Today, I want to talk about three weird things I’ve done to get more wedding clients at Love at First Travel. This episode is going to be different because I’m not saying, “Do these three things and you’ll explode your business.” I want to talk about subtle things and hopefully get you to brainstorm different ways to market your business beyond social media, blogging, and Pinterest, which I always talk about here. So let’s get into it.
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Table of Contents
1. I Started Selling an Ebook
If you go to my wedding business, I sell a destination wedding planning workbook. It’s about 100 pages and costs $27. My goal with selling it was twofold. First, I wanted passive income. I make a few hundred dollars a month on this ebook. I’m not getting rich off it, but I don’t promote it much other than SEO. I get many American viewers on the website, but our company only works with Canadians because travel is more complicated internationally. We work with Canadian Airlines, that’s who we have contracts with. I wondered how to monetize all this American traffic, and an ebook was the answer.
I made the ebook in 2019 and revamped it last year. I’ve noticed this ebook is a true first step and gives people who’ll invest thousands to work with us an introductory step to try our brand. Often, people reach out saying, “I bought the book. I love the helpful tips. What does it look like to work with you?” or “How do I get started? I want this date and this resort.” This is better because they’re highly warmed-up leads. They know they want to work with us and they’re educated leads. By buying the ebook, they know a lot of what we’d naturally tell them.
If people sign up to work with us and are interested in the ebook, we usually give it to them. It’s not about the $27. When someone agrees to work with us, they can have it. I think it adds credibility that we have this book. We clearly know what we’re doing and have been doing this for a long time. Even though it wasn’t the intention of the ebook, as the intention was passive income and something to do, it’s been a cool way to get people who might’ve felt cautious about reaching out to a small travel company to plan their destination wedding.
2. Added a Client Login Button To My Website
One thing that made a big difference (and I don’t have it anymore because we’ve changed our services), is when we offered full planning services, we had a client login button on our website leading to a branded Aisle Planner page. Aisle Planner was our project management tool. It sounds simple, but people love exclusive things. Our inquiries went up significantly when I had that client login button. More people were inquiring, asking what it looks like to work with us and wanting the special planning portal.
We can relate this to many areas in our business. I thought about my branding photographer – I’m hiring her for branding photos, but also for her top pose guide and tips on not looking awkward in photos. I want the deliverable, but I want anything extra. If you’re a website designer, you might offer a login for communication, a video library on updating everything, or your best copywriting tips shared with clients. It’s about getting the service paid for, but also what else?
Leaving that “what else” a bit vague can be compelling. A guide to copywriting your entire website or copywriting prompts might be more appealing than step-by-step instructions they could Google. Vagueness sometimes works in your favor. Something as subtle as having a client login button in the top navigation of my website made a difference because people see it and want access.
3. Sent Out Thank You Cards
Lastly, I sent out thank you cards to everybody. We’re in a unique position where when we’re hired to plan the wedding or book the travel, we have every single person’s address – the couple, the family, etc.
We mailed hand-signed cards to everyone: the vendors, families, couples, friends. This isn’t necessarily a direct ROI thing, but it helped people refer us. I had family members reach out to me to plan individual trips after that, and they wanted me to be their go-to travel agent, which was nice for extra income, especially as I was building the business up. We don’t do that anymore, and I don’t do it at all anymore, but my point is that I still have people reaching out. I guarantee they would’ve forgotten all about me if I was just so-and-so’s wedding planner.
3 Weird Things I’ve Done to Get More Wedding Clients
I wanted to talk about marketing practices that are not what I usually do to get more wedding clients. I hope this has shared a snippet of behind-the-scenes in my brain, life, or businesses, and shown you that you have many options for marketing your business, improving things, and making it more exciting to work with you.
It’s about staying in people’s orbit longer so they refer you or create a low ticket or free offer to funnel people in, even in a non-traditional business. My goal here is to tell you, that you have many options when you try to get more wedding clients (or more bookings regardless of the industry you’re in!).
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