Welcome to 2025. If you're listening to this in real time, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and a happy New Year. It felt only right as the UK's leading wedding industry marketing expert to start January 2025 with a roundup of what's going on in wedding industry marketing right now and marketing in general. So today I'm going to be talking to you all about 2025 marketing trends for you to look out for.
I'm Becca Poutney, wedding business marketing expert, speaker and blogger and you're listening to the wedding pros who are ready to grow po. I'm here to share with you actionable tips, strategies and real life examples to help you take your wedding business to the next level. If you are an ambitious wedding business owner that wants to take your passion and use it to build a profitable, sustainable business doing what you love, then you're in the right place.
Let's get going with today's episode. When it comes to your marketing, it's always important to keep your finger on the pulse. Why? Because consumer brands always pushing the landscape of marketing, customer bases are changing and perceptions are shifting. We see the social media platforms updating constantly and it's hard to keep up. But that's why I'm here to help you.
In today's episode, I'm going to run through some of the updates that are going on in the world of marketing, some of the things to look out for and some of the things I think may impact you in your wedding business. Now obviously that doesn't mean you need to go out and change all of your marketing immediately, but I think it's important to keep on top of what's happening and to keep looking forward.
I hope that some of these insights, even if they're from the bigger brands, will help you as you look into your small business. So the first big thing I want to talk about is content and the way that Google is changing when it comes to content. If you were on my planet before Christmas, you will have heard one of my clients, Jesse from J. Lawrence Photography, talking all about his marketing company and how they're viewing the changes that Google are making and in terms of content.
So if you Google something now here in the UK and probably around the world as well, you will notice that we are now getting more and more AI answers. So when you Google a question or when you ask Google for something, instead of just giving you a page to go and visit or even just giving you a snippet, it now gives you an AI generated response to try and answer your question. Now, obviously, AI isn't magic. It's taking the content from somewhere.
So what it's doing is it's scraping the websites of those first few people that are turning up on Google and it's giving you the information from there. Now, this means that the way we view content in general on our websites needs to shift to accommodate this. Why? Because Google will be looking for relevant sites that are helping them and pushing them further in the algorithm.
So I want you to look at the content that you're writing and as Jesse said in that planathon call, work out whether or not you have clear intent for every piece of content or every page on your website. Gone are the days when it's just all about keyword stuffing and putting the same keywords across all of your different pages on your website.
If you want your page to be liked by Google and you want to have that good relationship with Google, you need to really think about the intent of each page of content. How is it going to help the person searching for the question? How is it going to give an answer? What page on your website is going to be the perfect fit to answer one of those AI kind of questions? So when you look at each page of your website, is it very broad or is it very clear what the intent is?
If you're writing a blog post, are you intending to answer a specific question? Are you going deep rather than wide? Are you really thinking about the content that you're putting out there? The other great tip that Jesse gave us on that call was to consider putting FAQs on the bottom of each page of website, because Google can read these really easily.
And if you are specifically trying to answer a question in a piece of content or on your website page having a little bit of Q and A at the bottom, FAQs about that content will then be helpful to Google because that's going to answer exactly what they're looking for you to do. So why not consider adding those to the bottom pages of your website?
If you didn't catch the planathon and you want to listen back to it, you can still buy the replay and you can hear the whole conversation that me and Jesse had about this subject. But the big takeaway from me is that we can't change what Google's doing and they are starting to put more of that AI content at the top of the page. So instead, we don't want to fight it, we need to embrace it. So look at what the intent is of your content. Are you being clear and specific.
And if you want the replay of that planathon, then do just reach out to me and I can send you that. You can still buy it and watch it. So that's the first thing. AI is shifting the way that Google does things. So each piece of content, each page of your website, do you know what the intent is of that page? And are you writing content that Google is going to like? Okay, on the topic of AI, let's talk about the second thing.
And that is this year, in 2025, we are going to see ev even more influence from AI on websites, on the Internet and in our businesses. We've seen the rise of platforms like ChatGPT, but now what we're seeing is almost all software programs are starting to add an AI element into them. So my marketing software, my CRM software, I keep getting updates all of the time to say they've added.
In this AI thing, you hear the adverts on the TV and the radio for Gemini, which I think is the Google Pixel thing that you can talk to. It's an AI chat bot and AI isn't going anywhere. In fact, it's going to only increase. We're going to be seeing more and more of it. So how can we be making sure we embrace this in our businesses? Well, the first thing is we need to make sure that our content doesn't sound too much like it's generated by AI.
People aren't stupid and people are catching onto the fact that people are using it to be lazy. So if I go on your page, is it obvious that your content is written by AI or does it still sound like you? Yes, AI can save us time. ChatGPT can save us time, and if we do really good prompts, it can give us some really good results. But we need to make sure it doesn't just sound like generic stuff and it sounds like us and our business.
So I recommend using these platforms for ideas and inspiration as a starting point. But then you still need to put your own personal touch on them because if you just leave it down to the AI on its own, number one, it's not always accurate and number two, it won't sound like you and you'll lose a bit of your brand personality. And what we don't want is for everyone to start sounding the same.
The other thing is, if you're writing long length things by AI, things like blog posts, again, make sure you're changing enough of them. There's websites now that you can run your content through and it will tell you how much it thinks it's generated by AI and how much it thinks is actually written by a person. And it won't be long before places like Google and Instagram will start penalizing people who it's too obvious that their stuff is AI because they don't want that.
So make sure that you're personalizing it. Yes, use it as a place to get started. But also make sure that you are personalizing it and making it original content as well. Don't just use it as an excuse to pump out loads of content. Quality over quantity is definitely the theme of my talk for 2025. The other thing we're going to be seeing more of is these interactive chat bots. Interactive AI on websites where you can talk to people.
Exactly like the Gemini thing I've just mentioned to you, the Becca bot on my website. I think we're going to see more things like that. So if you go onto my website, go to Becca bot, you can ask me questions about marketing, you can ask me questions about how to work with me and it will respond as me based on all the information we've given it. If you've never tried it out, go and try it out.
But I think more and more we're going to see this popping up on different websites and as we get used to it as consumers, we're going to expect to see it more often. One of my other friends in the industry has now got a thing on there website where you can live chat with them at any point. So it basically tells them that they're online and they can pop up and say hello to it again. I think we're going to see more of this kind of technology coming into 2025.
So keep an eye on what's going on out there, have a look at what's going on. I'm not saying you all need to go and install a chatbot on your website, but we do need to pay attention to it and think about how we can use AI and integrate it in a way that matches what customers are used to around them. Okay. One that we maybe are more familiar with, number three is WhatsApp. Now I think whats is increasingly becoming a place where people want to talk.
We know that people don't want to do phone calls anymore and quite honestly, most people in Gen Z don't even want to do emails anymore. It blows my mind, but they are all about the direct Messages and the WhatsApp. Now last year one of my venue clients updated their contact page after we did some strategy sessions. Together.
And now when you go on their contact page to book a viewing or to find out more about getting married there, as well as the form and the phone number that's always been on their website, they've added a button saying talk to us on WhatsApp. Now, they showed me the stats for how many people are inquiring via WhatsApp since they added and it blew my mind. I couldn't believe so many people chose that as an option and I think that's a sign of where things are going.
So why not consider having something like that on your website? Now, obviously there's some boundary things there that you need to think about. If you are going to add WhatsApp, you can have a business WhatsApp account, but it is hard because it will mean that people are contacting you on the phone. However, they are doing the same process as if someone emails them. It's just everything is going via WhatsApp.
So they still send them the same message, they still send them the same links to book a viewing, et cetera, but the messages are going through WhatsApp. But what interested me is how many people chose WhatsApp as the option over filling in a form, phoning email. They chose WhatsApp and I think that's only going to increase. So we need to bear in mind, again, we don't want to fight against it. That's what consumers are used to doing. I even talk to my energy provider now via WhatsApp.
If I've got a problem, they talk to me on there. And so I think this is the way we're expecting things to go. So why not consider adding WhatsApp to your contact page? Maybe there are people that would feel much more confident talking to you via WhatsApp rather than filling in a form on your website. So another one to look out for. I think we're going to increasingly see businesses using WhatsApp as a marketing tool, using it as a place they can talk to people. Why?
Because they know it's going to get delivered. It's instant, it happens really quickly. It's not going to get lost in an inbox. So, yeah, WhatsApp, I think, is here to stay and maybe one for you to pay attention to. Numbers four on my list is I want to talk about the delay factor.
Now, My lovely friend Kelly Mortimer was talking about this at this year's UK Wedding conference with Guys for Brides and it really resonated because I've heard it from a lot of my clients as well, and she was talking about how in 2024, particularly venues, but other supplies as well, have seen a real shift in what she was calling the delay factor.
Now, what she means by that is when someone inquires with you, traditionally someone inquired with a venue, came to view the venue, and then booked the venue or didn't book the venue. Same with photograph photographers, florists. If you get an inquiry, normally you convert that inquiry within maybe 10 days, two weeks, and then the wedding happens later on down the line. What we've seen in 2024 is a shift in how people are doing things.
So increasingly we're finding that someone will come and see your venue or contact you and then disappear off the face of the earth and then suddenly come back three months later and decide to book or do a second viewing. Same with photographers, florists. I've had planners who've assumed that leads were dead in the water because they inquired with them six months ago, and then all of a sudden they pop back out of the woodwork and go ahead and book. Why is this happening?
Well, that is a good question. I do think that today's generation are maybe busier and so maybe things are getting left. I also think that they're doing more research themselves behind the scenes, weighing things up, making decisions before going ahead and booking people. But it's definitely happening more and more and we've seen it over 24, so I think we'll see it into 2025 as well. So what does that mean for us when it comes to our marketing?
Well, for me, I think the most important thing we need to take away is that we need to keep on following up with people. So we need to not make the assumption that it's a no until it's a no. I've been saying that for ages, but I think even more so. And I also think it's a good reason to embrace our email marketing. Are we making sure we're doing the right GDPR things so that when people inquire with us, we can pop them on our newsletter?
Because that way, even once we've done our follow ups personally and we've decided we've done enough following up, they're still hearing from us on a regular basis. This is why it's important that you are using your email list and contacting them regularly, once a month at a minimum, dropping into their inbox, giving them some updates, giving them some tips, giving them useful information that they want to read because it's reminding them you exist.
So if they are in that massive delay factor, they're going to remember you and come back. What we don't want is that someone inquires with us, we do a couple of days of following up and then they never hear from us ever again. Because actually they may not have booked someone else. And you can no longer make that assumption because they may just be having a massive with delay. So is your email marketing game strong as we go into 2025? Are you doing some really good follow up as we go into 2025?
Are you tracking leads and leaving them on a spreadsheet? Because if they haven't said no, it's not a no. So are we considering the delay factor in the way we do our marketing? It may be they're still following you on social media and you're popping up regularly, then you're popping up in their inbox. When they are ready to go ahead, then they're going to reach out and pay that booking deposit with you.
So make sure your email marketing is on point as we go into 2025 and realize that this shift is happening. And so just because there's long delays doesn't mean they're not going to book. Sometimes it means they are going to book, but they're just going to come back later down the line. Okay. The next shift I'm seeing as we go into 2025 is around your social media posting.
So for a long time we've been talking about consistently posting on social media, posting on social media multiple times a week, every day, scheduling ahead, and I think all of those things can be good. But we are definitely entering a different era where it's no longer about quantity of posts, but it's about quality of posts. We've seen Instagram particularly shift where it doesn't show people the posts in chronological order anymore.
So I could post a grid post and then suddenly it's appearing in someone's feed a week later, two weeks later, you may have seen this. When you're going through your own stuff, you see things posted and then when you see the date posted, you realize it was three or four days ago and it seems really out of date. That's because Instagram is no longer pushing things immediately as you post them. So with that in mind, I want you to start thinking about quality of content over quantity of content.
Again, we need to be focusing on our short term, short form videos rather than just on our grid posts as well, because we know they're being pushed further. But when you're posting on social media, it's not about getting as much out as you can it's about thinking about everything you post and why it's engaging. Why are people going to want to read it? Why is it going to encourage someone to follow you? Why is it going to make someone comment or like it?
I'd much rather seeing you posting less frequently one or two times a week with really great content rather than just chucking out things to get into the algorithm daily because it's no longer the way things need to work now. I think this is a big relief for a lot of you because you can focus on quality over quantity, but that means you don't need to neglect your account either. Just because we're not posting so often doesn't mean we need to leave it at because people are still looking at it.
The way people are using Instagram is shifting particularly. People aren't necessarily following you anymore, but they are looking at your content, they are looking at your portfolio, they are going onto your grid to see what you're doing. They are also potentially seeing grid posts that aren't from their followers in their feed to try and encourage them over. So make sure you've got quality content that's going to attract your ideal couples over to you.
I hosted a great training session recently in the Wedding Pro Members Lounge with Instagram expert Elizabeth Marbury and she did a whole section on how important now your bio is and how you need to make sure the words in your bio are speaking directly to your ideal customers to encourage them why they should come and follow you. If you are a member, make sure you catch up on that.
If you're not a member, why not consider becoming one in 2020 so you can keep on top of these marketing trends and you get the latest insights in the training as well and you can go back and watch Elizabeth's training. So I do think there's going to be a shift on social media towards quality over quantity. So if you are still just on that thought of just pumping out as much as you can, give yourself a breather, reflect.
Work out what your content is for, who you're speaking to and why it's going to be valuable to someone to make them want to engage with it. A few other things to note as we go into 2025 about social media. You may or may not know that Instagram is going through some changes with the it displays its grid. So traditionally your Instagram grid has always been a square a one by one, but it is now shifting to four by five which means it's more portrait shaped, no longer square.
Now they are rolling this out slowly. Some of you may already have it, some of you may not, but this is going to impact what you've already got on your grid, especially if you're someone that's made it very aesthetically pleasing. And you do need to realize that soon you're going to need to make your things a different shape.
It may be you want to start contemplating that now ahead of the shift, but this is going to be changing is again showing us that they're still focusing on those short form videos, the real reels, because that is making them more in line with that kind of shape. It will make things easier when you're trying to crop the grid part of the Instagram reel because you've got a little bit more space to play with. If you've got longer pictures, things like dresses, then that's going to work for you.
But if you are a landscape person or if everything has been perfectly aligned to those squares, this is something to pay attention to. I also want you to pay attention to what's going on in the US regarding TikTok. You may or may not know that for a long time there's been an ongoing thing about the them potentially banning TikTok in the US. Now the deadline for that is coming up now. Disclaimer I am recording this on the 16th of December even though it's not going out till the 2nd of January.
So the news on this may have changed by then, but as I'm recording they're Talking about that TikTok ban coming into effect midway through January. Now this could change and shift and you need to be paying attention to what's happening now. This is only happening in the us so if you are a uk European or Australian listener, this may not impact you, but it will have a knock on impact.
Now when I've been reading up on this, it looks like if you you already have TikTok, they're not going to make it be removed from your phone, but they will be removing it from the store, the Apple stores, the app stores, and they won't be continuing to allow updates to it. So this will start to impact people over time. If it happens now, if it does happen, then I do think we'll see an impact even here in the uk.
I think other people may follow suit, but also it means that people will jump either to another platform or do more on the platforms they're already on. I do think it will see more impact on Instagram reels. Think positively, more people will be watching them. So do make sure you are using Your content on both Instagram and TikTok as well. Don't put all of your eggs in one basket. And it's a reminder to us all about building your business on borrowed land, because I say it all the time.
But these social media sites, yes, they're free to use, yes, they're incredibly powerful. We don't own them, we don't have any rights over them. And at any point we can get hacked, we can be taken down, they could shut down or they could be banned. So if your entire business is built around TikTok videos, then this would be a worrying time for you.
It's why you should always be making sure your mo, moving people to other platforms, getting people's email addresses so that you do own them, moving them over to your website, having a good SEO presence because you can't rely just on one marketing platform. So do keep on top of the news with TikTok. Obviously, I will also keep you up to date if I see or hear changes. And if you're in the members lounge, you'll know about it first because I always share my information there.
Okay. The other thing I'm interested in in the world of social media as we go into 2025, is I'm personally seeing a bit of a resurgence in the world of LinkedIn. Now, I don't know when the last time was that you went on LinkedIn. If it was me in 2023, basically I never went on it. But over 2024, I've been on it more and more and I'm seeing a real resurgence in what's going on over there and some really great stuff.
Now, I don't necessarily think it's the place for you to be advertising your services to couples, although there will be couples on there. But it's a great place to do business, business to business. So if you're looking to grow relationships with other planners, with other suppliers, with particularly people that work hotels, it is worth paying attention to LinkedIn. The thing I like about LinkedIn is the fact you can actually curate your following and your connections.
You can request to connect with people or ask if people want to connect with you. And you can try and curate who follows you. So you can have a really good group of people in your world on LinkedIn. If it's been a while since you've been on LinkedIn, let me encourage you as we go into 2025 to consider reinvigorating your love of the app, particularly if you're looking to build venue relationships or relationships with other business owners. I've met loads of software on there.
There's so many interesting people on LinkedIn and is not an overcrowded space. Your posts do get seen. You just need to think about what the intent is. Again, going back to that word of you being on there, what you're trying to achieve and how you're going to achieve it if you are in the members lounge again, there's a really great training we had recently on LinkedIn inside the members lounge that was in 2024. So it's quite up to date, well worth paying attention to.
But even if you're not, I do think LinkedIn is a place for you to consider looking at again this year. Very, very different kind of platform to Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. That's definitely seeing a bit of a resurgence as we start to get towards the end of this episode. There's two other marketing trends for 2025 that are moving away from social media that I want to talk about. The first one is all about personalization.
So we are seeing increasingly the value that people are putting on personalization. So things that are personal to them, things with names on, things that are one of a kind, so they can't get them anywhere else. I think this is because we're so used to this quick consumer culture now that we're almost pushing back a little bit against it. And we like things that have a bit more thought in them, things that a bit personalized, things that mean a little bit more to people.
We're also seeing personalized options. So things like at Christmas now, you can go and buy a box of just the flavored sweets that you like. You can have that personalized experience. You can buy your name on a chocolate bar, on a Coca Cola bottle. You can get things personalized. You can get DIY things where you make them personalized to you. And we are seeing an increasingly popular thought around this. It's why you'll see some of the big brands do things like putting names on Coke bottles.
We've seen that again recently where they put people names on them. Why? Because people love the personalization. They like trying to find their name. They like buying their name on a Coke bottle. So think about how you can have this impact in your own business. How can you add a little bit of personalization? Maybe it is making sure that you use that personalization feature even on your email marketing.
Are you using that little tag that allows you to put their first name in it so that the email sounds like it's directly for them? You can Even use that in the subject line. Becca, are you getting married in 2025? You know, you can make it really personal, personalized. Are there personalized options that you can include within your packages? Are there DIY parts that you could include in your packages? Are you writing people personalized notes, sending them a card before their wedding day?
Personalization is key. You will see that if the big brands are doing it, then the smaller brands absolutely should be doing it as well, because we don't have to do it at such scale. So personalization, I think we're going to see more and more of it as we go through 2025. Keep an eye on what the big brands are doing with it, how they're using it, and think about how you can make more personalization in your business. The final thing I want to talk about is this values trend.
Now, I don't really like calling it a trend because value should be part of who we are, but it's definitely a thing that people are paying attention to. We know that, particularly Gen Z, are more aware than ever about values that are important to them. So this is things like sustainability, diversity, inclusion, or just whatever the core values are in your business.
Maybe it's trustworthiness, maybe it's honesty, but what's shifting is that people are more savvy and they no long want to see it as something tokenistic. You can't just put it out there, you have to live it. So, for example, you can't say I really care about sustainability. And then you keep putting pictures of yourself on airplanes. Right? That can't, that doesn't marry up.
So you really need to think about the values that are in your business and how you're living them out, because that means a lot more to people than you just saying something. So, for example, don't just change your profile picture to something to celebrate something that you don't actually do because you feel you have to. So you need to think about what your core values are. That's a bit of reflection for you and how you are embracing them genuinely throughout your business.
People want to see this running as a core through your business because if it's important to them, then they need to find someone that is important to you and genuinely important to you rather than you're just saying it. So, for example, sustainability, if that is important to you, are you living your life in a sustainable fashion? Are you thinking about how that impacts day to day? Maybe you are giving, giving something back.
Maybe you're planting a tree every time you are taking a Wedding booking, Maybe you're thinking about how you can go more carbon neutral if it is genuinely part of you and your business. Talk about it. If it's not, don't just try and stick the badge on because people will see through it and it'll have the opposite effect. So values are really important to people at the moment and I think it's really important that we're living them in our day to day lives and throughout our businesses as well.
So what can you be doing that is genuine? How can you support a genuine cause? If there's something that's close to your heart, how can you actually have an impact on that and use it in your business? People can see through the tokenistic gestures. Gone are the days when we can just stick that on our website.
So as we go into 2025, really take time to reflect on what is important to you, what is a core part of your business, what is a core value to you and how are you living that, embracing that genuinely as a lifeblood thread throughout your whole business rather than just as something tokenistic. So something for you to think really deeply about. This isn't going to be the same for everyone and there is no right or wrong about what you should or shouldn't be saying.
But just be aware, today's consum, particularly with the big brands, are calling people out when they feel like something is tokenistic and it doesn't actually follow what they've done the rest of the year. So think about that for yourself. Make sure you're being genuine, authentic, unapologetically, you.
If you're living something genuinely in your day to day life and it's genuinely important to you, you'll be able to put it through your business and talk about it and people will know that it's authentic. Okay, let's do a very quick roundup then. Of all of the things I've talked about as we go into 2025, number one was the AI content on Google. Making sure your content has intent and purpose.
Thinking about how we embrace AI in our businesses and those virtual assistants and chatbots and how they're being used. Thinking about WhatsApp and how consumers really are going towards using WhatsApp as a method of communication. We talked about the delay factor and how people are booking quite a long time after they inquire and how we need to make sure we're keeping those touch points, doing our email follow up and having an email newsletter.
We talked about the changes on social media, how there's definitely a focus now on quality over quantity. Short form video is still key. We need to really be thinking about the content we're putting out there and what the intent of it is. Plus I also shared some of those updates around Instagram and the grid sizes. We talked about LinkedIn making a comeback. We talked about the possible impacts of the TikTok ban as well.
We also talked about values and how important it is to live the values we're talking about. And finally, we also talked about personalization. We've covered a lot of ground. I'm excited to go into 2025 and see what happens. I always say pay attention to the big brands. Pay attention to what's going going in big business because it always filters down to small business. And consumers don't always see the difference between buying from a big brand and buying from us.
They expect us to emulate similar patterns of behavior. Now, there are three things that are still key in 2025 as they have been in 2024 when it comes to your marketing. I talked about them all year, so I'm going to reiterate them very briefly now. Number one, price transparency is still key. Are you being transparent with your prices? If you're not, you absolutely need to be in 2025. Speed of response. People expect everything now. Now that's still really, really important.
And of course those first impressions, they are overwhelmed with choice. You need to make sure as soon as I land on your site I have a great first impression and I know exactly whether or not you're for me or not. I hope you found this episode exciting, inspiring as we go into 2025 and you've learned a few things along the way as well.
If you've got friends in the wedding industry that don't yet listen to the podcast, why not tell them about it this year so that they also can grow their wedding business for success? And please do leave me a rating or a review if you listen to the podcast regularly. I haven't said that for ages, but it really does impact how other people find the episode and it encourages me to keep on going.
Sometimes I feel like I'm just talking to myself in a room in my office and I forget that there's hundreds of you listening to it every week. So leave me some encouragement, leave me a review, rate the podcast or share about it on your Instagram stories if it's been helpful. If you want to go deeper on any of those topics, I've mentioned it a few times.
The Wedding Prayer Members Lounge is the place for you to come is only 37 pounds a month on a rolling subscription, but what it means is you get training every single month on the latest and greatest updates in the world of marketing, sales, networking, everything you could possibly want to help you grow your wedding business. And there's a whole library of videos in there as well. If you're interested, go find the link in the show notes or drop me a message.
I would love to welcome you this year into our community. I hope you have a fabulous first week of the year. Go out strong into 2025, and I cannot wait to see how this episode impacts your wedding business. I'll see you next time.