This August I am recording a special mini series here on the podcast all about the customer journey funnel. This is what I do with my one to one clients, so I am going to give you an insight into that process so you can work on it too.

This week we are talking about the discovery part of the funnel - this is the point where potential couples come across your business. Are you standing out from the crowd?

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Time stamps

00:05 - Introduction to Customer Journey in Wedding Business

00:47 - Introduction to the Customer Journey

04:57 - Exploring Marketing Strategies

07:42 - Understanding Marketing Channels for Weddings

11:18 - Identifying Client Sources and Patterns

It's August, the sun is hopefully shining where you are and wedding season is in full swing.

So this August, I'm going to be running a mini series here on the podcast where I'm going to be walking you through each step of a customer's journey to help you dive deep and make sure you are doing the best you can for your customers. So welcome to week one.

I'm Becca Poutney, wedding business marketing expert, speaker and blogger and you're listening to the Wedding Pros who Are Ready to Grow podcast. I'm here to share with you actionable tips, strategies and real life examples to help you take your wedding business to the next level.

If you are an ambitious wedding business owner that wants to take your passion and use it to build a profitable, sustainable business doing what you love, then you're in the right place. Let's get going with today's episode. It's great to be here. Welcome to week one of my mini series.

Whenever I work with one to one clients or ven use and we look at their strategy, one of the things we dive really deep on is the customer journey or the customer funnel.

That's every step that customer takes from the moment they discover you exist all the way through to booking you and hopefully referring you on to other people in the future. We break this down in the strategy sessions in a lot of detail.

I look to see where there may be problems on that journey, where maybe you're losing customers on that journey, and where we can refine things and make everything 1% better.

This summer, I'm going to walk you through each stage of that customer journey, starting today with the top of the funnel or the entry point into the journey. And each week we're going to go through a different area of the journey.

So hopefully by the end of August, as we go into September preparing for engagement season which will be coming around the corner, you are clear in your mind about the customer journey. If you listen to these episodes and you think this is great, Becca, but I'd like more specific advice then.

This is the exact kind of thing we do in a one to one strategy session. Whether that's a day, a half a day, or a full day with a venue team or with a solopreneur, that's exactly what I do.

So reach out to me if you're interested in finding out more about a more personalized approach to this. So let's dive in then to today's episode which is all about the top of the funnel. The top of the funnel is where marketing is key.

Have you ever thought about what marketing actually means? Well, I'm not going to go into an in depth discussion on what marketing is, but essentially marketing is just telling people what you do.

If people don't know what you do, if they don't know your service exists, then they can't book you.

Do you remember, I don't know how long ago now, maybe a decade ago, when the trampoline parks burst onto the scene, or even going back a bit further, 15 years ago, Escape rooms burst onto the scene. I remember going to my first escape room when no one had ever heard of escape rooms before.

And I remember taking my kids to a trampoline park and thinking, wow, what is this? Now both of these services burst onto the scene and the reason none of us did it before was because we didn't know they existed.

And over time, people have discovered that these things existed. They've discovered that this is a great business thing.

And now you see escape rooms and trampoline parks popping up all over the country and probably all over the world as well.

At the beginning of that journey, though, there would have been a lot of marketing that had to be done to start teaching people about this concept and to tell them why they should be going and engaging and spending their money there. See, it's the same in your business when you burst onto the scene.

When you start out as a venue or a wedding pro, you need to tell people that you exist.

Because if people don't know you exist and they don't know what you offer or why they should spend their money with you, then you're not going to get any business and it's going to be very quiet, sat in your office at home.

I often speak to people right at the start of their journey when they first set their website live or they first go live on social media and they're so super excited and then wonder why nothing happens immediately. Well, the reason nothing happens immediately is because people don't know that they exist yet. So that's what we're going to look at today.

We're going to look at the top of the funnel, the marketing piece, to find out how you can go from zero to hero, how you can go from invisible to irresistible, and how we can make sure that people know you exist and you're doing the right things at the start of that customer journey. So the first thing is I want you to consider how visible you are.

Sometimes I do this exercise when I speak on stage or run workshop days with venues where I say, how visible do you think your business is on a scale of 1 to 10? And then we start doing a bit of a deep dive.

So I say, okay, well, let me ask you, if I was to ask all of your family members what you do, what your business does, what makes your business great, how many of them, what percentage would be able to tell me? Well, for most people that's pretty high. And then we go out another layer.

Okay, well, let's do for your friends that you spend a lot of time with, how many of them would be able to tell me what you do or recommend your services? Then we go a layer out to acquaintances, then the town, then the county, then the country, and then the world.

And the point is that although we feel like we're really visible and everyone knows what we do, actually when we start getting outside of immediate friends and family, the numbers go down, the percentages go down pretty quickly because actually we're never as visible as we think we are, which is a great thing because it means you've got loads of room to grow and loads of ways you can start telling people what you do.

So when it comes to marketing, when it comes to essentially telling people that your business exists and that your service exists, where can we be doing that? Well, I've written down a few things that are going to be obvious to you, but that's the where people are.

This is how we're going to tell people that you exist. So the more of this stuff you do and the more places you are and the more you do it effectively, hopefully the more people will know you exist.

Now, whenever it comes to any of these things, I'm going to mention there's going to always be a trade off between time and money.

So, for example, social media, which is the first thing on my list, is essentially free to engage on social media, to post organically, but as everyone knows, it takes a lot of time. Whereas sometimes we can engage with higher audience, maybe Google Ads, but it's going to cost us a lot of money and take us less time.

So there's always going to be a trade off. The more money you have to throw at things, the less time it's going to take.

But if you're right at the start of your journey and your money is low, then you need to spend more time building up these audiences. So first of all is social media.

Obviously within social media, there's multiple platforms, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn threads, TikTok, you know, the list is endless. Secondly, I've got word of mouth. This is people you know telling other people what you do.

So your friends, your family members, your acquaintances, your past clients, telling people to use your services. The third thing I've got is organic search. This is turning up on Google. How are you turning up on Google?

Do you know what people are searching for to find you? Do you know how often you're turning up? Do you know who your competitors are that are turning up higher than you?

And have you thought about a strategy to make sure you turn up higher than them? Over time, that search is starting to move over to ChatGPT as well and other AI services.

So do you know how well you're performing in in AI search or is there a little bit of work you need to do there?

Moving on from that, I've got paid advertising, whether that's social media advertising, whether that's Google Ads, to get yourself to the top of Google, or whether that's paying for ads in something like a magazine or newspaper. Yes, you're going to pay money, but essentially you're paying money and then trying to get your message into the hands of more people quicker.

The next thing I've got on my list is wedding showcases or venue open days. This is where you go and exhibit in person and meet lots of people who are definitely getting married in the area where you live.

Again, depending on the. The size of the show will depend, will depend how much budget this is going to cost you.

And often the more people that you're going to reach, more people are going to walk past your stand, the more expensive it's going to be to be there. Next up on my list, I've paid directories. Now, I know these are controversial.

Some people love them, some people hate them, but what they do is they put you in front of a wider audience. Most of the directories are what turn up at the top of Google when you do search. Why?

Because these businesses have the money to spend a lot on social media and SEO and they've got all the links, they've got all of the resources, they've got all of the businesses on there and they're useful. So sometimes we're paying just to make sure we show up in the directories and getting our name out there in front of more people.

And the final thing I have on my list, and I'm sure there's other things I've forgotten, is referrals. This is when professional people, other pros in the industry venues or planners refer you.

So I just want you to reflect for a moment on all of those things that I've just mentioned and jot down which of them are currently forming part of the top, top of the funnel or the start of the customer journey in your business. Are there any that you're neglecting? Are there any that are working better for you or working worse for you?

Are there any that you prefer doing or are there any that you really don't like doing? Ultimately, if it's just you, you won't be able to do all of these effectively all of the time because it will take too much time or too much money.

So you need to be able to narrow down which ones you should be spending time on.

Now, once you know all of these different options available to you, and I'm sure there are more, as I said, you now need to narrow it down and start thinking about the couples that you're trying to reach and where they spend time. Time. If you don't already.

One of the things you should add onto your contact form, or at least into your first consultation with a couple, is to ask them where they found you. Although this data isn't always accurate because they can't always remember, it can give us a good idea.

Now, if you get referrals and inquiries from a variety of sources, you should also be noting this down for yourself. So if an inquiry comes in via an Instagram dm, make sure you mark it next to their inquiry, either on a spreadsheet or in the system that you use.

If you know that you first met them at a wedding show, note it down. If they came via a directory, note it down. Why?

Because then we can see what's actually converting and what marketing and what top of the funnel activities are the most beneficial to your business. Once you do that and you have a bit of research, you can start narrowing down where couples come from and where your ideal couples spend their time.

If you are exhibiting at a wedding show, chat to the couples who are there, find out if they're the kind of couples you want to work with and ask them where and how they're doing their planning. How are they finding their suppliers? If you've got friends who would be your ideal couples, ask them the questions.

Market research, find out where they're spending time. Is it that they're spending time on TikTok? Is it that they're going to particular shows? Are they asking their friends and family for recommendations?

Are they going to Google ChatGPT? Gemini? Where are they going? And particularly Your couples, your niche, where are they spending time?

I have a member of my members lounge who I absolutely adore and we spent a long time trying to work out where her niche spend their time because her audience is very niche. And over the last couple of years she started exhibiting at some alternative and quirky wedding shows.

And the percentage of return on investment has been better at those shows than any of the other marketing that she's tried to do. Why? Because she's going directly to the source of where her niche clients are spending their time. And it works.

So trying to work out where your clients are going to be, where they're spending their time, where they're planning their weddings, and not just where you want them to be can be really beneficial. It's also really important to note that, that not everyone is going to have the same experience.

If you look left and right and talk to other people about where they're marketing, sometimes where their marketing works well for them, but might not work well for you. You see, if wedding shows work really well for them, but actually your clients aren't at wedding shows, it's not necessarily going to replicate.

This is why I struggle when I go to events to speak and they have people on the stages that are maybe big planners, big photographers, and all they do is tell them every step that they took in their business.

Now, although we can be inspired by that, actually it doesn't always work because the nuance doesn't work, because not everyone wants the same client types that they have and not everyone replicating their ideas will actually work for them. It's very, very personalized to the clients that you want, your personality, where you like spending your time, what your budget is.

And so copying someone else's route doesn't necessarily work. The next part of this is I want you to look at current clients if you've got them.

If you have had clients and inquiries come in over the last year, I want you to note down, number one, that list of where those inquiries came from. So if you've got it or you can remember it, write it down. Inquiries first up and then secondly sales.

Because inquiries and sales do not equal the same thing. Sometimes I speak to clients and they say, yeah, this directory is working so well for us. We have a hundred inquiries a month.

But when we break it down into sales, actually the percentage of inquiries to sales is so low.

Whereas something else that they're doing, for example, a wedding show, maybe they had 10 names on a list, but five of them turned into sales, well, suddenly that's 50% conversion rate. That's much better than a hundred inquiries that turn into nothing.

So I want you to go through your past year or two of clients inquiries and sales and work out where they came from. From this, you will start to see some patterns. We do this every month in the members lounge.

We have something called lounge calls, where my members jump on zoom calls with me and we go through a series of questions to look back on the month that's just been.

And one of the things I ask them to look at every month is the amount of inquiries, the amount of sales, and then where those sales and inquiries came from so they can notice patterns. Sometimes we get caught up with shiny object syndrome.

We're excited about something new, a new social media platform, a new form of video, a new wedding show down the road. And we don't realize that actually what's working better for us is organic search, the blogs we're writing, the people we're meeting.

And so actually we need to double down on the things that are working really well. So do that piece of work, work out where your inquiries are coming from, where your sales have come from, and start looking for patterns.

And when you're thinking about where your marketing budget is going to be best spent for the next year, you need to look at that. Because if it's working, you want to do more of it rather than trying to add new things in.

And if you're spending a lot of time on something or a lot of money on something and it's not working, that's a sign you need to change.

Either you need to change the method that you're doing, maybe you need to change something about that, or maybe you need to stop doing it entirely because it's just a waste of your time or money.

Once you've done all of those exercises, once you understand all the different platforms and the places you can tell people about your business, once you understand where your current inquiries are coming from, and once you understand where your couples are looking for their wedding vendors and venues, you should be able to start to develop a plan for the top of the funnel or that start of that customer journey to work out where you're spending time. Now, I recommend that you do this on a quarterly basis and you review it every quarter so you have your focus.

And then after a quarter you look and you go, was that working? Is it worth the time and investment? Is it worth the money I'm spending on it? Do I need to change something ready for the next quarter?

Once a year isn't often enough and once a month is too frequently because it doesn't give you time to actually see results. And sometimes it can take two or three quarters of doing something well to see the results. So don't give up on it straight away.

Once you know where you need to be to start shouting your messages, you need to know what messages you need to shout. So I want to know what makes you different from your competitors? Is it that you have a unique service that no one offers?

Or if you have a service that lots of people offer, what makes you different? What makes me recommend you? What would someone be looking for for me to have your name and your business spring into mind?

Start having a think about that, because that should be your key. Marketing messages. If you want to be found, you need to be known for something. If you're vanilla, you just blend in with the crowd.

Everyone is just going to compete on price because you're the same as every other photographer, florist, celebrant in your area.

But if there's something that makes you different, if there's something that you can say, we're the people that do this, I'm the person that does this, I do this differently, my service is different for this reason, then that's going to really help you stand out, especially in the age of the marketing theme parks that we're living in.

So, as a final piece today, as we come to the end of this short mini episode all about the customer journey, I want you to start thinking about what makes you different and how you can start shouting those messages from the rooftops in all of the different areas to attract people to take the next step on your customer journey. I'll be back next week. We're going to be talking all about how to turn them from a looker into an inquirer in the next part of the funnel.