7 Super-Easy Ways To Market Your Wedding Business

Working to ensure the smooth planning and execution of the most important day in a couple’s life is undoubtedly a rewarding profession. However, just like any line of work, you need to find a steady stream of customers so you can keep doing the job you love.

This article will cover seven wedding industry marketing tips to help you stand out in a crowded market and acquire more customers. Without further ado, let’s dive right into our guide on how to market your wedding business.

1. Launch Your Website

If your wedding business doesn’t have a website yet, you need to get one set up as soon as possible. A website is the cornerstone of your company’s online identity - think of it as a virtual contact card. Most couples will go online to look for the service providers they need for their wedding. Without a website, they simply won’t find you.

With a small budget, a bit of know-how, and an excellent eye for detail, you can build a stunning website. Initially, you just need a couple of core pages on your site. The most important page will be your homepage. This page will allow you to share your story to attract customers, and convince them you’re the person to hire. Share what inspired you to start working in the wedding industry and what you love about it.

In addition to the homepage, you will need a services page. The services page is where you discuss what you offer and what customers can expect from working with you.

You’ll need beautiful images on these pages. Weddings are visual events and aesthetics matter. Share photographs from some of the weddings you’ve worked on. You should also get professional, branded shots of yourself that reflect your personality. The images you use should set the tone for your business and your approach to weddings.

Focus on emphasizing the characteristics and traits that your customers desire. For example, most people probably want their wedding planner to be organized, have an eye for beautiful design, and be friendly and approachable.

Over time, you can also develop a blog on your website. Create articles that target keywords that are relevant to your business. For example, you might decide to create articles about the best wedding venues in a specific region, or a roundup of unusual wedding reception locales.

You want to create content for your blog that your ideal customers will use to make their wedding preparations. Focus on actionable tips and answering questions. You can use a Google Chrome extension like Keywords Everywhere to check the search volume for any given keyword. Google Analytics will also tell you what terms people are using to find your site, which should give you some content inspiration.

2. Invest in Local SEO

As a wedding industry professional, you probably operate within a specific region, and most of your clients will come from that location or be planning to host their wedding there. One of the best ways to reach those customers is to dominate the local search results.

There are many elements to local SEO. A completed and optimized Google My Business profile is essential. It’s also free. One of the first things anyone searching for a specific professional in your area will see are Google My Business listings:

Here’s a great guide that goes much more in-depth and will help you master Google My Business. The two most important things to remember are to complete your profile with accurate information and ask your happy customers to leave reviews of your business.

You should also try to get your content to rank for local search terms. There are two parts to this equation. Firstly, you need to write great content that is relevant to local search intent. For example, you might target keywords like “Manhattan wedding venues” or “wedding photographers in Philadelphia”. Next, you need to build links to the content to make it rank. One way to do this is by guest posting on relevant sites. Actively using social media and adding your business to local business directories are also effective strategies.

Pro tip: want to get in touch with specific people but don’t have their email address? An email ID finder makes it quick and easy to find their contact information and reach out.

3. Collect Emails and Start Sending Newsletters

One of the biggest regrets most marketers have is failing to build an email list when they started their business. And they’re right - this is a huge mistake.

As a wedding business, email marketing will allow you to connect with visitors to your site who may be looking for what you have to offer. I’d recommend creating a wedding-related lead magnet offer to get people to sign up. For example, you might create “The Ultimate Wedding Checklist” and promote this through a popup on your site.

Once someone signs up, send them an email welcome sequence. The welcome sequence is a series of emails you send to new subscribers. It should go something like this:

1. Welcome email. Introduce yourself and deliver the PDF as promised
2. Share some of the most common questions about a wedding you get
3. Offer a free wedding consultation

Through this email sequence, you can introduce yourself, showcase your expertise, and pitch your service. It’s a simple but proven and effective way to promote your wedding business.

4. Locate and Partner With Great Local Publications

Collaborating with wedding magazines and publications is crucial to marketing a wedding business. These publications account for a large fraction of the wedding-related content consumed by brides and grooms to be. Whether online or offline, couples consult these magazines for style tips, the best wedding locations, decoration ideas, and recommendations for wedding planners.

Source: https://www.yourlondon.wedding/

Wedding magazines will either charge an upfront fee to advertise your business or initiate a quid-pro-quo partnership with you. Either way, partnering with these publications to feature your business will help publicize it to a much broader audience.

There are a plethora of ways to go about creating the kind of attention that’ll get you featured in popular wedding publications in your area. First, you can start by taking on a high-profile client or two. If you knock a VIP wedding out of the park, it’s sure to get the local media’s attention and might even attract national wedding publications.

Secondly, you can plan and execute a community-oriented give back campaign. For example, you might offer a discount to couples in your area or partner with a local charity you’d like to support. Making a positive difference is a great way to grab media attention.

Lastly, you could hire a PR consultant to guide your business’s communication efforts so that the right people get to hear your message.

5. Run Referral Campaigns

Referral campaigns have become one of the most popular forms of word-of-mouth advertising. That’s because they work. In a nutshell, a referral campaign is one where you reward past customers (either monetarily or otherwise) for bringing in new paying customers.

This concept relies on the fact that people are more motivated to perform an action if there's “something in it” for them. Since most people only get married once (or perhaps twice), referral campaigns for wedding businesses might work a little differently.

For example, you could offer a 10% refund on their fee if a couple refers another paying couple within six months of their wedding. You could even offer a set financial incentive (either a set figure or a percentage) to your vendors, partners, and even employees when they refer a couple who become paying customers.

If you incentivize people who love your services to tell their friends and colleagues about you, you’re bound to get more inquiries and convert at a higher rate.

6. Use Instagram to Connect Deeper With Your Audience

In this day and age, the importance of social media can’t be overstated. It has helped many brands and individuals reach far more people than they would ever have been able to reach without it. If you want to increase your wedding business’s reach, you need to maximize your use of platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

Instagram is an ideal platform for any wedding business if used properly. Instagram’s focal point is Why Photos Matter: How to Use Images on Your Websites, both of which are extremely important elements of the wedding industry and wedding business marketing.

Therefore, if you haven’t already, get on Insta and create a business account. Add all of your contact details, link to your website, and start posting high quality, engaging content that’s related to your business.

(Source: @Sweetephotography_ on Instagram)

Once you’re set-up, it's time to run promotions. Social media promotions are one of the easiest ways to create traction on posts. If you announce a promotion where you give 5 random Instagrammers a reward (for example, a $50 gift card) for following your page and sharing your content, your engagement rates will soar. Again, this is a testament to the power of incentivization.

Instagram is also great for creating goodwill through client testimonials. If you just organized and executed a highly successful wedding, you can contact the couple for their thoughts and feedback, and post their kind words alongside pictures on your Instagram page. People love a feel-good story.

Don’t forget to use hashtags, too. Hashtags are a powerful tool to boost your posts’ organic visibility. For example, if you are a wedding photographer based in Boston, you might use hashtags like #BostonWeddings and #WeddingPhotographerBoston.

The strengths of social media, such as hashtags, shareability, and a focus on visual content, can give your wedding business a big marketing boost.

7. Partner With Wedding Vendors and Agencies

Fruitful partnerships are at the core of the modern business landscape. No man is an island, and by extension, businesses also need to help each other out. Your wedding business relies on vendors for a supply of things like furniture, food, and decorative materials.

Striking a long-term partnership with a reliable vendor will allow your business to serve customers consistently and expediently. As opposed to cycling between multiple suppliers, having one on call that you trust ensures that your clients will benefit from great service, and your business will also reap benefits such as bulk orders and regular business.

Wedding agencies can also be useful in sourcing high-paying clients, taking on some of your planning work, and overseeing the events themselves. Partnering with such an agency will ensure that your calendar is always fully booked.

Conclusion

However stressful it can be, marketing a wedding business to reach a broader audience is possible. There are more resources available today than ever before, waiting to be put to use. Services like Limecube’s website builder can help you to build a simple yet attractive business website or blog.

You will need to get used to juggling several different wedding marketing tasks at once. Your local SEO efforts, newsletters, and social marketing campaigns are likely going to run concurrently. But with a little planning and know-how, you can make it work.

Here’s to your wedding business soaring to new heights!