The Hidden Reason Why You’re Getting Ghosted (No, It’s Not Your Pricing)

Are you struggling with fewer leads and bookings in your wedding business? Are you getting ghosted? You’re not alone! Many wedding pros are facing this challenge right now. In this episode, we’re diving into why you’re getting ghosted by potential clients and, more importantly, how you can stop it from happening.

One of the biggest frustrations wedding pros share with me is getting ghosted. It’s so disappointing to get excited about an inquiry only for that person to disappear, often leading you to think it’s because of your pricing.

But here’s the thing – ghosting is rarely about your prices. Most people underprice themselves, and the real reason you’re getting ghosted has nothing to do with being too expensive. The real issue is that you’re not standing out from others who offer the same services.

You might think you’re standing out but you’re probably not. If you’re ready to stand out so you can book more weddings and get ghosted less often, this episode is for you.

In this episode we’ll cover:

• The real reason you’re getting ghosted (hint: it’s not your pricing)
• Why most wedding pros blend in and how to stop doing it
• How to stand out from your competition and stop competing on price
• The importance of positioning yourself as the go-to person for your ideal clients
• How to create a strategic marketing plan that makes you stand out
• Examples of wedding pros who successfully made themselves stand out and saw better results
• The power of focusing on what works and eliminating what doesn’t in your marketing strategy
• How to get access to the free Book More Wedding Summit for more strategies to get booked out with clients you love

The Hidden Reason Why You’re Getting Ghosted (No, It’s Not Your Pricing)

Welcome to the podcast, I’m your host Heidi Thompson.

For the past 12 or so years now, I’ve been helping wedding pros just like you follow a simple roadmap to book more of the ideal clients that you want, and also build a business that gives you the time, financial, and creative freedom that you’re looking for.

And today I wanna talk to you about ghosting.

It’s always something that comes up in our industry, and I find that a lot of people seem to think that it’s a judgment on their prices.

I’ve done a ton of research on this, and I can tell you that that is almost never the case. The real reason you’re getting ghosted is not about your pricing. It doesn’t mean that you’re too expensive. And honestly, that’s a very rare thing anyway, because most people underprice themselves.

The real reason you’re getting ghosted is you’re not standing out from the other people who do the same thing that you do. So without realizing it, you’re competing on price.

And when you stand out, when you make yourself the go-to person for your ideal client, as I often describe it, people stop caring about your price so much because you put yourself into a different category, it becomes an apples-to-oranges comparison.

You are the perfect person for your ideal client. And then there’s all of the other DJs, all of the other florists, all of the other officiants that maybe can do what they want them to do but that’s not what they’re making themselves known for.

I see this a lot with people who decide they wanna work with me, when they join The Wedding Business Collective, which is my membership that really gives people that simple roadmap to book more of the weddings that they wanna be booking.

One of the main things I see in that very beginning period when they join is they’re not standing out. They are really blending in with all of the other planners, all of the other photographers. They usually don’t think they are but from an outside perspective, I see a ton of wedding planner websites, a ton of photographer websites, you know, I can tell you if it’s blending in. And more often than not it is.

That’s because you’re not making a point to make yourself the go-to person for anyone. This happens a lot because people in the wedding industry think that what marketing is just, you know, randomly posting on social media from time to time and hope that their ideal clients are going to find them.

I have people tell me all the time, like they feel like they’re throwing spaghetti at the wall.

It’s a very random way to approach your marketing, and it’s not all that surprising that it gets random results, but it’s what people in our industry think you should be doing for your marketing. And I can tell you that is absolutely not the case, but I understand why people do it because they don’t know what else to do.

They don’t know how to create a strategy, they don’t know how to create a marketing plan that tells them exactly what they need to do in order to stand out so they’re not competing on price.

I also see a lot of people in our industry believe that they need to do more and that’s why they’re not getting enough bookings. It leads to feeling like you have to be everywhere. You have to do all the things. Oh, a new social media platform comes out, gotta be there, gotta learn it, gotta get good at it, gotta spend like a quarter of your week on it.

This is a huge problem because it makes your marketing harder than it needs to be. And I find most people actually make their marketing harder than it needs to be.

So for example, one of the many people who have gone through and submitted their marketing plans for feedback in The Wedding Business Collective is floral designer Carolyn Kulb.

When Carolyn first submitted her marketing plan, and I looked, and this was like early 2021, so she’s been in The Collective for a few years now, she decided she was going to stop doing a few things.

And this is a question I always ask members about their marketing because most people are doing way too much. You’re trying to be everywhere, you’re trying to do everything, and it doesn’t actually get you better results. That’s the really annoying thing is you think like, okay, if I do more, surely I’ll get better results. That’s usually not how it works.

So Carolyn stopped posting content on Facebook altogether. She just allowed some auto posting to happen occasionally from Instagram where she decided to pare down what she was doing to save some time there. She was really doing kind of the bare minimum to keep things going, to keep showing up.

She shifted her focus to SEO and referrals because those are the things that were working exceptionally well for her and she knew she had huge opportunities in each of those areas.

So she was able to get her marketing time down to about two hours a week, and as a result, she booked her biggest wedding ever that had a $35,000 floral spend because she created marketing that made her stand out as the perfect fit for her ideal client.

She created marketing that brought in a client who wanted to spend that much on their florals. That’s exactly who she wanted to work with. And she has a 100% booking rate with people who inquire.

I want to highlight her story, and there are so many others, to show you that it’s not about being everywhere. It’s not about doing all the things, it’s not about doing more. It’s more like the approach that award-winning rose growers take.

It’s like very strategic pruning and getting specific about what you’re cutting out and what you’re keeping in. And I understand why people have this tendency to do more to think if I do more, if I’m in more places, if I throw more spaghetti at the wall, I will get more results.

That is 100% not your fault. That is just straight up our cultural programming that if you work harder, you’ll be successful.

There is absolutely merit to working hard, but just because you work hard, it doesn’t mean you’re gonna be successful. There are plenty of people in this world who work hard every single day and hardly make enough money to live on. So we know that those things are not directly connected.

It isn’t about working harder, it isn’t about doing more. It isn’t about putting more hours in order to be successful, but I totally understand and I fall into this sometimes too, of feeling that that’s what I need to do because that is like our background subconscious cultural programming of, well, if you want to do better, if you want more success, you have to work harder when really the opposite is true when it comes especially to your marketing.

You need to get real strategic and get those pruning shears out and be ready to stop doing things to take time back from things and choose to spend time on things that are most likely going to work for you as opposed to just randomly throwing spaghetti at the wall because we all see how well that works. And if you’re doing that, if you’re working harder, if you’re spending more time, if you’re just trying to, the phrase I hear all the time, “get yourself out there” in air quotes. You can’t see me, but big time air quotes.

It prevents you from standing out because you are just throwing random things at the wall. There’s no strategy behind it, there is no decision making of “I’m going to do this because it’s going to help me stand out in this specific way and I’m not going to do this because it’s not helping me stand out.” So it actually actively prevents you from standing out and then you’re just left to compete on price.

This is the position that I see most wedding professionals in and the good news is, it’s a pretty easy solution and it’s one that I work with people on on a daily basis inside The Wedding Business Collective.

To make sure you are standing out, you have to put yourself into your own category. You become the go-to person for your specific ideal client because when you put yourself in that separate category, all of a sudden you can’t be compared in the same way to everybody else.

Instead of competing in the wedding officiant category, you compete in the wedding officiant for first-generation Hispanic couples that honor your sense of spirituality, while still respecting your family’s traditions category.

Instead of competing in the wedding photographer category, you compete in the wedding photographer for couples who want bright, colorful photos that feel natural category.

Instead of competing in the wedding planner category, you compete in the wedding planner for nature-loving, adventurous couples category.

To give you a non-wedding industry example, let’s think about local bakeries. There are multiple bakeries in my area that all do very well BECAUSE they don’t compete in the bakery category.

They compete in the French baking category or the bagel category or the donut category. And even in the donut category, there are bakeries that do different styles of donuts whether that’s really inventive and unique flavors vs your classic donut shop.

When you put yourself into your own category, price becomes less of an issue and people can justify spending more money because they’re getting this specialist, this person that they really want because you specialize in exactly what they want.

So if these are things that you have been struggling with like most wedding professionals have, I want to invite you to grab your free ticket to Book More Wedding Summit.

Registration is now open for the seventh Book More Wedding Summit and in this free online conference for wedding pros, you are going to discover how to get booked out with clients that you love, even if things are slow.

We’re hearing from people that things are slow in their market, things are slow for their business. I have talked to a lot of people about this and the main differentiator I see between people who are really struggling right now and people who are fully booked right now is the people who are fully booked have made themselves the go-to person for their ideal client.

They’re not seeing the same kind of downturn as everyone else because those people are blending in together.

I’ve heard this personally from multiple people I know who got married recently. They had 10 tabs open with 10 different planners or photographers or DJs and they felt stuck because no one really stood out to them. If everything feels the same to them, the only point of comparison is price.

We are digging deep into this during Book More Weddings Summit which is a free five-day online conference. It is for all wedding professionals, whether you’re a cake baker, a planner, a musician, a DJ, a dance instructor, a live wedding painter, an officiant, there is so much here for you.

We have more than 30 incredible speakers from all sorts of different backgrounds. It’s happening August 19th through the 23rd. It is all online. You can hang out in your PJs and join us, but you wanna make sure you get your free ticket.

You can grab it over at www.bookmoreweddingssummit.com or if it’s easier for you, just DM the word summit to me on Instagram. I’m @evolveyourweddingbusiness, just DM the word summit and my little HeidiBot will take you through the concierge of getting you your free ticket.

If you have ever attended one of these before, you know how just filled with value they are. I am so excited about the presentations and the sessions that you are going to get access to this time. And I really, really can’t wait to kick things off on August 19th with our first day of presentations.

So make sure, like I said, to get your free ticket. It’s at www.bookmoreweddingssummit.com or shoot me a DM at @evolveyourweddingbusiness. Just include the word “summit” and my little Heidi bot friend will take over and get you registered and we can get you out of this position where getting ghosted and you feel like it’s because I’m not good enough, my portfolio’s not good enough, my price, my prices are too high.

Because that’s really, really, really not the case. What it is, is simply a matter of what we call in marketing is positioning to make sure that you are the go-to person for your ideal client. You are creating that apples-to-oranges comparison. It is not hard or complicated to do and it’s one of the most impactful things you can do for your business.

So be sure to come join us for the summit and I will speak to you again very soon!

Thanks so much for taking the time to listen today. Remember to get your FREE ticket at www.bookmoreweddingssummit.com, and I will speak to you again very soon.

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Links & Resources:

Get your FREE ticket to Book More Weddings Summit
The Wedding Business Collective
Episode 133: Why Your Wedding Business Needs A Marketing Plan
Tired of Paying The Knot & WeddingWire? Here’s How to Get Wedding Clients Without Them
The Key to Breaking Through Wedding Business Booking Plateaus

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