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A Wedding Business Podcast - Tips and tricks to, grow and sustain a amazingly successful wedding business in a way that's is fun and gives you tons of freedom.
Welcome everyone to The Wedding Pro Academy podcast. I'm Nicole, your host. I'm an expert in the wedding industry and I've personally built 2 6 figure businesses from the ground up. I am obsessed with building businesses that make lots of money, but do so in a way that also create luxurious amounts of freedom. So if you're looking to build, grow or scale a wedding business in a way that doesn't burn you out and you'd love some guidance from someone who has done just that, this podcast is for you.
Nicole:Each week I'll cover strategies, ideas, tips and tricks that will give you your dream wedding business too. Thanks so much for tuning in today. Let's dive in. In today's episode, I'm gonna give you 5 tips on how to build a genuine connection with wedding planners. We're gonna talk about why wedding planners are ignoring your cold pitch emails and a better way to build genuine connections that can lead to you getting on their sacred preferred vendor lists.
Nicole:I know a lot about this personally because I am a wedding planner who is established and who gets these kind of cold pitch emails all the time. Once I got ranked on the first page of Google with my wedding planning business, we really started taking off and that was awesome. But, what I also noticed was there was an influx of random vendors that began reaching out. Just cold pitching me through email, wanting to get to know me so I could bring them business. There were photographers, videographers, rental companies, custom favor people, you like so many like different kinds of vendors that would just email me and send me these these emails that were something like this.
Nicole:Hi Nicole, I'm so excited to find your website. I am in love with your work. Your weddings are beautiful. Let us introduce ourselves. We are blah blah blah blah of blah blah films.
Nicole:A wedding videography company that doesn't just capture moments. We weave stories together that are as unique as our couples are here in Hawaii. We would be honored to work together with you and we kindly ask that you pass our details to your couples. I'm attaching a price sheet and links to our sample galleries below. If you have any questions regarding our video services, please reach out to me at any time.
Nicole:We are excited to collaborate with you. Sincerely, blah blah blah. I'm reading you an actual email that I got and they all kind of sound like this. They're like almost exactly the same. And here's what I do with these.
Nicole:And I'm like wasn't sure if I should just say this out loud, but since I'm being real here, I usually just delete and ignore. Okay, sometimes I do take like 2 minutes to look at their website and price sheet and I will sometimes check it out depending on if I have time but usually I don't get any further than that. I don't reply. I don't pay very much attention to these emails at all because I get so many of them and because if I'm being brutally honest, this kind of email makes me a little bit annoyed and here's why. It's obvious that this vendor hasn't taken any time to get to know me and they're just really wanting me to throw them some business.
Nicole:And I worked really damn hard to get where I am and to earn, you know, this consistent influx of clients that I have now. And I'm not willing to just take chances on any vendors and give my, you know, very important couples to this random videographer who I've never met and who has obviously just copied and pasted this email to, like, every wedding planner that they could find on Google. I don't know them. I don't know how they work. I don't know if they're any good or not.
Nicole:I don't have any experience working with them, so I don't trust them. So why would I trust my couples with them? What if they have, like, a terrible experience? Then that would be on me because I recommended them. So I can't take those kind of chances with my couples.
Nicole:It's not worth it. And here's the other half, I'm busy. If you're reaching out to an established vendor, they are freaking super busy. I've already got tons of videographers that I know, like and trust and who I am super confident will do an excellent job. So I don't exactly need to take a risk on somebody new.
Nicole:So Here's the bottom line: wedding planners only recommend vendors they know, like and trust. Vendors that they have personal experience with and whom they know for a fact will go above and beyond for their couples period. So if you're sending out these kind of cold pitch emails to random wedding planners hoping for their recommendations and bookings, please stop. I mean you honestly you just aren't thinking about it in the right way and you're probably thinking thoughts like this. How can I get in front of this planner so that they can get me in front of more brides?
Nicole:How can I make it easy for the planner to bring me business? How can I book more weddings through them? How can I become top of mind, get noticed by the planner so that she will recommend me to her couples? I want you to notice what's happening here. It's all about you, me me me, right?
Nicole:How do I get more weddings? How do I get noticed? How do I use them to find me brides? It's like a what's in it for me energy, and that is just never appealing. And we can feel that on our end too.
Nicole:Like, we can tell and that's why it feels annoying and kind of irritating because we know that you just wanna use us for our connections, right, for our clients. You want to poach brides off of us and that never feels very good. So try thinking about it from the wedding planners perspective instead. What's in it for them? Why should they even care about you or pay attention to you?
Nicole:I know that sounds a little harsh, but I'm being real here because I want to help you out genuinely and like get you in front of a planner that may be able to actually help you. But we get so many of these cold pitches, it's highly unlikely that any established planner is gonna reply unless you do or say something different, something extraordinary. So here are some ideas to ponder that would be a lot more beneficial to building a real connection and getting noticed by an established wedding planner. What can I offer this planner that would be beneficial to them? What do they need to know about me and my business in order to trust me enough to recommend my services?
Nicole:How can I solve a problem that they might have? What can I do for this planner for free to show them what it's like to work with me? Is there anything I can do for them that wouldn't take too much of my time or their time that would be beneficial to them to show them how awesome my work is and what it's like to work with me? Thinking about it this way changes everything. Approaching it from the planner's perspective also shifts from this, like, what's in it for me energy into what can I give to them energy, and that is so much more appealing to the wedding planner?
Nicole:So here are 5 simple tips you can use to build rapport with a planner that actually work. This is coming from an established wedding planner who gets these kind of cold pitches all the time. These tips, these strategies would work a lot better than I love your work. Now throw me some business cold pitch type emails. And I'm telling you from personal experience, like, these things would probably work on me.
Nicole:Okay. Number 1. Tip number 1. Do your research. What type of weddings are your ideal weddings?
Nicole:Reach out to the planners who do these types of weddings specifically. You don't want to reach out to luxury planners if you're more of a budget friendly style photographer. Spend more than 5 minutes really getting to know the wedding planners brand, their identity, their style of work. Get to know all about them ahead of time and make sure that your values are aligned because you only really want to collaborate with them if they're in the same sort of niche as you. They need to know that you're going to provide them with a service that would fit their couple so you want to be a match.
Nicole:So check that ahead of time. Tip number 2, you can build a connection by making it personal. Nothing, seriously, nothing is more annoying than getting an email that has been clearly copied and pasted and sent to 20 other wedding planners. We can tell right away when you're doing this and these types of emails never get more than 2 seconds of my attention and almost always get ignored and deleted. So here's what works better: build a personal connection right away.
Nicole:Are they a mom of 3 little boys and do you have 3 little girls? Talk about that. How cute their kids are, like maybe something that you might have in common that you could have picked off their about page. Look at their body of work. Is there a wedding that they did that made you tear up and that you absolutely are in love with?
Nicole:Talk about that. Is there something you admire about them? Something specific in their, you know, company page or about page that you feel connected to, tell them about it. And here's why. Because we all secretly want to know that people see us, appreciate us, value us.
Nicole:Wedding planners need this too. It's just like these little amounts of personal recognition. It's a nice touch and would definitely make me take notice and give the email a second glance, which is really what you want. Tip number 3, connect with a wedding planner who is close to the same level as you. If you're just starting your wedding business looking for your first clients, you probably aren't going to get recommended by a company who's 20 years in.
Nicole:Building rapport is a lot easier to do with someone who is on the same timeline as timeline as you. So if you're if I were a wedding videographer on the newer side, like, say, I just started my business. I'm like 6 months in. I would be reaching out to wedding planners who were just a little bit ahead of me. Not planners who had 20 years of experience or 10 years of experience, who are already set in their ways and who already had a set of preferred vendors that they use all the time.
Nicole:So try to choose someone that is new too, who is looking for contacts. That would be a lot more beneficial for you and for both of you guys to build your relationship together. Some of my best friends in the wedding industry, we started our businesses around the same time. So, I would use her photography businesses, she would recommend me, and we would do this across the board. And that's the same for like hair and makeup, for officiants, we all kind of like work together and bonded because we were starting businesses together and we would help each other out and throw each other business.
Nicole:So choosing someone that is close to the same level as you would be highly beneficial and a lot better than choosing or reaching out randomly to an established vendor who is years ahead of you. Okay. Tip number 4. This is a really cool idea that I would totally fall for. Offer them a free or discounted service.
Nicole:If you're a photographer or videographer, and I say that because those are the kind of people that I get cold pitches from most often, photographers and videographers. What you could do is you could offer the wedding planner a free photo shoot for their team. If you notice on their website that they have crappy headshots, offer them a free photo shoot of their team so that they have good, you know, photos to put up there. Or you could offer a free Christmas card photo shoot, which every planner has well, every established planner probably has a small team that they would love to get a team photo, a professional photo that they could use for a Christmas card. I know I would love that.
Nicole:So that would be a great thing that you could offer. It probably only take, like, 30 minutes of your time. Or you could offer a discounted or free behind the scenes video shoot of them working a wedding that they could then use on social media or on their website. Videographers can do this, and I know I would absolutely love it if somebody offered me this. I would love to have some behind the scene video of me because I don't ever get that, and it's great to be able to show couples what I do, not just what it looks like the final product, them seeing me actually working.
Nicole:And I wouldn't expect that this would take very much time, and it's something easy that you can do to build rapport with a wedding planner and get on their radar. It also gives you a chance to get to know the wedding planner personally. You can show her what it's like to work with you professionally and then let her see samples of your work. So, you're building right there the know, like and trust so that she knows what kind of, you know, product you're producing and if she loves it, she likes working with you, she gets to know you, she trusts you, then of course she's going to start recommending you. We as planners love recommending vendors we know, like and trust and ones that we have connections with, ones that we actually like and bond with, ones that we can refer knowing that you are gonna go above and beyond for our couples.
Nicole:And if you're already going above and beyond for me, I'm gonna believe that you're gonna go above and beyond for my couples too. And here's another cool thing you could do, you could then post about this planner and then tag her and she can repost thus bringing you both business. Okay, tip number 5: send a thank you note or small gift. Planners, we spend so much time taking care of everyone and everything. It would be really really nice to get a thank you card in the mail or a small gift.
Nicole:No you know just telling us that you see us too and you care about us too. A little handwritten note telling us how much you enjoyed working with us is such a sweet gesture and it would go a really far way. If you really want to get on her radar, a simple gift card wouldn't hurt. A Starbucks gift card or like a massage, it would be really hard to ignore something like that. And these kinds of little acknowledgments would go a long way I think with most wedding planners.
Nicole:So I hope that you could take some of this and maybe use it to get in front of wedding planners in a way that would help your business and help you to grow. And I guess the reason why I was thinking about this is because I got a ton of these types of emails in this last month. I guess because it's December and a lot of us are a little bit slower, and there's so many new businesses. And we, as planners, do want to connect with new businesses, but we have to have that kind of know, like, and trust established before we're going to ever recommend you to our couples. It's, like, too risky if we don't have that.
Nicole:So building that kind of connection and showing them what it's like to work with you and just kinda going above and beyond for us, let's us become aware of you, puts us on puts you on our radar and teach you know, like, shows us that we we should recommend you, that we can trust you, that you are someone that would go above and beyond for our couples. That's the way I would go about getting in front of a wedding planner and building that kind of genuine connection. So, I hope you found this episode helpful. Please send me an email, drop me a comment. Let me know, like, that you'd love to hear more of this kind of stuff because it's kind of fun for me sharing it.
Nicole:And, I love to know what you'd like to hear more of too. Thank you so much for tuning in today, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Bye for now.