Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Do you want to know how to create an ideal client avatar for your wedding industry business? You’ve probably heard the term Ideal Client Avatar (or ICA for short) used a time or two. Creating an ideal client avatar is an important step in building your business strategy–and it isn’t as hard as it seems.
Inside this article, I’m breaking down four easy steps to help you create your Ideal Client Avatar (so you can attract those dreamy clients ASAP).
Before I share those steps, let’s talk about what an Ideal Client Avatar really is…
What is an Ideal Client Avatar?
An Ideal Client Avatar is a dynamic and detailed profile of your ideal client. It explores things like their likes, dislikes, and demographics that tell you more about who they are. But more importantly, an Ideal Client Avatar will tell you what worries and problems your customer has, along with what they value and ultimately desire from you.
It will help you attract, sell and serve your ideal customers.
While it’s helpful to know what an Ideal Client avatar is, I think it’s also important to know what an ICA isn’t…
What isn’t an Ideal Client Avatar?
An ICA isn’t a unicorn person who is the perfect customer. No, your customers are not flawless. And it’s when you understand their flaws that you start to discover who they really are.
As you set out to write your Ideal Client Avatar, I want you to keep in mind that you’re NOT writing a dating profile of your customer. You know the kind… where there are no flaws and literally everything about them is perfect. The people you want to work with have flaws, quirks, and personality traits that are not always the best. They’re human! But aside from that, they are *your* people.
They’re the people you want to serve and support in your wedding business because they value what you do, are enjoyable throughout the process, and can pay your bills!
So, you might be thinking hey! I’ve already done this.
When most people set out to write an ICA profile, they come up with something like this…
My ideal customer is between the ages of 25-35 and is female. She’s planning a wedding in the greater (insert your city area). She makes $80K a year and is a professional, has a master’s degree, shops at J.Crew, and drives a mini cooper. She’s hiring a wedding planner because she needs help with her wedding and doesn’t want to be stressed.
Does that sound familiar? Maybe you have this exact profile knocking around in some Google doc or in that original business plan you wrote.
You didn’t do anything wrong. You got started! And for that, I want to give you all the gold stars. But that profile doesn’t tell us anything about how to attract, sell, and serve that customer. We’ve just got a bunch of facts but no real information we can build a strategy from.
Let’s change that, shall we? Here’s how to create an ideal client avatar in four easy steps:
Step One: Identity which clients are *not* your ideal clients
Before you can begin to attract, you have to decide who you *don’t* want to work with. You need to decide who you’ll say goodbye to and stop serving the clients who DON’T serve you. By understanding who you want to repel, you can stop wasting your time in email threads that go on forever, or on consultation calls that go nowhere.
This is the first step to calling in those dreamy, high-end customers you’re dying to work with.
Sayonara, sister!
It’s time for you to repel couples who are the WRONG fit for your business based on their budget and personality. We don’t have time to waste with consultations and leads that go nowhere.
Plus, it’s a lot easier to start off thinking about who you no longer want to work with.
Take Action
- Map out who you no longer want to work with
- Come up with a repelling strategy, so those customers know you’re not the right fit for them
Step Two: Identify who you want to attract
Now that we know who we don’t want to work with anymore, it’s time to decide who we do want to work with. Which couples do you want to call into your wedding business? What’s their budget, style, age range, and current circumstance?
In many cases, to attract higher-end clients who are *dying* to work with you, you’ve gotta niche down a little (because you deserve to be booked out with the best customers)
I’ve got a whole blog post on how to do this too.
Here are some questions you can ask yourself to get started identifying your Ideal Client Avatar:
- Where is my ICA getting married?
- How much money do they have to spend?
- What is their wedding style?
- Where do they live, work, and play?
- How old are they, and what does that say about them?
There are a few more important questions to ask, but I’m saving that for students inside my training, The Client Cocktail – which is my secret recipe for attracting, selling, and serving your ideal clients.
These starter questions give you a good idea of the characteristics and traits you need to explore in order to understand who your Ideal Client is.
Take Action
- Decide whether you need to niche down (such as working at specific venues, catering to different styles or demographics)
- Answer some of the questions about your ICA I’ve provided to begin painting a picture of who they are
- Go a little deeper and instead of just answering the questions, ask: what does this answer tell me about this person? What does this really mean about who they are?
Step Three: Identify your ideal client’s wedding personality type
We started this work in the previous step, but now you need to go deep and think about your ICA’s wedding personality type.
- Where is their wedding taking place?
- What kinds of traditions are they incorporating?
- Are they infusing their culture into their event?
- What colors do they love?
- How do they define their style?
As you dig into these details, you’ll begin to uncover how you can market to this ideal client by sharing content and images that help them to buy with their eye. It’ll also help you position yourself with the right vendors (and in the right venues!) to make referrals from vendors your biggest referral point.
Take Action
- Build your ICA’s wedding personality profiles
- Answer the questions I’ve given you
- If you want more support, check out The Client Cocktail
Step Four: Identify your ideal client avatar’s worries and desires
To serve your customers better and land those sales, you have to understand what they value and desire from you. You also need to know what problems they have and what worries them the most about their wedding.
When you know your ideal client’s desires and worries, it will help us build services, products, and offers that your customers will be begging you to purchase. It’s how you’ll show up and serve your clients better than any competition–and turn them into raving fans.
Sit down with all the work you’ve done so far and ask, what does my ICA..
- Value about what I do?
- Desire from me?
- Worry about when it comes to their wedding?
- Need from me to solve their problems?
These are the final building blocks to understanding your ideal client and what they ultimately need and want from you.
Take Action
- Map out what your ICA values about the work you do
- Understand what it is they ultimately desire for their wedding day
- Know what worries them and what problems they need to be solved
Interested in creating your Ideal Client Avatar with my help? Check out The Client Cocktail, the *secret* recipe for wedding pros who want to book high-end clients in the wedding industry.
The Client Cocktail is a client attraction formula for wedding planners, photographers, and industry creatives who are ready to upgrade their clients (and stop serving the wrong people). In just one day, you can map out your ideal client avatar with my help.
Here’s how to create an ideal client avatar in four easy steps:
- Identify which clients are *not* your ideal clients
Before you decide who you want to attract, get clear on which customers are NOT the right fit for your business. This will give you a boost in understanding who you do want to attract.
- Identify who you want to attract
Now that you know who you don’t want to attract, who is your ideal client? What’s their age range, gender, career, likes, dislikes, and more? And what do those facts say about who they are and what they value?
- Identify your ideal client’s wedding personality type
Focus on characteristics of the wedding including where they’re getting married, what their wedding style is, and how much money they have to spend.
- Identify your ideal client avatar’s worries and desires
To serve your customers better and land those sales, you have to understand what they value and desire from you. You also need to know what problems they have and what worries them the most about their wedding.
Explore More Wedding Industry Resources
- How to Start a Wedding Planning Business
- How To Get Wedding Clients When You’re Just Starting Out
- The #1 Reason Why You’re Not Booking The Right Wedding Clients (And How To Fix It)
- Why You’re Not Attracting The Right Clients and How to Fix It
- 4 Strategies That Will Help You Book MORE Of Your Ideal Clients
- Coping With the Career Stress of Being A Wedding Planner During Wedding Season
- 7 Ways to Use Honeybook as a Wedding Planner
For More Wedding Industry Business Secrets, Follow Me on Instagram
I’ve come to realize that many of us want to have a village, but we don’t recognize that we have to be a villager first.
My friend carla @c10ike is one of those rare exceptions and I want to introduce you to her!
When I started my planning business, I had no contacts and no real idea what I was doing. I was so green it makes me laugh to look back on it now!
And somehow, I got lucky enough to be taken under the wing of this incredible woman who showed up for me then when I was a little baby business owner, and has kept showing up ever since in more ways than I could possibly count.
She’s taught me so much over the years, and I don’t mean in the traditional sense of teaching someone something. She simply lived her life, and I paid attention.
She modeled what it means to be a friend.
A sister.
A daughter.
A wife.
A mother.
A business owner.
A boss.
I learned generosity by watching her be generous.
Compassion, connection, leadership… none of it came from advice. All of it came from the way she carries herself and the way she treats the people around her.
She has taught me more than she will ever know by the sheer act of living loudly and joyfully in every corner of her life.
I am so lucky to call her my friend. So lucky to be one of the many, many people she has been a villager for.
Carla thank you for letting me grow up right beside you. I love you. 🤍
DAY ONE // WPI Spring Retreat 💜
This was our first real day together! The theme of this whole retreat was refinement, so we wasted no time getting into it on Day 1!
The women shuttled up to my home, walked through the gate to mimosas and the biggest hugs, and got their welcome totes filled with goodies I curated from female owned businesses that were mostly local!
Then we settled in, did some tapping to manifest all the answers we needed for the week, courtesy of our very own @ashley.peraino (who couldn’t join us this year, but was SO THOUGHTFUL to record a video for us!)
I opened with a talk on complexity, discernment, and self-trust (today’s podcast episode, BTW) simplifying your business and actually trusting yourself to lead what’s left.
From there the room took over. We had three incredible member gives: @c10ike on trusting your creative instincts, @ininkweddings on refining your creative POV, and @welldressedevents on generating real revenue through Google Ads (it’s giving… LEADS 😉).
In between we had small group discussions, hot conversations about where instinct and POV are out of sync, a homemade Caribbean lunch, and an afternoon of poolside snacks and conversation.
This is what the WPI room looks like. A talented group of women who came with one big business question and spent day one getting closer to the answer while having fun and getting their brains stretched!
All these gorgeous moments captured by our retreat photographer + my business bestie @c10ike 💜💜💜
Do it or delete it.
I said this recently to a coaching client, and now it’s sort of become our mantra inside WPI, because almost every business owner I know has a to-do list with 47 things on it (the same 47 things that were on last week’s list, and the week before that).
They don’t get done. They just travel from week to week collecting guilt, and that guilt somehow makes it even harder to get anything done at all.
After years of coaching women through this, you start to realize that most of those tasks don’t actually have dire consequences if they never happen. They just feel important because they’ve been living on your list rent-free for six months.
I want you to look at your to-do list right now and choose.
You do it… meaning you do it right now or at the very least put it on the calendar with a real deadline.
You delegate it… but only if it’s actually worth someone else’s time, not because you’ve been avoiding it and want to make it someone else’s problem.
Or you delete it… and I mean actually delete it, not shuffle it to a “someday” list where it will haunt you until 2027.
The guilt you feel about your undone tasks won’t go away if you magically “get more productive.” Instead I want you to see it for what it is: a list-curation problem.
What’s one thing you’re deleting today?
PS: I can confidently say these @aritzia sweatpants are 10/10
Syd from @ininkweddings spent $$$$ on a rebrand... and a year later, her gut told her to do it again.
She listened, and that’s how Messy Luxury™ was born.
The Behind the Brand series is BACK on the podcast, and this episode is one of my favorites yet. I’m excited to introduce you to Sydney Meyer (AKA ya girl, SYD) – a talented, vibrant, and dynamic wedding designer / planner based in Austin but serving clients worldwide.
I’ve been coaching Syd inside WPI since 2022, so I’ve had a front row seat to her evolution.
I’ve gotten to watch her build an iconic brand from the inside out, and it’s been one of the great joys of my coaching career. I’m so excited for you to hear her journey and some of the interesting twists and turns she’s encountered because boy, are they RELATABLE.
In this episode, we get into:
- What inspired her to start In Ink
- Why her first rebrand still didn’t feel right and how she knew
- The rock-bottom moment that forced her to build a business for HER, not everyone else
- How she trademarked Messy Luxury and turned it into the most recognizable design philosophy in Austin
If your business doesn’t feel like you anymore or if you’ve been searching for your unique creative POV, you’re going to LOVE this week’s episode!
Drop MESSY LUXURY in the comments and I’ll send you a link to listen!
A special shout out to all the photographers whose images reflect Syd and her great work: @alicialeighphoto @anastasiastratephotography @fallonstovallphoto @lightasgold @natalienicolephoto @haleyfolkman.photo @c10ike
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