Paid advertising can be one of the fastest ways to grow your wedding business... if you're doing it correctly. In this episode of Mind Your Wedding Business, Kevin sits down with Mark Chapman, Founder of The I Do Society, to discuss the biggest mistakes wedding professionals make with paid advertising and how to build a strategy that actually brings in qualified leads.

Mark shares why most businesses waste money by relying on a single advertising platform, how today's couples really shop for wedding vendors, and why showing up in multiple places is more important than ever. He covers everything from Google Ads and Meta to website optimization and lead follow-up; this episode is packed with practical advice to help you make smarter marketing decisions.

If you've ever wondered whether paid advertising is worth the investment, or why your campaigns haven't delivered the results you expected, this episode will help you rethink your strategy.

Mark Chapman is the Founder of The I Do Society and one of the wedding industry's leading experts on paid advertising. His team helps wedding businesses use Google Ads, Meta Ads, and TikTok Ads to reach their ideal couples and turn clicks into bookings. After discovering the power of paid advertising while growing his own family wedding business, Mark has spent nearly two decades helping thousands of wedding professionals grow through strategic advertising.

Highlights:

• Why most wedding businesses waste money on paid ads
• Understanding how today's couples actually shop
• Why Google Ads alone aren't enough
• The website changes that improve conversions
• How to build trust with cold leads before they inquire
• What wedding pros should know before investing in paid advertising

Connect with Mark:

Website

Instagram

Facebook

YouTube

LinkedIn

Connect with Kevin:

Wedding IQ

Fantasy Sound

Instagram

YouTube

TikTok

LinkedIn

All right, folks, welcome to another episode of Mind Your Wedding Business. We are here with Mark Chapman from the I Do Society. And we're gonna be talking today about what nearly every wedding business gets wrong about paid advertising and why it's caused wasted money and how to create ads that actually work. And I'm gonna be honest with you, Mark, that's probably the longest title we've ever had for a podcast. No, no, no, that's okay. But I I

So long title, sorry.

I think it's important that we touch on all those because I think there's a lot of

wedding businesses out there that are advertising and not seeing any return for it before we jump into the topic, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how we got you here today?

Yeah, short, quick story. early two thousands, I was a wedding photographer, and this was a long time ago. But I was a wedding photographer, I was hustling, I was doing everything that we do as wedding business owners. I was also trying to grow my business and going to the Chamber of Commerce and BNI meetings and asking for referrals

Yeah.

and those things. And I was working really, really hard, like too hard. I was watching my friends get married, I was like living alone in an apartment, and I and I, you know, was working seven days a week, like ten to sixteen hours a day. And long story

short is that I stumbled across Google ads for our own wedding business and I started using Google ads and I wasted a lot of my own money to figure it out. But I'll never forget the day that I sat across from a couple in our photography studio that had found us from a Google ad and clicked on it and visited our website and came in and we booked that couple and it changed the game for me because I realized like I could turn my time, I could use my money instead of my time

Mm.

to get leads. And other people in the wedding industry started asking for help. Fast forward it has been

almost seventeen years with the i do Society, the company that I own

Wow.

that focuses on paid ads. and we help businesses all around the world with their paid advertising reach and convert couples so that they can do other things that they love to do, raise their children, go on vacation and stuff like that. So

Yeah.

that was the quick version. Yeah.

and that's very it's it's nice when you get an aha moment like that and it's just like, you know, and then the 'cause I don't think

Yeah.

every business owner actually ever sees that or gets that aha moment when they're going through it. So

Yeah, the aha moment.

it was a life changer. And I don't and I say that like I know people say that, but I I I don't say it like over dramatically. Like it really did change my life. And that's why I'm so passionate about

Yeah.

it. And there's so many pitfalls to advertising and I love helping people experience what I experienced. Yeah.

I love it. All right.

All right. You s well, you say almost every wedding business gets paid advertising wrong. What's the biggest misconceptions you see?

almost every wedding business wants to dip their toe in the water with paid ads. It's expensive. It makes sense. Dip your toe in, see if it works. But one of the the foundational problem that they get wrong is that it's not how couples shop. So for example, some wedding businesses are like, okay, someone I know does Google ads really well, so I'm gonna have them do my their Google ads for me. And they spend a bunch of money on Google Ads. Couples are searching Google, they click on your ad, they visit your website, that's all well and good.

But

what that couple's journey looks like is actually going back to Google and looking at all the other venues in the list or all the other photographers in the list. So Google

Mm. Yeah.

Ads actually did its job. And what they get wrong is they don't realize they need to show up in multiple places multiple times as that couple figures things out and on their journey. And so dipping your toe in the water with paid advertising as a wedding business isn't really the right thing to do because you need to, if you're gonna do it, you gotta show up where those couples show up. And today, that means Google, that means TikTok.

That means Instagram and it really can feel overwhelming and expensive. But if you're gonna do paid advertising, you've got to do it right because it's about the couple's journey, not about you and dipping your toe in the

Yeah, no, it makes sense. And if yeah, why why I know like just the other day it made me laugh because I got an a thing from Google- I did Google ads a long time ago and I haven't done it in a long time for my business and I got, hey, here's five hundred dollars, come back and I'm like, Well that I'll probably blow through that really, really fast and then that five hundred will turn into five thousand if I don't really know what I was doing. So I was very much looking forward to our conversation today. So yeah.

Yeah. And you know, that that's just

a gap between like Google's a business that's built for enterprise businesses like Starbucks and Target, right? But we're wedding businesses

Yeah.

and it's a very human journey for couples to pick whatever vendor they're gonna pick or whatever venue they're gonna pick, right? It's a very complicated, complex journey that doesn't match up with like just five hundred dollars in Google ads. It doesn't it doesn't match up. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. All

right. So Mark, why do so many wedding pros assume paid leads will behave the same way as referrals?

I love this question. I'm so glad you asked. Someone's primed you.

Yeah.

okay, let's say you are wedding business and you got great referrals. You're maybe you're down funnel from a venue and there's a venue that gives you a lot of business, and those people come in because they called you and they heard about you and they're like, Wow, I've heard really great things about you. we're interested in hiring you. Well, in a paid advertising scenario, if it's a click from Google or a click from Instagram ad or

TikTok or something like that. They don't know you, they don't like you, they don't trust you, and they don't act the same.

Mm.

And it's okay because they don't know you just yet or don't trust you just yet, but you have to work a little bit harder to warm up those people who don't know anything about you. And it's fair that they don't know anything. It's okay it's fair that they're asking like the dumb basic questions, right? Because

Yeah.

they've never planned a wedding before. And

Yeah.

this is the first time they're clicking on ads for a DJ or a photographer or whatever, right? So,

Cold traffic from paid advertising is not the same as those warm leads, and it doesn't mean that it's bad, just a different process.

Okay. the cold audience, let's go back to that. Like how long does it take to warm them up? is it a longer, harder process? I mean I'm imagining it is, but 'cause like we get referrals from venues all the time. They call, they look at our stuff, get our pricing, and pretty much book. So it's an easy process. So it how much harder is it with the cold?

It's

a lot harder, but here's the recipe. Seeing you in multiple places multiple times is important. They

Okay.

need to see what makes you different in multiple places multiple times. They need to see your

okay.

pricing. pricing is really important. Price transparency. I know 10 years ago it was like, don't do it, or like people were on the fence, but like I will die on the

No. Yeah.

hill. That no one from a paid ad campaign who doesn't know your pricing is gonna call you. So

Yeah.

being transparent with your pricing very upfront on your website is very important. And then also adjusting

your communication strategy to a cold audience. A lot of times

Okay.

if it's a warm referral, people will forgive the fact that you sent them a 10 page email and they're not reading the whole thing, but they trust you already because someone referred you. If it's someone from a cold audience and you and they like on on your website and they fill out your form and they put their phone number in, pro kind of assuming that you're going to text them, that's that's a whole conversation. We'll put a pin in that.

But like let's

Yeah.

say they put the phone number in and they're giving you their phone number and you send them a ten page long email, like you have not really met their expectations. And so and since they don't trust you already, they're not gonna forgive the gap in communication that they feel from you.

Yeah, because you really gotta meet where they are now. I mean, and I feel like today's couples, some of them are DMing you through Instagram or TikTok and some of them are wanting to

Totally.

t yeah, wanting to text and so you know, you you

Yeah.

so you you have to meet them where they are. I I think that's a big you know. you do you know Tom? yeah, yeah, yeah.

And as painful as that is, like you you

'cause I I know as a business owner, I know that I've got four email addresses, I've got text messages- like it's crazy. That's the

Yeah.

reality of doing business though, especially with consumers.

Yeah. Do you know Tom Chelednik from the knot at all? So yeah, tom so yeah,

Yes, love Tom. Yeah.

t- Tom said something that's stuck with me for a long time is that he said if you if we continue to do our business the way we've always done it, you know, like going back and not making any changes, we're gonna be basically non existent in two to three years because this

Yeah.

new group of of brides and couples that are coming into the market are very they're they're different. They're changing. And if we don't change with them, we're gonna become a dinosaur and they you know.

be out out there. So yeah, it really is. Yeah, yeah.

It's so true. And you know what? We were those couples too, right? Like I think that

you know, I I don't know how old you are. I I'll I'm forty six, so like when you know, when I was in my twenties

I'm older than you.

the yellow pages was a thing, right? Like you go down

Yeah.

so so businesses that we reached out to when we were a young young couple, we they had to adapt to us too. It's just the nature of doing business.

Well, I I mean I've been in business so long that having a yellow page ad was a a big deal, like and getting your name bolded and

Yeah.

you know, and having the ad and it was big

Yeah.

money. It was big money. But it but it worked back then.

So yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Those were the days. Yeah.

So so all right, Mark, how should wedding pros adjust their messaging when they're targeting people who never heard of them before?

It's all about differentiation. And what I mean by that,

Okay.

I'm gonna use the phrase different is better than better. When a lot of wedding businesses will promote that they have the most experienced staff or like they're the best, they've been doing it forever. the concept of better is incredibly variable in people's brains. Like better could be up here or better could be down here. You don't know what better is to that couple. And also it's not a very good argument. So great marketing actually shows what makes you and tells what makes you different.

there's a guy, his name's Pete Martin, and he wrote this book about businesses that grew really fast and really solidly. And he studied thousands of businesses, small businesses, big businesses. And what he learned from his in-depth study of all these businesses was that businesses who shared what made them different, not who talked about what made them better. Those who talked about what made them different grew better and f or grew grew faster and more solidly than other businesses

Mm.

who were just like, we're better than these guys because better is so subjective.

So the takeaway is, and I know it's high level, but you can think it through, put it in chat GPT. Different is better than better. So differentiate yourself. Tell people what makes you completely unique.

Tell your story out there. And it just I don't know why this popped in my head, but I just got back from the knot Gala with my wife, my wife and I went to the knot Gala and we spent an extra day in New York goofing around. And everywhere you walked was this is the best pizza or the best bagel. And I was like, I'm like, who's Yeah, I was like, yeah.

How many can there be? Yeah.

I was after we walked by like about 10, I was like, Man, that they're another best pizza. This is good pizza here. So it just made

Yeah.

me laugh. So

Have you ever seen the movie with Buddy the Elf? I forget it's called Elf. Yeah, yeah. And he he's walking around New York and he sees this neon

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

sign that says World's Best Cup of Coffee. And then he gets a date with the girl. He takes the girl

Yeah, yeah.

and blindfolds her and he's What is it? And she's like, It tastes like a crappy cup of coffee. So like that was

Yeah, I do remember that. It's a good one.

such a poignant example of like it you can say what you want about being better, but that's so subjective.

So what are the most common mistakes that cause wedding businesses to waste money on ads?

Yeah. I mean I'm gonna come back and die on this hill of like only doing one ad platform. the

Okay.

correct way to do it would be honestly like get Google ads up and running as well as Instagram ads at least. I'm gonna say meta. Meta is Facebook and Instagram. So use meta ads,

Yeah.

use Google ads, making sure that couples see you on Google, making sure that they see you on Facebook and Instagram, because when they see you in two or three different places over the course of a few weeks, that is going to be the recipe for them understanding what makes you different.

And and feeling more comfortable with you if they don't know you already. Even better if they already know about you from a referral source, and then they start seeing your ads and they're like, wow, this company is the bomb. Like they're everywhere. I've heard about them in person. I saw them when I searched on Google. I saw them all over Instagram. There's a subconscious sense of like trust when people see you in multiple places like that. They're like, they must really have their stuff together if they're all over the place. And so that isn't necessarily like a

detailed

takeaway of how to nuance an ad campaign, but it is foundational that I think most people who are listening are really gonna benefit most from is when they accept the fact that one ad platform isn't going to be enough to make the

Isn't enough.

difference. Yeah.

Yeah. So now like I guess the elephant in the room, AI, like what it like is that that blowing everything up or changing everything? Like how how do you adjust to having, you know, because there's no paid, you can't pay to be on any of these platforms, correct?

Chat GPT actually has paid ads now. TBD, we're testing them out. We don't really know

okay, okay, okay.

to be honest, but it actually as of the date of this recording, like ChatGPT ads have been live for about two weeks. And it's really fascinating.

wow. Okay.

Yeah. So and the Chat GPT ads are shown to people who are are using ChatGPT's free version or ChatGPT Go, which is an eight dollar a month version.

Okay.

and quick rabbit trail down that path.

What the sense we have is that if people aren't paying like the twenty dollars a month for Chat GPT and they're using a free version, there's probably a demographic there that if that's for your business, that's okay. But it's probably not for a lot of wedding businesses who want to charge a premium

Yeah.

because if the couple isn't forking over the twenty bucks a month for this tool, there's probably an indication of a financial demographic that is in play. Yeah. But yeah, people are

Yeah, that makes sense. So interesting.

using AI to research folks and plan weddings, and that's cool too.

Yeah, no, because my my daughter will ask Alexa a lot of times for the best wedding people in in Livermore, California and she gets upset when it doesn't when we don't pop up. So I don't know. Yeah, that makes me laugh.

Yeah, really. Yeah, she's like, what the heck? Yeah. There's a

really good resource in the industry, Sarah Dunn. She does Sarah does SEO. So

Yeah, yes.

she knows a whole lot about showing up, I'm gonna say organically on AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT. And I recently ran into her and talked to her at a different event and it was about she was saying how like n actually not a lot of website traffic for wedding businesses is AI. Like there's a s like five percent or something like that, maybe even less.

Mm-hmm.

Which is pretty fascinating. so in terms of like competing against organic SEO, I think that there's I don't think I know based on her data that there's still so much to be gained from being present in regular SEO searches.

yeah. I I've actually done a lot of work with Sarah and then we've had her on the podcast. She's great. So she's yeah,

yeah, awesome.

she she does phenomenal. She is like the smartest person, I think, in the wedding industry when it comes to you knowing all that. Yeah, yeah, she really

She really is. She really is.

yeah, she really does a great job. So all right. So how can someone tell whether they have an advertising problem versus like a website offer sales problem? 'Cause I feel like you can have a really solid sales plan, but then if your website is not doing a good job, then

Y you're gonna think your advertising's not working, but really it's something else.

I

love that you asked this question because as a business that focuses exclusively on ads and we don't build websites, it really is the biggest thorn in our side when it comes to this stuff. It's like we can

Okay.

you can pay create a great ad campaign all day long, but if the website isn't ready to convert, the people who get there. Let's talk about what people want to see on a website when they click on an ad. Let's say they don't know you, they don't like you, they don't trust you. Cold audience from a Google ad click. your website needs to be super transparent about what makes you different. We already beat that.

Down, but you get the idea. What makes you different has to be the headline. Not like don't have a like a fluffy headlines like the beautiful wedding of your dreams. Like, screw all that. Who are you? Where are you

Yeah.

at what makes you different? Like be super simple and straightforward. your website has to be really clear on a mobile device. So many folks are still designing and building websites for a desktop, and then they click a button and it transitions it to mobile. But I'll tell you what, if you look at your Google Analytics, it looks like crap and you've you probably

It looks like crap. Yeah. Yeah.

have

more than 50 or 60% of your traffic on mobile. So stop building websites for desktop, build it for mobile.

Yeah. Yeah.

Have a button at the top of the website that allows people to click and text you or click and chat with you. And

Mm-hmm.

don't force them to put their personal information in in order to start a conversation with you. What I mean by that

Mm.

is like there's a lot of chat functions like Twilio or things like that you can put on your website. And it asks you for your name and your email address and your phone number before you can start the chat.

Well, like I don't want to give you my personal information just to ask you a question

Yeah.

about your pricing that should be on your website anyway. So stop forcing people to put their personal information in before they can talk to you. Just allow them to ask you the questions because they've never done it before. And it's really stressful

Yeah.

and they don't have a lot of time. So click to text, click to chat, but no f no gate of no gatekeeping of like personal information. And then pricing is really important. So differentiator, click to text, pricing. Those are the three things. Yeah.

All right. All right. Makes

sense. All right. So what do we need to have in place before a wedding pro actually is ready to like invest in paid advertisement?

Yeah. So those things we just talked about about the website, super important.

Okay.

it can't hurt you to have a lead follow up plan in place. I know a lot of folks use a lot of different CRMs in the wedding industry. And what I mean

Mm-hmm.

by lead follow up and CRM is like customer relationship management platform. so someone inquires on your website and it's a really great thing to have an automated response to say, Hey, we got your inquiry. You don't have to AI automate your entire response and you don't want to because people do want to talk to a human eventually, but

You know, in today's fast communication world, if someone reaches out to you and you can have like an automated text back or an automated email back and say, Hey, we got your message. We're so excited about it. We're busy doing a wedding and we'll get back to you within twenty four hours, letting people know like the time frame of when you're gonna respond to them is really powerful. So having your website buttoned up, having your ads running on multiple platforms, and having a follow-up strategy in place that includes one automation at least, and then

Mm-hmm.

Some

personal human follow up after that.

Yeah. No, and a lot of people I've had a lot of people on the podcast, but it seems like Dubsado and Honey Book seem to be the two that are really, really ruling

Super popular.

yeah, super popular in our industry. There's seventeen hats and a couple others that are out there and then you got the few

Yeah.

people that are still doing it manually. So we'll I don't it's hard like yeah, I know it's it's really difficult. So anyway.

Bless their hearts. Yeah.

All right, Mark, what role does like a landing page play? Like is that necessary to have for an ad?

Or or you know, just good ol' website and the success of the campaign. Does that landing page do anything?

We've found that particularly with wedding venues, landing pages work really well because on a landing page, you can condense sort of like a whole website into a mini website. so we'll put a pin in that and talk about what's on a landing page after. But

Okay.

for other types of businesses like a bridal store,

Landing

pages don't work because it's all about people checking out your inventory, what designers you carry, what dresses, what styles, and things like that. So condensing it to a landing page actually works against you because those brides who discover you from an ad really just want to look at the inventory and and learn about different appointments and things.

Mm-hmm.

Too much for a landing page. And then for most other businesses, let's say photographers, DJs, officiants, planners, it's such a personal thing where like they're determining who you are as a human.

less than they are determining your service. Because if you're a human that's going to come to the most important day of their life, they really want to learn more about who you are, who what your story is. So we've found that landing pages for other, let's say like in entrepreneur like single solo entreprene entrepreneurs don't work as well as they do for venues because there's this element of like they have to figure out what you offer as a business, but they also have to learn about you as a human. And it's just too much

Mm-hmm.

to condense into one landing page. So

With a venue, you can put on the venue landing page images of the space, images of the building. You can put testimonials, you can put answer bullet point in answer questions in a bullet point format like what's your alcohol policy? Are you all inclusive? Like so that actually

Yeah.

works really well for venues to condense it down, but for other businesses, it's better to send them to your main website.

It's interesting. I would have never in

Yeah.

a million yeah, I wouldn't never have thought of that, but it makes sense. So yeah.

Yeah, and

that's based on like thirty million dollars of advertising data that we've managed each year, so it's not my opinion. Like I've a and I wanna share that

Yeah. No, yeah.

too, is like everything I'm sharing is like this is data. This isn't necessarily how I would do it or data in the beginning, but we're just sharing based on data. Yeah.

All right, well speaking of money, how

Yeah.

much how much should someone budget realistically, you know, before they can expect a meaningful results?

I want a thousand dollars a month. I want you to budget a thousand dollars a month. And I know for some business

Okay.

for some folks that is a lot of money. But I promise you if you don't reach couples multiple times in multiple places, that you're gonna spend that four hundred dollars a month and you're gonna be like, advertising doesn't work and you're gonna turn it off. It sounds crazy, but

Yeah, I w and

I'm gonna be honest with you, I was expecting that number to be higher. So yeah, yeah. No, I really

Yeah, okay, cool. Yeah, yeah.

I I I th I I thought you'd have to spend like two, three plus thousand a month to see results, but I but I yeah. So thousands

Nope. Yeah.

thousand seems reasonable to me. So

There is

a relationship between geography and budget too though, right? Like you

Okay.

can't target let's say you live in Toledo, Ohio. You are gonna spend that thousand dollars a month on a fifteen mile radius around your business if you live like in Toledo or whatever. But if you live if you're trying to target the whole state of Pennsylvania, like a thousand dollars a month isn't gonna do that. So

Okay.

smaller budget, smaller geography, and that's the recipe.

That makes sense. So like I'm in the Bay Area, but instead of targeting the entire Bay Area, target the my, you know, like a smaller reach around there and that'll probably be more successful. 'Cause I'm imagining ads in San Francisco are a whole lot more than ads out here in Livermore, which is, you know, we're forty five

Yeah.

minutes east of San Francisco.

And there's more people, there's just more couples. And so if the goal is

Yeah.

to reach them multiple times in multiple places, you can only have a certain number of couples in a geographic area that you're gonna be able to reach with a thousand dollars a month.

Wow. Yeah, that makes sense. All right. That now how how do we yeah,

Yeah. Math.

math- it's a lot of math. Well, speaking of ma metrics, like how do how should we be looking at all this, you know, paying attention, which you know, which ones do we obsess over when it comes to metrics and what really doesn't matter?

Yeah.

Every one of the platforms has conversion tracking, it's called. So you set up tracking on your website to measure did someone click an ad and take an action. Conversion tracking is really important to pay attention to because it tells you how many leads did I get from this ad campaign. It's tricky in our industry though, because like we talked about with Google, someone may click on a Google ad and then go back to Google and look at all the different things.

And then later on they click on your Instagram ad and they did convert and filled out your form or texted you or whatever. So Google deserves some of the credit, but it's not going to get the credit. And Instagram's going to take all the credit. They're like, look at us, we did an amazing thing. It's

Yeah. Yeah.

just a function of how couples shop and the fact that Meta and Google are not friends, and that's okay. So but you can track you can track. It's not perfect. A lot of people have privacy settings as well. So you can't you can't track them if they don't want to be tracked. But you can

look at and learn numbers of conversions as sort of like a a bellwether of like whether this campaign is doing anything for me or or not. so that's really the most important thing. And then other metrics would one other one which is really like an old foundational metric is click through rate. It's the ratio of how many times someone saw your ad versus how many times someone clicked on it. The higher the better. If no one's clicking on your ad and you have a low click through rate, it means whatever you're sharing in your ad, like it isn't enticing to people.

Okay.

So click

through rate and conversions really are two foundational ones that are just top level to pay attention to.

so if I have an ad that's not converting, what what do I need to look at or change? Is it the the wording, the the offer, the

Yeah, great question. I think the short answer to that complicated question, because you can test anything. you

Yeah.

know, where what people really need to know is that right now, if it's an ad on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or any other platform that has video, video ads are really important. If it's a Google ad,

okay.

it's a little bit more difficult because you only have a tiny bit of text. So let's spend some time on video ads and talk about those on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

Okay.

Let's say you are a DJ, planner, wedding photographer, someone who doesn't have like a physical space and you provide a service, that video needs to be your face. They're not going to invite you to the most important day of your la of their lives and pay you a whole bunch of money. If they don't know what your voice sounds like, see what your face sounds like and kind

Mm.

of get a sense of what you value and who you are. So face-to-camera videos are really important. If you're a

Makes sense.

physical location, like a wedding venue or a bridal store,

They need to know what that venue looks like. No close ups of cakes, don't do close ups of like table settings and things like that. What does the building actually look like? I'm not gonna go tour a venue based on pictures of cakes and table settings. I'm gonna tour a venue

Mm.

based on what does the space looks like. Is there a view of a lake or something like that, right? So

Yeah.

show video tours of the space. And the same thing with bridal. Interestingly, like brides want to see dresses in those ads, but at the same time, they also

don't wanna invite their mom and their bridesmaids and all these people to a thrift store. They wanna see that it's a really nice space that you've created for them to have their bridal appointment. So showing the space is really important in video ads.

So so it seems like social media side is more video and then Google is more 'cause you only get so- l yeah, little text. Yeah, no. Just get it.

Yeah. Google's not sexy at all. It's just a little bit of text. Yeah, yeah. And so for a Google

ad, really what it comes down to is like sharing your location and what makes you different in that ad text. Because everyone

Okay.

else is gonna write their business name in the the ad like I don't know why people do this, but like people think they need to write their business name as the headline. Like no. Like if they're searching for a wedding DJ in Toledo, Ohio, your ad needs to say wedding DJ in Toledo, Ohio, and then share in the little text underneath it what makes you different.

'Cause that means

Okay.

they like typed a keyword in that was like Wedding DJ Toledo Ohio and they found exactly what they were looking for in the headline of your ad when you repeat that keyword of the ad. Don't write your business name.

So then when it comes to that, do you need a bunch of different keywords that you're like are you doing ads on multiple things, one thing? You know what how yeah. I'm imagining there's lots

Yeah. It's it's depends on like

of campaigns.

you know, it depends on how big your business is, right? 'Cause if it's like if you're a

Okay.

wedding DJ and all you do is weddings, amazing. Like you really only need one keyword and then Google takes care of

Yeah.

the rest. But if you are a business that has like you're a multi service business that like maybe you do photo booths, maybe you do all the other things, right? So you you could create ads for all the different types of services that you offer.

If you're a venue, you could do ads for like corporate events and things like that. But I will be honest with you, when it comes to paid advertising and like corporate events and other things, the decision making behind corporate events and non wedding events is done by multiple people. So you have a lot more layers and that time frame of like when they see the ad and click on it and when they actually convert can be a lot longer. Whereas despite all the like issues of couples taking a long time to figure out what to book, at least it's like one or two people that's making the decision.

So it's shorter. Yeah.

Yeah. All

right. So so now if I have an ad, do I automatically get put on page one or do I get pushed back? Or how does that work on Google side?

For the most part, if they're gonna show your ad, it's on page one. And like

Okay.

'cause no one's like clicking on page two or three anymore, right? Especially with AI

Yeah, yeah.

answers there. So yeah, if your ad shows, it's gonna be on page one. It may not

be at the top top, which is fine, but it's gonna be there

Okay. Yeah.

on the page.

Now and is it important to boost your Google listing that you know that you have, like your location? Is that a a thing as well?

When you create a Google Ads campaign, there's an option for you to link your Google business listing. And what that does

is if someone searched with a geographic term, it may show the map and it may have your pin on the map more prominently than other businesses. And what's great about that is people don't feel like that's an ad. They're like, this is just the map. So they go over your business profile and they click on your website or your phone number or whatever, and they just interacted with your ad, but they didn't feel like it and they didn't know it.

It's awesome.

that's a good

way good way to cheat the system, you know, like make it feel more

Yes, exactly.

yeah, more organic than than like we're forcing it down your throat. So yeah, I like that. So are there

Exactly. Great question.

are there certain kind of business types, for wedding industry that tend to see stronger results from paid advertising than others?

Folks

who are more at the top of the journey, top of the funnel, mm, beginning of the journey, it works for great for wedding venues all day long because that's

Okay.

like, you know, first thing typically a lot of times, the like one of the biggest things people book and they book it sooner. Wedding dresses as well, because you I don't I mean, that's just the the journey of the couple, right? They start with the venue and dresses. Yeah.

Yeah. I was gonna say it's usually the dress

and the and the venue is where they're going first. So so I I

Yeah. And then when

you are maybe a photographers because there's engagement photos and things. Yeah.

Yeah.

So say I'm a a wedding planner and I really want to work at, venue X

the journey's taking a long time. Could I start targeting ads to that venue as my planning service or is there a way to like kind of go around it?

That's a great question. So you mean if people are at that venue, they see your ads?

Well, like I I really wanna

work at this venue, but like it's really hard to get on the preferred vendor list, you know. So like could I

yeah, yeah.

can I create an ad for that venue to maybe where I'm starting to get work there?

Like

the people at the venue to see your ad or the couples?

No, no,

no, no. Just just the clients that are getting married there. Yeah.

I get it, I get I get it, I get it.

let's walk through that. So

Okay.

let's say you're a wedding planner and you're gonna run a Google ad and you want your Google ad to show up when people search for Lakefront Wedding Venue in Toledo, Ohio. We'll use that example again.

Yeah.

if they search for a venue, they're looking for a venue during that search in that moment. So if you try to distract

Okay.

them as a wedding planner and you bring them to your wedding planning website,

They might click on the ad because they're curious and you could have a whole great page about how amazing work you do at Lakefront Wedding Venue. But at the end of the day they intended that search to be finding a venue and to book a venue.

Okay.

So you've you've connected with them, but you sort of wasted your money.

Hmm. well and it makes sense 'cause I was like, is there a way to cheat it? but I don't think there's a way to cheat cheat it. Yeah.

But I love that way of thinking, right? Because maybe

somewhere in there there is a way of of doing that.

Well yeah, and

I it just I thought there's a venue in my area that's really difficult to get on the preferred vendor list. Thankfully our company is on the preferred vendor list, but I have so many people going, they're so jealous that we're on that preferred vendor list. And I you know, I'm like, Well, just be nice to them and maybe you'll get it, you know, like this it it

Yeah. Yeah.

kinda happens, but I'm like in the my head, I was like, That would be a good scenario. Like, could you target their clients, you know, that they have? So, but nope. Yeah.

Yeah. So the clients are talking about you. Yeah.

I've never seen it work where you're trying when you're trying to divert someone to do something different than they intended to do to do in that moment. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Makes sense. No. All

right. So speaking of failing, like I just failed right there. So if someone's listening,

has

No, good.

tried ads before, felt like they failed, what would you recommend they do differently?

Well, we've talked a lot about budget. We talked a lot about strategy here. I would say reframing the failure is like just not understanding the couple's journey and not being realistic about the fact that if people don't know, like and trust you, they aren't gonna call you. And so you have to do your job if you're gonna pay for ads to build that know, like, and trust. So through your

Yeah.

website and through having the right budget and through showing up multiple times, there's no way to circumvent the natural process of people planning a wedding. And you don't want to. You don't want people to jump the gun. So

No. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, you really don't. It makes sense. Well, and then obviously we need to hire someone like yourself to help, you know, make sure you're doing it right. Yeah.

Please do. Yeah, all day long. Yeah.

All right. All right, Mark. I I I learned a lot about Google Ads I don't know. I mean, you I I really appreciate everything. I I learned there's more. You got to show up in multiple spots. You gotta do what makes you different. I think I mean that's I I it sounds like those are the the big ones that just

Multiple spots and what makes you different. And then I think it sounds like you're off to being somewhat successful. So

Yeah. You

know, that differentiation bit too, Kevin, plays out not only in ads, but every area of your marketing. And and I I hate getting on the soap- and I'm I'm getting on the soapbox again, but it's just like it's so

Yeah.

important to be to differentiate yourself. And sometimes, myself included, we're too close to our own business to understand what makes it different. And so we say better, we say these things because we know we can say those things easily. But digging in to find out what makes you different is really, really important.

And is it is unique to each person and there is something about your story or why you do what you do that is why you're different. Spend some time. Dig into that. It'll it'll make a huge difference.

Yeah. Well, and

it's really that's a big thing. You you know, we know everything about our business, we know everything, we know all the acronyms, we know all the different things, but when you you know you're someone from the outside that don't know, I I I just recently did a site survey with a a company for a corporate client and they were using all these acronyms. And at one point I'm like, guys, I don't speak your corporate acronym language. So

Help yeah help me help you, you know, like let me in, you know, let me in. But you know, that's the kind of thing. It's just like I I think we all when we get into it, we get so focused on our internally that we don't look externally. So yeah. So no. Well, that's the

So true. It's so true. We're trying to be efficient and do a great job. Yeah.

world we live in today. So it's faster is better. So all right, Mark, where can listeners learn more from you and connect with you?

Super

easy. We're at theIdoSociety.com. That's our website. We've got lots of different ways to help folks with ads, whether it's do it yourself or whether it's hiring our hiring our team. TheidoSociety.com has all the information about ways you can help. We also have an amazing YouTube channel where we host some live learning events where it's like what's

happening now in paid advertising so you can watch and learn on our YouTube channel. We love doing that. So yeah, thanks for asking.

Like it's ever changing

that like now Chat GPT, you can pay to advertise on Chat GPT. So yeah. No, I feel like it's

Like surprise. Yeah.

I I I feel like you go like every time I go to a conference and I sit in a class, it's surprise, this is different or this is change

Yeah.

in the search world and this you know, so it's ever evolving. And I think a lot of us in the wedding industry that are running businesses, we're so focused on the art side of our business, but not on the business side of our business. And so it's

Yeah. Amen.

it's it

I'm glad that's a probably a really nice service you provide there on YouTube for everyone. So All right.

Yeah, thanks. Thank you.

All right, folks. We'll have all of Mark's information in our show notes as well as the email blast that goes out. And then Mark, we can't thank you enough for being here today.

Thanks, it was a pleasure.

All right, thank you.