C H E C K L I S T & W O R K S H E E T

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1 W H A T T O D O W H E N Y O U R B O O K I N G S A R E D O W N C H E C K L I S T & W O R K S H E E T

2 Review Date: Estimated exercise duration: hours W H A T T O D O W H E N Y O U R B O O K I N G S A R E D O W N C H E C K L I S T & W O R K S H E E T It can be a real worry when you notice that the number of bookings you have, appear to be less than your previous year, or for the same period of time in a previous year. Or you could be a new Celebrant who is worried about the number of bookings or lack of bookings received, especially when you re not reaching the targets that you set. Particularly. for more experienced Celebrants who have perhaps enjoyed quite a few years of stability and consistent booking patterns, it can be quite alarming when out of nowhere there is a drop-off in bookings. The hard truth is that when you work for yourself, your salary, your earnings, cannot be taken for granted. Whilst all Celebrants aim for a pattern of consistency in terms of bookings, there can always be moments when bookings dip. If you do find yourself in this situation, the only way forward is to try to identify why a drop in bookings, or lack of bookings is happening, in order to then establish where improvements can be made. By systematically looking at your business practices, advertising and marketing and all the systems you have in place, you should be able to tweak certain processes and make improvements. So before giving yourself unnecessary cause for concern, let s walk through a thorough process of checks to make, in order to review how well your business practices are functioning and possibly identifying any weak spots. It may well be that you never fully know why you have experienced a dip in bookings, but in completing a review of all important areas of your business, you can make sure that you are doing everything that you can. These are the areas we will look at; Website/social media Enquiries & conversions 3rd party marketing & industry contacts If you save this pdf to your computer you can write directly into the boxes of the worksheet, without needing to print it off, unless you'd like to.

3 S T E P O N E : R E V I E W Y O U R M A R K E T I N G T O O L S C H E C K Y O U R W E B S I T E Your website is your virtual business front, it's your storefront to the services that you have on offer. We know that you have heard this a lot and it is something you will continue to hear, because it is true. It does not matter how people might hear of you or about you, you can guarantee that most will pay your website a visit to learn more about you. Not only do you need to make sure that the front end of your website is working exactly as it should and looks exactly as it should but also that the 'back end,' the technical side, is working correctly and driving your website to fulfil its potential on the internet. T H E L O O K... Does your website look professional? Does your website look as professional as other websites you think look professional? Does your website look as professional as you would like? If your answer is no, what plans do you have in place to rectify this? Please note: By professional, we mean a professionally constructed website. Clean, modern, up-to-date and user-friendly. With the majority of photos being professionally taken ones. T H E F U N C T I O N... Do you have analytics software such as Google Analytics or Statcounter in place to monitor your website activity? If your answer is yes, well done. If the answer is no, then you really need to consider having either one of these, or an equivalent added to your website. With no way of measuring your website activity, you won't be able to identify how well your website is doing, or how many visitors your website receives roughly. Nor will you be able to see how traffic (visitors) find your website. If you do monitor your website activity regularly, have you been able to see a reduction of visitor numbers? Or is it the same? Is your website slow to load? Research has found that if visitors have to wait more than a minute (or less) for a page to fully load, they'll click away.

4 T H E U S E R - A B I L T Y Is your website clear and easy to use? Are your contact details on other pages as well as on your contact page? Does your website have a contact form AND your address? And other alternatives ways to contact you? Can visitors easily find the information that you want them to see? Do all the links work? How is the language on your website? Is it clear? Is it grammatically correct? Is it inviting and engaging? Do you sound like a real person, like someone people would like to meet? What elements of your website really stand out or make your website stand out positively? P R I C I N G Do you have your prices visibly displayed on your website? Is it clear what potential clients will get from you? Have you reviewed your prices recently? Are your prices set accordingly for your market? For your experience? For the service you offer? Some businesses that don't display their pricing on their website, do so because they think it will encourage people to contact them to know more. This may be true, but sometimes it can have the opposite effect, and people can actually shy away from contacting them in case the price is out of their budget. Even when you have your prices clearly displayed on your website, people still enquire to get confirmation of your price, so don't assume not having a visible price will lure them in. Notes/observations about your website:

5 C H E C K Y O U R S O C I A L M E D I A U S E Can you access your social media platforms from your website? Can you access your website from your social media platforms? Do you check the insights and analytics of your social media platforms to gain an idea of how much they are visited and interacted with? Are you making the best use of the platforms that you use? Is it clear from your social media posts and biographies - what you do, where you're based and how you do your job. G O O G L E B U S I N E S S P A G E Do you have a Google business page? If yes, do you regularly update it, add posts and offers and recent photos? Do you ask clients to leave reviews on your Google business page? If you don't have a Google business page, will you think about setting one up? A Google business page is an excellent crutch and support to your already existing website. Seeing that Google is the largest and most used search engine in existence, being able to link your website to a Google business page will help your rankings in Google. A well kept and updated Google page when used to its full potential will operate almost as a secondary website and point of contact for you. Plus having a Google business page presence will help visitors to find you via location searches, too, which is generally how most people begin a search for a service supplier. Notes/observations about your social media use:

6 S T E P T W O : R E V I E W Y O U R E N Q U I R I E S How you manage your enquiries and convert them into bookings is crucial to the number of bookings that you will get each year. If you are currently only managing to convert 50% of enquiries into paying clients, then it really is a good idea to review your enquiry process to see what might be happening and what may be contributing to you not making higher conversions. A good percentage to aim for is 70%. You want to be at a point where 2/3 of your enquiries will go on to become clients. It may well be that your conversion rate is high but that the number of enquiries themselves is low. However, in following all steps in this worksheet, you should be able to work on increasing the number of enquiries received and the number of bookings made. Do you monitor your enquiries? Do you make a note of the number of enquiries you've received during a certain period of time? Do you make a note of where your enquiries come from? Are the number of enquiries received in this period less or more than the previous year? What is the approximate percentage of your booking conversions (enquiries to bookings)? Are you happy with this number? If not, how do you think you can improve your enquiry process? What do you think might be responsible for a low/lower conversion rate? Do you reply quickly enough to enquiries? Within 24 hours? Is your first response to a couple clear, concise and informative? Is your first response too long and overwhelming? Do you include a sales brochure with your initial correspondence? Take a look at our post on creating a sales brochure for more information about the benefits of including a sales brochure in your initial responses. Click here to visit the post and video. Do you follow-up enquiries after a certain period of time if you've not heard back from the enquirer? If not, why not? If you follow-up enquiries, how often has the follow-up led to a booking? Or conversely, stopped at a dead end? Text & logos copyright of ECC 2017

7 Notes/observations about your enquiry process: Text & logos copyright of ECC 2017

8 S T E P T H R E E : R E V I E W Y O U R I N D U S T R Y C O N T A C T S & 3 R D P A R T Y M A R K E T I N G It's always a great idea to have enquiries coming to you via lots of different sources. Having your website and social media up and running and working at their best, will go a long way in making sure that you are doing everything you can to bring in the enquiries and bookings by yourself. However, it is always great when you can supplement your own efforts with the recommendations and referrals of others. This will help you to have enquiries coming in from lots of avenues and therefore help to boost the overall number of enquiries that you'll get. Wedding Contacts It is important to maintain good relationships with other wedding suppliers, wedding venues and also other Celebrants who work in the same area as you. Getting to know other Celebrants in your area can be really beneficial to your business and your bookings if you are able to collaborate and work together on occasion. And the same with wedding venues in your area and surrounds. Seek out new venues that you haven t yet been in contact with or re-approach venues who you ve not spoken to for a while and re-introduce yourself. Research and list all of the Celebrants in your area. Do you have a good working relationship with them? Could it be improved? Do they refer bookings to you if already booked? If not, could you reach out to them and make the suggestion of a mutual arrangement? Do you have good relationships with the venues in your area? When was the last time you contacted a wedding venue which you ve not worked at before? Are there new venues you could approach? Funeral Contacts In some countries and areas, funeral directors have a lot of say in connecting families in need with Celebrants who can help them. In some areas it can be difficult to make any headway with funeral directors, especially when they already have a small circle of Celebrants who they work with. The least you can do is to make yourself known to them and to keep in contact, every so often. You could also review other avenues such as death cafes and coffin clubs which may indirectly be a way for enquiries and referrals to come from. Text & logos copyright of ECC 2017

9 T h i r d p a r t y m a r k e t i n g & a d v e r t i s i n g Unless you are really established and manage to drive a huge amount of traffic, enquiries and bookings through your website, you should have a least one type of advertising with a third party source. Paid advertising/marketing can mean anything from magazine or newspaper adverts, adverts on blogs or business websites, Facebook or Instagram ads, paid listings in directories, sponsored articles or features in magazines or blog, Wedding fairs or open days. However in order to judge the success of these campaigns, you need to adequately monitor and check the success of them. One of the most common mistakes that people make when they pay for advertising, is not sufficiently monitoring if and how the advertising is working for them. You cannot judge the success of an advertising campaign or know if the campaign has contributed to your bookings or not without, monitoring them. List the paid marketing and advertising that you took part in this year or in the period that you're reviewing. Are you able to measure which source has contributed to your enquiries and bookings, or not? If you can find out, do you know which source of advertising was the best? Which was the worst? Do you know which type of advertising works best for you? Notes/observations on industry contacts and paid advertising:

10 C O N C L U S I O N T O W H Y Y O U R B O O K I N G S M I G H T B E D O W N You may find that after going through all of these checks and had a thorough examination of your business practices, you might not have a clear answer for why your bookings were down. There could be a whole host of reasons, which can't be accounted for. For example, how the economy in general or your local economy fairs, can most definitely have a knock on effect. When times are tough, weddings can suffer. Couples cut their budgets and try to make savings. And maybe in chatting to other trusted wedding suppliers in your network, it could be that they are in the same position. Perhaps, you live in an area which has had a growth in Celebrants and whereas before you might have been one of few, maybe you are now one of many and so have to work harder to promote yourself and harder to secure those enquiries when they come in. (That doesn't mean undercutting or selling yourself short!) Maybe your online presence needs a boost or your platforms need modernising or revamping. Maybe you need to collaborate more with those in your industry and not be so much of a lone ranger. You cannot alter or change what has already happened (a drop in bookings) but you can alter how you move forward from this. You can make improvements from any weakness that you might have identified. You can make small changes to your social media and marketing. There is always room for improvement. So if you have found yourself in this situation, try not to be too concerned about what was and use all of that energy to move forward and do the best that you can do. Text & logos copyright of ECC 2017