We started off our wedding business webinars with a big one this year! Easy Weddings Senior Account Manager and Marriage Celebrant, Belinda Letts, shared some epic sales strategies to attract your target couple, convert the enquiry, and manage your pipeline. Here’s a summary of what we learned.
1. Turning your target audience into potential customers
Before we can talk about sales, we need to understand a few things about our potential clients:
Determine who is your ideal client
Not every client is going to be the right client for you. If you’re not targeting the couples you really want to work with, or whose vision you best align with, your conversion rate will probably take a hit and you’ll have a lot of time wasted. So invest less time in appealing to a broad market, and more time in appealing to your niche market.
Are you appealing to your ideal client?
In your branding and marketing, be really clear about who you are and who your community is, rather than trying to appeal to every couple. Couples can usually tell when suppliers try to be someone they’re not or offer a product that is beyond their wheelhouse. Instead, double down on your personal brand and demonstrate who you are through your photos, your language, and your social media presence. Use the language of your community in your marketing to help attract like-for-like.
Another really important tool to connect with your community on a personal level is video on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. It can be daunting if you are not used to putting yourself out there, but people buy from people. They want to know who they will be working with to make their wedding vision come to life, so video allows you to build that personal relationship in the planning phase.
One key factor that is often overlooked is ensuring your service location or city is listed on your website, Easy Weddings storefront, and socials. “I can’t even tell what state the business is, let alone what areas they’re servicing,” Belle said.
Consider the top 3 buying influences
Next, consider the top three factors influencing couples to book their wedding supplier and cover those bases: upfront pricing, relevant photos, and positive reviews.
Upfront pricing
Be transparent with your pricing or price range. It will weed out the bargain hunters and time-wasters.
“For some categories, upfront pricing can be a little bit difficult, so list your price range or a starting price,” Belle recommended.
Relevant photos
Weddings are a visual and emotional purchase, so ensure you use quality images that align with the style trends today’s couples want for their weddings, and roll these images across platforms. Our data shows us that 73% of couples will leave a supplier’s Easy Weddings storefront to research them further – either on their website, social media or online reviews – so consistency is key.
Network with the photographers and videographers you have worked with on the same wedding, and ask them to share their professional-quality photos that you can use on your platforms. Just be sure to credit or tag them when using the images. If you don’t have many great images to showcase your product or service, partner with a local photographer to set up styled wedding shoots.
Reviews
Make sure you have reviews where couples are looking, on multiple platforms. That could be Google Reviews, on your Easy Weddings storefront, maybe even on your Facebook page.
“Couples do scroll through a list of suppliers on Easy Weddings. Seeing one review next to one supplier and 80 reviews next to another supplier, they’re going to be more drawn towards the supplier with the 80 reviews,” Belle said.
You can read more in our article: How to ask for reviews and why they add value to your business, which also includes a template to help you ask for reviews.
Make it easy for couples to contact you
If you’re on Easy Weddings, the couple will already be signed in and their email, phone number, wedding date and location will be pre-formulated. So all they have to do is write a message, click “enquire now” and that information will be sent directly to the supplier. But when 37% of couples jump from Easy Weddings to your website, ensure you have a clear Call To Action on every page.
A contact form makes things much simpler than asking the couple to send you an email, Belle said.
“I was a couple, I would then have to copy the email address, open another browser, log into my emails, paste the email address, and think of an email I want to send. It’s just all too hard. If you want to stop the bounce rate of your website, make it easier and make it clear.”
Each page should end with a contact form so the couple doesn’t have to keep searching around for it when they are ready. Keep it between five to eight boxes maximum — get the basic information that will help you provide more information.
“How the end of your contact form finishes will actually make a difference in terms of how many people are going to inquire with you,” Belle said. “I’ve tested this myself. I’ve seen contact forms end with things like ‘marry me’ or ‘book me’, and I feel like that’s quite presumptuous. By changing it from ‘inquire now’ to ‘check my date’, my bounce-through rate reduced.
“It doesn’t just have to be ‘submit’ or ‘enquire now, there’s so many different ways you can write it. For example, if you are a planner, you might have ‘plan my dream’. “
To learn more about your target audience into potential customers, watch the video below:
2. The Strategies to the art of Closing you could be missing
Change your mindset from making a ‘sale’
During the webinar, Belle referenced leading international speaker and wedding business expert, Alan Berg, who advises wedding suppliers to “change your mindset from selling to helping them buy!”
Belle added: “No one wants to go somewhere and be sold, right? But everyone wants to buy a wedding service. That’s exciting! So it’s just how we look at sales differently.”
Communicate better
Belle also added that our typical wedding clients are Millennials and Gen Z, who are obsessed with their phones, but likely won’t answer calls because the find them time-consuming, disruptive and inefficient.
We asked our couples how they would prefer suppliers to communicate with them and email was the clear winner, preferred by 82% of couples.
As a general tip, the best way to respond to a question from a potential client is the same way that they contacted you. So if you’ve started a dialogue and you’ve got a back and forth going and they send you a text — if it’s convenient and it’s a quick answer, then it makes sense to reply with a text.
Respond quickly
Your speed of response will impact your conversion rates. Our data shows us that 19% of couples booked the first supplier that got back to them, and 92% booked suppliers based on the information they received within a reasonable timeframe.
Set up your template response through our WedCRM and download the app for mobile notifications when you’re away from your computer.
“And also draft response templates to your phone notes. That way, no matter where you are, you are able to respond,” Belle adds.
What is your template saying about your business?
Tell them everything they want to know but keep your initial email short.
“Millennials have a short attention span and are generally reading off their phone — no more than two pages on your mobile,” Belle advises.
Offer some upfront pricing packages, price range or a starting price.
Couples buy based on emotion, so make your response all about them and their wedding, and less about you and your business. A great way to do that is to ask questions.
You’re starting to trigger a response by asking them some questions, Belle said.
A venue manager might ask: How many guests are you thinking of having? or Were you thinking of a sit-down meal or cocktail food?
A celebrant might ask: Are you looking for something more traditional or more laid back?.
“Asking questions is triggering a response rather than: ‘Here’s all my info, get back to me.’ So finish an email with a Call To Action. I never want to see: ‘I hope to hear from you soon’ as the last sentence of an email,” Belle said.
What is your Call To Action?
Wedding suppliers often tell Belle their Call To Action is to book the couple, but she said that’s actually not the call to action – the Call To Action is the step before that.
For example, a client isn’t going to book a venue without booking a site tour. So say something like:
I have time for an inspection this Saturday between 9:00AM and 2:00PM. Or
I currently have 10:00AM, 11:00AM, or 1:30PM available for an inspection this Saturday. Do any of those times suit you?
If they’re not available, they’ll come back and book another time that works.
“As a celebrant, I personally do my initial meet-and-greets on Zoom,” Belle said. “I know some of you prefer to do a drink in person. There is no right or wrong, but making sure they’re clear on the Call To Action and giving them two to three times that you’re available, they’re more likely to come back to you.”
Follow-up (more than once if you need to)
“How often do you follow up? — this is probably one of the most frequently asked questions I get when working with wedding businesses,” Belle said.
“It does depend on what stage of the planning process you are in and your category. If I have someone enquiring for a day in four months, I know they’re going to turn around quicker than someone that’s enquiring for a wedding in 20 months’ time who might not be as urgent to book me.
“So when they’re enquiring for will actually determine how quickly I follow up. But my first email is always super quick, out the door.”
She usually emails the initial response within 24 hours – usually within 12 hours, sometimes sooner if possible. Then if she hasn’t had a reply yet, she will follow it up with a text message later that evening or the next day, with a clear Call To Action, along the lines of the below:
Hey, it’s Belle from Wedding Belle Celebrant. Thanks for considering me for your wedding! Just letting you know I’ve emailed you with some more info. It may have gone to your junk mail. Is there a good time to chat? I’d love to organize a Zoom if you’re free?
A lot of suppliers we work with use software to automate a second or third follow-up after a set time without hearing back, which have led to bookings. As wedding musician Adam Ray said in this article, the difference between being persistent and pushy is in your tone, not how many times you ask.
To hear more about Belle’s strategies for closing leads, watch the video below:
3. Using WedCRM to Track Your Sales Pipeline
WedCRM stands for Wedding Customer Relationship Manager. It’s a tool built-in to our Easy Weddings supplier’s online account, to help you track of your leads, update your sales statuses, and value your return on investment.
Under the Sales Leads menu, each enquiry is listed by wedding date. From there, you can change the status of the drop-down menu to ‘Contacted’, ‘booked’, ‘meeting scheduled’, ‘lost’ and other options. This will help you keep track of why you’re not converting the leads.
We launched the WedCRM in 2017, so the tool allows you to download old leads and see how you’re tracking year on year in terms of your enquiries coming through Easy Weddings directly, Belle said.
“This is useful for you when you’re reviewing your marketing year on year, you can say, okay, each wedding for me is worth X, Y, Z and you can work out how much you’ve directly booked.”
The WedCRM also allows users to add enquiries and bookings that have not directly come through Easy Weddings.
“At the end of the day, we’re trying to make your passion a business, so use these tools.
To learn more about tracking your pipeline, watch the video below:
