most common thing I hear from wedding pros. They feel like they’re doing all the stuff they’re supposed to be doing and somehow the results are inconsistent And that inconsistency really messes with your head It like if you were told all you needed to do to lose weight is do these exercises and you doing them and you doing them regularly and you not getting the results So wedding pros in this position start to ask themselves, am I doing something wrong? Is my pricing way off? Do I just suck at this? And no, stop. That is not what’s happening, I promise. In this episode, I want to talk about why doing all of the right, right in great big scare quotes, marketing things still isn’t booking you weddings because the problem isn’t effort. The problem isn’t talent. And the problem isn’t even you. Here’s the issue. Most marketing advice in this industry, and really in any industry, is completely tactic-focused instead of strategy-focused.

What I mean by that is you hear things like post more on Instagram, blog every wedding, fix your SEO, network with venues, get listed on WeddingWire. And honestly, none of that advice is technically wrong or bad. Those things can absolutely work. But here’s what nobody tells you. They only work when they’re connected to an actual plan. Most wedding pros are trying to juggle all of these tactics at the same time with zero connective tissue holding any of it together. So marketing starts to feel more like throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. And when nothing sticks, you panic and you try more stuff.

It’s exhausting and it doesn’t work. When marketing is just a giant list of things that you’re supposed to do, it becomes a full-time job on top of your actual full-time job.

You’re already running a business. You delivering for your clients You managing inquiries contracts timelines vendors And on top of all of that you supposed to be posting reels and blogging and networking and optimizing your website Come on. And when all that effort doesn’t translate into consistent bookings, you start second guessing everything. You look around the industry and see vendors who are fully booked and thriving and you think, well, what do they know that I don’t? And I’ll tell you what they know. And we’ll get there. But I want you to realize that the real problem here is not your work ethic. If anything, most wedding pros are doing too much. Too many things, hustling too much working too hard. The real problem is deceptively simple. You’ve never been given a clear marketing plan. You’ve been given tactics, a million individual tactics with no strategy connecting them together. And random marketing produces random results every single time.

It’s like trying to build a house by just buying random materials.

Cool, you’ve got some lumber, some drywall, some pipes, but without any sort of a blueprint, you don’t have a house. You just have a pile of expensive stuff and a lot of frustration.

I want you to realize that the goal of marketing isn’t to do more. It’s not to hustle harder. It’s not to put in more effort. Oftentimes we think that’s what’s going to fix it, and it’s not.

The goal is to do the right things intentionally. And when your marketing is connected to an actual plan, and you have a real strategy that connects everything together everything shifts You know what to focus on you know what actually moving the needle And you can stop the other 17 things that aren’t moving the needle that are just wasting your time Marketing finally stops feeling like chaos, and it starts feeling like something you’re actually in control of. This, by the way, is 100% possible for you. And it doesn’t even require you to become some kind of marketing genius or expert or spend hours upon hours on social media every day. All it requires is a plan. And if you’re listening and thinking, yes, this is exactly what marketing feels like for me, then I want to tell you about the Wedding Business Collective.

It’s a membership for wedding pros who are done with this guessing and randomly throwing things at the wall and are ready to build a real marketing plan that actually attracts their specific ideal clients. A system that tells them what they need to do in order to do that. No burnout, no random ass tactics, just a clear system that works. And you can learn more and start your first month for just a dollar at evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/pod. Now in the next episode, I’m going to break down the difference between random marketing and a booking system and how you can get the booking system installed in your business so you can stop being busy working hour upon hour throwing spaghetti at the wall. So be sure to subscribe to the podcast if you’re not already subscribed so you don’t miss that. All right, I’ll speak to you again very soon.