How To Go From Trendy To Iconic With Your Marketing
When you’re fully booked (at the moment) with clients, and you’ve been in the wedding and event industry for some time, how do you position your business so that you’re not just like all the newbies with a social media account? How do you prove to future leads and potential clients who are having a wedding or planning and event that your business is legit? That you’re the real deal? That you’re more than an expert, you’re an icon?
I spend a lot of time giving wedding and event business marketing tips and sharing advice for what to do when you need more leads and how to promote your business when your business needs more inquiries to survive. But I want to switch gears a little bit and share my thoughts on marketing when you’re the expert. How do you use an intentional marketing plan to take your ideas and inspirations from trendy to iconic?
I meet with lots of wedding and event professionals, from planners, designers, photographers, stationers and more, and it’s always the same story when it comes to their business’ marketing. They are looking to be different and set themselves apart. They don’t want to be just like everyone else. But other than just using the trending audio and doing the same stuff that everyone else is using on social media that sort of seems to be working, they have no idea where to begin. Much less how to be intentional about it.
When you have all the business you need (for now), a thoughtful and intentional marketing plan is more important than any other stage in your business, especially in the wedding and event industry. At the industry veteran phase of your business, marketing is about being iconic and solidifying yourself as a true expert. You can’t just toss a bunch of stuff up on social media and hope for the best. You can’t just trust that today’s customers can see through the nonsense and trash content, and somehow magically find their way to your expertise. The rules of the game have changed in this digital world, and it doesn’t work like that anymore.
In this post, I’m going to share a few thoughts and ideas (maybe a few rants!) about how to use your marketing system to truly up level your wedding or event business, and take it from trendy to iconic. If you’re done playing small and ready to be the legend that you know you are, welcome. You’ll feel right at home.
The Shift
When you’re fully booked (for right now) and you’ve been working in the wedding and event industry for many years, there’s a shift. The marketing focus isn’t about more leads or better leads, nor is it about what you can do to attract new business.
When you’re in your prime, marketing becomes about being the authority, and the expert. It is about taking control and being in control. Your marketing goes from sustainability to how to become legendary in your niche.
As I mentioned earlier, you can’t just post and pray on social media using the same style, tactics and gimmicks that everyone else is doing. Not only are you better than that, more creative than that, but you’re doomed to be put on par with every other business in your potential customer’s mind. And you’re not like everyone else.
You're an industry legend. You’re the expert. The leading authority in your niche and darn good at your job. Moreover, you have years and years of gorgeous events and experience to prove it.
So, at this point in your business and marketing phase of the game, you can either do something different for which I’ll share some tips for below, or you can just keep doing the same things as everyone else hoping for a different outcome.
I believe they call the later insanity, right?
Marketing That Makes A Mark
How can you make your mark in your industry? How can you be the icon that everyone looks up to? We do this through marketing. After all, marketing is telling our brand story on our own terms.
By getting our ideas, our creativity, our expert advice, our unique content out there, we go from being trendy just like everyone else, to setting the trends. Sharing our work and our ideas on a medium that we control, like our website, allows us to be the one to emulate.
We can share our full story without algorithms, or rules, or followers, or engagement numbers holding us back and defining what we can and can’t say about our craft. We can share the details, the backstory, the ideas, the thoughts, the intentions behind our craft in a way that social media with its limits doesn’t allow.
For More On This, Check Out: Gatekeeping Your Content Is Only Hurting You
When our ideas and content just live in unopened galleries, or worse, are only shared on fleeting social media posts, we gatekeep ourselves from being the expert. We don’t share our ideas and creativity and it is almost as if it never happened.
Have you ever heard the old adage about the tree falling in the woods? And if no one heard it or saw it, did it really ever fall?
The same is true with our ideas and inspiration. When we don’t share, when we don’t post, when we keep our creativity hidden away in galleries on our desktop, or shoved down or swiped past in a social media algorithm, are we really that great?
If no one sees our work, did it really happen? Are we that creative genius that we think we are?
Go On, Post More
If you want to truly set yourself apart with your marketing and establish yourself as the go-to expert in your field, you have to post more on your website.
Your website must be constantly updated with your freshest work, your most amazing work. And, if you’re up for it, your most helpful advice.
Of course, you can, and should, share your content on social media, but it starts with posting it on your website first. On your website, you own it, and no one can tell you “No.” You’re able to tell the whole story - on your own terms - free from algorithms and engagement numbers suppressing your creativity. Once it’s on your website and you’ve said what you wanted to say about it, you’re free to share it on social media.
I’m sure you’ve heard this, but you can’t take your social media likes and followers with you. But, on your website? You own everything!
Icons and legends use their website as a living, breathing look book of their work. There. Done. That’s it.
Don’t Be Afraid
I hear from many experienced wedding and event pros who say they are worried about their ideas being stolen or their inspirations being copied when they post it or share it. I’ll spare you the advice about imitation being flattery, and how there are no new ideas in this world, and I’m sorry to say, but you probably (unknowingly) copied it from someone else, and I’ll say this: If you’re an amazing creative person and business with unique ideas that will blow everyone’s mind, let’s see it.
You have the creative ideas and the unique inspiration, show us. Hiding it for fear that someone will steal it is only hurting you. Besides, when you share your creativity and ideas from past events, that event has already happened. It’s done. It’s over. That ship has sailed. And whoever steals or copies it from there is being trendy, not setting trends.
If you want to be the trend setter, post your events and your past work, and show us your skills. Let’s see what the trends are those ideas that you’ve been-there-done-that with so you can help to push the boundaries of our creative industry forward.
Furthermore, your clients are hiring you to make their event or design look unique, like nothing that has been seen before. They just want - no, they need - to see your past work to trust that you can pull it off for them. Hiding it makes it that much harder for you to book your next job.
Stop Playing Games
If you truly want to be iconic in the wedding and event industry, stop play the social media algorithm game. Stop trying to be just like everyone else. Stop competing for the same eyeballs and the same clients. It’s so boring.
In order to be successful on social media, you have to be just like everyone else. You have to be trendy and do it just how the algorithm wants you to do it, so that it will show your content to more and more people. Social media doesn’t want you to be new or different or push the envelope, it wants you to do it just like everyone else so it can keep giving users more of the same.
Social media claims it wants new and different, yet it doesn’t. Because as a creative, when you push the envelope on social media, it buries it or hides it. But, when you do it just like everyone else, it pushes it out to the masses.
Social media is literally the digital world’s version of a “yes man.”
Except that you, your business and your creative ideas are not yes men. You’re unique. You’re a one of one original. Stop trying to be just like everyone else on social media. Take control of your marketing and be yourself. You say what’s important, you decide what the future clients see. You tell the whole story of a past event or a creative design. You say what you want to say about your work, your ideas and your creativity.
Tell us the whole story, the backstory, the intention, the challenges, and all the little details that made it come together. That’s how you show the world you’re not just some wannabe with an Instagram account, you’re a seasoned professional with all the ideas one could ever need.
Being Helpful Is Being An Expert
Keep in mind that if you’re in the wedding and event industry, your clients are hiring you because they’ve never done this before. They have no time and no mental space to do the work that they are hiring you to do.
The more that you can help them, and answer their questions before they have them, the more you can solve their problems, even the ones they didn’t know they have, that’s how you go from just your basic industry veteran to a truly respected professional.
Helpful people are respected as experts. If you help a potential customer or solve a problem, it says that you’re the expert without you having to come out and say it directly.
You just made their life better and easier; they know you’re the expert.
Trust Yourself
Let’s be real for a minute, shall we!? You and I, who are wedding and event industry veterans who have been in this industry for a long time, know that ideas and inspirations only take you so far on the day of the event.
You know that 99% of your expertise is in pulling it off. In making that event happen, in dealing with teams and challenges and weather and family drama and whatever else is thrown at you on the day of the wedding or event. Your true genius is in making it all seamless and magical for the client.
Anyone can slap a Pinterest board together and call themselves a designer. Anyone can set up an Instagram account and call themselves a business. Both are free, you know!?
Your genius, what makes you a true expert in your niche, is in making it happen. Don’t forget this.
Trust yourself, trust your expertise. More importantly, if you want to be a legend in this industry, trust your experience.
Go Where The Creatives Are
I’ll leave you with one final thought for how to become legendary in the wedding and event industry. I want to encourage you to break out of the sea of sameness that social media is known for and do your part to push the industry forward. Put your content where the creators are. More importantly, where the clients are.
Whether it’s not posting events, not updating your website, we’re all guilty of being stuck in our ways. It might be because fear of failure or rejection. It might be because of overwhelm and confusion. Regardless of the reasons why, let’s all commit to taking control of our content, and sharing our ideas and creativity as a means to push our industry forward.
Be a leader and show us how you lead. Show us your ideas. Show us your expertise.
Let’s be done with recycling the same space on Instagram, and fighting for airtime on TikTok. Those are entertainment platforms. You’re not an entertainer. You’re a designer. A creative entrepreneur. Get your ideas out of social media. Get them onto your website. More importantly, get your ideas, inspirations and creativity where the creators are, where the people who are looking for what you have to offer are.
Creativity is happening everywhere and you’re missing out by trying to compete with the entertainers over on social media. If you truly want to be known as a legend in this industry, if you truly want to set the trends, if you want to be the leading authority, take control of your marketing and be the expert that you are.
*****
With that, my advice and encouragement to you, as a seasoned wedding and event professional, is to stop playing so small. Trust yourself and your business to set a marketing system that positions you as the legend that you are. Anything less is for newbies.
If you’re a creative small business serving the wedding and event industry - such as a wedding planner, photographer, entertainer, DJ, rental company, florist, invitation designer and more - and you need help with your online marketing, content creation, or your Pinterest account, please send me an email at info@juliannesmith.com or check out my done-for-you and training services for wedding pros as well as my newest course, The Pin Pipeline designed just for wedding and event businesses. I’d love to work with you to maximize your creativity and the overwhelm and work with the clients that you want to work with!
For more tips and advice on the wedding industry, be sure to check out past blog posts and sign up for my weekly emails where I’ll send you all kinds of wedding business education nuggets in 100 words or less!