Today, I want to talk to you about the very survival of your business. If you have a wedding business and you want to thrive instead of struggle, you’ll want to pay close attention to what I’m about to share with you. This is the first episode in a 3-part series where I’ll be talking to you about how you can book more weddings.

People ask me several times a week – “How do I book more weddings?” because what used to work doesn’t work anymore. The way we make purchasing decisions has changed – a LOT.

It wasn’t that long ago that all marketing was outbound and that people could only be reached in a few different ways. In this traditional outbound marketing, companies focus on finding customers. They use techniques that are poorly targeted and that interrupt people. They use cold-calling, print advertising, T.V. advertising, junk mail, and spam.

My clients don’t interrupt people from what they are interested in – they become something that people are interested in. This approach is called inbound marketing because it brings clients to you like a magnet instead of chasing them around and screaming at them through a megaphone. Think about it – when was the last time you bought something from someone based on an outbound marketing tactic like an ad or a cold call? I bet you can remember the last time you bought something based on research you did on Google, a recommendation on social media or a blog post. I bet it wasn’t even that long ago!

Inbound marketing costs 62% less per lead than traditional outbound marketing and 54% more leads are generated by inbound marketing than by outbound marketing. Inbound marketing costs a LOT less and you build an asset when you do things like write helpful blog posts. That blog post will be around forever and will bring traffic to your site for years to come – the ad you run in a magazine on the other hand will only be published for as long as you pay for it. Doing inbound marketing is a pretty fantastic way of doing business!

The problem is that a lot of people don’t know how to adapt to this new way of marketing and they end up doing what I like to call “spray & pray”. They market sporadically all over the place and just kind of sit and hope that some people will want to work with them. This doesn’t work and it actually chases your ideal clients away because it make you look unreliable and inconsistent.

You know you need to make some big changes in how you market – that’s why you’re here! You now have a decision to make – are you going to continue doing the things you’ve always done and get the results you’ve always got or would you prefer to use a well-engineered, proven step-by-step system for marketing?

Homework Time!

Your homework for today is to download the ideal client worksheet and get super specific about that perfect client that you want to work with. You can download that worksheet by clicking here and please be sure to leave a comment after you complete the worksheet and let us know what you’ve discovered!