Wedding business marketing can be tough-especially if you’re trying to attract magazine-worthy clients. Can I be brutally honest with you? If you haven’t worked with your ideal client avatar yet in your wedding business, it might be because you’re showing up in all the wrong places. Or, you’re talking to someone who doesn’t really exist.
Often, when I ask wedding planners to describe their ideal client to me, they describe the exact same person.
My ideal client is 25-35 years old and a professional. She shops at Nordstrom, her household income is well over six figures, oh yeah – and she also is willing to shell out a bunch of cash for a wedding planner.
Although these facts might be true about your ideal client, this is not enough to market to them effectively and find them in real life. Partly because it’s incredibly vague. And partly because you treat your ideal clients like they are perfect (spoiler alert: they aren’t!).
Before you can even attempt to dive into better wedding business marketing, attempting to book more ideal clients and make sales, you need to do some hard work uncovering who your ideal clients are.
Seriously, don’t skip this step. It seems simple enough, but without it, the rest of this post won’t be nearly as effective!
Okay, ready? I’m going to trust you paused to do the work here, or you’ve invested a chunk of change ($47!) and grabbed my Ideal Client Cocktail so you can genuinely uncover who your ideal client is. I’m biased, but I feel pretty confident in saying that it just might be the best $47 you’ve ever spent.
Finding your ideal client avatar in real life and getting the most out of your wedding business marketing strategy.
Can I tell you a secret? It’s much easier to have your ideal client avatar find you than to find them. Below, I have listed five places where your ideal client is likely looking for your services. You know your ideal client best, so I will leave which area you should focus on up to you.
When it comes to marketing to your ideal client in the wedding industry, you want to show up where they are, but you also want to show up in a way that makes you feel comfortable and lets you (at least somewhat) enjoy the process.
For instance, if you hate Instagram, focus on building your blog content. If networking drains you, focus more on the online marketing channels. As a business coach for wedding pros, I have learned that there is no one right way to do things. You get to decide what a business you love looks like!
Now, let’s jump into the five main places your ideal clients can find you!
1) Google Searches
If I know anything about your ideal client, it’s that they are using Google to find exactly what they need. After all, how did you find me today? I’m guessing it started with a search! Can I be honest with you? I geek out over SEO. I have repeatedly found that focusing on your search engine presence is beneficial in so many ways.
First, you automatically look like a professional when you show up on page 1 of Google. Second, SEO strategies don’t change as frequently as the Instagram algorithm. It’s much easier to stay on page 1 than you think.
If you are a podcast listener, make sure you listen to this episode with Vanessa Hicks. She talks about how the average lifespan of an Instagram post is 48 hours, but the average lifespan of a blog post is 700 days! Doesn’t that sound like a place where you should put your marketing efforts? Blogging is excellent for SEO and one of the ways you can make sure you show up in your ideal client’s Google searches.
A quick tip: When they search for your service, they check reviews! Include your Google Business profile when you ask your couples for reviews.
2) Locations
When they are searching for their wedding venue or destination, their searches revolve around the locations they are interested in. When you are crystal clear about who your ideal client is, you can use that information to target your ideal clients.
Want to rev up your wedding business marketing?
Start blogging about your favorite locations in your city – your favorite wedding venues, places to take wedding day portraits, and your favorite hotel for out-of-town guests to stay! A little SEO tip? Use nicknames of your locations, too (and airport codes – if it’s popular!).
Don’t forget to collaborate and feature other wedding vendors that complement your service! Before you collaborate, make sure your ideal clients are similar and you are crystal clear on who you hope to bring in! Guest blogging can be a great way to increase your exposure, and backlinks to your site are great for SEO (that’s when they link back to your website as a way of cross-promotion!).
3) Recommendations from Family and Friends
Wouldn’t it be nice if you knew the friends and family members of your most ideal clients?
Don’t worry. I know that’s not realistic (for now!). With that in mind, recommendations from family and friends are an incredibly effective way to get more ideal client business once you start. You shouldn’t feel bad about asking current and past clients to send more people your way.
The other point I want to make here is that although marketing is essential, I want you to make sure you’re taking care of the clients you have really, really well.
So often, we face mindset blocks where we just want more and more. We constantly worry that we don’t have enough, so all of our efforts go toward finding new clients (and we’re willing to take everyone and anyone). That’s not the kind of business that I want for you.
Often, there is more opportunity in our current clients than we realize. Treat them well, and you will reap the benefits for years to come.
4) Referrals from Other Wedding Vendors (so get networking!)
Wedding business marketing is all about networking.
Has your ideal client already booked a few of their wedding vendors before they start to look for your service? If so, they are getting recommendations from the wedding vendors they’ve already booked. I have to admit, this works better for wedding vendors who are typically booked further down the line in the wedding planning process than it would for someone like a wedding planner. Often, we are the ones recommending other vendors and not the ones that get recommended ourselves. Not always, though!
Don’t ever underestimate the wedding venues that might send couples your way or the cake designer with a lot of friends (that look a lot like your ideal client!) getting married soon.
When I started my business, I put a lot of effort into making as many connections as possible, and I have seen this investment pay off tenfold. As in-person events start to safely open up again, get involved in your community.
If you are new to the industry, consider interning or volunteering with fellow wedding pros who do the work you would love to do.
5) Instagram
I tell the women in my mastermind all of the time: the eye buys. In the wedding industry, we are incredibly fortunate to have an abundance of beautiful visuals. Put the stunning photos you have (of real weddings or styled shoots) to work on Instagram.
A quick tip: Make sure you use location-based hashtags and geo-tagging the places where you want to work. If your ideal clients are looking for inspiration and information for their wedding, that’s where they will look.
If you don’t have a robust portfolio (yet), you can get away with stock photos in the meantime. I highly recommend you take the networking skills I talked about above and put together a styled shoot (or two) as soon as possible! It is a great way to showcase your real and authentic work, but it’s also a great way to really get to know other vendors in the community. We are all in this together!
Wedding Business Marketing Tips: How To Find More Of Your Ideal Clients
As a quick recap, if you want to book more ideal clients for your wedding business and you’re ready to kick up your wedding business marketing… you need to show up where they are hanging out (in real life and online!). Just because you build it doesn’t mean they will come. If you focus your marketing efforts where your ideal clients are already hanging out, it will be much easier (and more sustainable).
Although I recommend you dive straight into my Client Cocktail for even more actionable advice, here are a few places your ideal client avatar is hanging out right now:
- They use Google to find exactly what they need (and check reviews!)
- When they are searching for their wedding, their searches revolve around the locations they are interested in.
- Your ideal client is asking their friends and family for recommendations.
- Has your ideal client already booked a few of their wedding vendors before they start to look for your service? If so, they get recommendations from the wedding vendors they’ve already booked.
- The eye buys (and we all love a visual platform). Your ideal clients look at Instagram hashtags and geotags to find inspiration and information for their wedding.
Once we know where your ideal clients are looking for you (and exactly what they are looking for!), booking them gets much easier! Cheers to booking a lot more dreamy clients in the future!
Before finding your ideal client, you must know exactly who you are talking to. Grab My Client Cocktail for a breakdown of EXACTLY how to find (+ book) your ideal clients.
Explore More Resources
- How to Start a Wedding Planning Business
- Wedding Industry Marketing Trends in 2024: A Marketing Trend Report For Wedding Pros
- Where Are Your Ideal Clients Hiding? Here’s What You Should Do To Marketing Your Wedding Business
- How To Build Your Portfolio As A Wedding Planner When You’re Just Starting Out
- How To Create An Ideal Client Avatar in Four Easy Steps
- Why You’re Not Attracting The Right Clients and How to Fix It
- How To Become A Wedding Planner With No Experience
- Wedding Planner Marketing: How To Attract & Speak Directly to Your Ideal Clients
- How To Focus Your Marketing Platforms And Go All-In On Just ONE
- 9 Mistakes to Avoid When Starting Your Wedding Planning Business
- 4 Strategies That Will Help You Book MORE Of Your Ideal Clients
For More Wedding Industry Business Secrets, Follow Me on Instagram
12 years of being the luckiest girl on the planet.💜 happy anniversary to the person who makes everything about this beautiful life we have possible.
📷 @c10ike
DAY TWO // WPI Spring Retreat 💜
If Day 1 was about getting closer to the question, Day 2 was about getting honest with the answer.
We came back together over mimosas and morning hugs (a WPI staple at this point 😉) and got right back into refinement — this time turning the lens inward. What are you actually building? And are your standards, your pricing, and your daily reality all telling the same story?
The member gives went THERE. We talked about how a systems strategist can help you untangle your process, and how saying no (A LOT) helped two photographers book better weddings.
I spoke about two important topics: setting standards and nervous system – two topics that have become very important inside WPI!
In between these conversations was room for the good stuff: small group breakouts, real talk, a few happy tears, a homemade Caribbean lunch (those pressed sandwiches 🤌), and an afternoon of feet in the pool and brains fully stretched.
Not pictured was the homemade Guac I whipped up and other poolside treats!
All these gorgeous moments captured by our retreat photographer + my business bestie @c10ike 💜💜💜
You might see the highlight reel and think ending up here was always my plan all along but you’d be wrong.
Like any good career, there have been lots of pivots and hiccups, and lessons that had to be learned the hard way.
Not seen here? The time…
- I forgot to add chairs to a rental order and ended up footing the $2,000 bill
- A client sat across from me crying that I ruined her wedding because her parents table had a low centerpiece
- I had to borrow $4,000 from Grandma Vera to make payroll, because I didn’t pay attention to my numbers
- About a hundred “dream clients” hired a different planner than me and I felt like an absolute failure
- I cried in my car before a wedding because I was completely and totally overwhelmed with the amount of responsibility on my shoulders (OK, maybe I did this more than once)
- My seasonal launch of The Planner’s Playbook completely bombed and I felt like my entire business was falling apart
…and roughly 700 other moments I’ve chosen to leave off the highlight reel.
So if you’re at the messy, nothing’s-working stage right now? Just know that if you have been to one wedding in your life, you are starting with more experience than I had.
I’m getting ready to embark on an exciting new chapter that I cannot wait to share with you… it’s big, and scary, and I’m sure in another few years I’ll have a lot more lore to share… but in the meantime…
Cheers to all the ups and downs I’ve experienced over the last 19 years!
And a special thanks to the photographers who made a lot of this lore possible: @c10ike @allanzepedaphoto @stevedepino @withincreative @robertandkathleen @thebrandedbosslady 💜🫶🏼😘
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. 🤍
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