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How to Create an Effective Marketing Strategy
62 Plays7 months ago
Episode Overview:
In this third episode of our five-part series on starting a wedding planning business, host Amber Peterson, a former wedding planner, marketing strategist, and owner of Planner’s Lounge, delves into the essentials of crafting an effective marketing plan. It’s not just about making noise; it's about strategic communication, understanding your audience, and maximizing your resources for the best results.
Key Topics Covered:
- Understanding Your Target Audience: Learn to identify and understand your ideal clients, considering their demographics, psychographics, and values. Understanding your audience is crucial for refining your marketing strategies.
- Choosing the Right Marketing Channels: Discover how to select the most effective marketing channels for your business. From social media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest to email marketing and local advertising, find out which channels will best reach your target audience.
- Planning for SEO: Understand the importance of SEO and content marketing in attracting more traffic to your website. Tips on incorporating a blog into your website to boost your search engine rankings and attract more clients.
- Crafting Your Marketing Message: Learn how to craft a message that resonates with your target audience. Understand the importance of niche marketing and how being specific can lead to more bookings.
- Relationship Marketing: Explore the power of building partnerships and networking with other vendors. Hear a personal story about the benefits of relationship marketing and its impact on business growth.
- Marketing Budget: Guidance on allocating your marketing budget wisely to focus on channels that offer the most return on investment. Tips on tracking spending and adjusting your budget based on the performance of your marketing efforts.
- Measuring ROI: Learn how to measure the success of your marketing efforts. Tips on tracking metrics like website traffic, social media engagement, and conversion rates to understand and adjust your strategies.
Resources and Freebies:
- Finding Your Niche in the Market
- Quick SEO Tips for Wedding Planners
- Building Relationships with other Wedding Vendors
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Amber Peterson & Series Overview
00:00:05
Speaker
Hi, everyone. Welcome to the business of wedding planning podcast. I am 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. Today, we are focusing on crafting an effective marketing plan. Well, marketing is not about just making noise. It's about strategic communication and understanding your audience
00:00:31
Speaker
and maximizing resources to get the best results. This is the third episode in our five-part series about starting a planning business. If you miss the first two, make sure to go back and give them a list. Let's get started.
Understanding Your Target Audience
00:00:44
Speaker
The first part of any good marketing strategy is understanding your target audience. This means spending some time to think about who are you trying to reach, who do you want to work with, and how does that pair with what you're offering to the marketplace.
00:01:00
Speaker
The first step to creating a effective marketing strategy is to understand your target audience and how your business will serve them. Think about who are you trying to cater to? Are you a specific type of wedding planner? Do you only work with certain budgets? Or is it something entirely different? You want to think about what and who your business serves.
00:01:26
Speaker
And that will kind of go back to some of the work you did in your brand development, which we talked about in the podcast last week. At this point, if you have that in place, if you know, like, this is my business, this is what we're offering, this is when you think about who are the people that will be interested in buying what you offer.
00:01:44
Speaker
You can consider their demographics, their preferences, their lifestyle. And remember, there's never too much information in this exercise. The more you know about your audience, the more refined your marketing strategies will be. Questions that you can ask yourself are, what are the type of clients that I'm currently attracting if you've been in business for any amount of time?
00:02:07
Speaker
and what type of clients do I want to attract? If you've already planned some weddings, are the people that you are planning for, are those the kind of clients you want to work with? If the answer is yes, amazing, you're already doing great. If the answer is no, then you want to think about what is it that I am putting out as my marketing message that's attracting this type of client that I really don't enjoy working
Demographic Insights & Client Profiling
00:02:34
Speaker
with.
00:02:34
Speaker
Things that you start with when you think about who are the clients you want to work with are demographics. These are just general, like think of a form you're filling out, boxes you check kind of information. Where are they located? What is their age or gender?
00:02:53
Speaker
What is a typical job title they might have? Now, of course, every person that comes through your door is probably going to have a different job. What you can think about is, are these people all professionals? Are they, you know, working in jobs, they work a normal nine to five, or are they
00:03:13
Speaker
nurses, doctors, like you can kind of think about like in a broad way, what kind of jobs or companies would they have? What is their household income? You're a luxury planner. Your services are just not accessible to everyone. You want to think about like, what would their
00:03:31
Speaker
household income be? And is that going to match up with the prices that I charge? Because you don't want to be putting out a great marketing message to people that just are never going to be able to afford what you are offering. And then you can just think about age, their education level, things like that, really things that you would fill out on any type of form where they're gathering, I guess you could almost think of it as like census information.
00:03:58
Speaker
So those are their demographics. Now, the next part is where it gets a little bit more interesting. This is where you dive into their psychographics. So these are things like their opinions or attitudes. You might find that your typical ideal client shares certain worldviews that are not directly related to what you're selling. For example, if they are really committed to environmental issues, they might be really interested in a wedding where
00:04:28
Speaker
you are sourcing vendors that have sustainable practices for delivering their products. If your clients generally all share the same enjoyment of a certain musical genre or have similar political beliefs, this is where you're kind of diving into what makes people tick and what's important to them.
00:04:46
Speaker
Another interesting, um, psychographic area to dive into are interests and hobbies. So this could get into what are they like to do when they're not working? How do they spend time when they travel? What do they do for fun?
Aligning Company and Client Values
00:05:02
Speaker
That's going to help you think more deeply about the type of person they are.
00:05:06
Speaker
here where I live in Washington, people like to hike, we like to go out on the water. And how does that affect their decision making for purchasing? So psychographics, I find fascinating because over time, you might notice that a lot of my clients kind of have the same interests or the same values. And if that's happening, that's usually a good sign that your marketing messaging is attracting the people that you're hoping to.
00:05:34
Speaker
And then finally, once you've go through these psychographics, think about like, how do your values as a company owner and as your company values align with that of your ideal client? You want to make sure that they're in alignment so that it makes sense for them to view you as the right wedding planner for them. Once you have a clear picture of your ideal client, it's time to decide on which marketing channels you'll
Effective Marketing Channels & SEO Strategies
00:06:00
Speaker
be using. A quick rundown of
00:06:02
Speaker
What some of those could be are your website, your email, creating content, social media marketing, word of mouth, SEO, networking, events, podcasts, community-based marketing, online paid advertising, video marketing, and affiliate marketing are just a handful.
00:06:24
Speaker
There are going to be so many opportunities, but don't try to do them all. I would choose two to three max that you can do really well to reach your ideal clients. And then if those are going great, you can certainly add more. It's better to do a couple very successfully than to spread yourself super thin.
00:06:48
Speaker
really think about who your target client is and where do they spend time on the internet, in real life, what channels would most likely reach them. And this is where those psychographics come into play. You really want to make sure that you are clear about where they're finding information.
00:07:09
Speaker
Now I can't talk about a marketing strategy without also talking about search engine optimization or SEO. SEO and content marketing, specifically blogging and developing your website go hand in hand. SEO is just making sure that the text on your website, the texts that you're putting into blogs, everything is optimized. So when people are going to Google and searching in wedding planners,
00:07:37
Speaker
Washington state or wedding planner Seattle or wherever you are you have optimized everything on your website to show up in that search not all wedding planners want to have a blog but a blog on your website is very helpful with boosting your search engine rankings because
00:07:58
Speaker
Any new content that is optimized for seo is going to help google deliver traffic to your website and so you want to spend time developing a solid keyword strategy.
00:08:13
Speaker
so that you are showing up in Google. Ideally, you want to get to the first page of Google because people don't really go too much further past that. I'm always going to say that your website should include a blog and regularly updating that content.
00:08:29
Speaker
is going to be very important to showing up in organic search.
Crafting Resonant Marketing Messages
00:08:36
Speaker
You have identified your ideal client, you have chosen the marketing channels you're going to use, you have your keyword strategy in place, and now you need to develop your actual marketing message. Your marketing message is something that you craft that is going to resonate with your target audience.
00:08:58
Speaker
This is where knowing your ideal client and your niche in the market is most important because when we put out our marketing message, and this is anything you're putting out into the world. If you are posting on social, if you're blogging, if you are developing collateral for a wedding show, you want it to resonate with the people that you want to work with and
00:09:22
Speaker
I know there's resistance to niching down or specializing in a certain type of wedding because it feels like you're reducing your potential pool of clients. In reality, when you try and speak to everyone, so if I'm just saying, I'm a wedding planner, I can plan your wedding. That really doesn't tell anyone anything about my expertise.
00:09:47
Speaker
past events, the things that I do really well. If I can say, I am a wedding planner who specializes in yard home weddings.
00:09:59
Speaker
And I have all of this experience with dealing with sourcing all of the things that come with throwing a home wedding or a backyard wedding that is going to resonate with people planning a wedding in their home. And we all know as planners that different types of weddings require different logistics, different challenges arise,
00:10:22
Speaker
So if you specialize in a specific type of wedding or a specific venue or a specific budget range even, you're going to be able to create messaging around that specialty that's going to resonate. Let me give you another example. If
00:10:39
Speaker
you love to plan big hotel weddings. Then if your social media is filled with images from a wedding that you planned in the mountains at a remote location that may have been beautiful and you loved planning it, but that's not really where you mostly get clients from, then anyone who's planning a fancy hotel wedding, they're not going to see
00:11:05
Speaker
your social media posts and think, this is the planner for me. Our brains automatically try to categorize. They're going to think, oh, that person, that's a beautiful wedding, but it's not my style wedding. You want to reduce the amount of times that a potential client could say, no, that's not for me. That's not the right fit. Really align whatever you put out as your marketing message with who you're trying to reach.
Specialization & Networking Advantages
00:11:29
Speaker
If you're really strategic with your message, you can also attract your ideal client, but repel the clients that aren't a good fit. This is going to reduce the amount of back and forth that you have to do with people that you're probably just not ever going to be able to work with anyway.
00:11:46
Speaker
and it kind of helps people self-select. And if you're an expert at your specific niche in the market, that also just gives you a little bit more credence and sway when people are looking for their perfect wedding planner. Find your niche, refine your marketing message, and that is going to make doing the actual work of creating marketing collateral and posting and writing
00:12:14
Speaker
so much easier if you know exactly who you're speaking to. So relationship marketing is probably the number one way to grow your business quickly. When I say relationship marketing, I mean other wedding vendors that you work with, network with, you send clients to, and they send clients to you.
00:12:33
Speaker
You want to make sure that you are constantly working to expand your network, to develop meaningful relationships with people that serve a similar target market to you. You can do this through networking events, through styled shoots if you're newer to wedding planning.
00:12:56
Speaker
putting yourself out there, no matter where you're at in business and making sure that you are creating connections that are not just what can you do for me, but also making sure that you are reciprocating and giving them something in return.
00:13:12
Speaker
No matter what stage of business you're in, the number one thing that you should always be working on to grow your business is developing relationships with other wedding professionals. Having a strong network of other businesses that you can refer your clients to, but who also can refer their clients to you is the quickest way to grow your business and to book more weddings. If you can build partnerships
00:13:41
Speaker
It can be so beneficial to both of you and specifically partnerships with businesses that serve a similar client to the one that you want to serve. Networking not only leads to great referrals. You can also collaborate on marketing efforts. You can work on projects together. They can also be people that you call on if say for some reason you have an emergency
00:14:06
Speaker
in your business, a good network of other wedding professionals can really help you in so many different ways. Don't underestimate the power of building these relationships.
00:14:19
Speaker
When I first started as a wedding planner, I was super introverted and I really didn't want to go to networking events or reach out for coffee dates or anything. I just thought, you know what, I'm going to build a beautiful website. I'm going to do all of the traditional marketing methods that I know and that'll be fine. I booked weddings, but pretty slowly.
00:14:45
Speaker
And it took a lot longer than I had hoped. And then finally, I just thought, you know what, I'm I'm going to listen to what experts say about networking and just go to a local event that was here in my area. And that changed things in so many ways. First, I had built it all up in my head that I was like, oh, it's going to be terrible. People are, you know, I don't know why, but I was like,
00:15:11
Speaker
who am I going to talk to? Who am I going to sit with? All those things. I mean, we all are in this business of helping people on one of the most lovely days of their lives. And generally, people in this industry are so kind and so welcoming. And so that was a silly fear that I had. But also
00:15:30
Speaker
it was immediate that the connection started paying off i was able to develop business relationships but also friendships i was able to refer my clients to businesses that i really didn't know before
00:15:48
Speaker
and have them start referring me business. I find that generally most people want other businesses to succeed. And so even if you are a little nervous or you're just like, oh, just networking is not my thing. Think of it as you're just going to an event to make new friends and just chat about weddings, which I love to chat about. I can't tell you how important it is. And so
00:16:15
Speaker
whatever you have to do to get over whatever's blocking you from doing it, do it because it will help your business so much and it just is nice to have a network of like-minded business owners who know what it's like to be in the wedding industry because it's unique. Even if you have people in your life who own businesses and other industries, we know that being in the wedding industry
00:16:40
Speaker
is unique. And it's great to have supportive partners that you can go to work with. And just sometimes it's just event to get out there network, I promise it will be great.
Budget Allocation & Evaluating Opportunities
00:16:54
Speaker
The last two aspects of
00:16:56
Speaker
your marketing strategy are going to be your budget and measuring the effectiveness of what you're doing. Let's talk about budget. Budgeting for marketing activities means allocating money to focus on the channels that you've selected. You want to make sure that whatever money you're spending is bringing money back into your business. Track your spending and adjust your budget based on the performance of your marketing efforts.
00:17:22
Speaker
no matter where you're at in business, there are going to be so many ways that you can spend your marketing budget and you will have so many different people reaching out to you and offering a marketing or advertising option. Some of them will be great and you want to consider the opportunities that come your way. Make sure you're really doing your due diligence because everything sounds great when someone might tell you, oh, if you advertise in our local publication, you're going to reach
00:17:51
Speaker
Let's say a thousand engaged couples. That sounds great, right? Getting in front of a thousand engaged couples. You want to ask some questions about what are their demographics? What is their general budget for a wedding? The questions that are going to help you determine, is this the right audience for me?
00:18:10
Speaker
Same goes for things like wedding shows. You always want to ask things like how many people usually come through, what is their wedding budget, and then also who are the other vendors at this event. If you are finding that all of the other vendors that are there serve a totally different type of
00:18:29
Speaker
couple, maybe that's not the right fit for you. Don't be afraid to ask questions. If they're taking advertising dollars, they should have this information for you. And if they don't, that would be a red flag to me because you want to know who you're getting in front of so that when we go when we move on to the measuring your return on your investment, or your ROI, you can say, okay, like I spent let's say you spent $2,000 to be at a wedding show. And I
00:18:57
Speaker
booked two weddings. So you need to understand the numbers so that you can understand like, is this actually worth it? And would I want to do this again? I feel like there are a lot of times that people they just keep spending on
00:19:15
Speaker
different marketing channels because everybody else's and they're like, well, I don't really get anything from this, but I'm afraid not to use it because that's what everyone does. But just because everyone's doing it doesn't mean that it's it doesn't not everything's going to work for everyone. And that is totally fine. When you're budgeting, make sure that you can
00:19:35
Speaker
spend on where you want to, but don't just jump at every opportunity that comes your way and stretch yourself too thin.
Measuring Success with KPIs
00:19:43
Speaker
I would stick to those two to three channels and then measure the return on that investment. Finally, how do you actually measure? When you have spent money, you've put out a marketing message, how do you measure the success of those efforts? When we start any sort of marketing activity, you want to determine what is the
00:20:04
Speaker
and success. It's generally called like a KPI. So a key performance indicator is going to be your measurement. And I know that in our industry, it can be difficult to pinpoint exactly where someone comes from because
00:20:19
Speaker
when these couples get engaged and they're researching, they might have been to your website, they may have met you at a wedding show, seen you on social media. The list goes on and on because engaged couples are just inundated with information, right? It's part of my consultation questionnaire is where did you hear about us? I have a list of everywhere that I market. I could always say, okay, here's where you would have seen me and let them choose more than one.
00:20:45
Speaker
Because sometimes they'll remember just the last place. Sometimes they'll remember a lot of different places. You want to gather as much information as possible. Don't be afraid to ask. For some reason, a lot of wedding planners I've talked to, they don't ask. It's so important.
00:21:01
Speaker
so that you know exactly where you're getting results from. And this is going to allow you to be even more intentional with your budget because if you have spent a ton of money on wedding shows and you find that 2% of your clients actually come from a wedding show, maybe it's time to reevaluate if you go at all or scale back what you're doing there because it's just not worth the big spend to be at that show.
00:21:31
Speaker
you only can make these decisions if you have the data. Let me give you an example of how to measure with using a key performance indicator. Let's say that you are writing blogs, putting them out on Pinterest with a great local keyword strategy. And then your KPI might be website traffic that comes from Pinterest,
00:21:54
Speaker
and then transitions into an opt-in on your email list. So you would want to figure out by looking at your Google Analytics and figure out how much traffic is coming from Pinterest, and then you can set in Google Analytics how much of that transitions into an email opt-in. So you have those numbers.
00:22:16
Speaker
And from there, it'll be easy to tell if anybody off your email list turns into a client, you'll be able to tell that easily. Again, our industry is interesting because it's not usually a direct, saw you on Instagram, booked you immediately.
00:22:32
Speaker
Whereas if you are selling like a low dollar product or something, that would be an easy thing to measure. But just make sure that in some way you're getting an overview of are people seeing your marketing? Is that turning into are they taking any kind of action so that you can refine your marketing strategy, refine your marketing budget?
Timing & Adjusting Marketing Strategies
00:22:53
Speaker
And finally, my last tip when you're measuring ROI, whatever channels you've decided to use for marketing, you need to give them time to work. To go back to using Pinterest for an example, you can start putting content on Pinterest, and usually it takes three to six months before you start seeing any real traffic back to your website because
00:23:12
Speaker
The Pinterest algorithm has to do its magic and start serving up your pins to their users. I have worked with clients in the past when I was doing content marketing strategy where, you know, they're like, I've been blogging and I've been putting pins on Pinterest and I'm not seeing anything and it's been six weeks.
00:23:31
Speaker
Well, that really takes some time to get going. You want to give everything a good amount of time. And that's another thing to dive into when you're choosing which channels to use. Think about what makes sense for your timeframe of how much time do you want to give it? And if you are like, I need clients today, that is where that personal network is going to be the quickest way
00:23:58
Speaker
to get people signing your contracts because a referral is kind of like jumping the line a little bit. If they're getting a referral from a wedding professional that they've already booked or they're getting a referral from a loved one or friend that has used your services in the past,
00:24:17
Speaker
that's automatic vouch for you. If you are in a position where you are like, all this is great, I know I need to do marketing, but I need clients like yesterday, then reaching out to your personal network is going to be the quickest way in your your professional
Final Tips & Resources for Wedding Planners
00:24:32
Speaker
network.
00:24:32
Speaker
to get those inquiries coming. We have talked about a lot today, and I know marketing, for me, I love marketing. I can talk about it forever, but most people who love to plan weddings, they did not get into it to spend 100 hours on their marketing. I get that, but also make sure that you are giving this some attention.
00:24:55
Speaker
We have some digital products that address some of the different aspects of developing a marketing strategy at the planners launch shop. There's one called finding your niche in the market. This is a deep dive that will help you really figure out what's my specialty? Is there a specific niche that I could serve? We also have a really quick SEO tips for wedding planners product that just kind of gives you the 10 basics to SEO.
00:25:23
Speaker
because SEO can be a full-time job. There are people that that's their full-time job, but they're going to get you started. They're going to get you results without you having to actually learn SEO top to bottom. And then finally, another product that could be helpful is building relationships with other wedding vendors. And this is just a way to learn some tips and tricks for building meaningful relationships without coming across as like, what's in it for me?
00:25:51
Speaker
You can always visit plannersloudshop.com to find these and also to find our free downloads. But all the links are in the show notes. And I just encourage you to spend some time crafting an effective marketing plan that you can reach that ideal audience and help them make that make their buying decision a little bit easier. And this just comes from creating a great message, finding the right channels,
00:26:20
Speaker
and continuing to adapt as you measure the results. I am so happy to be here chatting with you about building and growing wedding planning businesses. I know that it is such a rewarding career and it's such an amazing job to have. I look forward to supporting you in the future and I will talk to you next week.