You’ll learn the full truth behind some of the half-baked marketing strategies for wedding planners you might have heard over the years. In this post, there are four marketing for wedding planners tips.

The other day, I was scrolling on Instagram and caught a brief snippet of a fellow podcaster for wedding pros. The guest she had on is a super successful wedding planner. But the advice she was giving made me roll my eyes. It was a strategy that worked for her because she already had a well-known wedding planning business. It wouldn’t apply to someone who didn’t have dozens of 100k+ luxury weddings under their belt, even though she was talking to aspiring luxury planners. I want to unlock marketing secrets for wedding planners in the middle stages of their business.

4 Marketing Secrets Wedding Pro Educators Won’t Tell You

The other day, I was scrolling on Instagram and caught a brief snippet of a fellow podcaster for wedding pros. The guest she had on is a super successful wedding planner. But the advice she was giving made me roll my eyes.

Marketing for Wedding Planners

You shouldn’t spend money on paid marketing.

We asked 1,120 wedding pros, “Where are you most likely to invest money in your business?” 77% answered Marketing & Advertising, but I caution before you wip out the credit card. You shouldn’t spend money on paid marketing until you have a solid brand. If you’re successfully booking clients, then you can start paid marketing. You need to know your a) target market b) your brand differentiators and c) your signature offering before you’re ready to pour money into marketing.

Having a money-making business without paid ads allows you to:

• Test your systems to ensure you can handle more clients
• Not rely on paid ads when the landscape is ever-changing

Think of paid marketing as a turbo boost to scale your business. 

This is why our VIP Marketing Service, our DFY marketing retainers, is not a public offer. You have to go through our Signature Rebranding Service before you can “unlock” our marketing services because it ensures you have anything you need from a branding standpoint for your marketing to be successful. We don’t want you throwing valuable money down the drain.

What worked for other wedding pros, won’t always work for you

I have a friend inside a wedding pro paid membership. She texted me one day and told me inside this group, they’re encouraging their members to strip their websites down to one page with minimal information and focus solely on social media and vendor relationships. I was horrified. This is wrong for so many reasons. But the members were listening to the educator because she has a successful wedding business. They want to be where she is. But she’s been in the industry for over a decade at this point. When she grew her business, did you think there was social media, website, or SEO around? No. She’s teaching aspiring planners what worked for her years ago and what’s working for her now – as someone who’s already “made” it.

Strategies reliant on social media and vendor referrals leave your business vulnerable. What if the vendors you work with businesses fail, or god-forbid they pass away, or y’all have a falling out?

And social media can be here today and gone tomorrow. We’ve had numerous clients’ social media account disappear overnight.

There is the famous quote, “don’t build your business on borrowed ground,” and that is so true.

Social media should only be one part of your overall strategy.

Here’s a short list of things you own for your business (assets): your website domain, your email list, podcast episodes, and blog content.

Educators’ main objective on Instagram is to get you off the app

Wedding Pro Educators won’t tell you that their main goal is to get you off the app. And I want wedding planners to take a page from their book. If you were to look at a marketing funnel, Instagram is at the top. It’s a great place to grow your audience and get new eyes on your content.

What I see wedding planners get wrong is that they’re trying to go from Instagram to Lead, which can happen.

But for many wedding planners, they’re missing the middle of the funnel.

Where can you continue to grow your relationship with your audience – bonus points if you own the content like the assets I mentioned earlier. This is why I am a huge advocate for growing your email list.

Having an email list gives you intimate access to your audience. You can slide into their inbox whenever you want to provide value, educate, and sell when needed. Whenever we do a promotion or affiliate sale, almost 100% of our sales come from our email list.

Their education isn’t focused on how you can grow your audience

Imagine your audience as a lemon. If you’re squeezing sales from your audience but not bringing new people in, your lemon will eventually run dry. You can squeeze so much juice out of one lemon.

“The most valuable thing you can build is an audience.” – Alex Hormozi

The marketing landscape is evolving. It’s not just about selling your service anymore. It’s about creating a brand that people want to be a part of and building your audience.

I want to leave you with a bonus marketing secret from Mack Julion (wrong name mentioned in the podcast episode) on Instagram: Your Price is a Part of Your Brand.

Your prices set expectations for who you attract, the service you provide, and how well you will be respected.

There are many wedding pro educators giving advice; some good, some not so good. I hope this unlocked some marketing secrets from paid marketing to Instagram and growing an audience, you have to decipher what works for your business.