Sometimes good things DO come for FREE - with Heidi Thompson

Let's get going with today's episode. Today, I'm welcoming Heidi Thompson back to the podcast. Heidi is a wedding business coach, marketing strategist, and bestselling author. Not only that, but she's also the founder of the Bookmore Weddings Virtual Summit, which I'm going to be speaking again this summer. Today, we're going to be chatting all about how to get the most out of her free summits, as well as geeking out about some marketing practices along the way too. It's going to be a fun one.

Heidi, welcome to the podcast.

And it came up, it told me the episode number, it gave me the link to listen, and it told me what we spoke about. And I was like, yes, Becca Bot, you've done all the work for me.

So if you're a listener and you want to find a podcast about something specific in Becca's world, that is the tool for you. But it gave me the useful information today, Heidi, that It was exactly two years ago since you're on my podcast, so it's such a pleasure to have you back. Now, a little bit like Becca Bot, a lot has shifted in the last two years and both of us work in the world of marketing and marketing has shifted a lot in the last two years.

So I thought, let's start by talking about two years on. What are we seeing or what are you seeing specifically in the world of wedding pros is working right now from a marketing perspective?

What I'm seeing now is The people who are struggling are usually ones that don't have a strategy behind their marketing and they don't have a very clear way of standing out. I'm seeing a lot of people who, you know, when I look at their website, if I could copy and paste something onto their competitor's website and nobody would buy it. know the difference, your potential clients are having that struggle telling you apart as well.

And then it comes down to a pricing issue because there's nothing to compare you on when there's like 10 planners or 10 photographers that all kind of seem the same and no one's really standing out as the go to for anyone.

You've got to find those ways to set yourselves apart. So what about from a couple perspective? What do you think shifted over the last couple of years from the couple's perspective? Do we think they're looking for something different from our vendors?

So what we're seeing right now, especially with Gen Z is a propensity to dig more into reviews, dig more into, you know, how can I find out more about this business as opposed to just diving right in, whether it's, you know, they've heard stories or whether this is just like a general inclination of buying behavior for this generation, which it certainly seems to be across a lot of different sectors. We need to keep that in mind that, you know, they're doing a lot more research.

I've definitely heard too that In the past, if you got a referral, that was pretty much a done deal, and now what a lot of people are seeing is you get a referral and you still need to sell to them, you still need to convince them that you are the right person for them, or not, if you're not the right person, then you're not the right person, but it's not enough to just get the referral, They also need to be able to go to your website, you know, go to

wherever you have a presence online and be able to learn more about you and why they should work with you specifically. I feel like referrals are much more of a jumping off point whereas they were a like full spectrum start to finish for previous generations. So those are a few things.

Well, actually, I didn't hear anything. And I kind of followed it up with them. They came back to me and they said, Oh, we went in a totally different direction and just found someone on Google. And I was like, what? Why didn't you go with one of my recommendations? And it really blew my mind that they would rather go with someone that they had not had recommended. They never worked with before based purely on their online presence, rather than over a tried and trusted recommendation. So that's.

Definitely happening.

And I think sometimes as business owners, we're so worried about not doing enough that actually sometimes it's just down to couple's choice. And also couples are really knowledgeable and they're willing to do that research and they know that there's lots of choices out there and therefore they can find that perfect person for them. They don't need to settle on someone else.

Because we all have different psychological drivers for why we do things, but unless you understand those things, you can't then come out in your marketing and say, hey, is this the thing you're looking for? I have the perfect solution to it. So that's really what I like people to think about when I. When I say standing out, that's what I mean. I don't necessarily mean like do the opposite of what everybody is doing. You might, that might be something you want to do.

You might want to look different. You might want to have a different design, a different aesthetic, or it's something more internal that you're speaking to. You know, the problems that we want solved are all Very different. Like the reason why I buy a painkiller isn't because I want a painkiller. It's because I have cramps, because I broke my foot, because I have a migraine. Like those are three different reasons. why I would make the same decision. So we can't just guess at that.

And you know, if you're running a painkiller company, come out with this ad about migraines. If none of your people have migraines and your painkiller doesn't work well on that, it's not going to connect. So it's really about connecting to the problem that your person actually wants you to solve and then molding your marketing to show them that you have the solution to that problem.

We can, and we're going to get into specifically how to do that during the summit with over 30 speakers who are speaking about all different facets of this. So you can lit. I love it. It isgoing to work for you, what you're going to take from it and implement it so that you can actually. go into the rest of 2024 and into the 2025 engagement season, having a marketing strategy for what you're going to do to attract and book more of those ideal clients.

Now I love promoting your summit whenever I'm part of it and one of the reasons I love to promote it is because it's so easy to promote because it's free, right? It's free for people to sign up, it's free for people to listen to my session and all of those other sessions that the speakers are doing, but one of the pushbacks. I always get and it winds me up when I'm ever promoting something for free, whether it's something I'm doing or something someone else is doing is, well, why is it free?

What's the catch? What are you trying to do? What are you trying to sell me? What, why is it actually free? Is it actually going to be any good? Is it going to be rubbish? Is it going to be just people trying to sell me stuff? So Heidi, tell people, why did you make the decision to do it for free? And what do you say to the people that say that kind of stuff?

And typically I would say about 15 percent ish of people decide to upgrade to that. And that is what makes this sustainable for us to give free access to everybody on a limited. capacity in a limited window, but still make it super accessible. And for that reason, we get attendees from all six inhabited continents, which is amazing. And I love that we have that reach and that accessibility, but there is that option to take it a step further.

If you would like to do that, you don't have to do that. A lot of people do a lot of people don't. It's One of those things that you get to make that decision for yourself. And you're still going to get a ton out of it either way. So that's how the event makes money. It's also one of those things that because all of us are coming together, you know, you have 30 different groups of people, audiences that allow us to bring people together, that for us as educators, We get leads from this.

We get people who say, you know what, I really loved your presentation, Becca, I think I want to work with you in xyz capacity. So that's how it functions as like a feasible model for it to like exist and not just be this free thing that is full of pitches, is full of just like, you know, getting you into a timeshare presentation and trying to sell to you for eight hours. You know, we don't want to create that kind of an experience.

So this is the way we structure it so that we can give really solid education and still make a big component of it free.

I've signed up to other summits before when I knew that I wasn't going to have the time to digest the information. And therefore I paid the upgrade so that I can get those back. But the important thing is if you are going to decide to pay the upgrade, like with everything I always say, make sure you then use it because it's only valuable to your business.

If you buy the upgrade, if you then do put in some time in a couple of weeks to listen to the presentations or to go through the resources and make sure you're making the it. Otherwise, if you just. throw money at something and never look at it, it's not going to move your business forward. So absolutely take advantage of either the free or the upgraded version because there's going to be so much great stuff in there.

And I know because I've listened to the presentations in Heidi summits before, you're going to get loads of great value. Definitely. So don't feel like people are just there to sell to you because they absolutely are not. So, if someone's thinking of signing up then, Heidi, if someone signs up to the Summit, either on the free or the paid version, how would you recommend that they throw themselves into it? How does someone get the most out of being part of one of your events?

But I'm a big fan of prioritizing things that will make the biggest impact for you. So I would look at what are you struggling with in particular. In your business, and then I would look at the presentations as Okay, how can these fill gaps? How can these fill holes? How can these help me solve some of these problems? Because you're going to get a much better return on investment either of your money or of your time or both if you're prioritizing things that are going to get you results.

So like we have a wide array of things that we're covering during the summit, but there will inevitably be things that you're like, Yeah, realistically, can I, can I implement that by the end of the year? Okay. No, it's probably not the best use of your time. I would say at least during the week of the summit. And even if you have the upgrade, I still recommend approaching it in that way because during the week of the summit, you're able to ask the speakers questions.

You're able to have conversations with them and join our speaker panels and get clarification. So, Personally, the way I would suggest approaching it is what's going to have the biggest impact so that you can get results.

And they can get like a real nugget of information specifically for their business, that they would normally maybe have to work one to one with someone to get that kind of answer. And so if you are the person showing up live and being brave enough to put those questions forward, then you're absolutely going to get the most out of all those incredible educators who are there live and giving up their time for the week as well. I would love, Heidi, if you know any, have you got any success stories?

So obviously you've been doing this summit now for kind of seven years. Have you got any stories of people that maybe have come along to a summit or listened to And then change something in their business.

So it doesn't take a ton of implementation to get results. Like I said, we've had people who are like, Oh, okay, that's an interesting way of following up. I'm going to go follow up with this lead that I have. And then, hey guys, they booked. It's the best thing ever to get to see and it really is just a matter of taking the information you need, not just like what sounds necessarily interesting.

I'm not saying don't follow your interest, but we all have limited time here and then it's actually implement it. And we do see people, there have been many, many summits where we've seen people go implement something and book a client that week.

So talking about there being a ton of information, sometimes when we go to these educational events, whether it's online in person, even podcasts and things like that, we can feel really overwhelmed. So do you have any tips on how to feel less overwhelmed if someone's being part of your summit?

Could you put that kind of in a parking lot over here for next quarter or does it actually need to get done right now? So I find immediately upon doing that I just feel like a weight lifted off of my shoulders because all too often we tell ourselves we have to do 20 million different things and realistically if we just did one or two of them it would make a huge difference. And if we try to do all of them, we're not going to do any of them.

So I'm a big fan of getting everything out of your head and then like sorting and putting into order, okay, this is what I'm going to do. This is my plan. This is how I'm going to proceed. I'm going to do this thing. And then next month I'm going to do this thing.

And next quarter, I'm going to do this thing so that, you know, Those ideas, those things you want to implement actually have a home, they get onto your calendar and they actually get done because I don't know about you, but if something is not on my calendar, it will not happen. I can promise you that.

I think the other thing that I see The mistake people make at summit sometimes is that they go after the shiny things rather than the things that are actually going to make the difference in their business. So they hear some exciting new idea and they think, Oh, this is going to solve all my problems. And it sends them off down a rabbit hole in a direction that they were never intending to go, instead of maybe taking the thing that they needed to.

So how do people find the actual useful information in that crowded lots of information.

And I would say from every single presentation, our speakers are really good about this, but I would say, look for the action steps. And note the action steps and schedule the action steps because that's the part that usually gets left behind. And then it's just kind of floating around in your head as this, you know, half formed idea that you feel like you need to do.

And that just builds as anxiety and weight of all the things we feel like we have to do when really, if you just, if you can narrow it down, And go through that and find the action steps. Schedule the action steps. That is going to help you extract as much as possible from this because I always tell people I feel like business owners are typically they were very good students. They were typically people who like did the extra credit. You know, we're like the I'm an A isn't good enough.

I want to a plus kind of people and we get into this. way of being where we're just like checking off boxes and we're like, well, I watched all of these presentations. Okay. Are you going to do anything with it? Because if you're not, it doesn't really matter. And you kind of wasted your time.

One of the things that I think is going to be a pushback from some of the people here in the UK listening to this podcast is the time of year that the summit happens. So I'm going to address it straight on because every time, whenever I promote one of your summits here in the UK, August is typically like our crazy season. It's the only time of the year when we get any sunshine. All the kids are off school. The people are going on holidays. Wedding pros are incredibly busy.

And so immediately we go too busy to do any education. So I want to flip that on that, on its head and say to you, Heidi, why should people still be prioritizing some level of education or how can they fit this kind of stuff in even when it's crazy season?

It's a kind of middle time for a lot of other people, you know, especially in some parts of the U. S. It's like a, I'm not going outside kind of time of year because it's just too hot. So there's definitely no weddings happening. But With that in mind, even though it may not be at the opportune time for you, I would still recommend looking to see what you can get out of it.

Because like Becca said, if you can get one presentation and do one thing with it that makes an impact on your business, that's huge. You paid nothing for that. You've been able to get results from it. So a couple of things that we do to try to make it as accessible as possible is we don't release Presentations on like a schedule like you would a conference. We release everything for the day at once.

And it gets released at 9 a. m. U. S. Pacific time, which is Los Angeles time, which is 5 p. m. U. K. time. You have a full 24 hours, so everybody in that period of time has a morning, afternoon, evening, and night. So, you know, we have participants in Australia and New Zealand and Hong Kong that joined because they're able to join because it's not at a specific time. It's just a specific 24 hour window. So you can get it in any time of day. you want, and it's on demand.

So you don't have to be there for a specific time for the video to like stream live for you. You can press play, you can press pause, you can press one and a half speed, and everything is also available. on our summit podcast. If you're joining us for free, those expire every 24 hours as well, but it gives you another medium to do that. So you could very easily listen to and watch, you know, a couple of things from your phone. And quite honestly, like I said, this isn't school.

The point isn't to do all the work and do the extra credit. The point is to get a result. And if you can watch one presentation and get some action steps out of that and take action on it and book more weddings as a result, congratulations, you've won. You've put in minimum time, gotten maximum results.

So I can listen to it while I'm cooking dinner or I can listen to it while I'm driving the car to my job or I can listen to it while I'm preparing some work. And so if you want to be part of this and you want to listen to it, I promise you you'll be able to find the time to do it. Now, if people don't have much time, I would love to just hear a couple of highlights. So can you give us a couple of highlights that you think there's some good sessions going on?

Obviously mine, I'll do my own highlight in a minute, but some good sessions going on at the summit and also a couple of highlights from resources that you've seen inside of the PowerPack.

Becky Hart is speaking about networking and making the most of your relationships. If you're struggling with turning inquiries into bookings, Elizabeth Shields is talking about that exact thing. Let's see here. Oh, if you want to get more referrals from venues. Terza Caffey's presentation is all about how to play nice with venues and really practical tips to get and stay on a preferred vendor list. She is coming at this from working exclusively with venue owners, so she has heard everything.

She's kind of reporting back and sharing with us. What it is that we need to do. Let's see here. There are so many here to choose from. Oh my god Mark Chapman is talking about what you need to know before you start Advertising and how to craft ads that convert and I really love this one because a lot of people Will just throw money at advertising and assume that it will work And that's not actually true. And a lot of times it can be a really big waste of your money.

So make sure that you are not making that mistake because it is a huge one. So we've got a lot of topics that are really focused on marketing, on sales. We've also got some that are focused on the money piece. So finding the profit leaks. In your business, because that is a very quick thing. You can change that immediately changes your financial situation in your business or creating profitable packages.

If you can make the next package you offer more profitable, that is going to make a huge impact on your business. And then, of course, Becca's presentation, which I have seen and I really love, all about getting a Visible and Becca, when you propose this topic, it really intrigued me because there's this idea that, well, yeah, I'm marketing. I'm visible. But are you, you know, how visible are you? So tell people a little bit about that.

And then I'm going to ask you that question a few more times as we go through the presentation, because often we think we're a lot more visible than we actually are. We feel like everyone knows our business and no one's booking us, but turns out most of the time, It's just that we're too quiet. So that's what I'm talking about in my presentation, how to get visible and book more weddings. And there's lots of actionable strategies in there as well.

So that's worth the free ticket price on its own. Come along and listen to that. Although Heidi, you've got so many great sessions, but there's one thing that I like to do when I go to a summit. And I always encourage people to do this, whether it's an in person event. or an online event, play Summit Roulette, because sometimes there's a hidden gem in there that you don't think you need, but it actually ends up being the presentation that you are like, so glad that you listened to or watched.

So, go to something you think, I wouldn't want to go to that, and then watch that one, because often it's the best one. I love that.

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We've got a Whitney and Daniela Created a beginner's guide to building the ultimate Google search campaign and actually a step by step workbook showing you how to build that campaign. There's a lot here. There's about 2, 900 worth of bonuses inside of this on top of the presentations and all of the VIP sessions. So, there's a lot going on in it.

So again, don't get overwhelmed by the resources, go through them one by one by one and highlight, okay, actually, I need some help with this. This is where I see that I need some help and go through the resources and actually take people up on these offers. Because again, people are offering really great stuff. They're not doing it to try and upsell you something else. They really want you to get results because I know a lot of the people that are involved in the summit.

I know Heidi, and that's what they're about. They want to give you value. Yes, of course you can go and work with them, but actually they're all about helping you and they just want the industry to grow and thrive. Heidi, I'm so excited to be part of the summit again this year. I know that people are going to get loads out of it. Can you remind us once more about the dates? And again, I'll put the link in the show notes.

Now, Heidi, I'm always in the podcast with the same question and it's this, what's one thing you wish you'd known sooner in your own business?

And to be honest, I'm kind of glad that's the case because it would be pretty boring if it was, you know, if you get 10 years into a business and it's like, well, I know everything, I've done everything. What's the point? You know, there's nothing to do anymore. So yeah, it's definitely that you never are finished. It is never finished. Sometimes it feels like it's. taped together with duct tape and just folding and that's okay because everybody else's business is too.