How To Prepare Your Wedding Business For Engagement Season
Updated November 2022: We survived the wedding boom—barely. Now with hardly a moment to catch our breath, engagement season has arrived. Those inquiries are going to start pouring in—fingers crossed. Are you ready? I anticipate that 2023 and 2024 will be unusual seasons for wedding pros again while couples navigate the busy landscape of the wedding industry as well as the recession.
Read more below to put your best foot forward.
Engagement season is coming folks!
December is still the most popular month of the year for marriage proposals. More than a third of engagements occur between November, December, January and February!
Now that the temperatures are dropping and snow is sticking, we’ll start to see those engagement announcements popping up on our Facebook and Instagram feeds again and again.
As a wedding planner or pro, this is a key time to work on your business, behind the scenes.
Is your business really prepared for new inquiries?
Whether those new emails trickle or rush in, either way you need to be ready with your best foot forward to court new potential wedding clients.
Here are my top 7 tips to make sure you're ready for engagement season:
1. CHECK YOUR WEBSITE & SOCIAL MEDIA FOR BROKEN LINKS
This is something that drives me absolutely bonkers when I’m working with my business coaching clients. If your website has broken links, then you’re seriously missing out. The minute a potential client tries to follow their nose from your social icons to go and have a good browse on your Instagram or Pinterest, if that link is broken, you’ve lost them.
I see cases regularly where businesses have input their social links incorrectly—or forgotten to update after a handle change—and it goes unnoticed for ages because it’s not where we access those sites ourselves. Even more embarrassing—happening most often in template sites or DIY platforms—business owners have forgotten to input their own links entirely. So when a couple clicks on their Instagram icon for example, they’re redirected to Instagram.com, instead of the business’ account.
Please, check on your social profiles regularly.
It’s vital to make sure all links are up to date there as well. You absolutely want clients to be able to keep browsing your work. The longer the better.
TEST YOUR CONTACT FORM & EMAILS
Similar to the headache of broken links, you’re losing clients if they can’t reach you directly. Have you ever had your emails stop forwarding? Only to realize they’ve landed in your spam folder or some internet blackhole for days, or even worse, weeks. What a nightmare! Think of all that potential revenue lost, because you couldn’t respond in a timely fashion.
Statistics have show that responding very quickly to new inquiries is an essential part of booking wedding clients. Broken forms and missed emails are working against you, big time.
Aside from engagement season prep, this is a year-round item for your to-do list.
You’ll want to make sure that your contact forms are up and running, forwarding to your inbox or CRM software. Likewise, if you have contact buttons on your Instagram or other social media page, check that they’re linked correctly and in working order.
Never assume everything is working just fine. You know what happens when you assume.
GIVE YOUR CANNED RESPONSES A ONCE OVER
If you have no idea what I’m talking about when I say “canned responses” then we’ve got an even bigger problem. They’re a set of template emails that you can easily copy-and-paste to save time, instead of typing the same responses over and over again each time.
They’re your best friend and a huge time-saver.
You’ll want to keep a file of canned responses for the types of emails you write frequently. Most importantly, a new inquiry response. If you use a CRM like Dubsado or Honeybook, make sure you’re updating templates—and workflows—there as well.
To prep for engagement season, make sure that your reply for initial client inquiries is up to snuff with the following:
typo-free
on-brand lingo
correct links
up-to-date pricing
a call to action
EDIT OR UPDATE YOUR PRICING GUIDE
While you’re polishing up your new inquiry reply email, you’ll want to check on your pricing guide as well. Most importantly, make sure this is send-able as a reasonably sized PDF—or even better as an unlinked page on your website that is optimized for mobile viewing. If the file is too large, it may get snagged or flagged.
If you’re still typing package or pricing details out in an email directly, or sending over as Word doc, it’s time to join the future and step your game up. At a minimum, you can likely save the document as a PDF in whatever software you used to create it. But I highly recommend saving time and stress with a template. A quick search on Creative Market for “wedding pricing guide” will turn up dozens of easy to use Canva templates, so you can whip up something simple, beautiful and on brand, to woo new wedding clients.
Make sure your sales guide—or whatever you want to call it—has correct pricing and package details, updated for the new season as well as new portfolio images and testimonials.
Planners in particular will want to read this post about day-of coordination.
Worth a read if you’re considering adjusting your service offerings to avoid a few headaches.
GATHER RAVE REVIEWS
Reach out to your past clients and ask them to leave a review on Google and other wedding listing sites you maintain a profile on. That social proof is incredibly important for potential wedding clients to vet you and help them through their buyer’s journey.
Couples can and absolutely will research you and other wedding vendors during their decision making process. It’s vital that you have current testimonials to share. The more the merrier!
Now is the perfect time to write holiday cards, wishing them a happy holiday, their first as a married couple. While you’re at it, don’t be afraid to ask them to refer their friends and family. You don’t ask, you don’t get.
EDIT YOUR INSTAGRAM
It’s highly likely that your best-fit new clients will find you on Instagram, through your tags, mentions, hashtags and regular browsing or suggested posts.
Now is the time to perfect your profile with your Ideal Client in mind, and make sure you aren’t making any big blunders on your Instagram. You’ll want to make sure that you’ve updated everything to take advantage of new features like pinned posts and guides, and best practices for making your profile searchable.
Don’t be afraid to archive images from your feed that don’t highlight your best work or appeal to the wrong client.
Everything you’re serving up should be work you would love to do again.
And, stop being chicken and get your face in that feed. People want to know the face behind the business. We might all hate getting in front of the camera, but it’s important that you appear regularly on your Instagram, to connect with your followers. You might be surprised to find that it’s the post people interact with the most.
STREAMLINE YOUR ONBOARDING PROCESS
Whether your wedding biz is still a “side hustle” or your full-time gig, chances are you would benefit from a little more organization and automation. We all want to work smarter, not harder, right?
Ahead of that avalanche of new inquiries — fingers crossed — how about implementing CRM software? Get it up and running ahead of busy season, so that you can take new clients through your sales process seamlessly and professionally.
Personally, I use Dubsado. I wish I had added so much sooner!
Thanks to my CRM, I’m able to spend less time in my inbox, while Dubsado automates my inquiry process, client onboarding, contracts, invoices, payment schedules and more. No matter the stage of your business, a CRM software will save you time, and give your business more clout and professionalism, to validate your value to clients.
Dubsado promo code
If you’re interested, give it a try at 20% OFF with my coupon code “KJANDCO”.
That code stacks with their sale pricing a few times a year for extra savings and locks in as your renewal fee!
There you have it, seven simple ways to prepare your wedding business for engagement season!
You can always find more helpful tips on my Instagram and Pinterest. If you’re struggling, or have no idea where to start, I’m available for one-on-one coaching. Reach out to book a free discovery call today.
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