How to be consistent in your marketing
If you’re a business owner and you’re working in weddings and events, you’re likely doing all the things. You’re the CEO, the CFO and the COO. You’re in charge of production, design, coordination, shipping, receiving, customer relations, and customer service. You’re a therapist and an accountant. You wear all the hats and then some. You’re also the director of marketing too. When you’re being pulled in a million directions as a business owner, it can be hard to show up consistently in your marketing, even though you know that marketing is important to the future of your business. Marketing, after all, is how your business brings in new business and when you’re in the wedding and event space, you’re on the hook to book new clients all the time. Here is my best advice for businesses in the wedding and event industry on how to be more consistent with their online marketing.
Whether it is a blog post, email newsletter, social media, and more, there are all sorts of ways to market your business and try to get more clients. But, when you’re wearing all the hats, it can be overwhelming to show up consistently in anything, let alone your marketing. Marketing is a task that often falls to the bottom of the to-do list because it isn’t urgent, except that the job of marketing is to bring in new business so that you can keep serving clients and doing what you love. Marketing is vitally important to the future of any business, but how do wedding and event businesses keep it at the top of the ever-growing to-do list?
Here are my best tips for showing up more consistently in your online marketing (with ease!) so that you can get back to doing your job and serving your clients.
After all, when you have not posted on your business’s Instagram account in six months, what does that say about your business? Worse, are you even open for business?
don’t be a hero
When it comes to marketing, specifically how to make it easier and how to be more consistent, technology will be your best friend. Scheduling platforms where you can batch your work and A.I. services that can write for you are all a marketer’s best help. Tech tools can help you quickly and easily create and manage content.
This is not the Dark Ages anymore. Don’t be a hero and think that you have to go it alone. Technology is your friend and will help you be more consistent with your marketing.
use what you have
Especially if you’re in the wedding or event industry, you have more content than you know what to do with. Trust me. If you’re working on events on the regular, then you have the content to show up consistently in your marketing. Don’t let your content from past events go to waste in your Inbox or stuck in a gallery never to be downloaded and shared.
Don’t create more work for yourself or get stressed out trying to create new content before you make the best use of what you already have. Your past work will be the biggest help in helping you book your next job or client.
Remember, your “old” events and weddings are “new” to next clients.
consistency is what it means to you
There is consistent and then there is consistent. Consistency in marketing is what it means to you and your business. Period.
(And consistency will be different for every business too! But, more about that in a later tip.)
There are no hard and fast rules to showing up consistently in marketing. Yes, there are tactics to consistency and industry standards or recommendations, but if you’re having a hard time keeping up with the industry standards, does it even matter what those standards are?
For example, when it comes to your E-mail newsletter, there is no rule that says you need to E-mail your list every week or every month. If every quarter is all that you can manage, do that and do it consistently.
It’s better to do your marketing less, but do it consistently, than to not do it at all.
own your expertise
When it comes to your marketing, it will help to be more consistent if it is easier. The easiest content to create is the content in which you’re the expert. I’m talking about the blog posts and social media captions that you could write in your sleep because you’re the expert and you’ve told a million clients this advice a million times and then some.
Don’t try to be the expert in someone else’s field when it comes to marketing. Stay in your lane and be the expert that you know you are.
Sticking to what you know will be faster and it will help you show up more consistently….and with greater ease, might I add.
COMPARE YOURSELF TO YOURSELF
Sometimes when it comes to marketing, we all tend to compare our business to other businesses a little bit too much. What is working for my peer? Ok, I’ll do that. This kind of comparison falls flat every single time because it’s sustainable for you.
When we don’t know what to do and we’re suffering from decision fatigue (no doubt because of wearing too many hats!), it can be easy to just do what everyone else is doing.
If a peer is posting every day or doing a certain type of content on social media, it can be tempting to fall in line and do it too. Except that what is working for them might not work for you. When you just do what everyone else is doing, it can come across as forced and uncomfortable, which leads to inconsistency. Why would you consistently keep up with something that feels forced and uncomfortable?
When you’re thinking about consistency and what it means to show up in your marketing regularly, the only one that matters is you. What works for you? Do that.
Don’t Try To Break The Internet
When it comes to marketing, there is a lot of pressure for each piece of content to have a major impact. But, when there is all this pressure to make it perfect and to reach maximum engagement every single time with every single post, it can be difficult to sustain this type of pace. Let alone unrealistic. Not all marketing efforts will be the best most amazing thing your business has ever done.
I’m not saying that you need to settle for mediocre content, but you also don’t have to break the Internet with each piece of content. It matters more to the future of your business to show up consistently in your marketing than how much engagement or how many likes a particular piece of content received.
Repurpose, Repurpose, Repurpose
The most successful markers repurpose content like a boss. They would never create a piece of content for one platform and one platform only. All marketing content starts and lives in one piece, like your website, and then it is easily adaptable for all other platforms you’re using to market your business.
If you’re running your own business in the wedding or event space and you’re wearing all the hats and doing all the things, you can not afford to be inefficient in your marketing. You have to get the most out of each piece of content you’re creating.
In order to be successful with repurposing your content, you have to be smart and understand each platform as well as the expectations of the user, but that’s a whole other post for a whole other day.
consistency matters
Consistency in your marketing is important for two main reasons. It’s important for lots of reasons, but I’ll give you two important reasons because I feel that when you know why something is important, it helps you show up and get the work done.
First, consistency matters to clients. To your current clients, it helps them to know what to expect from you. They know what they are going to get and they know when they will get it. And, to your future or potential clients, it lets them know that you’re still in business and it helps to keep your business at the top of their mind for when they’re ready to book.
Second, consistent content creation, posting, and sharing matters to the algorithm of the marketing platform that you’re using. For example, blogging regularly matters for your Google rankings, and pinning consistently matters for Pinterest. You will get more milage out of your content if you post consistently.
The consistency and cadence of how often you show up in your online marketing matters to your potential clients as well as to that platform’s algorithm.
If you’re a creative small business serving the wedding and event industry - such as a wedding planner, photographer, entertainer, DJ, rental company, florist, invitation designer and more - and you need help with your online marketing, content creation, or your Pinterest account, please send me an email at info@juliannesmith.com or check out my done-for-you and training services for wedding pros. I’d love to work with you to maximize your creativity and the overwhelm and work with the clients that you want to work with!
For more tips and advice on the wedding industry, be sure to check out past blog posts and sign up for my weekly emails where I’ll send you all kinds of wedding business education nuggets in 100 words or less!