Rethink Your Marketing When You’re At The Top Of Your Game
Are you a wedding or event business and at the top of your game? Are you fully booked out for this coming year, and the foreseeable future? Do you feel like things in your business are humming along just fine? If this is you and your business, it’s time for you to rethink your marketing strategy. If you’re a wedding industry veteran who has been around for a long time, this is the time to double down on marketing in a new, fresh way that’s unlike how you approached marketing in the past. I’m sharing some thoughts on reimagining your marketing when you don’t necessarily need more business - for right now. Because, let’s be honest, marketing hits differently when things are going well.
Photo Credit: Carter Rose Photography from Engage Summits - Engage!23 The Boca Raton
Too often I hear from seasoned wedding and event professionals that they don’t invest in marketing. They’re too old. Too busy. Too tired. Too confused. Too frustrated. Too overwhelmed. And frankly, they’re booked at the current moment, and don’t really see the point given all that they have on their to do list.
They neglect their website. They stop making the effort. They’re apathetic when it comes to marketing. Maybe they spend what little time they have phoning it in on social media, or checking the box when it comes to building their referral network.
Sounds Familiar
When you’re at the top of your game, this is the time to take your newbie hat off, and put your expert hat on when it comes to your marketing. Because, marketing at this stage of your business, is not about bringing in new business, it’s about being in control of your brand’s image. It’s about being relevant. It’s about setting up your business - right now - for the future, whatever that future may be in this fast paced, ever-changing, unpredictable digital age.
It’s about exploring new and different marketing tools, platforms, systems, and tactics - right now. Not waiting for the changes to pass you right by. Marketing when you’re not new is about taking up space, and joining the conversation to establish yourself as the expert that you are.
Neglect and apathy when it comes to marketing at any stage of your business, but most certainly when you’re at the top, is a recipe for getting left behind as our creative wedding and event industry, this economy, and our future clients evolve.
Marketing Is Your Job
To be clear, when I talk about marketing, I’m referring to those things that we do in our business to get our name, our work, our services, and our brand out there into the world. Marketing is about telling your story on your terms in your own way.
The Internet has brought a lot of things in business, that’s for sure. But, as a business owner, especially one in the wedding and event industry who is in constant need for new clients with each year, it has put you in charge of your marketing. You can’t rely on anyone or anything to promote your business anymore. What could once be farmed out to editors or algorithms, is no longer effective.
Marketing is your job.
So, yes, in addition to doing everything you do from human resources manager, to client relations, to guest experience director, to chief financial officer, to creative director to customer relations, you’re also the marketing director.
Take Up Space
The Internet is a big place. Like huge. There’s more than enough space to go around, but it’s up to you to claim it. No one will do that for you.
Whether you’re on your website, or social media or at an industry conference, marketing when you’re a seasoned business in the wedding and event business isn’t necessarily about getting new business anymore. You don’t need more leads. You don’t need more inquiries. Your referral system is a wheel oiled machine at this point - for now.
Marketing as an industry veteran is about staking your claim, and taking up your fair share of the real estate on the Internet and in this world.
Right now, thousands and thousands of businesses - your new and old competitors - are out there sharing their ideas, inspirations and creativity with the world. When you’re so busy doing all the things in your business and don’t share your work, aka don’t market your business, you’re missing out on taking up your rightful share of the oxygen.
The problem with not taking up space, and getting your ideas or content out there is that this world is moving so fast. What took years, now takes hours, even minutes. Trends in the wedding industry used to last for years and years, and feel like they’d never die out. Now, wedding trends are over before they even happen.
When you stop engaging in the conversation. When you stop sharing your work and your expertise, over time - a very short period of time - your catalog of content and inspiration is too thin to matter.
You’ve spent so much time building and building your business, and by not marketing it properly at all phases, especially when you’re at the top, you’ll be back at the bottom again in the blink of an eye. Your marketing strategies will have to shift backwards to finding leads, and promotion just like when you first started out.
Join The Conversation
Marketing for seasoned wedding and event pros is about being a part of the conversation that’s happening right now all around you - without you. What’s worse is that if you don’t engage now, the future conversations will leave you behind.
When you join the conversation, you push the industry forward. Whether it’s a new design, or your inspiration, or your expert advice, you’re the professional. Your ideas and creative inspiration matter. Our industry wants and needs to hear from you.
If you’re sick of seeing the same things over and over again. If you’re tired of clients coming to you with ideas that have been done before, many times, that’s on you. You have to join the conversation. You have to speak up and get your ideas out there.
How else do you expect to move the industry forward if you stay silent? Potential future clients only know what we, as a whole industry, have provided to them in terms of creativity, inspiration and ideas. If we provide them with nothing, they are forced to keep recycling the same trends over and over and over again.
How do you join the conversation? Market your business. Get your ideas out there. Share your content. Post your advice, your tips, your creativity. Get your inspiration and expertise out of the unopened galleries, and beyond the folders on your desktop, and join the conversation.
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With that, I encourage all of you seasoned wedding and event pros who are the top of your game - and there are many of you, I know - don’t be afraid to market your business a little differently than you did when you were just starting out.
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 advice and thought nuggets in 100 words or less!