Is Your Wedding Marketing Making Your Business Forgettable?

In this episode we’ll cover:

• Why your wedding marketing might not be converting (even if you’re doing all the “right” things)
• What The Clarity Trap is and how it can make your business blend in instead of stand out
• The real reason your website visitors forget you after clicking away
• What your brain actually looks for when deciding to trust or remember someone
• How to shift your messaging so ideal clients immediately recognize you’re the right fit
• Why “clear and professional” doesn’t always work and what to say instead

Is Your Wedding Marketing Making Your Business Forgettable?

0:00:00 – Heidi Thompson
What if the reason you’re not booking more weddings isn’t your pricing, or your photos, or how often you post? What if it’s your marketing?

0:00:11 – Intro
And more specifically, the fact that it sounds just like everyone else’s 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.

0:00:54 – Heidi Thompson
Hello, my friend, welcome to the podcast. I am your host, Heidi Thompson, and my whole thing is helping wedding professionals of all different kinds make their marketing easier, book more weddings with the clients you really want to be working with and build a business that gives you freedom and flexibility. And today I have a question for you Is your marketing making your wedding business forgettable? Now that might sound dramatic, but it’s a very real problem, and it’s one that I see all the time. If you have ever wondered why your website isn’t converting, or why you’re getting ghosted, or why inquiries don’t turn into bookings, this episode might hold your answer, because a lot of wedding pros are unknowingly falling into what I call the clarity trap, trying to sound clear and professional, but ending up with messaging that is so vague it could live on anyone’s website.

So in this episode, I’m going to show you why this happens, how it’s costing you bookings, what your brain actually needs to see in order to remember and trust someone, and what to say instead if you actually want to stand out and book more weddings. So let’s dive in. First off, what is the clarity trap? Let’s start with this. First off, what is the clarity trap? Let’s start with this. Have you ever seen a wedding vendor website that says something like creating timeless, elegant weddings, or stress-free planning from start to finish, or luxury experiences tailored to you? It sounds nice, right, but it doesn’t really tell you anything. It does not paint a picture and it doesn’t make you feel anything. And it definitely doesn’t help you choose that vendor over someone else who said the exact same thing.

That’s the clarity trap. Exact same thing. That’s the clarity trap. We try to be so clear. We muddy our message. You’re trying to sound polished, you’re trying to sound professional and elegant, but by simplifying your message, you end up sanding off everything that makes you different, and that’s a really big problem, because when you sound like everybody else, the only option you give potential couples is to compare you based on price. If you don’t give them another differentiator, that’s what they’ll go with, because they have to. That’s the only way to tell these vendors apart. So let’s talk about why this fails, not just my opinion.

This is not just a copywriting trend. There’s real psychology and brain science behind why vague messaging does not work and why painting a picture with your words does. First, we know, and there are journal studies on this the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience had a really interesting study that I looked at on this. Concrete language lights up our brain because we can picture things. When we read or hear specific language, that is, visual things we can imagine, like holding a bouquet, brushing sand off your shoes before you walk down the aisle at your beach wedding our brains light up as if they are actually experiencing it and it gives us a really strong connection to it. But when we use abstract words like luxury or stress-free, those same areas of the brain are quiet. Then we have the fact that specificity builds trust.

One of my favorite copywriting quotes is from Joanna Wiebe and she says specificity is what makes copy believable. Saying I will make your day stress-free is a claim. Saying I will hold your bouquet, carry your lipstick and keep your mom calm when she’s freaking out is proof, and proof is what builds trust. It shows that you understand them and it paints a clear picture. Our brains love that. Then we have the picture superiority effect. We remember images so much more than we remember words, and that includes mental images, not just images on your website. So if the words you are using in your messaging create a clear picture in someone’s mind, they are more likely to remember you Now.

The entire idea for this episode came up when I was doing a strategy call with a member of The Wedding Business Collective, this amazing hairstylist. She has been doing hair for years and she’s starting to build an agency. She’s incredibly talented. She has amazing clients, but when we looked at her messaging, something felt off. She was describing her services as luxury, because that’s what everyone in her market does, but that word didn’t fit and it didn’t elicit any visual cues. It didn’t elicit any emotion. I feel luxury. I feel more like your best friend doing your hair. This isn’t a stiff luxury brand. I’m bubbly, I calm people down, I hang out with them, and she told me I do so much more than make them look good. I make them feel good, whatever that means to them, whether that’s protecting you from your mother-in-law’s drama or making sure you feel like an elevated version of yourself instead of someone else that doesn’t even look like you on your wedding day.

Oh my God. She said that to me and my jaw dropped, because I can picture that. I can connect to that, and so can her people. That’s her magic. But she had distilled it down into luxury. She had sanded off those parts that make it special, and that’s her magic.

That’s what we leaned into with her messaging, because you don’t need to force yourself into polished, vague language. To be taken seriously, you need to show people, with your words in their brain, what it’s like to work with you. They need to be able to watch it as if it’s actually happening in their brains. So why does this happen? Why do so many wedding pros fall into this trap?

Well, I definitely see one cause, as people want to sound professional. You know you want to be taken seriously. Sometimes wedding pros do this because they’re trying to attract a higher end client. Another reason might be they don’t want to turn people off or what I think is really the most common reason they honestly don’t know what else to say because they’re too close to it. But here’s the truth Generic messaging does not seem professional, it feels forgettable and it’s holding back a lot of talented business owners from booking more weddings. So let’s fix that. Let’s talk about how to paint a picture.

Here are four things you can do right now to make your messaging actually connect. The first thing is to use your client’s words. Ask your favorite clients what made you want to work with me instead of another hairstylist, another DJ, another wedding planner? Those answers are full of gold. Pull those phrases, those exact words, into your copy. This is exactly why I teach my clone your best clients process inside The Wedding Business Collective. Instead of guessing about what your clients care about, you get the real language directly from them. We’re too close to know what language to use, and doing this makes your marketing resonate on a much deeper level because you are speaking their words directly back to them. You are showing that you understand exactly what they’re looking for and that really helps you stand out.

Number two be specific with your language and be visual. Don’t say stress-free. Say I’ll wrangle your wedding party for photos so you can sip champagne and relax without stressing about the schedule. It’ll all just fall into place without you even having to think about that. Number three show your personality. If you are calm, warm, funny, let that come through. That is what makes someone say, oh my god, this person gets me. I love this person, they are just like me.

Next, run the copy-paste test. I use this test with members of The Wedding Business Collective when I review their websites and nine, nine and a half times out of 10 wedding business websites fail this test, and the way you do this is to read through the copy on your website and ask yourself could this text go on someone else’s website and would it still make sense? If the answer is yes, it is time to rework this. This is something that is keeping so many wedding pros from booking, and they think it’s pricing or they think it’s their work, but really you’re just not making an impression. You’re being forgotten. You’re not making them see themselves in your marketing and in your messaging.

So we talked about what the clarity trap is, how to avoid it by being overly professional. We don’t want to do that. We talked about why vague messaging fails, even when it sounds nice, because that’s not how we work as humans. We talked about how your brain responds to specific visual copy. We talked about a real life example of flipping bland messaging into something more memorable and four simple ways to paint a picture that actually books more clients.

Now, if you are listening to this and you are realizing, oh my God, I think my messaging is costing me bookings, I want to invite you to join me inside The Wedding Business Collective and we will fix this. You are going to learn how to write what I call your perfect fit statement. So your website and marketing reflect who you are, who you serve and why you’re different, and then we build your marketing plan entirely around that. So it is a magnet for the perfect person who see you, and only you, as their best option. Head over to evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/invite to join now for just $1 for your first month and start standing out for the right reasons. Thanks for listening and I will speak to you very soon.

Links & Resources:

The Wedding Business Collective
Wedding Planner Marketing That Works – How Katie Sautter Booked 15 Weddings in Her First Year
How To Stand Out & Get Booked This Engagement Season
The Secret To Booking More Weddings: Show Off Your Personality On Your Website With Andrea Shah

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