Today, I want to help you become a better copywriter for your wedding business, but first, I want to ask you a question. If businesses exist to solve their customer’s problems and give them something of value, my question to you is: what problems do you solve for your clients, and what do they value?
This is NOT an easy question to answer for most entrepreneurs. Sometimes I STILL wrestle with this, and I’ve been in business for 13 years. Today, I’m going to share a few tips and tricks on how to data mine for your business, which will help you get inside your customer’s head and become a better copywriter for your wedding business.
Feel like you might be too experienced for this? Maybe you’ve been a wedding planner for five or ten years, and you feel like you really do know your customers. Here’s what I want to say to you: The Achilles heel of seasoned business owners is not adapting to the needs of their customers. Today’s post is for you too!
First, What is Data Mining?
Simply put, data mining is using tools to research your ideal clients so you can uncover information and patterns about who they are, what they value, and what their problems are.
Data mining is important because it helps you gain a better understanding of your target market and its needs. You can use the insights from data mining to create more effective marketing strategies, improve customer relations, and increase sales.
Here are 5 strategies to help you get started with data mining to help you figure out what wedding couples want in 2024.
#1 Survey Your Audience and Customers
How can you survey your audience to learn more about them? Surveying your audience is a quick and easy way to get clear information about what’s happening in their lives right now (and learn more about what wedding couples want in 2024). You can deploy a survey to your email list, or you can use your Instagram stories and ask questions. This strategy is quick and easy to implement, so I often encourage wedding pros to start here first!
Here are the 3 places to get started when surveying your audience:
- Send out a general survey to get a pulse on your audience at ANY time
- After a launch of a new product or service, reach out with a post-launch survey to learn why they didn’t buy.
- Schedule brief 1-to-1 interviews with customers to ask questions and get feedback.
I include actual DFY swipe files for your own data mining campaign inside the client cocktail if you want to make this even easier!
#2 Dig Into Your Recent Client Testimonials
Testimonials are one of the most UNDERRATED places to figure out what wedding couples want in 2024. Seriously.
Think about the last positive review you left for a company or product…
When a customer writes a testimonial, they often mention what they valued the most about you and how you solved their problems. The reviews are likely not just glowing reviews about how amazing and awesome you are, but they’re also telling you either overtly or covertly, what problems you solved and what they valued most about what you did for them.
Need to start collecting client testimonials more consistently?
I break this down further in my offboarding playbook, but here’s what I want you to do right now:
- Create a system to capture testimonials and start asking KEY questions (an example from the swipe files included in the client cocktail is “What were you struggling with when it came to finding a [insert your craft] for your wedding?”).
- Revisit thank you notes, emails, 1-on-1 conversations and Google reviews. Look for patterns and anything that might indicate what problems they had and what they valued before hiring you.
- Schedule post-mortem meetings and interview your clients as part of your onboarding process from now on!
Look for patterns and trends! What keeps coming up?
Can’t I just ask them to leave a Google Review?
While Google reviews are GREAT (and you should definitely keep asking for them!), they don’t paint a full story. Your customers are just left to their whim. Using a form instead helps to frame up the testimonials that you’re asking for so you can get the information you need to continue to be curious about your customers and adapt to their changing problems and values. Read between the lines – the problem you solved is NOT always what you think!
#3 Review Recent Inquiries from Ideal Clients
What do past inquiries through emails, phone calls, and form submissions reveal about future customers?
I want you to think back to the last inquiry you made to someone else’s business. Maybe you were hiring a brand designer, a copywriter, or even a business coach like me.
When someone reaches out about your services, they’re literally asking you, are you the answer to my problem and do you value what I value? They’re probably not asking you this exact question, but when you read between the lines, that’s often what you’ll find.
Go look back at the last time you inquired about someone’s product or service in this way, and you will see that you framed up your language to be asking this question too. Your customers are doing the same.
2 Steps to Find Out What Wedding Couples Want in 2024
- Add a questionnaire to your sales funnel and start asking some key questions. Again, if you want my exact swipe files I include them for you here. This step is as easy as adding 1-2 questions to your contact form!
- Next, I want you to systematize your sales process to keep track of emerging patterns, language, and questions. Go back to email exchanges that you’ve had with your ideal customers (both the ones who booked and the ones who sent that dreaded “we went in a different direction”. Pull direct quotes from these emails and add them into your data mining document.
As you start to collect more data, make sure to keep looking for patterns, trends, language, and questions. Get curious. Every pattern tells you something more about your ideal customers (and may help you identify what wedding couples want in 2024 or 2025 so you can adjust your marketing/sales strategy accordingly).
As you gain more and more insight into questions your customers might have, start to include those answers in places like your first email to a new inquiry, talk about it on your social media, put it in your FAQ section, or even write a whole blog post about it. Trust me – this will ultimately have them look at YOU like the expert thinking “She’s in my head!”.
#4 Hang Out Where They Congregate
Your ideal customers often get together to ask questions, share experiences, and find support in their communities. Especially if your ideal clients are millennials or Gen Z, right? The fourth place to find out more about what wedding couples want in 2024 is by hanging out in places where they congregate.
I know what you’re thinking: ugh, please don’t tell me I need to get into Facebook groups.
And the answer to that is, it depends. Are your ideal clients in Facebook groups? They ARE an easy place to collect data though.
If you believe your ideal clients are not in Facebook groups, we may have to search a little harder. What questions keep coming up in your inbox or DM’s? Or, what comments are your ideal clients leaving on your account (or other accounts that are booking your same ideal client)? What questions are they asking? There’s a little more legwork with this strategy, but it’s just as effective.
And speaking of looking at your competitors or complimentary vendors’ accounts, let’s talk about my last strategy to data mine for your business…
#5 Reach Out to Your Friendors and Ask Questions About Their Customers
Valuable insights can come from within your own community. If you are feeling a little overwhelmed (but equally excited to get started), I recommend you start with this strategy in your quest to find out what your wedding couples want in 2024. Talking to friendors can be a great way to start data mining for your business.
3 Steps for Data Mining with a Friendor
- Set up a call to chat with one of your trusted friendors to discuss your ideal client avatars.
- Ask them about patterns that THEY have been noticing and whether they are spotted any new problems that couples are coming to them with.
- Brainstorm solutions and new ways forward to elevate BOTH of your businesses. Remember to be just as generous, if not MORE generous, with them too!
As information starts to come in, remember to keep compiling everything into a master document you can refer back to often to search for patterns and update your messaging in a way that makes future couples feel like you are inside their head, and that YOU know exactly what wedding couples want in 2024 (and can help them get it!).
Ready to Become Your Client’s BFF And Give Them That “She’s In My Head” Feeling?
Listen – these five steps are tried and true, but if you want a step-by-step guide with a swipe file that shows you exactly what to do, you’ve go to grab the Client Cocktail. I know I’ve teased it a few times, but the swipe files and Client BFF masterclass are just part of the BONUSES. If you are ready to stop booking “anyone” and start calling in dream clients, your messaging plays a BIG part in doing just that. Grab my 4 part ideal client cocktail system and start calling in those magazine-worthy weddings today! I will be cheering you on as you do!
Ready to Elevate Your Wedding Planning Business?
We would love to welcome you inside The Planners’ Playbook, the membership for wedding planners who want to elevate the wedding industry and feel confident AF in their wedding planning business. From masterclasses and workshops to a deep-dive playbook being released every month, The Planner’s Playbook has everything you need to streamline your processes and save time. Plus – you’ll even get a discount on the CC shop!
Explore More Wedding Industry Resources
- Wedding Planners – Should You List Your Wedding Planner Pricing Packages On Your Website?
- How to Stand Out in a Crowded Market: Creating a Website for Wedding Planners That Get Results
- Want to Book Better Clients? Stop Marketing and Improve Your Client Experience Instead
- Wedding Industry Branding: How to Create A Recognizable Brand in the Wedding Industry with Brand Strategist Nicole Yang
- Should You Increase Your Price? How to Know When It’s Time to Raise Your Rates
- 8 Steps to Spring Cleaning Your Wedding Business
- How to Book Your FIRST Client as a Wedding Planner
- How To Build Your Portfolio As A Wedding Planner When You’re Just Starting Out
- Elizabeth McCravy On How To Create A Knock-Out Business Brand And Website
- Top 5 Blogging Tips For Wedding Pros in 2023
For More Wedding Planner 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
filed under:
+ show Comments
- Hide Comments
add a comment