Paid Advertising-a chat with The Wedding Industry's Authority of Advertising

With Mark Chapman

I recently sat down with Mark from The I Do Society. I got to nerd out a bit with him about marketing in the wedding industry.

I share my takeaways' and tips.

If you want to catch the full interview

Their specialty is paid media and they’ve spent over $30 Million in the wedding industry. That’s quite a lot of ad spend.

We took a deep dive into paid media, who its for/not for, how much it costs to make paid media work, how fast you can see results, 

If you’re in the wedding industry or ever been interested in paid media for advertising, I think you’ll get some nuggets from this.

Mark believes if you’re spending money on advertising, you deserve to get good results. I know a lot of business owners who tried ads, lost money, and swore it off saying it doesn’t work.

I’ve lost money running my own ads so I learned the hard way why it’s better to work with experts.

Artists aren’t engineers

Mark noticed a challenge in the wedding space that I also agree with and that is businesses in the wedding industry are run by creatives. They’re artists not data engineers.

While there is a degree of creativity needed in advertising, when it comes to paid advertising, it’s  less about creativity and more about data. 

This is exactly why I never got interested in learning paid ads myself. Sure I’ve ran some meta and google ads but it’s not 2010 anymore. 

You have to be an expert at those platforms and you can only become an expert if you’re in the trenches of the data day in, day out spending thousands per month.

You have to test headlines, copy, colors, graphics, and let the data lead you.

Google, meta, and other paid ad platforms aren’t set up to support wedding pros. So you have to know how to interpret the data, understanding impressions, conversion rates, click through rates, comparing watch time.

Honestly just talking about it overwhelms me. I personally value creativity with less rules.

That’s why engineer minded people are exceptionally good at paid media. 

But doesn’t google take care of all this for me? Well it can. And trust me, Google would rather handle this for you. But make no mistake, Google will spend your money.

Think about it.

 It’s in their best interest that you spend more on their platform. So while they genuinely do want you to get results, their top priority is you spending more dollars on their platform. 

Advertising data doesn’t lie. Being able to interpret the data will actually tell you what the humans want more of.

Should all wedding pros do paid advertising? 

Well it depends on if you want to grow beyond your current network and sphere of influences.

The best customers are referrals from past clients and your warm network. But there’s only so many people in your warm network.

Content marketing (my favorite kind of marketing) is great for warming up and nurturing people who already know about you.

But paid ads is how you can reach people outside your current sphere of influence who don’t know about you.

Ideally the paid media route brings cold people into your world and then you can use organic content to nurture and build trust.

The combination of paid media + on point organic content= lethal combination. 

You have a machine that’s constantly bringing in new people to your world and content that educates them and builds credibility and trust. That’s why I’m doubling down on creating more content personally.

What kind of budget would you need for paid ads

Traditionally you’d dedicate a set amount of revenue towards marketing, let’s say 10%.

Mark recommends thinking about this differently. He thinks about how much budget it takes to reach potential customers enough times on enough platforms.

As a start point, he recommends at least 1k/mo to reach enough people multiple times on multiple platforms.

Which platform is best to start on

Currently in 2024, it’s less about one or two platforms and more about omnipresence. It’s not about one being better than the other.

Cold audiences may find you initially on Instagram, then they see your add again on Facebook. Most people aren’t ready to buy the first or 2nd time they see you.

You want to build a cohesive campaign that gives the highest likelihood for being seen as much as possible.

The initial time they see you, they likely won’t become a buyer, but by the 3rd, 4th, or 5th time each time they see you, they’re building familiarity and deciding if they want to work with you.

Can’t I just run ads on my own?

Yes you can. This is a skill you can learn. But it’s probably going to take you several years and you’re going to lose money.

It’s the hardest time in history to be successful with paid ads because there’s more ads than ever.

So you have to ask yourself what’s’ most important? Doing it yourself even if it costs you longer and takes more money?

or getting results as fast as possible with as little money as possible?

Until you’ve run $30 Million dollars in ads, there’s a good chance hiring an expert like Mark and his team will get better results than you could get winging it.

If you want to become obsessed with paid media and you’re ok with investing the years and money then there’s a lot of value in doing it yourself.

If you just want to do what you do best and the thought of interpreting spreadsheets of data is mind numbing (like it is for me), maybe hiring a professional team is the better option.

How much does it take to work with The I Do Society?

They charge $1200/mo. so what does hat does that get you?

Sales assets, conversion, strategy, branding, and of course, plus the ad campaign and data analysis.

They will do a deep dive into your website to look at conversions, client experience, automations, communications, social media, branding.

Personally I think that’s very reasonable, especially given how much they do. 

How fast does it start to work?

Once the strategy is dialed in, paid advertising can have immediate results. I’ve personally seen campaigns start to generate least day 1 or 2. 

Sometimes you’ll need to make tweaks to the website and results might take longer so they don’t make any promises on timelines (which I appreciate. I can’t stand when companies make bold promises that they shouldn’t be).

Mark was very upfront about that.

But 80-90% of clients see results immediately. Those are pretty good odds. 

Paid ads aren’t right for every business

On consultation calls, Mark explains not everyone is ready to work with them and sometimes he recommends they fix a few things first before starting paid ads.

That’s a sign of real integrity and ethical business. 

If websites aren’t easy to navigate and don’t foster simple ways for customers to communicate with you, that needs to be addressed before pouring the fuel on the fire of paid ads.

The next thing is a lack of transparency with pricing. When businesses don’t reveal pricing it creates unnecessary friction.

Nowadays with enough searching you can find pretty much anyone’s pricing so there’s no real benefit with concealing it.

A lot of people in sales and marketing think you have to build the value through a call with them. Even if this is true (which I don’t believe it is), that only benefits the business owner. No customer would rather wait to know pricing until after a sales call. So it’s a selfish strategy in my opinion. Just tell them.

As a business owner I want to be transparent, authentic, and always be thinking of creating the best customer journey and that means being upfront about pricing.

The huge advantage of paid media is leverage

Paid ads will get you in front of a disproportionate amount of eyeballs. It’s the fastest and easiest path to get the most amount of attention. The caveat to that is it’s not cheap. 

If you have a service, they’re buying you

This goes back to a fundamental rule I believe about sales and marketing and that, if you have a product, there is a tangible good and it’s easier to sell. But if you’re operating a service business, it largely comes down to buying you.

There are a million xyz service providers, why should anyone choose you? Certainly the quality of work is a big part of it, but all things being equal, customers are going to go with who they like the best, who makes them the most comfortable, who they trust to not screw them over.

And that only happens if you’re communicating your values and humanity in your marketing.

This is why I’m doubling down on writing more organic content for me personally. Nothing builds your brand like sharing your ideas and values with the world. 

But not everyone will like what you put out. And that’s the point. Good marketing pushes away the bad fits but attracts the people that are the best fits to work with you.

Final thoughts

If you’re in the wedding industry or operate a service based business and you want to attract cold audiences, paid media may be the best bet as long as you have at least $1k per month budget for ads.

You also want to make sure your business has a reasonable conversion and your customer journey is smooth, frictionless, and allows communication in their preferred medium.

Paid ads are a weapon for scaling but the platforms aren’t designed for wedding professionals.

You can either become an expert marketer, investing years and lots of dollars to perfecting the craft, or turn to a trusted professional such as Mark who you know will operate with high integrity and ethics.

I plan on working with Mark in the near future for our wedding business. I’d love to hear from you if you do the same.

PS.

Do you know any business owners or interesting professionals I should interview next?

I value introductions and connections more than anything.

Until next time, keep innovating.