Photographers, venues, planners, videographers, florists, and so many other unlisted vendors – you aren’t the most important thing at a wedding. You are, however, a part of many weddings and are an important part to a couple’s day.
You are desired and wanted, and the service you offer is no longer a luxury but a commodity. Yet there are photographers who can charge $20,000+ while others are charging less than $1,000 to work full days. So how does a “luxury” wedding vendor become one?
They stopped racing to the bottom and stopped competing. Lets talk.
What it takes to race to the bottom
The easiest race to run is the race to the bottom. In the game of business, you are looking to elevate your brand. The key word here is elevate, so what do you think going down means? Hint: It’s not raising your brand.
What are ways businesses race to the bottom? Here are a few:
- Lowering pricing to be lower than your competition
- Offering the world at low prices
- Saying yes to every wedding that comes your way
- Not setting boundaries in your business
- Eating all costs – even travel
- Doing everything yourself
- Cutting corners
- Delivering late
- Giving the bare minimum communication
- Not incorporating your gear into the brand you are curating
- Hiring the cheapest help
- Sharing every wedding you shoot on social media
- Withholding help to other wedding vendors
- Arriving late
- Not dressing for the occasion
- Engaging in negative conversation
- Allowing others to run over you / Not taking a stance
- Having a “good enough” attitude
It’s far easier to race to the bottom – it takes intentionality to elevate a brand.
How to elevate your brand
Ask brands like Miles Witt Boyer and JLK Weddings, and they’ll say the way to grow your brand is in the customer experience. Why does this matter?
Let’s paint the picture here.
Imagine giving such a great experience that your client can’t help but rave about you to their friends and family.
You can scream from the mountain tops that you give the best experience, and it may be true, but no one will believe you. We always say the best things about ourselves.
However, if your best friend says something is amazing, we’re likely to take their word for it, right?
Remember, people buy from who they know, like and trust. We don’t just buy with money – we buy with aligning our beliefs and ideals too.
So back to you – your client goes and raves to their friends about you. Coincidentally, your client’s best friend – who was at the wedding – is getting married too. She saw how you work and sees how much her friend loved you, so it makes sense she contacts you.
Months later, and now and its her friend gets married. She loves the experience and begins to tell about you as well.
Before long, you are building a following of people who LOVE you. You are building your tribe. (Seth Godin explains this brilliantly in his book, Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us.)
What is it they are saying about you though? This is why you need to have a brand strategy. You need to know where you are leading your tribe and teaching them how to talk about you.
Otherwise, they’ll begin to say things about you that you don’t intend for them to say.
Photographers
If you want them to say your work is alive and inviting, but they call it light and airy, then this is on you. What are the words on your website? How are you describing your work to them in your consultation? What are the images you are showing on your website?
Planners
If you want clients to say your ability to allow them to just enjoy the day and be surprised, but they have to ask questions on the day of the wedding, then your actions are out of alignment with your brand.
Videographers
If you want clients to say your work feels like a Nicolas Sparks movie but they refer to it as a highlight reel, you need to watch more movies and understand what makes a Nicolas Sparks movie feel that way and translate it to your work.
Catering
If you want clients to say your food it out of this world, then you need to ditch the aluminum pans and spend the money on the silver platters.
Brand Strategy
We can be married to our work to the point of not seeing it clearly. Think of it like newborn baby syndrome. When you have the baby, it is the most precious thing in the world. Look at someone else’s baby, and you see a potato alien baby.
Often, we need outside help.
B.Human offers brand strategy as a service and we want to help you elevate your brand. Our belief is that if we can help wedding professionals raise the bar of their work, we can help raise expectations for couples getting married.
This means couples have a better wedding experience and wedding professionals have more profitable, human businesses.
The best experiences we have in life are the most human experiences.
