Hi! My name is Rachel, and if we’ve not met before, I’m a wedding photographer and business coach on a mission to help wedding professionals elevate the quality of clients you attract, craft a luxury client experience by focusing on what matters, and profitably automating everything else.
Today we are talking about 3 ways to uplevel your wedding business to attract high end clients—the exact same steps that I used to book 4K+ clients from my first year in business, so I hope you are ready to take some notes and get excited!
When I started my photography business two and a half years ago, I already had a profitable business doing wedding makeup and didn’t want to start at the bottom all over again transitioning into photography. I decided that I wasn’t going to charge bottom of the market rates, or say yes to jobs that would be taking advantage of me, and instead, I focused on targeting clients in the budget range I actually wanted to be serving.
Because I was already an experienced wedding vendor, I knew that the biggest hurdle to building a new business was going to be the marketing piece, getting in front of people.
I decided to get a jumpstart by learning how to utilize facebook ads and got a lot of my very first weddings from doing that successfully—I was booking weddings in the 3-5K budget range within the first year.
So today, I’m going to let you in on the secrets I’ve used to book high end clients from the very beginning.
Secret #1: Highlight what makes you unique.
This really comes down to knowing what it is that your soulmate clients find to be uniquely different about you.
For instance: say you have an expensive, foreign car and it needs to be repaired. Do you take that to any old car shop, or are you looking to take it to a shop that specializes in your particular kind of vehicle?
What if you owned a car shop and you actually had a mechanic that was an expert in foreign vehicles, but you didn’t share that in your marketing anywhere? Would you be getting lots of calls for those more high-end repairs? Probably not.
It’s very important to remember that high end clients with bigger budgets THINK differently than budget shoppers. They are looking for someone who fits them and their specific vision like a glove, because that’s what they are investing in, and they are READY to invest in that. It’s very unlikely that you will be attracting those people unless you are able to clearly articulate what it is that makes you the specialty expert that fits their exact needs and vision for their wedding.
Secret #2: Require personal connection.
My marketing is very specific towards attracting clients who want and are willing to pay for a very personal connection with their photographer. This means that all roads in my marketing lead to having a conversation with me. I make it part of my qualification process, because I know that if someone is really serious about booking me, they need to be willing to go through my process—which is all about personal connection.
Personalization and connection is the hallmark of high end luxury services. Like the difference between getting your clothing tailored and buying it off the rack at Walmart. I know that the potential clients who are not willing to follow my process for getting to know each other and just demand my rates right away are simply not going to be a good fit, and I can say no with grace.
Getting to know each other, and asking a lot of questions, is how I develop strong relationships with clients, collect tons of information and answers about what my soulmate clients want and need, and help them feel secure and safe with my business. At the end of the day, I want to have a relational business, and I know that my soulmate clients want the same.
Secret #3: Connect at the heart level.
High end clients understand that they aren’t just paying for the photos, they are paying for the experience of seeing their event through your eyes and for the experience of working with you. This artistic and highly relational process is greatly elevated when you can talk with your clients about heart level things. The desires and the dreams for their wedding that go beyond the planning and get to the why behind it.
When you know your soulmate clients and their common heart-level desires, it’s easy to infuse that into your marketing. The conversation changes from how your photos have the colors and style they like to talking about how much they love their grandma and how they just loved sitting on her lap as a child looking through the old photo albums and hearing the stories of her life.
When you can connect at the heart level with your clients, the connection is so, so much stronger, and you will feel like a perfect fit, Cinderella’s shoe-meant to be.
That is the most powerful sales tool of all.
Those are my secrets to booking high end clients!
1: Highlight what makes you unique
2: Require personal connection
3: Connect at the heart level
The students in my Empowered Weddings Masterclass are getting really practical help with all of this as we are going deep into actually understanding and implementing all of this for them. We are really diving into doing the research and working together to craft their marketing, messaging, and client experience into an irresistible offer for their unique soulmate clients.
If you want some personalized help with understanding more about what might be keeping you from attracting your soulmate clients, I offer free 15 minute business audits. These audits are not sales calls, they are literally there to get you clarity and help you find the missing piece. If you want to have a free 15 minute audit with me, here’s the link to schedule yours today: https://racheljordaneducation.com/audit/
Blessings!
