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Developing Your Wedding Planning Business Brand
82 Plays8 months ago
Title: Building Your Brand in Wedding Planning
Date: April 17, 2024
Host: Amber Peterson
Duration: 23:44
In this episode, Amber Peterson, seasoned wedding planner and marketing strategist, dives into the crucial aspects of branding for those embarking on or revamping their wedding planning business brand. With a decade-long wedding planner background as a marketing strategist for service-based businesses, Amber brings her knowledge to this second episode of our five-part series on starting a planning business.
Episode Highlights:
- Understanding Branding Basics:
- Common confusions among brand, branding, and marketing, setting a solid foundation for understanding their distinct roles in your business.
- Brand Development Journey:
- Discover the essence of brand development as Amber guides you through reflective questions designed to unearth what sets your business apart, core values, mission, and the unique stamp you wish to leave on your clients.
- Visual Branding Essentials:
- Learn about the significance of visual branding, including selecting the right logo, color palette, and typography to resonate with your brand's personality and appeal to your target audience.
- Cultivating an Online Presence:
- The importance of a cohesive online presence, from an aesthetically pleasing and navigable website to strategic social media use, highlighting the value of consistency across platforms for brand recognition and engagement.
- Authenticity in Branding:
- Embrace the power of authenticity as we conclude the episode with insights on how genuine representation of your brand attracts your ideal clients and fosters meaningful connections.
Resources Mentioned:
- Brand Development Checklist: This checklist will guide you through the nuances of brand development. It is available at Planner's Lounge Shop.
Next Episode:
Stay tuned for the next episode in our series, where Amber will delve into crafting an effective marketing strategy to elevate your wedding planning business.
About the Host:
With a decade of experience in wedding planning and extensive experience developing marketing strategies for service-based businesses, Amber Peterson is the owner/CEO of Planner’s Lounge. Amber’s journey in the wedding industry and her passion for business growth and development make her a resource for aspiring and growing wedding planners.
Subscribe and Follow:
Don’t miss out on invaluable insights and tips to start and grow your wedding planning business. Subscribe to the Business of Wedding Planning Podcast on your favorite platform and follow us for updates and exclusive content.
Contact Us:
We love hearing from our listeners! Share your thoughts, questions, or topic suggestions with us at info@plannerslounge.com
Disclaimer: Our recommendations and insights are based on research and personal experience in the marketing and wedding planning industry.
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Transcript
Introduction and Host Background
00:00:03
Speaker
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the business of wedding planning podcast. I'm your host, Amber Peterson. I was a wedding planner for 10 years, a marketing strategist for service-based businesses, and now the owner of Planners Lounge.
Why Brand Development Matters
00:00:18
Speaker
Today, we are talking all about brand development, whether you're just starting out with your business or you're looking to do a revamp of your brand. A strong brand identity is what makes you stand out and connects deeply with your ideal clients. So it's a really important process to go through no matter what stage of business you're at.
00:00:42
Speaker
This is the second episode in our five part series about starting a planning business. So if you missed last week's episode, which was the first steps to starting your planning business, make sure to go back and give that a listen. Let's get started. Before we begin talking about the steps to develop your brand, I want to just cover some basic vocabulary.
Understanding Brand, Branding, and Marketing
00:01:04
Speaker
Brand branding and marketing are often confused and sometimes used interchangeably.
00:01:10
Speaker
So just so we're all on the same page, your brand is what your purpose, mission, history, and story of your businesses. Think of this as the why for why you're in business, uh, the services you offer and the emotions that people associate with your business. Basically it's how you and others perceive your business in the marketplace.
00:01:37
Speaker
branding is the visual aspect. So logos, fonts, colors, your tagline, the tone of voice that you use in your marketing messaging, your website, social media channels, things like brochures and collateral that you might give out at shows, at wedding shows.
00:01:59
Speaker
That is all under the branding aspect. And then marketing is the methods, tools, and tactics your business uses to communicate your brand identity and message and to drive customers' interest, engagement, and ultimately sales.
Defining Your Brand Mission and Values
00:02:18
Speaker
Let's begin with the brand foundation.
00:02:22
Speaker
Before you start thinking about logos, fonts, and color schemes, you want to really understand what is your brand all about. So to go back to that vocabulary, this is purpose, mission, things like that. And that takes some kind of introspective thinking and a little bit of research into the current market.
00:02:47
Speaker
There's lists of questions everywhere about how to develop your brand. And I compiled some of my favorite questions to kind of get you thinking. So some of these are, what sets you apart in the market? So this could be, are you only planning destination weddings or do you specialize in second weddings? What is the thing that is going to make you different from the next wedding planner that appears in Google search to potential couples?
00:03:17
Speaker
to potential couples. What are your core principles and values? What is your business about? What do you want people to feel when they're working with you? What are the principles that you want your employees to communicate when they're working on behalf of your business?
Internal Culture and Professional Style
00:03:38
Speaker
Things like that.
00:03:40
Speaker
What's your mission statement? This is something that I think as entrepreneurs that we can kind of be like, I'll do that later. I'll come back to that. But really sit down and think about like, what is your mission for being in business? The story behind your business, what inspired you to build this budding planning business? This will help you. This story is going to be important anyway in your messaging. So kind of sit down and jot down, like, what is your why for being here and what's inspiring you?
00:04:11
Speaker
What are the services that you plan to offer to your target clients? What makes you unique?
00:04:19
Speaker
what is your internal company culture? So as, you know, right now as you're starting, you might just be a team of one, but it's always good to think about what do you want the internal culture of your company to be in terms of a team that you might build? And this can even be, you can, if you're a solo entrepreneur right now, you can even think about this in terms of
00:04:44
Speaker
How do you plan to set boundaries for yourself with your business? So if the internal company culture is that, you know, you make sure that you have you and any future employees have two days off in a row a week or you have a really strong work life balance, things like that, jot those down, because especially at the beginning of starting a business, we tend to be hustling all the time.
00:05:14
Speaker
We want to book any wedding that comes along because it's a wedding and you're a wedding planner. But it's good from the beginning to have an idea of how do you want this company to work for you and how do you want your employees to feel about the company.
Visual Identity: Logos, Colors, and Fonts
00:05:35
Speaker
You can think about what's your professional sense of style. If you are planning to be a wedding planner that specializes in, you know, farm weddings, then you probably wouldn't show up to consultations in a, you know,
00:05:51
Speaker
suit jacket or in high heels or something really formal because that wouldn't match the brand that you're trying to build. Think about how your personal style will be reflective of your brand. What do you want to come to mind when someone hears the name of your business?
00:06:16
Speaker
That's a great question because not only will you be serving couples, but you're going to interact with their families and those extended people that you come into contact with during the planning process, they also become potential people that will refer you. So what do you want? Not only your couples, but their VIPs that you interact with during the planning process to think of when they hear your business name.
00:06:43
Speaker
And finally, how would you want your customers to describe you and your company? So this is a good starting point to think about the client process that you have, like onboarding, offboarding. How would you want them to describe at the end of your relationship, how it was to work with your company? As planners, we want them to feel like everything was easy and they didn't have to worry about anything.
00:07:11
Speaker
just jot down what you'd like the end result to be. As I mentioned, these are just a handful of questions. You can Google all over brand development questions and find more and more and more. These are just some of my favorite. At the end of this podcast, I'll give you a link to a free worksheet where I will list these all out for you so that you can download that and use them when you're working on your brand.
00:07:42
Speaker
Once you understand the core of your brand, you've gone through the questions, you've brainstormed, you've got something cohesive that makes sense to you, then it's time to work on developing a strong visual identity. This would include your logo, color palette, typography,
00:08:02
Speaker
and things like that. So remember that whatever designs and colors and fonts that you use, they should be reflective of your brand's personality. To go back to the example from earlier about if you're planning country farm weddings, like if your area is rural, that's kind of the area that I worked in as a planner. And a lot of my weddings were at family farms, which was amazing. But my logo was not a
00:08:31
Speaker
super formal scripty font that wouldn't really make sense to a potential client. You want to think about what is going to be your specialty and how would your visual branding be representative of that because you want
00:08:51
Speaker
connections to be made by potential clients, really thinking about who you're going to be serving and what you will be doing in the market and then building your brand off of that. I think sometimes with the wedding industry, there tends to be sort of a leaning towards, you know, really pretty scripts and really fancy
00:09:17
Speaker
color schemes and things like that. But even though you're in the wedding industry, you really can make it what you want. And often doing something different is going to make you stand out a little bit and working through that initial exercise of questions is going to help you figure out more what the visual elements of your business should look like.
00:09:39
Speaker
The first visual element that you need to consider is your brand colors. Color is a powerful piece of your branding and it can communicate your brand personality from a first glance. But when you choose your brand colors, think about how they reflect the identity of your business and how they'll speak to your target audience.
00:09:59
Speaker
There are different types of brand colors that you'll want to choose. Your primary palette are the colors that you'll use the most and they'll express the primary voice of your brand. For example, Planner's Lounge, our primary colors are two shades of a turquoise color.
00:10:19
Speaker
and you'll see those mostly everywhere. The secondary palette are the colors you're going to use the least. So these are background colors or supplementary colors in your designs and for marketing materials. With Planner's Lounge, we have a very pale, pale pink that it's almost unnoticeable, but it changes like backgrounds of
00:10:40
Speaker
website pages and things like that from a stark white to something a little softer. Then you'll want to think about your text colors. And when you're thinking about text colors, the best tip I can give you is you want to choose something that's going to stand out against all of your other color palette colors. You can definitely have break it into like headings and subheadings. For Planners Lounge, our headings are generally black, our
00:11:08
Speaker
subheadings and text are a dark gray, but it's always safe to go with black. But if you'd like to have some variation, just make sure that you're checking those colors on a variety of your color palettes that you choose because you want to make sure it's always readable. There's nothing worse than not being able to read the text on a website or a piece of marketing material.
00:11:35
Speaker
The next visual element that you'll want to choose is your fonts. Consider choosing two typefaces for your brand and using them consistently. It's usually a font for headings that should be the largest and the most expressive and represent your brand's persona. If you want to use script or all uppercase letters, the title font is usually where you would want to do that.
00:12:00
Speaker
That would be headings on website pages or titles on marketing materials, things like that. Usually, if you're choosing a script or a super expressive font, those aren't as easy to read when they're small and are used in the paragraph copy. Make sure that you save the really pretty fonts for headings and titles.
00:12:27
Speaker
The next would be a subtitle font. And this, you could use this for subtitles or the body, like the paragraph pieces of your marketing materials. Subtitle would be like, if you're reading a blog and there's a, a bolded piece of text that is telling you what the next paragraph will be about. You could use that font, your subtitle font there, but then also as the paragraph copy and
00:12:54
Speaker
change the subtitle to italics or bold it, but it's going to create consistency between the body text and the subheading text. And you're going to want that to be a very easily readable font. The last visual element that you want to work on is usually the most fun, but can also offer the most challenges, and that's your logo.
00:13:19
Speaker
We think about our logos and we want them to convey our mission our values our personality and how do you do that in a single little graphic or, you know, a wordmark. It can be a challenge, and it can take some time to develop.
00:13:35
Speaker
But some of the breast practices that I found when I was doing some research into this are that your logo should communicate your brand's personality. So to go back to choosing the fonts you use in your logo, things like that. If you are a wedding planner that focuses on more casual events, you don't want to choose a super formal looking font.
00:13:57
Speaker
Same goes for any kind of graphic element. You want to make sure that it is cohesive with the personality of your brand. You want your logo to incorporate your brand color palette, but also have a black and white version on hand to use just in case.
00:14:14
Speaker
it should be a balanced image. So you don't want to have different elements that just aren't that draw the eyes somewhere you don't want it to. You'd also want to embrace white space. There are logos that are so busy that it's hard to even understand what they are at a glance. You want your logo to be so easy that if someone just gives it like a side eye, they know what it says. You don't want it to be something that you have to really
00:14:42
Speaker
sort through a lot of different elements to understand it. You should use contrast. That means like not laying it on a background that's going to confuse the eye that kind of goes hand in hand with embracing white space. You want to establish sort of a hierarchy when that guides people's eye through the designs. That means if I'm looking at a logo.
00:15:05
Speaker
And I'll use the planner's lounge circle logo as an example, the eye goes to the middle and then around the middle image is our different wording in a circle.
00:15:20
Speaker
all right there, but the eye is naturally drawn to the middle and then goes around. Make it as simple as possible for the human brain to see it, understand it, and take it in. If you are just starting this process, there are a ton of online low-cost options for developing a logo. Canva has
00:15:41
Speaker
just different templates you can use, you can always go to Etsy and find one and it can be modified for you by that designer. But if your budget permits, then I always like the idea of hiring a graphic designer because you're allowed, you're able to
00:15:56
Speaker
hand it over to a professional because graphic designers have their own sets of skills that most of us just don't have, and it'll be creating something unique for you to use.
Consistency Across Platforms
00:16:07
Speaker
If you go to a Canva template or buy something off Etsy, there's a good chance you're going to see someone with the same logo, just a different business name on it. If your budget permits, I always recommend hiring a professional.
00:16:21
Speaker
Once you have all of your visual branding in place, you also want to think about your online presence. Since most of our couples are, even if they find us through a referral, they're generally going to our website, checking our social media platforms, just to get a better idea of who we are, what our business does, and
00:16:42
Speaker
obviously to look at our portfolio of work. You want to make sure that your online presence is consistent with your brand. This is your website, social platforms, any place that you can be discovered while people are on the internet. And the reason this is so important is that clients who are in research mode are looking all over and you want them to experience brand consistency no matter where they are.
00:17:08
Speaker
if they have heard of you and they were referred to you by a vendor they've already hired and they've told them like oh yeah this planner is perfect for this barn venue and then they go to your website and what they're seeing is
00:17:26
Speaker
a totally different style of wedding, they're going to be confused. And we want to eliminate as much confusion as possible because it helps speed along the decision making process for potential clients.
00:17:40
Speaker
Let's start with our website. Our website should be the hub of our business and it's generally often the first point of contact with potential clients. Whether they are being referred to us by a different vendor or they're finding us via search, they're usually going to go to our website first just to see what we're all about. You want to make sure that it is visually appealing, easy to navigate, and reflective of your brand identity.
00:18:10
Speaker
This means showcasing your expertise, having a portfolio. If you have client testimonials, having those there and having a blog, which I will talk about more in our marketing episode next week. But for just as a little preview, a blog is going to
00:18:32
Speaker
be a key element to help with your search engine optimization, which is going to help you get discovered more easily in organic search. Make sure that your website is super easy to navigate. If you go, if you land on a website, and I'm sure you've had this experience where you're not quite sure where to go clicking, clicking, clicking, and it's hard to find information.
00:18:59
Speaker
you're going to lose those readers. Make sure that it is very easy to navigate your website. Your other online areas would be your social media platforms. And social media is a big tool for the wedding industry. Platforms like Instagram and Pinterest are perfect for showcasing visual work and sharing weddings, behind the scenes glimpses and
00:19:24
Speaker
planning tips, having a strong social media presence, if that makes sense for your target market.
00:19:32
Speaker
make sure that those social media channels are consistent. I like to use the same logo or image across all platforms so that if someone goes to Instagram and they are seeing seeing things there and then they go over to Pinterest, they're going to immediately recognize that, oh, this is the same company. There's no confusion. Make sure that you are
00:20:02
Speaker
creating easy recognition among all platforms. And it also helps solidify your presence in the markets. Like I said earlier, when couples are gathering information, they're all over the place.
Authenticity in Branding
00:20:15
Speaker
They're going to all the channels, they're searching, and it really helps solidify a presence in the market if it is easy to recognize at a glance that, oh, this is the same wedding planner I saw over on this platform.
00:20:31
Speaker
And it's also going to make it easy for other wedding professionals to link to you. If you have the same social media handle, like for Planners Lounge, our social media handle on every single platform is Planners Lounge.
00:20:47
Speaker
Try to make everything super consistent just for ease of use by everyone. Finally, the last thing and probably the most important is be authentic. Your brand should genuinely reflect who you are and what you believe in and why you're serving people as a wedding planner.
00:21:07
Speaker
If you don't have authenticity, that is so easily detected. Our couples are savvy, they're smart, they can very easily see if you're putting on a face that is not who you are when they meet you in person. Make sure that you are personally aligned with the brand that you've built and
00:21:29
Speaker
that you can show your authentic self wherever you're at, whether you're in front of clients, you're online, you're posting on social, you're meeting with vendors. You never want to come across as insincere. And honestly, it's easier to be authentic, right? If you have to put on a show every time you're going to go meet a client and pretend to be someone you're not, that's not sustainable. If anything ever feels
00:21:58
Speaker
not in alignment with who you are as a person, then that might be something to dig a little deeper on when you're in the brand development mode.
Resources and Next Steps
00:22:07
Speaker
I mentioned a ton of things today. All those questions, the different steps to take to create a visual brand, all those things. So I put together a just simple checklist for brand development. And if you'd like to download that, just so you can easily refer to it, it just is going to give you like a step-by-step checklist of like making sure what to do, how to go through the process of brand development.
00:22:36
Speaker
And you can download that by going to plannersloundshop.com slash products slash brand development checklist. And I'll also put this link in the show notes. To wrap up, I just want to remind you that building a brand in the wedding planning industry, it takes creativity, it takes strategy, and it takes authenticity.
00:23:01
Speaker
And it's more than just your logo. When you're going through this process, just keep in mind the experience you want to give to your clients and how that can be reflected in what you're putting out in the market. And I want to thank you again for tuning into the Business of Wedding Planning podcast. I was so overwhelmed by the response that we received last week when we launched the first two episodes.
00:23:27
Speaker
And I'm so excited to be doing this. And I hope that you come back. Next week, we will be discussing how to create an effective marketing strategy. I will see you soon.