Lead Generator – Your Knowledge Could Equal More Business

 

During this economic downturn, closing a sale is a longer process than normal. The key is being in the forefront of your clients’ minds. Jamie Wolfer and Heather Loree Fier discuss generating and building relationships with your leads. By providing amazing value now, you’ll be on top of mind when they are ready to make a purchase. They also talk about how to create a lead magnet for your wedding business and share some information about the best ways to generate leads, including emailing and relationship building. 

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Listen to the podcast here:

Important Links:

• Max Sadik – previous episode
• Wedding Pro – Facebook group
• UpViral
• EarlyParrot
• Gleam.io
• Canva
• Letter and Ink Creative

Lead Generator – Your Knowledge Could Equal More Business

Jamie: In this episode, we are going to be talking about how to create a lead magnet for your wedding business. This might sound like it is completely bizarre lingo because it’s not something wedding vendors talk about a whole lot, but Heather and I have seen the true value in offering a freebie to potential clients because that means that with a little bit of effort and a little bit of love, these people have a higher likelihood of booking you when all of this craziness settles. I hope you enjoy this episode. Get your pen and paper ready. We’re going to be tossing a lot of information at you and we can’t wait to see all your lead magnets after this.

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Heather: We’re in a crazy season and we have all started to see that people are not making buying decisions. They’re not too eager to spend money. It’s totally understandable. Jamie and I wanted to talk about what we can do to foster relationships and get that foundation laid to plant those seeds, so to speak, to harvest a big amount of goodness a little bit later this year as people start opening up their wallets again.

Jamie: One thing that Heather and I have talked about is building that relationship with complete strangers is going to sweeten up that relationship. When it does come time for them to book a photographer, to book a videographer or to hire a florist, they’re going to want to hire the person they’ve already had an experience with. Even if that’s some digital offering online, they’re going to be so much more likely to book someone who’s already provided value to their life in a time when they feel a little bit crazy. They feel a little bit unsettled, they’re not quite sure what’s going on in life and there you are with something for them to download, something for them to work on, something for them to read through that helps them feel more equipped for their wedding moving forward.

Heather: This is such a challenging time for our couples. A lot of them are tight on funds. They’re unstable with their jobs. They are trapped in their houses in some areas and have a lot of free time, but no funds and no certainty about when their wedding is going to be so they are having trouble getting traction. Us as professionals being there to support them and give them whatever guidance we can that for us is a low-cost item. Maybe a little bit in the guidance angle is huge for these people but for us cost little but in the long-term brings a huge relationship-building value that long-term is going to be beneficial for us. We wanted to talk about some of the ways you can do this. The benefits here are pretty clear but we’re going to dig into that a little bit as well. 

Jamie: As we’re talking about this, it dawned on me, if you have not checked our episode with Max, you need to read that because there’s much value that he offered in that specific episode. It makes me think of social reciprocity where there’s a psychological thing that happens when you give away something for free that people will then be more inclined to book you. It’s crazy. If you give them something, they’re going to feel obligated to give you something in return. Oftentimes that could mean their business.

Heather: That’s true. It’s tough for us as professionals if we’re working on things that are going to give us an income a little further out. I know in the short-term this isn’t helping a whole lot, but there isn’t necessarily a whole lot you can do in the short-term because if you are a service provider and you can’t run an event in your area, people cannot get licenses here in California, you can’t even get a marriage license. There are not a whole lot of ways to win in that short-term. The best thing you can do is position yourself to have yourself lined up for a huge amount of success as soon as you can. 

 

Jamie: Both Heather and I have online platforms, online courses, online things that we’ve worked on. I know for me it took nine months, it sounds like a baby, but no, to make my online course. It was drawing everything out. It was getting everything prepared. I’m still working events at the time and we’ve got a full life here at the house. Take all of that with a grain of salt because someone else, a single person with a lot of free time on their hands might’ve had it done a lot more quickly, but this isn’t something that overnight turns into money in your pocket. This is something where you can see the long-term gain out of it.

Heather: A course or an online program of any sort is a huge investment of time but pays big dividends. I know on my side of things here, I spent around 4 to 5 months working on everything before I was able to launch it. There are a lot of moving parts on the backend of building an online course. You have your systems, you have to hone in an offer, develop a plan for online marketing, a lot of tech and things like that. As a beginner for you guys who haven’t dabbled online at all, that may be jumping into the deep end. I don’t know if that’s the way to go. Also, you may spend months working on this and then when the industry opens back up and your main focus was being a service provider in person, your attention may swing back there and anything you’ve worked on may get left on the shelf. That’s why we want to suggest some shorter-term wins, some different things you can put together maybe over a weekend and then start putting out there to be a lead generation system or lead magnet for you. 

Jamie: If you put in 1 or 2 days worth of work because you already have the knowledge, Heather and I have harped this into your brains. You have much more knowledge in your brain than you even know just because it seems simple or normal to you does not mean that couples are used to this thing. What you can do is take 1, 2, 4 days. Lord knows we have the time and write down stuff that you already know. People who are not a photographer or who are not a florist have no idea about and I guarantee you it will be providing value.

Heather: It’s an enormous amount of value. You can provide your special skills and that knowledge that to you is pedestrian, basic. Everybody knows it. I don’t know it. I have no idea how to do certain things. I know there’s this stuff called Oasis. You put your plants in it. I don’t know how to do that. I know of it generally, but I would need some guidance from you and I’m a little bit savvy. These couples who’ve never planned a wedding before, never made a floral arrangement in their lives are going to love the guidance you can provide. You being the person to step up and give them this information in a time when they’re sitting around in a house and desperately trying to figure out how to get some traction going on their wedding, it is going to resonate with them.

It’s going to be something that bonds them to you in a way where they are a fan, not just a potential customer but someone who is a fan. That’s huge. On that note, one of the first things you could make is something like a cheat sheet or a quick little checklist of things to do. No matter what industry you’re in, whether you’re a florist, a planner, even a DJ, a little list of things you’d suggest that prepare someone to be a client and you don’t need to position it that way. You’re going to position it as something that’s a guide on how to do X, Y, and Z. Realistically, it might be the guide of how to prepare up to the point of hiring you. You don’t need to put that in there. We want to make this a resource that could stand alone and be helpful for the person.

You’re going to leave them hanging at that critical point where they need to turn to you when they’re ready to turn to you and ready to get their wallet out. What that might look like is for a florist, it might be a guide to how to develop an amazing Pinterest board for inspiration and all the different pieces that they should be thinking about when they’re looking for inspiration on their florals. That way they build up a nice, beautiful board, but they don’t know how to take that and go anywhere with it. They don’t want to make those flowers or whatnot, but they do have a clear vision. When they’re ready to buy, they can take that to you and move forward.

A nice little referral fee is never a bad thing. Click To Tweet

Jamie: Another great idea is how to prepare to hire a photographer? What information do you need to have handy when you start interviewing photographers? What should they be looking for? Putting together a Q&A, how do you interview a venue? What are some venue Q&As? If you are a venue and you’re looking to try to help people out, share with them what clients should be potentially looking for when they go out venue shopping. I’m sure you could cultivate the answers in a way that highlights you in a favorable light. Mostly, you want to educate people on how to ask the right questions. That’s another great freebie that you can do. It’s a quick and easy checklist. It’s something you already know. These are questions that you already answered in every single intake or in every single interview meet and greet type of situation. You’re already answering these, just throw it onto a PDF and offer that out to people ahead of time so they feel good going into that.

Heather: Building on that, another idea is a resource list, this is something that in my space has been powerful is sharing with couples the places I’d recommend that they go. This is a way for you and your community there locally to help prop each other up because this could be powerful not only for your business but for your favorite partners that are out there who are also in the same boat floating along hoping to get some momentum going soon. You could collectively work on a resource list that highlights the crew you prefer to work with and speaks to some of the benefits, speaks to maybe some special offers that they’re putting out there to get some traction going, all of that. 

Jamie: I seriously thought that you were going to say something about affiliate links. I was like, “Here she goes, Heather with her affiliates, it’s coming in.”

Heather: I do love that angle, too, but I know a lot of you reading are local vendors. You’re not necessarily going to want to send someone away to the internet to hire one of these online resources. I do personally love. Think about that local crew you’ve got and some opportunity there too. A nice little referral fee is never a bad thing. Maybe you work that into the deal that’s up to you. 

Jamie: Why not? That’s a good idea. I hadn’t considered offering our preferred vendor list as an option. I love the vendors that we work with. Are you kidding? Please hire them. Absostinkinglutely but what a great way to be a wonderful resource for people. It’s stuff you already have. It’s sitting there waiting to be offered to potential clients.

Heather: In the benefit of this on another level is, don’t you want those businesses you love to survive this craziness? You don’t want to get into next year and your favorite photographers are like, “Not doing this anymore.” Give them some love, push some people their way and you’re doing a good thing and you’re keeping this great work relationship going. On many levels, that’s an awesome option for folks to consider. 

Jamie: Another great idea is timelines and that can either be an overall planning timeline or it could be a day-of timeline. I personally think there are a lot of adjustments that oftentimes need to be made to a day-of timeline. That could be a good option. Let’s talk about the long-term planning aspect. What does it look like to hire a florist? At what point should they have their vision developed? At what point should they be contacting florists? At what point should they have their first meeting? When do they need to have the final numbers into the florist? If I had a nickel for every time a client forgot to update a florist on their guest count and there were either not enough centerpieces or there were too many centerpieces, a lot of people do forget that.

 

If they don’t have a professional in their field or a wedding planner to go, “Have you updated the florist too?” A lot of people don’t necessarily consider that. That’s something already in your brain and a great way to groom clients for yourself potentially should they come back. Now that I set up for success, they know that six months out, they need to have their vision done, ready to go, locked and loaded. They also know that you need a final guest count about four weeks before their event. Two or three weeks before when you place your order at the wholesaler, you have the appropriate number of flowers to work with.

Heather: These ideas are not only powerful for the couples you’re working with. These are also things that are powerful for you and the fact that you’re grooming these couples, if they do come back to you, they’re going to be easier to work with. They will have used this downtime where they’re holding out, trying to get their footing in this craziness to prepare themselves to be better clients, to be more organized. They’re seriously making use of their time, which all of us need to feel like we have a purpose and we’re making something happen. 

Jamie: How much even chatting with clients, for us, it’s grounding for them. “What can I be doing? What progress can I be making? Can you point me toward something to do with my hands and/or with my brain? I need to feel like this time is purposeful.” Which by the way, I love all of the quotes out there that are like, “You don’t have to do anything important right now. You can keep your pajamas on all day if you want.” I feel that.

Heather: That’s an option too and that’s something you should also tell your clients. If you are talking to people, yes. You don’t have to do weddings every day. This doesn’t have to be quarantine where it’s a wedding workshop the whole time because you have free time. Integrate that a little but also chill out and make use of the fact you’re getting more time with your honey or a good book, whatever.

Jamie: That’s the great part about offering some digital offering like this is, if people are actively seeking answers, they’re seeking something to do. They’re going to download it. They’re going to send you their email address or they’re going to sign up for your email list so they can receive that as a download because they want something to do. If it’s a digital offering and someone’s like, “I can’t get into that headspace.” They don’t have to download it. That’s a great part about this is you can equip those or help those who want to make progress. If anyone else is looking at that and they’re like, “No, I could care less about a floral timeline that’s not my speed.” They don’t have to download it. It’s not you’re shoving this information in anyone’s faces at all whatsoever. You’re making a resource available. For those who want to be proactive, they totally can.

Heather: What’s nice about all these resources we’ve been talking about, they’re evergreen resources, they’re not something that you’re building given the climate and then in a few months they’re not that helpful or even in years that you toss them out. These are things that will be great to include in a pack you give to a new client that signs up and would be a helpful reference material for them. These are things that you can develop thinking long-term, but strategically build out some systems that are going to help you build the rapport and the relationships that are going to bloom for you in the coming months ultimately. 

Jamie: Let’s talk about practically speaking, how do you put the stuff together? Like, “Cool. We gave you some ideas.” They’re bomb ideas if I do say so myself, I’m seriously thinking, “Should I make some of these?” I already have a lead magnet but that’s specifically for the course. I don’t have any excuses anymore because I could easily do some of these and I’m not doing them.

Heather: We all have maybe a little extra time. I feel like if you’re a parent at home, you won’t be like, “What free time?” I’m on that page. I am glad I do have some of these resources already built for myself and for my business and they are powerful. There were a few more we want to talk about.

If people are actively seeking answers, they're seeking something to do. Click To Tweet

Jamie: Did I miss them?

Heather: We have printables as an idea too. 

Jamie: I’m ready to move forward. We’re done. No more ideas.

Heather: We’ll get to how to integrate this, but as far as a few more ideas for you quickly, printables could be powerful as an unprecedented situation. People need unique materials about postponement, about sending people notifications about their save the date. That’s a save the date maybe situation. Making up some little designs like that. If you are a calligrapher or let’s say you’re someone who makes digital invites and then building the rapport with them, giving them that for free, collecting your email address and keeping that relationship going or you’re the person they go to for your invites or the fancy calligraphy on those invites or whatnot. That’s a great plan. That wouldn’t work for me because you don’t want my handwriting on any of your stuff. 

Jamie: What an awesome opportunity to get people interested in your business. That was the last one.

Heather: That was the ultimate one that we wanted to say, giveaways. These are powerful. This is something again, we already referenced Max, he teaches this and in his Wedding Pro group off on Facebook, he outlines exactly how to do this with some easy beginner Facebook ads integrated. That’s something to consider and the whole point of that campaign is to harvest a bundle of leads and you’re offering may be an engagement session for free. You get hundreds of people signing up who would be interested in that and they’d be providing you their approximate wedding date, their information and you can develop a relationship with them and hopefully from that group turn your calendar packed. Build out that pack calendar for whenever we can pack our calendar again. 

Jamie: Saying something like that, people will go, “I don’t feel right doing a giveaway for free engagement session if people aren’t supposed to be leaving their homes.”

Heather: It doesn’t have to be now. I’m not saying to sneak out of the house and do an illegal engagement session down.

Jamie: Black market engagement session.

Heather: In a park where we’re not supposed to be. This can be cashed in on in a few months but the idea, start collecting those email addresses and start building that relationship. 

Jamie: If a giveaway feels weird to do, giveaways are powerful in general. I’ve seen what that can do with YouTube specifically when we hit certain marks or certain subscriber counts. Part of my giveaways there has been to sign up through this one platform that I like to use. In order to get an entry into the giveaway, they have to follow us on Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram and each one of those, we’ll give them a point. I’m pushing people to all of these platforms and they’re not going anywhere. For some reason when they start following us on Pinterest, even though we’re not active and we could be a little bit better, we still have thousands of monthly views off of that one time when I offered a giveaway. To use a platform like that where you push people toward social media, you can get a broader sweeping stroke and then it will automatically find or select a winner for you so you don’t have to worry about filtering through all of that. It’s a great way that you could still do a giveaway and still get traction on a couple of different platforms and then say, “When I’m allowed to see you legally in person, that’s when we’ll do your engagement shoot.”

 

Heather: Are you using UpViral or something EarlyParrot? 

Jamie: I don’t know those words. No to either one of those.

Heather: Those are a few options of the tech side of things that do exactly what Jamie talked about. I don’t know what she uses. Maybe she has some magic fairies that work for her at the house and does this because she’s cool in her little garden with her chicken. 

Jamie: No, it is a platform. It’s quite identical to that. It’s Gleam.io.

Heather: UpViral, EarlyParrot or Gleam.io are some options for you guys there. It’s also simple to have people sign up for an email list, but this is the, “How to?” all of these things we talked about. It’s adding something simple to your website where you collect an email address or dropping the same thing out there on social media. You get their email address and in that first email that they’re going to receive afterward, get whatever free amazing thing you’re sharing with them and be cool about it. Don’t email them 5,000 times and make it spammy. That’s not going to go anywhere. Share content with them. Send out things that are going to help support them. Make them feel good. Make them want to read your emails because that’s a huge part of having an email list. It’s not helping you at all to have 5,000 emails if no one opens them. You want them to read your emails, enjoying what you’re telling them, and learning from it. Angle for that, when the time comes, pop a little light pitch, maybe it’s in the PS down at the bottom of the email. You don’t have to go hardcore and make a whole big sales page and enough people will convert over where you will see your calendar start filling up. It’s going to be awesome.

Jamie: Before you check out because you heard the term email list, we plan on doing a whole different episode on why an email list would be important as a wedding vendor. I know at first I was like, “These are short-term clients. They’re not going to be long-term.” No. There are a bunch of reasons why an email list is a fantastic idea but don’t worry, we will dive deep into that in another episode. There is a reason that email lists are powerful across many different marketing platforms and many different businesses. It is a good idea to collect these emails and it is a good idea to be prepared to start to have an email list. It’s a lot easier than I thought it would be because there are platforms out there that will gather all the information for you. It’s a good thing to add in that popup and to collect those emails but don’t panic and don’t leave yet.

Heather: It’s not as scary as you think. You do not need to be some coder to put these things together. If you are worried about the tech side of it, you can always go over to something like Upwork, find someone who does this, they can put together the architecture of it and then you put your own words into it. It’s your voice and your style. This is powerful and something I have told Jamie many times is, “You’ve got to own your community.” Having people out there following you on any medium. We know what one Jamie has people on in mass, a few of them, but in real and big masses on a certain one and you don’t own that. The platform owns that, all of it. Moving people to something where you have the power to engage with them how you like. Where can you keep that information and utilize that information in different ways? That’s the power of email lists. It’s also a way to get ahead of the line. When you’re using any social media platform, you’re beholden to the algorithms. If the algorithms are not in your favor, no one’s seeing anything.

That’s frustrating as a business owner that you may put this amazing information out and think you need the coolest meme that everyone’s going to love and relate to. If only 10% of people following you are even seeing it and they’re hiding it from a lot of people, that sucks versus if you’re emailing people, you’re getting into everyone’s email inboxes. For me, I have an open rate of almost 40% of people who like to read my emails. I don’t know why, not always the best emails, probably some typos in there, but I do the best I can. I tried to relate that to people so that they know it’s crazy old Heather sending something. I try to make it interesting and helpful. That gets people engaging and hopefully eventually buying, and not everybody buys and that’s okay. I’m going to give them some helpful info in the meantime and even later on if they never buy it, that’s okay. 

Take this extra time that's been shoved into our laps and create something that helps you start relationships with potential clients. Click To Tweet

Jamie: The whole point of starting off or creating a lead magnet is ideal for creating a process to cultivate a relationship with this potential client. Our main focus is to let you know those lead magnets are easy to make. As far as the practicality of physically putting one together, the information is already in your brain. It’s a matter of figuring out what exactly you want to share. If you want to make something pretty, I put together a nice PDF that people can download and then have access to. Canva is my favorite for that stuff because they already have templates for you and they have pretty fonts. I am a sucker for good branding. I am a sucker for nice fonts and making everything.

Heather: She is that. She’s over the top on this. I’m impressed.

Jamie: I have to give a giant shout-out to Jess over at Letter and Ink Creative because she has been my go-to branding person for quite some time. I’m the type of person that will invest hundreds of dollars into a logo because I’m like, “It’s got to be good.” When I tell you that Canva is great, it is great, you can move stuff around. It’s intuitive and it makes you look professional as heck. You have this information in your brain, you write it all down and you’re like, “I don’t want to send it over in a Word document.” You don’t. You want it to be a polished, pretty looking and aesthetically pleasing PDF. Canva is for sure the place to go for that.

Heather: Once you build that out, you can easily upload that item to even something as simple as Dropbox. You could use Amazon S3, an online storage option, it’s affordable. You could even store it in some other digital file-sharing realm such as Google. You put that there, share the download link in the email, the first email that they get saying, “Thank you. Congratulations, you’re awesome and you’re BA for being here and read my stuff.” They’ve got that amazing content to enjoy and to learn from and you start cultivating that relationship. Hopefully, that sounds simple enough that it’s not scaring you. It isn’t that hard. You don’t have to think about building a whole nurture sequence, a huge email funnel that people go down, take it one week at a time or every couple of weeks, and shoot an email. The main thing is to stay top of mind where when they seek about, “Who’s a photographer in my area?” They have your name in their brain. That’s all you’re trying to do. 

Jamie: Our encouragement for you is taking this extra time, I should say, that’s been unwillingly shoved into our laps and creates something that is going to help you start relationships with potential clients. It could be printable, it could be a checklist. It could be a timeline. It could be a list of your preferred vendors. It could be a cheat sheet or it could be something as fun and as big as a giveaway. There are tons of options that you could put together, but now is the time to put something together like that so you will be at the forefront of clients’ minds when they’re considering moving forward when they’re allowed to move forward. When all of this is opened up, what photographer are they going to go to first?

What florist are they going to go to first? What venue are they going to want to talk to first? It’s going to be the ones that had provided them something when they had nothing else to do or they were bored and twiddling their thumbs or they were anxious and they wanted to make progress. You will be the person, you will be the vendor they will most likely turn to above others and that potentially may not be offering them something. Don’t get overwhelmed. Grab a piece of paper and a pen and start jotting down ideas of what you could do, a checklist you could put together, a freebie you could put together and get to work on it. It’s might sound scary but I promise you all the information is already in your brain. You need to get it out and it’s going to be incredible.

Heather: A two-week turnaround on this is all you would need to launch the whole thing and that’s plenty of time to make it beautiful, crafted, all up nice, and get it out there for the world to enjoy. I encourage you to take the next few weeks, make that happen. 

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