No matter how long you have been in business you will experience up’s and down’s; from financial challenges to balancing your work load with your personal life - we have all been there. To be honest it seems to come in waves, one minute you are feeling like you need to book more events and the next you feel like you are going to need help to keep up with your workload. Through these struggles, we make decisions on what we feel is the next step for our business.

Whether it is adding more staff or training current staff to take more of active role with clients and become lead planners, outsourcing social media or other administrative tasks, raising your prices or expanding into new markets - these are all decisions that will bring pro’s and con’s but you have to evaluate the risk and benefit to determine if it is the best path for you.

When I hit 7 years into my planning business, something changed. Maybe it paralled with also having two small children at home but I began to value my time enough to start being much more selective to inquiries (learning to say no!) and to felt confident in the pricing that I was sending out in proposals. What I was looking for in education was something that went beyond how to start a wedding planning business, beyond how to grow my portfolio or how to price my services. I wanted to see into the backend of running a business - advice on the best practices for taxes, training staff and keeping everyone engaged, improving my client experience and really how to scale.

On this search for education, I came across a lot of great industry professionals who are killing it with courses and speaking engagements - each have a specific niche such as pricing for profit, social media, contracts, etc. Maybe I was looking for a unicorn of educational courses! The point is, the mission I set out on was to find these key business practices and apply them to the wedding industry. I am so excited to bring you the newest set of strategy sessions!

Before we get to the new strategy sessions I would love to make sure that you have joined our Free Facebook Group - Wedding Planners Mastermind Group so that you can catch up on our previous strategy sessions available in PDF format and you can watch some of our replays in the group as well. Stay tuned for the first Strategy Session in the Step-up Series next week, released on Monday March 25th.

Should wedding planners participate in bridal shows and advertise in magazines? Here are some thoughts on the powerful tools you should be leveraging to market your business!

Watch the video below from our Visibility Challenge to see an overview on Facebook Page Manager and Ad Manager for the functions and tools you can use to make sure that your wedding planning business stands out on Facebook!

What has worked well for your business over the years?

What are your thoughts when it comes to determining your advertising budget for the year, have you decided to go the traditional route and stick to local bridal shows? Can you definitively show the return on investment (ROI) from participating in shows if you consider the time you allocate to planning out your booth, designing print materials, working the show and following up on leads after the show?
Personally, I believe that with Facebook and Instagram, among a strong email sequence you can not only reach the same number of people who would have attended the shows, but market to them for under 1/3 of the cost and capture the data much more effectively then having sign-ups in the bridal show booth. Now, I can already hear the wheels turning - what about the couples who want to meet us in person at the show? Won’t they just book another planner instead? If you have your ads ready to go the week of the show, and dialed in to the target demographic you can instead focus on meeting these couples after they have already viewed your website, social media etc and will be a much smoother sale in most cases!

{Join the challenge} If you’re looking for more tips on stepping up your social media game, check out the free 5 Day Visibility Challenge and join us in the Wedding Planner Mastermind Group on Facebook to meet your wedding planning peers!