Getting comfortable with the back-end of your wedding business

I’m a website copywriter, so I focus on the front-end, client-facing elements of your wedding business. However, as a business owner myself, I know how crucial it is to understand and be in control of the back end of your business.

Use this time to tackle the un-sexy, back-end bits of your business. Make sure your workflows are set up, familiarise yourself with your insurance policies, and update your tech stack. While these tasks might not be the most fun (or maybe they are if you’re an OBM), they’ll make your life a lot easier when things get busy.

How should I market my wedding business?

After you’ve perfected your back end, it’s time to tackle your wedding business marketing. The work you’ve done behind the scenes will help streamline this and enhance your output. But, it’s time to shift perspective and start thinking about the parts of your business your clients engage with.

How you market your wedding business is determined by you, your dream clients, and the position you have in the market.

Below, I’m sharing effective modes of marketing your wedding business. It’s up to you or your team to determine which methods suit your business and the strategy you’re going to develop around them.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is a popular and effective way to market your wedding business. It allows you to connect with couples, showcase your creativity, and establish your brand.

For those familiar with social media, this can be an easy and intuitive way to market your business. However, for those not used to using these platforms, it might feel stressful and overwhelming when you first start.

My tips for using social media for your wedding business are:

• Take people behind the scenes (don’t just show the final experience)
• Connect with people in comments and DMs
• Don’t spend all day scrolling — either create, engage, or take a break
• Focus on reels for growth & static posts for nurturing your audience
• Don’t neglect SEO
• Unfollow accounts that inspire insecurity or comparison

Blogging for your wedding business

Blogging regularly is the best thing you can do for SEO. If you’re a local wedding business, focus on writing blog posts that benefit those looking to wed in your area. And if you’re a destination wedding business, pick a few key destinations and start creating keyword-rich content around these.

While it will take time for your SEO efforts to pay off, it’s a wildly effective marketing strategy that pays off long-term, as opposed to the short-lived nature of social media.

My tips for focusing on SEO blogging for marketing your wedding business are:

• Conduct keyword research
• Use a combination of long-tail and short-tail keywords
• Choose keywords that are searched often but aren’t too difficult to rank for
• Add alt-text to your images
• Create and stick to a blogging schedule
• Write long-form posts that are at least 600 words
• Use an SEO blogging plug-in such as Yoast SEO

Email marketing for your wedding business

Email marketing has one of the highest ROIs of every marketing method. For every $1 spent, you can earn up to $42 in return.

The intimate nature of email marketing and the reduced competition in the inbox means it’s a great way to sell your wedding services to aligned couples.

However, because of the nature of the wedding industry, you’ll want to stay on top of your emails and make sure those consuming your newsletters and promotional marketing are couples actively looking to outsource wedding vendors, not those who have already wed and neglected to unsubscribe.

With this in mind, I have a few essential tips for using email to market your wedding business:

• Purge your email list regularly to ensure you’re talking to potential clients
• Create a highly engaging, binge-worthy lead magnet (a free resource to download)
• Email your list at least once every two weeks (once a week ideally)
• Combine selling with high-value content to keep your audience engaged
• Share behind-the-scenes information to make readers feel closer to your brand
• Offer exclusive promotions/offers to your email list to make readers feel special and privileged

Rewrite your website copy

This last time isn’t a marketing strategy, but something you need to do to ensure your marketing efforts pay off.

Driving leads to your website via social media and increasing the traffic on your website via your SEO efforts doesn’t matter if your website isn’t primed for conversion.

And to ensure your website converts the people landing there, you need connection-focused website copy. This means that if your website is low quality, overlooks your ideal client, or doesn’t convey the value of your offer, you’ll struggle to make sales.

Before developing and implementing a marketing strategy around SEO blogging, social media marketing, or email marketing, assess your website copy.

Questions to audit your website copy with:

What is your retention rate?

What is your conversion rate?

What pages are people spending their time on?

If you’re still struggling to identify if you have a copy problem, analyse other parts of your website.

Do you have a beautiful, strategic, and user-friendly design? Then it’s probably your copy stopping you from converting.

Do you have professional website copy but not much traffic? Then you have a reach problem.

Spend time analysing your website performance or work with a marketing strategist to do this and target your efforts in the right direction.

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