Do you think that you need more leads?

Could increase your sales if you could only get some more leads?

 

Did you wake up this morning and say “Hey, I need money, which means I need more leads. If I can just show my stuff to more people, I’ll land more sales and make more money.”?

At Team Wedding Marketing, we talk to a lot of wedding pros.  When asked their biggest pain point, most say “I don’t get enough good leads”. Many of these wedding pros are spending lots of money on advertising or some magical lead generator program, often with lackluster results.

In reality, you probably have lots of leads, most of them good ones. You just don’t know it, because a lot of those prospective customers bounce out before they ever get to the point where they want to connect.

Let’s explore this problem and what you can do to fix it.

We all think we have a sales funnel.  Leads go into the top of the funnel, and sales come out the bottom.  That might lead you to surmise that if you put more leads into the funnel, more sales will come out on the other end.

The problem is, a lot of wedding pros don’t have a sales funnel, they have a sales colander.  A lot of leads go in the top but many of them leak out the sides.

Selling to the wedding market is a competition, and you have to get everything right in order to win. In gymnastics, the athlete competes in four skills (bars, balance beam, vault, and floor routine).  The scores from each event are combined into the all-around score. The only chance of winning is to do well in all four skills.  If the gymnast does great in three, but poorly in one, they would find it almost impossible to win.

In the wedding business, the four marketing ‘skills’ are your website, social media, marketing materials, and reviews.  If each one is solid, you will convert more leads. If one or more are lacking, you will lose potential customers to a competitor.

Consider the couple that is looking for a photographer. They go to their favorite wedding website where they find dozens or even hundreds of choices. Before they ever reach out to a particular company, they employ a strategy called subtractive shopping, where they actively look for ways to narrow down their list by eliminating some of their options. Are you among those who get eliminated from consideration?

Once a prospective customer has discovered you, they will most often visit your website, check out your social media, look at your marketing materials, and check your reviews. With even one weak link in any of these, the prospective customer has a reason to cross you off their list.

A great example of subtractive shopping happens almost any time one shops on Amazon.  A search for an item typically returns dozens of choices. Amazon offers filtering options, such as ratings and prices, which makes it easy to narrow down the options.  Then, the user can look at images, read descriptions, and ultimately decide on the item they are going to purchase.

This is exactly how couples shop for their wedding.  Something about you caught their attention, perhaps your wedding website listing or a catchy Facebook ad. The prospect was interested enough to do some more research on you, but then they experienced a marketing letdown, where something in your marketing didn’t live up to the message that originally excited them.  They know that they have lots of other options, so they just move on.

This was your lead.  Had this prospect reached out to you, you might have been able to book them. But, they never gave you that chance because they bounced out somewhere along the way.  That lead slipped away and you didn’t even know you had it in the first place!

Before you spend another minute (or dollar) trying to generate more leads, look at the journey the couple follows between the time they learn about you and the time they decide to take the step of reaching out to you. There are a few hurdles in the way, so make sure that they are low.

It is fairly easy to make a good first impression on a wedding website, a Facebook ad, or a Google listing.  These messages are short and sweet, so there isn’t as much of an opportunity to mess them up.  Keeping the momentum going with the rest of your marketing is far more challenging.

Take a look at your website, social media, marketing materials, and reviews.  If even one of these areas is a weak link, you have given the prospective customer a reason to look somewhere else … and they will!

Make sure that all of your prospect-facing marketing is in order before you worry about getting more leads in your pipeline.  Doing a better job of converting the leads you already have will be far more productive.

Team Wedding Marketing can help. We can eliminate the hurdles that are costing you business. CLICK HERE to get your free Marketing Checkup.