Yesterday I received an email from a company that, for a few hundred dollars a month, will do online marketing for wedding planners and other wedding professionals who don’t want to do it themselves or feel they don’t have the time to do it. Apparently they offer a weekly blog post, tweet, Facebook post and help email an ezine a month.
Yikes!
I hope none of you are considering paying someone to do this for you. Wedding planning is a very personal business. A bride needs to get to know you and like you before she will trust you to plan her wedding. Information that someone else writes for you will not fully express your personality and your expertise, and it it doesn’t present an honest picture to your brides.
When you start a wedding planning business, you are not only in the business of planning weddings, you are in the business of marketing your services. You need to be prepared to spend time marketing online (and offline) in order to be successful. You may feel in the beginning that you aren’t doing it as smoothly as you would like, but you will soon find your style and learn to express your personality and passion for wedding planning in your writing.
And, when you do your online marketing, please tweet and post to your blog and Facebook page more than once a week! You need to offer a steady stream of content to catch the attention of brides and of the search engines. Also, if you offer an ezine, please send one out weekly or your brides will forget you. (Remember they are researching information for their weddings all the time, you need to stay in front of them.)
Check out a post I wrote earlier this year about ditching done-for-you marketing. When you read it you’ll understand why you don’t want to spend your money on these packages.
(Sorry that I’m writing about this again but I spent a lot of money on expensive marketing that didn’t work for me and don’t want you to do the same.)