Last week we talked about the most important piece to running a wedding business: your foundations. As a quick refresher:

Who you serve (your ideal clients) leads to —> your why, which leads to –> your messaging, which leads to –> your strategy for marketing to them.

Read The Blog About Marketing Foundations Here!

Now we are in week two, and this part of the house building is my favorite. Which I would not have told you was the case 10 years ago.

Because 10 years ago, I was co-opening a bridal boutique + wedding planning company in Savannah. I was fresh out of college, $100K in debt with a business loan, and felt I could take on the world.

What I cared about was the pretty stuff. The branding. The logo. The window display. The dresses. The accessories.

But now? It’s all about the strategy. And you know what you start with when creating a strategy?

The data.

And how do you track this?

KPIs.

Now, before I lose a few of you to the “Numbers are not my thing group,” just hear me out. Numbers used to terrify me. I struggle with math (like, I barely passed Algebra 1 in college, and it took multiple tries to struggle). But data doesn’t scare me. Because data actually paints a picture.

Start With Google Analytics

The biggest place to start is your website (which we will go over more in a few weeks). Google Analytics is a free tool that, while a bit complicated to learn at first, should be your business BFF.

It tells you….

• If you are attracting the right people.
• If your social media (like Instagram and Pinterest!) is working. And, you can see how effective each platform is.
• How many people went on your website, and how many pages they visited.
• Where they live (demographics)
• You can track how many people visited your contact page and how many actually submitted a form.
• If a platform you are advertising, like The Knot, WW or The Little Black Book, is actually getting you an ROI on your investment.
• What pages they visited (and didn’t!) Inside G4, you can see the pages they viewed and in what order. This lets you see what pages are working the best and what are ones you need to update (or remove!)
• How to get more leads (and get better ones!)

 

Real Client Case Studies

I love backing everything up with data and real client case studies! So here are two recent examples of how data and strategy helped us grow our clients business.

1) We have one client who posts on Facebook from time to time but does not realize that she has hundreds of visits per month from Facebook! So when we started building a Facebook strategy, we got her more bookings from people who found her there. In fact, she gets more website traffic from Facebook than from Instagram – 3x more!

2) We have another B2B client (a wedding educator) client whom we do a variety of tasks, including email marketing.

• Her average open rate is 67.8% (the industry average is around 22%)
• The average click-through rate is 15.6% (the industry average is around 2.5%)

 

Step One: Figure out your goals.

First thing first, figure out your goals and objectives!

What is the goal of your digital marketing efforts? Is it to get more clients/leads? To gain more publication exposure? Is it to raise your prices, and be a more luxury service? Or is it to book 50 weddings a year?

Whatever it is for your business, you must get clear on your goals and objectives. Take time to look at your goals for 2024 and even 2025.

When tracking your goals, be specific.

If you are looking for more clients in 2024, make that an exact number.

Or, if you want to have a large publication feature, be specific on what magazine or blog you want to be on. The more specific you are, the easier it will be for you to track your goal.

 

Step Two: Track your numbers & KPIs.

Once you have your goals in place, take a look at your KPIs (key performance indicators). These will be the metrics you use to keep track of your goal.

If you are looking for more clients, you might want to focus on Google Analytics, and driving traffic to your website. In that case, you would want to increase organic traffic with SEO updates, and consistent blogging.

If you are looking to increase your pricing, you will want to track where your current pricing is and determine the scale of how you will increase pricing. Will it be with every booking? Or a single price jump? Will you add more items into your packages, like albums, or offer more coverage (for wedding photographers, of course!) Look at what metrics will align with your goal and objective, and start keeping track of the numbers.

A few standard KPI’s to start with:

Website KPIs

• Website Traffic By Source
  • Organic Search – Unpaid listings on search engines (aka SEO and search results).
  • Direct – Direct traffic in Google Analytics is when someone types or pastes in your URL to visit your site directly, clicks a bookmark, or otherwise ends up on your website by clicking a link that Google Analytics can’t see.
  • Organic Social – Website visits from social media, including Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook.
  • Referral – A referral is reported when a user clicks through to your website from another website. Direct visits, organic searches, and paid traffic are excluded from referral traffic.
• New Users: Unique users who logged an event of some kind.
• Returning Users (established Users): A user who has previously been on your site and is now returning to your site is a Returning user.
• Average Engagement Time Per Session: Measures the “User Engagement Duration Per Session”, which is the length of time that your web page was in focus on a user’s screen.
• Contact Page Conversion (How many people visit your contact page and actually fill it out)
• Top Visited Pages
• Traffic By City

 

Business KPIs

• Cost per lead.
• Lead sources.
• Average booking value.
• Social Program ROI (By Platform)

 

Working With Ava And The Bee on Your Marketing Foundations

If you are ready to take your wedding business to the next level, we can help! We work with wedding professionals, vendors, and educators who are ready to level up and stand out from the competition. We work with limited clients each quarter, so reach out today!