Marketing Strategy for Wedding Professionals & Businesses: The Evolve Your Wedding Business Podcast

Hosted by Heidi Thompson | Wedding Business Coach, Marketing Strategist, & Consultant

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Episodes

391

Latest episode

Oct 2026

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EN-US

About the show

As a wedding professional, you're incredible at what you do but when it comes to marketing for wedding pros, you're stuck playing the social media game and hoping the right clients find you. Whether you love or hate the constant hustle, I've got news for you...there's a better , more sustainable way to get more wedding clients and book more weddings without burning out. This show delivers actionable wedding marketing strategies to help you attract dream clients, increase your wedding bookings, & (finally) get your questions about growing a profitable wedding business answered! We'll cover questions like: Getting More Clients: How do I get more wedding inquiries from my ideal clients? How do I book more weddings as a photographer? As a planner? At my venue? How do I turn wedding inquiries into booked clients? Marketing Strategy & Channels: How do I market my wedding planning business to stand out? Should I focus on Instagram, Pinterest, Google, or paid advertising? Is it worth it to advertise on The Knot and WeddingWire? What wedding planner marketing and event planner marketing strategies actually work? Sustainable Growth: How do I market my wedding business on a budget? How do I know if my wedding marketing strategy is working? Can I build a successful business without being on social media 24/7 or working 60+ hour weeks? After helping tens of thousands of wedding professionals around the world build sustainable wedding businesses, wedding business coach Heidi Thompson knows exactly what it takes to attract dream clients without the overwhelm. Through Evolve Your Wedding Business, she's on a mission to help wedding vendors create marketing strategies that work without working 60+ hour weeks. Heidi consistently makes wedding business marketing approachable and exciting! With a mix of solo episodes and guest interviews with successful wedding vendors and wedding marketing experts, you'll hear exactly how to grow your wedding business whether you're a wedding planner, DJ, officiant, florist, venue owner, or any other type of wedding vendor so you can spend less time chasing clients and more time doing the work you love. Ready to take your wedding business to the next level? Press play and visit evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/podcast for show notes, guest info, and even more free resources to grow your wedding business! 🎧

Listen to episodes

60 recent

October 28, 20261 hr 45 min

Replay: How to Get More Visibility This Engagement Season

You can be findable. You can show up consistently. And you can STILL get crickets in your inbox. Most visibility advice skips the third piece: being RELEVANT. When the right couple lands on your website, do they see their own situation in what you say? Or do they see the same promises as the other 26 tabs they have open? In this replay, I walk through why being specific beats being different (you don’t have to invent a new service), how an officiant and a wedding planner found what their best clients actually cared about and watched their inquiries change, and the 5-part marketing plan that ties it together: goals, research, message, the how, and measure. I also explain why most wedding pros start at step four and wonder why nothing sticks. You’ll hear the live Q&A too. Ready to stop guessing and market with a plan? Join The Wedding Business Collective and get 50% off your first month. ——— I’m hosting a free live class : Break Up With The Knot & WeddingWire (Without Losing Leads) We’ll cover why many wedding pros feel their directory listings aren’t delivering like they once did, what’s actually working for bookings right now, and how to create a marketing system that puts you back in the driver’s seat. Grab your free seat at evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/breakup ——— Find Heidi: Instagram (send a DM!) The Wedding Business Collective 🩵 (get your first month for $1) Ghosted Lead Booking Wizard 👻 Wedding Business Shop 🛍️ Free Training: Break Up With WeddingWire + The Knot Without Losing Leads 💔 Free Audio Training: Inside Profitable Six-Figure Wedding Businesses: What They Do That You Don’t (So You Can Grow & Scale Too) 👀 Case Study: Wedding Planner Marketing That Works – How Katie Sautter Booked 15 Weddings in Her First Year 🔍 The Knot & WeddingWire: Are They Worth It For Wedding Vendors? 🤔

October 21, 2026Episode 38015 min

Wedding Marketing Results From Four Real Business Owners

👉 Want more visibility so you can get more bookings this engagement season? Save your seat for this free training. You posted. You promoted. You watched the likes and comments roll in. And your inbox stayed quiet. Two weeks ago I told you about a wedding artist who ran a 10 day birthday promotion and got zero inquiries. This week I'm telling you where she is now, plus three other wedding business owners, and the wedding marketing results are the part worth hearing. A florist averaging $12,000 to $15,000 per wedding. A painter booking into 2028. All four were sitting in your seat not long ago. This is the last episode before the free live workshop on Tuesday, October 27th at noon Pacific (3 p.m. Eastern). Come see if it's worth an hour of your week. Get all the links from this episode: http://evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/380 ——— I’m hosting a free live class : Break Up With The Knot & WeddingWire (Without Losing Leads) We’ll cover why many wedding pros feel their directory listings aren’t delivering like they once did, what’s actually working for bookings right now, and how to create a marketing system that puts you back in the driver’s seat. Grab your free seat at evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/breakup ——— Find Heidi: Instagram (send a DM!) The Wedding Business Collective 🩵 (get your first month for $1) Ghosted Lead Booking Wizard 👻 Wedding Business Shop 🛍️ Free Training: Break Up With WeddingWire + The Knot Without Losing Leads 💔 Free Audio Training: Inside Profitable Six-Figure Wedding Businesses: What They Do That You Don’t (So You Can Grow & Scale Too) 👀 Case Study: Wedding Planner Marketing That Works – How Katie Sautter Booked 15 Weddings in Her First Year 🔍 The Knot & WeddingWire: Are They Worth It For Wedding Vendors? 🤔

October 14, 2026Episode 37915 min

How To Get More Visibility This Engagement Season

👉 Want more visibility so you can get more bookings this engagement season? Save your seat for this free training. You're posting. You're showing up onsocial media. You're working your little tail off. Annnnnndddd your inbox is still quiet. Engagement season is about a month away, and a quiet inbox is about to get very expensive. This is when newly engaged couples start searching, scrolling, and asking friends who to hire. If they can't see you, they can't pick you. So I built a brand new free live workshop. It's Tuesday, October 27th at 12pm Pacific (3 pm Eastern). In this episode I'm breaking down why visibility is so important and what most wedding pros are missing. Get all the links from this episode: http://evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/379 ——— I’m hosting a free live class : Break Up With The Knot & WeddingWire (Without Losing Leads) We’ll cover why many wedding pros feel their directory listings aren’t delivering like they once did, what’s actually working for bookings right now, and how to create a marketing system that puts you back in the driver’s seat. Grab your free seat at evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/breakup ——— Find Heidi: Instagram (send a DM!) The Wedding Business Collective 🩵 (get your first month for $1) Ghosted Lead Booking Wizard 👻 Wedding Business Shop 🛍️ Free Training: Break Up With WeddingWire + The Knot Without Losing Leads 💔 Free Audio Training: Inside Profitable Six-Figure Wedding Businesses: What They Do That You Don’t (So You Can Grow & Scale Too) 👀 Case Study: Wedding Planner Marketing That Works – How Katie Sautter Booked 15 Weddings in Her First Year 🔍 The Knot & WeddingWire: Are They Worth It For Wedding Vendors? 🤔

October 7, 2026Episode 37816 min

Posting Every Week & Still Not Getting Wedding Inquiries?

👉 Want to finally break free from The Knot and WeddingWire without losing leads? Save your seat for this free training. You spent two hours on a reel. It got nine likes. Six were wedding pros being supportive, one was your cousin, and two were accounts with a sunset as the profile picture. And your inbox is still quiet. If you're posting every week and still not getting the wedding inquiries you need, you're not doing it wrong. You're tired. And that gap between how hard you're working and what shows up in your inbox is a lonely place to stand. This episode isn't a new tactic or a posting schedule. It's a real conversation about what that gap feels like, why engagement season makes it louder, and what you can do before November hits. Get all the links from this episode: http://evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/378 ——— I’m hosting a free live class : Break Up With The Knot & WeddingWire (Without Losing Leads) We’ll cover why many wedding pros feel their directory listings aren’t delivering like they once did, what’s actually working for bookings right now, and how to create a marketing system that puts you back in the driver’s seat. Grab your free seat at evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/breakup ——— Find Heidi: Instagram (send a DM!) The Wedding Business Collective 🩵 (get your first month for $1) Ghosted Lead Booking Wizard 👻 Wedding Business Shop 🛍️ Free Training: Break Up With WeddingWire + The Knot Without Losing Leads 💔 Free Audio Training: Inside Profitable Six-Figure Wedding Businesses: What They Do That You Don’t (So You Can Grow & Scale Too) 👀 Case Study: Wedding Planner Marketing That Works – How Katie Sautter Booked 15 Weddings in Her First Year 🔍 The Knot & WeddingWire: Are They Worth It For Wedding Vendors? 🤔

September 30, 2026Episode 37750 min

How to Increase Wedding Bookings: From First Wedding to Fully Booked in 4 Months

Most wedding pros write their website for other wedding pros without realizing it. You look at what everyone else in your category says, you borrow the words that seem to work, and you end up with "elegant," "timeless," and "luxury" on a site that could belong to anyone. If you've been trying to figure out how to increase wedding bookings when your work is good and your wedding inquiries are still trickling in, that copy is a big part of the problem. Rachel Shannon is a live wedding painter in Philadelphia and a member of The Wedding Business Collective. She painted her first wedding in May. By September her 2026 calendar was full, 2027 was close behind, and she was taking bookings for 2028. She didn't have years of client data to work from, either. She had one paid wedding under her belt, a working hypothesis about who she wanted to book, and a habit of publishing things before they felt ready. We talked through what she changed on her website, how she started getting found on Google and ChatGPT, and what happened to her wedding leads once she did. Get all the links from this episode: http://evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/377 ——— I’m hosting a free live class : Break Up With The Knot & WeddingWire (Without Losing Leads) We’ll cover why many wedding pros feel their directory listings aren’t delivering like they once did, what’s actually working for bookings right now, and how to create a marketing system that puts you back in the driver’s seat. Grab your free seat at evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/breakup ——— Find Heidi: Instagram (send a DM!) The Wedding Business Collective 🩵 (get your first month for $1) Ghosted Lead Booking Wizard 👻 Wedding Business Shop 🛍️ Free Training: Break Up With WeddingWire + The Knot Without Losing Leads 💔 Free Audio Training: Inside Profitable Six-Figure Wedding Businesses: What They Do That You Don’t (So You Can Grow & Scale Too) 👀 Case Study: Wedding Planner Marketing That Works – How Katie Sautter Booked 15 Weddings in Her First Year 🔍 The Knot & WeddingWire: Are They Worth It For Wedding Vendors? 🤔

September 23, 2026Episode 37619 min

How to Plan for Wedding Booking Season So You Actually Reach Your Goals

You set a big goal at the start of the year. A number of bookings, a revenue number, something you actually care about. Now wedding booking season is here, and if you're honest with yourself, you've been busy for months. Posting, tweaking, reorganizing, answering emails. But when you look at what you did, a lot of it had nothing to do with that goal. That's not a discipline problem. It's a planning problem, and it's really common in wedding businesses. This episode is about closing the gap between the goal on paper and what you do on a random Tuesday. Get all the links from this episode: http://evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/376 ——— I’m hosting a free live class : Break Up With The Knot & WeddingWire (Without Losing Leads) We’ll cover why many wedding pros feel their directory listings aren’t delivering like they once did, what’s actually working for bookings right now, and how to create a marketing system that puts you back in the driver’s seat. Grab your free seat at evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/breakup ——— Find Heidi: Instagram (send a DM!) The Wedding Business Collective 🩵 (get your first month for $1) Ghosted Lead Booking Wizard 👻 Wedding Business Shop 🛍️ Free Training: Break Up With WeddingWire + The Knot Without Losing Leads 💔 Free Audio Training: Inside Profitable Six-Figure Wedding Businesses: What They Do That You Don’t (So You Can Grow & Scale Too) 👀 Case Study: Wedding Planner Marketing That Works – How Katie Sautter Booked 15 Weddings in Her First Year 🔍 The Knot & WeddingWire: Are They Worth It For Wedding Vendors? 🤔

September 16, 2026Episode 37556 min

Booking Season Doesn't Start In November: How To Prep Your Wedding Marketing Now

You've got the date circled. Week before Thanksgiving, booking season kicks off, and that's when you'll finally get serious about your marketing again. Here's the problem with that plan. Couples don't wait for your calendar. By the time engagement season hits, they've already been researching, comparing, reading reviews, and quietly deciding who's in and who's out. The wedding pros showing up in that research did the work back in September. Tayler Cusick Hollman has been working with wedding pros for 11 years and she watches the same thing play out every single year. Busy season eats your marketing. Your business goes quiet. Then November arrives and the knee-jerk reaction is to post more. Posting more is not a plan. We got into what is. Get all the links from this episode: http://evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/375 ——— I’m hosting a free live class : Break Up With The Knot & WeddingWire (Without Losing Leads) We’ll cover why many wedding pros feel their directory listings aren’t delivering like they once did, what’s actually working for bookings right now, and how to create a marketing system that puts you back in the driver’s seat. Grab your free seat at evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/breakup ——— Find Heidi: Instagram (send a DM!) The Wedding Business Collective 🩵 (get your first month for $1) Ghosted Lead Booking Wizard 👻 Wedding Business Shop 🛍️ Free Training: Break Up With WeddingWire + The Knot Without Losing Leads 💔 Free Audio Training: Inside Profitable Six-Figure Wedding Businesses: What They Do That You Don’t (So You Can Grow & Scale Too) 👀 Case Study: Wedding Planner Marketing That Works – How Katie Sautter Booked 15 Weddings in Her First Year 🔍 The Knot & WeddingWire: Are They Worth It For Wedding Vendors? 🤔

September 9, 2026Episode 37427 min

Busy But Not Booked: Why You're Overwhelmed And Still Not Booking Weddings

You're busy alllllll day long. Emails, proposals, social media, client work, scheduling, graphics. Your Tuesday is packed. But when you finally close your laptop at 7pm, you can't point to a single thing that actually moved your business forward. Here's the part that should really bug you: you did the same thing yesterday, and the day before, and you'll probably do it again tomorrow. Most wedding pros treat being busy and being booked like they're the same thing. They're not. This episode is about the gap between them and how stop feeling so overwhelmed. Get all the links from this episode: http://evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/374 ——— I’m hosting a free live class : Break Up With The Knot & WeddingWire (Without Losing Leads) We’ll cover why many wedding pros feel their directory listings aren’t delivering like they once did, what’s actually working for bookings right now, and how to create a marketing system that puts you back in the driver’s seat. Grab your free seat at evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/breakup ——— Find Heidi: Instagram (send a DM!) The Wedding Business Collective 🩵 (get your first month for $1) Ghosted Lead Booking Wizard 👻 Wedding Business Shop 🛍️ Free Training: Break Up With WeddingWire + The Knot Without Losing Leads 💔 Free Audio Training: Inside Profitable Six-Figure Wedding Businesses: What They Do That You Don’t (So You Can Grow & Scale Too) 👀 Case Study: Wedding Planner Marketing That Works – How Katie Sautter Booked 15 Weddings in Her First Year 🔍 The Knot & WeddingWire: Are They Worth It For Wedding Vendors? 🤔

August 12, 2026Episode 3731 hr 6 min

How To Get Wedding Clients Without Relying On Instagram

👉 Want to finally break free from The Knot and WeddingWire without losing leads? Save your seat for this free training. You post consistently. You get likes, you get comments, you even get shares. Then you open your inquiries and there's nothing there. If your whole plan for how to get wedding clients is Instagram, and Instagram isn't producing, that gap will wreck you. That was Elyse Stokes in July of 2024. She ran a ten day birthday promo, made the graphics, boosted the posts, ran Facebook ads. Plenty of engagement. Not one inquiry. Five days after her birthday she broke her leg, and she spent that summer in a recliner doing the math on whether she'd have to go back to a job and put her son in daycare. Two years later she's booked a year and a half out and turning couples away. She's a live wedding painter and wedding stationer in Georgia, and she gets specific in this one about what she cut, what she kept, and what actually changed. Get all the links from this episode: http://evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/373 ——— I’m hosting a free live class : Break Up With The Knot & WeddingWire (Without Losing Leads) We’ll cover why many wedding pros feel their directory listings aren’t delivering like they once did, what’s actually working for bookings right now, and how to create a marketing system that puts you back in the driver’s seat. Grab your free seat at evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/breakup ——— Find Heidi: Instagram (send a DM!) The Wedding Business Collective 🩵 (get your first month for $1) Ghosted Lead Booking Wizard 👻 Wedding Business Shop 🛍️ Free Training: Break Up With WeddingWire + The Knot Without Losing Leads 💔 Free Audio Training: Inside Profitable Six-Figure Wedding Businesses: What They Do That You Don’t (So You Can Grow & Scale Too) 👀 Case Study: Wedding Planner Marketing That Works – How Katie Sautter Booked 15 Weddings in Her First Year 🔍 The Knot & WeddingWire: Are They Worth It For Wedding Vendors? 🤔

August 5, 2026Episode 37211 min

3 Things Wedding Pros Tell Me (And Why They're Wrong)

👉 Want to finally break free from The Knot and WeddingWire without losing leads? Save your seat for this free training. You book weddings. But booked how? At prices you actually love, with couples you actually like, or booked despite your marketing, not because of it? There are three things wedding pros tell Heidi all the time about why they haven't fixed their marketing. She's heard all three, more than once, for 14 years straight. Each one has a grain of truth in it. That's exactly why they work so well at keeping people stuck. This episode walks through all three, the fear underneath each one, and why the busiest, most "successful" wedding pros are usually the ones with the most to lose by not fixing this now. Get all the links from this episode: http://evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/372 Get your free ticket to Book More Weddings Summit: https://bookmoreweddingssummit.com/ ——— I’m hosting a free live class : Break Up With The Knot & WeddingWire (Without Losing Leads) We’ll cover why many wedding pros feel their directory listings aren’t delivering like they once did, what’s actually working for bookings right now, and how to create a marketing system that puts you back in the driver’s seat. Grab your free seat at evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/breakup ——— Find Heidi: Instagram (send a DM!) The Wedding Business Collective 🩵 (get your first month for $1) Ghosted Lead Booking Wizard 👻 Wedding Business Shop 🛍️ Free Training: Break Up With WeddingWire + The Knot Without Losing Leads 💔 Free Audio Training: Inside Profitable Six-Figure Wedding Businesses: What They Do That You Don’t (So You Can Grow & Scale Too) 👀 Case Study: Wedding Planner Marketing That Works – How Katie Sautter Booked 15 Weddings in Her First Year 🔍 The Knot & WeddingWire: Are They Worth It For Wedding Vendors? 🤔