By: Laura Scott, WPICC Owner and Lead Wedding Planner of Tula Events was certified with WPIC in 2009. Laura lives in Toronto with her husband
Tim, son Hunter and her fur baby Duggy. Laura’s weddings have been
featured in Style Me Pretty Canada, Weddingbells Magazine, Ruffled Blog, Rock n Roll Bride and The Wedding Co. In her spare time she
loves interior design and going to her Tuesday and Friday morning
dance class at Goodlife. Laura loves being a Wedding Planner and is
honoured to help her clients plan the wedding of their dreams.
There are many different reasons your business might not be growing.
You may have been doing great over the years and felt you didn’t
have to change a thing but then one day you notice a drop in the
number of weddings you are booking and don’t know why. Its time to
evaluate what may be causing this slump and ways to turn things
around.
Its not something I like to talk about because we all want to give
off this perception that we are successful and top of our field but
I too have had times where my business just wasn’t growing.
Last year I had a devastating thing happen, my website hosting
company got hacked and all my website content and blog postings were
lost. This caused my Google ranking to go from page 1 to page 13!
With 50% of my business being Google inquires, I saw a huge decline
in business this year.
Here are a few things I’ve done that you can do too to increase your
business:
1. Evaluate Your Business
I think its important to first take a look at where your inquires
are coming from and also track the number of inquiries coming in.
One thing I do is keep a list of all the inquires that don’t book
with me. I keep notes as to why they didn’t book, the income
lost/package they wanted and who they ended up hiring (if they
decide to share that information with me). I also make note if I had
an initial meeting with them, to see where in the process I lost them.
By keeping track I’m learning if my pricing is too high, if they are
hiring another Wedding Planner in the same price point or in general
how many inquiries I’m getting each year so I can compare to past
years.
By taking a good look at where your business is coming from you can
better understand what is working and not working. I always ask in
my initial meeting questionnaire how potential clients found Tula
Events. By knowing where they are coming from I can decide how to spend my marketing dollars.
It’s always good to take a look every year at where you are spending
your marketing dollars and if you are seeing a return on your
investment. If you aren’t getting any leads from a certain paid
advertisement it’s probably time to move on and find better ways to
reach your target market.
2. Rebrand
This is what I decided to do when I was redesigning my website after
my hosting company lost all my content. I wanted a fresh start. A
more grown up look. Being in the business for 9 years I always
managed my own website using a basic template and my logos were
usually made from an Etsy company. This was fine when I was starting
out but it was time to invest in my business and bring it to the
next level.
So I hired a brand developer and business strategist, Caileigh from
Odds and Ends Creative, who really helped me dive deep into who Tula
Event is and where I want to take the brand in the future. It was a
lot of work but it really helped me focus on what I need to do to
take this business to the next level.
I’m in the final stages of the new website and logo and should have
everything up and running soon! So excited for this next chapter for
Tula Events.
For you, maybe rebranding means a new logo, a new website template,
or new content on your website. Maybe your website photos just need
to be updated with current weddings or maybe just taking out the
ones that don’t match your target market will make things seem more
cohesive. Sometimes all it takes is a little change to feel fresh
and current.
3. Networking
This is something I did a lot of when I first started. I think that
as we become more successful we feel that we don’t need to network
anymore. Sometimes networking is not about doing the site visit or
getting to know new vendors it’s about fostering the relationships with vendors we already have.
Many of my clients come from vendor referrals and I think its
because I work very hard on keeping these relationships; by having
coffee or lunch with them outside of wedding planning and getting to
know their business. I ask vendors how I can help make their
business grow. And by having these relationships with these vendors
who are in the same class as me, I know the referrals that are
coming from them are in line with my target client. I’ve even had
the honour of having these amazing vendor friends be my clients and
help them plan their weddings!
4. Wedding Shows
Okay this one I have not done. Wedding shows scare me. I hate big
crowds but for many Wedding Planners out there they find wedding
shows exciting and worth it. With so many to choose from it’s
sometimes hard to decide which is best. But if you have done your
homework and know the type of client you want to market to you
should be able to match up with the right wedding show. If you are
like me and get overwhelmed with the larger scale wedding shows
perhaps a small boutique wedding show is best for you.
5. Style Shoot
As part of my rebrand it was suggested that I do a style shoot to
showcase “my style” and use this for my new website. Part of me
didn’t want to do one because it felt like more work but I have to
say once I had a vision of what I wanted it was a lot of fun to
plan! I kept it simple and only did a tablescape and head shots. And
all my vendor friends, who I have networked with over the years,
were happy to help.
For you maybe you are just starting out and you don’t have the right
vendor contacts or relationships built yet. This is your chance to
start making those relationships and ask them how you can help their
business grow. Perhaps they too have wanted to do a style shoot and
love the idea of a Wedding Planner designing it all.
6. Expand Your Services/Offerings
Tula Events is rolling out a new package this fall for Wedding
Planners and other wedding vendors – it’s a Style Shoot Package
where we organized and plan a small scale style shoot with the
Wedding Planner or wedding vendor and they get to use the
professional photos as they choose plus also have their head shots
done. Perfect for the Wedding Planner just starting out that needs
photos to make their business look professional and curated.
See what I did there, by creating this Style Shoot Package I’ve
expanded my target market and opened up new ways to create income.
What ways can you create more income? Offer baby showers to past
clients? Offer rental items to current clients? Maybe branch into
corporate? Your experience is valuable so think of ways you can use
it!
7. Team Player Lastly, the most important thing you can do to help make your
business grow is by being a team player. By being kind to other
vendors and working hard people will notice and say good things
about you and your business, and that my friends is the best thing you could ever do to make your business known in this industry!
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