Becca Pountney – Marketing Theme Park or Marketing Funnel
Are you still relying on the old marketing funnel—or ready to embrace the chaos of today’s “theme park” marketing world? What actually makes you stand out in a crowded industry, and are you tracking what works or just chasing the newest trends? In this episode, I sit down with UK wedding industry marketing expert Becca Pountney to explore her innovative “marketing theme park” concept, why data matters more than ever, and what it really takes to attract ideal couples in 2026 and beyond.
Listen to this new episode for smart strategies on getting visible, understanding your customers, and making your wedding business the destination clients can’t resist.
Becca Pountney is one of the UK’s leading wedding marketing experts, helping venues and wedding professionals attract more bookings through smart, practical marketing strategies. She is the award-winning host of Wedding Pros Who Are Ready to Grow and author of Done is Better Than Perfect.
Contact Becca:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapountney/
Website: https://beccapountney.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beccapountney
LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/becca-pountney-a0181033
Podcast: https://wedding-pros.captivate.fm/listen
Book: https://a.co/d/42Y30LB
If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at [email protected] or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com
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View the full transcript on Alan’s site: https://alanberg.com/blog/
Here we go. Are we living in a marketing theme park or a marketing funnel? Listen to this episode. See what I’m talking about? Hi, it’s Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. I am so happy to have my friend Becca Pountney on to talk about marketing theme parks. Becca, how you doing?
I’m good, how are you? Good to see you.
Good to see you again from across the pond. I will see you. I will be back over in the fall again, so I’ll hopefully get to see you when I’m over there. But we’re going to talk about marketing theme parks. But before we get into that, just tell everybody real quick, you know, what do you do?
So, I’m Becca Pountney. I’m based here in the UK. I’m often referred to as the UK’s leading wedding industry marketing expert. And so I help wedding business owners and venues of all sizes here in the UK and further afield get more visible and, and market their businesses and stop being the best kept secret.
There we go. There we go. You help them get more, more inquiries and I help them sell more. And that’s why it works so well together. So when I asked you what we want to talk about and you said, you know, everybody used to speak about marketing funnels, but now it’s a marketing theme park. So fill us in, please. I love this picture that I’m putting in my head, but tell me why we’re talking theme park instead of funnel.
So for ever we’ve been talking about this marketing funnel, whether you’re in universities, whether you go to stage talk, I’m sure everyone here is rolling their eyes and they say, yeah, heard about that a million times before. And I started doing a bit of digging because marketing is my thing. And I found out. Do you know when the marketing funnel was first invented? It was 19. 1904. 1904. And I just could not believe that we’re still teaching this marketing concept that was first developed a long time ago in a world which looks very, very different to the world we find ourselves here in 2026 and beyond. And so I started thinking to myself, what? What is going on here? This is crazy.
Why are we still teaching this way of marketing when we haven’t lived in that world for quite some time. And then Google were talking about this concept called the messy middle. So they were starting to talk about how the marketing funnel was shifting and it was becoming this messy middle. But I didn’t like the sound of messy middle. So I came up with my own concept, which I think perfectly describes the landscape for marketing in general and particularly in our wedding industry, which was the marketing theme park, because I don’t know when the last time was that you went to a theme park, Alan. But I love a theme park. And they’re loud, they’re noisy, the lights are flashing, there’s choices everywhere. Everyone takes a different route through the theme park.
And I think that perfectly describes the wedding planning marketing process right now in 2026.
Oh, absolutely. All the distractions and they look like they’re having fun there, so I need to go there too. And, and all those things. I, I, I love it. I love it. I had not heard that, but I hope you have copyrighted that or trademark that or something like that, because you definitely need to. So, so just, let’s just step back a bit. So the marketing funnel concept was first from 1904.
Okay. Do you remember who started it or what was the business they were in or.
Yeah. So Frank Hutchinson, as far as I can tell, because it is Woolly, is the guy who first came up with this very basic marketing funnel. And then over time people have added to it and improved it and changed it, but it’s still this funnel concept. And I used to do a stage talk where I talked about, let’s go back to 1999 and remember how we used to buy. And when I was very, very young in 1999, you know, we’d watch a TV commercial and it had our full attention, but because we couldn’t skip through it, it was just on the screen, it would tell us something like, you need to buy this Sony Walkman. And it was really cool. And you thought, yeah, this is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. And so that was you going through the marketing funnel.
And you’re like, mom, I need to buy the Sony Walkman. Take me to the one store that I can buy the Sony Walkman in and I go through this funnel and I buy it. But actually now in 2026, we know that people can’t even watch the adverts without also looking at their phone or, or fast forwarding through it or scrolling and looking at something else. And so it’s not the same anymore. It’s not a funnel, it’s not a clear cut one route direction. And also, people are buying from everywhere. It’s not just that TV advert, it’s radio advertising, podcasts, social media. The list goes on and on.
Yeah, I mean, my wife and I will sit. We have our evening ritual. So after we turn off the telly, we do some games on my iPad. Their New York Times has these games, so wordle. And in some games, and then it’s turn it off. And then she wants to go look at Instagram, and she calls it Babies and puppies. Right? She wants to see babies and puppies. We actually have a new grandson.
So there’s a lot of baby stuff that shows up, because as soon as you click on something about a baby, it’s going to go showing up there. But what’s interesting is very often an ad will come up and we’re curious, you know, is this a real product? Is this like a good thing or whatever? So then we leave and Instagram, we do our research. We might go to Amazon because we figure maybe our recourse is better if we buy it on Amazon. And like you said, you know, I saw it here on one side, but then all of a sudden I’m over there, and then going someplace else and going someplace else and down this rabbit hole and. And all those things. It’s part of that paradox of choice, you know, which is you want to see all the choices, but then, my gosh, you can’t decide when you’ve seen all the choices because there’s just way too many choices. So what do you. What are you saying to wedding professionals in terms of, okay, you have just understand the distraction, right? Like, you walked into the theme park and it’s like, it all looks like so much fun.
And look, they’re all having fun over here. How do you coach them on how to navigate this?
Yeah. So once we understand we’re living in a marketing theme park world, we need to realize, okay, well, if we know that and we acknowledge that, how do we then stand out in that crowd? Because just shouting louder isn’t necessarily going to help. So the first thing I say is, you’ve got to find a reason to stand out. So, again, if you imagine yourself at the front of a theme park, any theme park, the gate opens, everyone goes in a different direction for very different reasons. So some people will go to the biggest ride, some people go to the shortest queue. Some people will go right to the back of the park because they think everyone else will be at the front. Some people go to the place that’s the closest, and some people will say, I’m going to stop and have a coffee before I do anything else. So everyone’s taken a different route, everyone’s made a different choice, but there’s something that’s made them make that choice.
And So I say to the vendors, what, when someone gets engaged, they’re going to go into this marketing theme park. They’re going to look for venues, photographers, florists. They are going to see every single florist from all over the world bombarding them. So you need to know what makes you stand out, what’s the reason? They’re going to come to you over any one of your competitors. And it’s no longer just happening to live close to your house. You’ve got to have something to stand on.
So besides that, that’s the first place I would start, is what makes you different. If I ask you, should I, can you give me a compelling reason? Or are you just saying everyone else?
Yeah, you actually froze there for just a couple of seconds in the beginning, but we got. We got that part of it. So how, as a vendor, do you decide which of those places that you want to be? Because I talk about it differently. I say there’s four steps to more sales. Getting their attention, getting the inquiry, having a conversation, making the sale. Right, so you call them funnels, whatever. But if we don’t have their attention, right, so like you said, what attracted them to go to this ride or go to this direction or whatever. But as a, as a vendor, you can’t be everywhere, right? Nobody’s got unlimited budget, so you can’t be everywhere.
So how do you decide? I want to be over here. So when they go to the back of the park, I’m going to be there. I want to be in the coffee shop or whatever. How do you decide?
Okay, so once you know what you stand for and what makes you different, you need to work out. And you’ll know this, who you’re for and where they’re hanging out. Number one, very important. So not just what everyone else says, but have you done a bit of market research? Do you know where your ideal customers are spending their time? And very importantly, and I’ve been talking about this a lot recently, and it’s not necessarily the most exciting thing is, are you looking at your data? Because so often I will talk to clients and they’ll say, I need to be on TikTok, or I need to be on Instagram or I need to be on Google. And I say, well, where did your bookings come from last year? And they say, wedding shows. I say, well, why are we not doing more wedding shows then? Why are you not looking at your data? And so, you know, not only do you need to know where people are hanging out, but you need to see what’s worked for you in the past, and sometimes less is more, doubling down and doing things that worked previously rather than just thinking, I need the shiny new thing. Because as business owners, we’re also lost in the theme park. And so we see the shiny stuff on social media and it pulls us in all these directions with false promises.
And actually we have the data in front of us. Look at your own data. That’s really important.
Well, we could have the data in front of us. And I think that’s something that you’ve come across, and I certainly come across all the time, is it’s not that our. The vendors don’t want to have the data and don’t want to know it. A lot of them don’t collect it. And it’s actually a chapter in my new book, AI for the Real World. Garbage in, garbage out. If you don’t have the data, you can’t analyze it. That’s it.
And the data that I wish people would have, it’s not that it’s impossible to get. It takes some work setting up the collection points. So you can know that, for instance, there’s an AI that I’m helping with, which is VenueX AI, which is AI for venues that responds to the inquiries, has the conversation, books the tour. And when they were building the dashboard, I said, I need you to build in inquiry to conversation, Conversation to tour toward a booking. Right. Because inquirer to conversation shows you your ghosting percentage. So if you’re getting 50% of the people to respond to you, you’re getting ghosted 50% of the time. Most people have no idea because they go inquiry to booking.
Right. That’s what they track is inquiry to booking. But they don’t know what their percentage of ghosting is from this source or their percentage of sales are from this source. Could you have that data? Yeah. Like, do you know where your inquiries came from? Right. It’s not perfect data because like I said, you know, I’ll go on Instagram, see something, buy it on Amazon. Right. And they don’t know that.
They don’t, because they’re not connected. They’re not connected at all in there. So what data? If we could, you know, waiver, magic mouse. Okay, what data do you. Would you want to have? So if you were that wedding florist, what data would you like them to have?
So I’m a big fan of a monthly KPI. So with some of my clients, at the end of a month, I will give them a whole list of things I want them to go and look at. So things like, have you looked at your Google Analytics recently? Do you even have Google Analytics installed? And if you’ve got it installed, have you looked at it? Do you know how many people are coming to your website? And does it show you where they’re coming from? Have you looked at that acquisition place? Because again, that can tell you so many things. I had a client who said to me, I’ve been posting all the time on Instagram, it’s doing nothing, I’m going to stop. So I said, well, just a moment, before you stop, let’s look in your Google Analytics and see where people are coming from. And organic, social. And Instagram was her second highest source after Google. And so I said, well, all that work you’re doing, you think it’s not doing anything because they may not be engaging there, but they’re coming to you from there.
So definitely Google Analytics 100%. Secondly, social media traffic. Are you looking at your social media stats? Not the vanity statistics, but actually how many people are clicking your link? How many people are seeing your content? How long are they engaged in your content? Just, it doesn’t need to take you a long time. I would say maximum 30 minutes at the end of a month to go through this stuff this. Then look at how many inquiries did you get in this month? And I say you can either track that very roughly by I got five inquiries or you can do it numerically. I got £5,000 worth of inquiries. And how many did you convert out of the five? You know, I had five inquiries, I converted two. Right.
Now we’ve got some numbers to work with and this is basic stuff, but I’d rather people did the basics than had nothing.
Yeah, I actually had a consultation earlier today and I asked, I said, so how much of your traffic is mobile? And she said, I don’t know. She said, my husband might know, but I don’t know. I said, and I’ve done podcasts about this, spoken about the three things I want you to know. So just what you said, like, where is your traffic coming from? And you know, your biggest source of traffic may not be your biggest source of business. Just because you get a lot of traffic doesn’t mean it’s converting. I said, what pages are they looking at? Because you might have all this great stuff on your website and find out nobody’s going there. Okay? And then, so how much, how much time are they spending? Right? Because if they’re not spending a lot of time, then that’s it. And what happened with this particular client is.
She said, we have our price on the website, and yet everybody’s reaching out and asking how much. And I knew what the problem was before I even looked. And I go to look at the website, I go to the page, the wedding page, and I had to scroll so far down to find the pricing. Then I switched it to a mobile view, and of course it’s much further down now because all those pictures that were side by side are stacked up now or whatever. And I scrolled, I don’t know, nine, ten times. And I said, and she goes, oh, that’s really far down. I said, right, so you think you’re being transparent. And we’ll probably find that this page is viewed a lot.
But if we did heat mapping, which you don’t have to do, but to show you how far down they’re getting, nobody’s scrolling 10 times. Like, nobody’s scrolling on their phone 10 times to get down, down there. So we found some of the issues. We reworded it. We actually used AI to update the wording, put the pricing not at the very top, make them read a little bit. Right. But much, much closer. So now it’s like the third scroll instead of the ninth or tenth scroll there.
But go look and see is anybody even looking at the pages. Right. I mean, it’ll tell you that on analysis. And I’m not talking about the crazy stuff there that, you know, Google Analytics has. I always say it’s like sitting in a cockpit of an air fuel. Got it. Okay. Altimeter, how high we are, we’re not upside down.
The horizon. The rest of it, I have no idea what’s going on there. Right. There you go. So that’s easy data, right? That’s the easy data over there. The. The harder data is connecting the dots. Right.
Because I got the lead. My website shows I got a lead. Now how do I know that lead came from that source? Right. That’s where it becomes a little bit harder, right?
Yeah, it does. But at the same time, there’s other points where we can ask them those questions on contact forms. Again, they don’t always know the answer, but we might as well get some data because then we can start to see some patterns or just ask them. Sometimes people just forget in a conversation, hey, where did you find me? And often people say, oh, you kept popping up on social media. Oh, I saw you on, I heard you on this podcast. And it may not be the answer you think, but often people will tell you something. Just note it down.
Yeah. And if you’re going to have a drop down or something on your website if you can randomize it so that. Because if people always choose the first thing on the list, you have to be really suspicious. Is it, is that really the answer? You made me answer. So I just took the first thing on the list and there you go. You want to have that in there. So having visibility to the data and I always caution people don’t look at just today and don’t look at this week. You have to look over time.
Is it increasing, is it decreasing, is it seasonal? Right. I get more leads in January because people got engaged around the holidays. So I’m getting more leads there. And then don’t freak out in March when it’s dropped down because it’s not engagement season. Right. And then based upon your business, do they book you six months out, eight months out, nine months out, 15 months out and things like that. So let’s go back to understanding their avatar, like who is my ideal customer? Give them some ideas on how they can identify them. Because you can’t hit a target you can’t see.
So, you know, engaged couples is not a good description of your ideal customer. Right.
I find that people go one of two ways in this. They either go anyone who’s getting married or they have the most complicated description of the person, the name, the age that they don’t ever do anything with. And I think sometimes there’s a happy medium somewhere in the middle. I often say to my clients when they get spun out about this, just think about some of the people you’ve worked with in the past that paid the right price, that were easy to work with, that you loved working at their wedding and just base it around that. And often our ideal clients are kind of a version of ourselves because that’s why we get on with them, that’s why we relate to them. But again, there’s no point doing this big long list of 27 different attributes just for the sake of doing it, you know. You know, my book as well is called Done is Better than Perfect. I’m very much of that mantra of let’s just get it done.
Let’s not spend, spend so long worrying about the avatar. Let’s actually just explore. So that would be my little hint though is just think about the people you’ve worked with recently, the ones that you really liked, and let’s work out how can we replicate those.
Right. If you could choose your customer. Right. Just make them appear. Who are they? How old are they? Where do they come from? What do they like? I break it down to three things. So geographics, where do they live? Okay? And then you have demographics, which are measurable things. They are this age. I love working with couples from this area, couples that went to this uni.
I love couples that again, maybe you, like you said, people like yourself. So maybe they’re the same religion, maybe they’re the same race. Maybe there’s something about them that. Right? And then there’s psychographics, right? Maybe you love dogs and you love people who love dogs, and that’s a psychographic thing as I connect with you because of these things. So if you can put those together and make your avatar, then you say, okay, well, where do they hang out now? Maybe they’re not on TikTok. Maybe they’re on Instagram. Maybe they’re on Pinterest. Maybe they’re on Facebook.
People keep asking me why I don’t post on TikTok. I’m like, because you’re not looking for me there. You might be on there looking, and maybe your couples are, but you’re not looking for me. I don’t know if they’re looking for you, but I get even very little Instagram interaction. Like you said, just because they’re not doing anything doesn’t mean they’re not lurking, right? But I get my most interaction on Facebook, a little bit on LinkedIn, a little bit more on Instagram. I’m not going to bother with TikTok, just another place just to post, just to do that. And I have an assistant, so it’s not like it’s taking my time. But still, I don’t want to waste our time either.
And I think the misconception people have when we start talking about these avatars as well is that when we think about these people and then we think about marketing, that makes sense. But then people panic and they say, well, what if this person inquires and they don’t look like my avatar? Should I turn them away? And I’m like, no. We need to understand the difference between marketing and sales. That’s not the same thing. One of the examples I often talk about, as is Coca Cola, right? Diet Coke is. Was very much marketed towards women. The adverts in the 90s, going back to the 90s, were all about men and how you drink a Diet Coke and you attract these men. And actually, I then say to people, so they were marketing at women, but does that mean my husband can’t go to the shop and buy a Diet Coke? Of course he can.
And so we have to understand the difference. We might be marketing ourselves, sheltering these messages, trying to reach these ideal couples, but if someone who doesn’t fit that type is willing to pay your price, please don’t turn them away. Right?
And if you think about the people you’ve done business with already, they’re not all that avatar and it doesn’t mean they’re not a good customer. As long as they liked you, you like them, and you wanted to help them have an amazing wedding day, then that’s good. I think what we’ve seen, if you can go back to before 1999, they used to run the same advert everywhere, right? But now you’ll see an advert for the same company with pretty much the same message, but the people in it look different because the people from that show that they’re trying to, you know, attract or my wife will have something on. She, she plays these, a lot of YouTube music and stuff like that. And some of these adverts will come on in Spanish because she’s been listening to this kind of Latin music thing and now the adverts in Spanish, which it should be because it’s a good chance that audience, you know, not her, but there’s a good chance that that audience, that’s what it’s for. I also love that we’re seeing real people, right? We’re not all seeing these beautiful six foot tall size zero models and whatever. We’re seeing real people and we’re seeing interracial couples and we’re seeing just the beauty of the world represented there. I just had somebody at one of my events and they manufacture, they design and manufacture wedding dresses for plus size brides.
Right. And yes, all brides are not six foot tall, size zero. Thank you very much. Let’s, let’s have a dress for you that looks beautiful and I think it’s just wonderful to see that. I also caution everybody listening, go give yourself a reality check. Go to your website. Did you only put people that look a certain way when your real customers look different? And I get it. I have some areas of the country where everybody looks kind of the same.
Right. And not the same as another area, the same as the people in your area. Well, great, then they show that because that’s what they look like. But if you live where I live, oh my gosh, I walk out and it looks like a Benetton ad. I mean there’s, there’s everybody here. Therefore you should be showing that in your adverts because people want to see themselves.
Yeah. And that’s what’s going to make you stand out to those people, because they want to see themselves in your marketing. And exactly like we say those cheesy adverts we hear on Instagram, I get them. I don’t know if you get them, where it’s like, are you a woman with children who’s 39 years old and you’re like, how do you know? And people. But you immediately take notice? Even though we know from a marketing brain, it’s probably AI, it’s probably fixed, but something about being seen makes you take notice. I had a photographer client a few years back and I often use him as an example. He said he was the photographer for people that didn’t like having their photos taken, people who didn’t look the norm. And he asked me to do a review of his website and I said, how come your website looks like everyone else, then? Why have you got all the thin blonde people on your website? You just told me you’re for these other kind of people.
So he totally transformed his imagery. He went and got real people, all sorts of different sizes, shapes, genuine couples. And guess what? His business increased because he was attracting the people that didn’t want to have their photos taken, whereas the people that didn’t want to have their photos taken were not attracted to the people that didn’t look like them.
Right. And his messaging is. It should be just that, right? If you hate your having your photo taken, you’re in the right place. Well, let me get comfy now because I need to sit here. That. Yeah, that’s beautiful. When you say it out loud, it sounds so simple, right? And then people go back and they look and go, oh, wait a minute, you’re right. But, you know, what you just described is the curse of knowledge, right? He knew what was on his website.
He put it there. But you needed somebody like you to look at it from the outside and go, really? Because that doesn’t match what you just told me. That’s not exactly that. So let’s. Let’s. I want to change channels here just for a second. You recently put on an event for wedding pros in the uk.
Yes, I did. Wed Prose Live. It was very exciting, it was very fun, and there was a whole lot of Becca energy in the room.
I can’t imagine that at all. So that was your first time doing that event?
Yep. So it’s my first ever industry conference. I’ve been and spoken at all these different industry conferences and I was like, I need something that’s got more energy here in the uk because I go to the States and I love the energy. And sometimes in the uk, we’re a little bit boring and we’re a little bit straight laced. And so I decided let’s bring something different. Let’s bring some of my friends, let’s do something different here in the uk. And a blast. Just to give you a picture, the day started with a video, me in a pink sparkly dress running down the aisle to a Spice Girl track and then talking about marketing and it just went from there.
And it ended with a themed sparkly cocktail. So it couldn’t have been more fun if we tried. But the most important thing was people connected, people had fun, people came open to learn and they’ve walked away taking action.
Fantastic. I was watching from afar on your social media, all that and I saw the sparkly dress and all. So what did you learn? Because you’re on the other side then, right? Because you’ve been on like me, you’ve been on the stages, you’ve been going through, going through all these different conferences. What did you learn from the other side?
That the thing that made it stand out and the thing that worked was thinking about the details of the experience. So I knew that I wanted to give people the details. I talk about it and you probably do too. You know, people talk about how they’ve made to feel. They remember what they saw, you know, all of those things. And so for me, the learning was how can I take those things and make people feel seen in that big environment? So from every single speaker, what makes it good for a speaker? Having your confidence monitor, having someone mic you up through to what makes it good as an attendee. So we had a program that had one page was the name of the speaker and the other page they could write notes and so that all of their notes could be kept next to the information about the speaker, the QR code to get their freebie. And it was all those little details that really made the difference.
And that’s what people noticed, I think. And also just the fact that you can be authentically yourself like no one else could have pulled off Wed Pros Live in the way that it was done. Because they’re not that person. And if they did, it wouldn’t work. If someone danced down the aisle in a pink sparkly dress to the Spice Girls, people might look twice. But you know, in 2026, we gotta be ourselves and that’s absolutely fine. Right? And some people will love it.
Some people won’t. And that’s fine because I’ll find my people. In the same way, the wedding businesses have got to find what they stand for to find their people.
That’s a great lesson, you know, being authentically you and the people that are attracted to that are your people, and the people that are not are not your people. And it’s not that you’re trying to exclude them, but they’re just not attracted to that very much. Like, if you go fishing and you drop a certain type of bait in, some fish are attracted to it and some fish aren’t attracted to it. They’re still there. They’re swimming around. They’re just not your people. And that’s wonderful. I love it.
Now, if you do it again, I notice I said if because sometimes it’s painful. What would you do differently?
That’s another great question. I am going to do it again in 2027. I’ve already sold a third of the tickets, so I now have to do it again. So it is happening. What would I do differently? I don’t know. There was a lot of things I liked. Obviously, there’s always room for improvement. One thing was I feel like I needed more screens so that people at the back could see better.
Okay.
But on the whole, I think for me, the challenge is keeping it fresh and keeping it exciting and keeping it moving forward. Because it’s easy to do an exciting first event because it’s new. It’s harder to keep that momentum going. And, yeah, I think that’s it. Like being on top of your game and leading the pack. The same for these wedding business owners. If you’re listening to this, you know, it’s easy to come out with a new idea, but it’s harder to keep on evolving and staying ahead when everything around you is changing.
It’s like a debut album. You just had your debut album, and debut albums are authentic to the artist because you wrote the music, it’s you. Hopefully not overproduced. And all because you didn’t have the money. Right. So you couldn’t. Could. So you just put it out there.
And now can you keep the you and. And I say this as a speaker. I am me wherever I’m me. Because you and I have had coffee together and we’ve hung out, and I’m no different than the guy on stage. Right? You’re no different than the person on stage. But that’s hard for a lot of people because they get on a stage and they’re like, I’m I’m on stage, people are looking at me. What do I do Right? And you’re not authentically you. You need to be authentically you in your marketing.
You need to be authentically on your website, you need to be authentic in your messaging. This is what I’m teaching people with AI, how to be more authentically them with AI as opposed to making it not sound like them at all. Because they’re eventually going to meet you and you better be you when they meet you. Right. You better be that same person there. So it’s. Yeah. I love the fact that you’re going to do it again.
I love the fact that you pre sold a third of the tickets. Kudos. That is, that is absolutely wonderful. You know, events you’ve attended events, I’ve attended events and I think you had a unique perspective because I’m not putting on any big events like that. I do my workshops and things like that. But we do see things differently. Like you talked about the confidence monitors or when I was in London last year with you at a certain event, I did a three hour workshop. I walked in, I said, oh, where’s my lavalier? Where’s my ear set? And they handed me a handheld mic for a three hour workshop.
And you know, I like you talk with my hands and all of a sudden one hand can’t talk. It’s got to hold over here. It’s like really? Really. I mean you knew that I was doing this and of course. Did I tell them? I wanted to laugh. Of course I did. Right. And do I have one I could have brought? Well no, because it’s US power.
But anyway, we could have done that. So you’re doing it again. How many days?
One day. At the moment it’s one day at the moment. I’m committing to one, but I’m growing it bigger. So last, well, the last event in March, I had a capacity, 184 people in the room. Every single place was taken. There was a waiting list, which is why I already planned 2027. We’re expanding capacity to 200 plus and yeah, over time I would love to see a multi day event. I absolutely love Wedding MBA in Las Vegas.
I think the team there are incredible. They I advertise them in my program, I chatted with them because they said they’re not interested in coming to Europe right now. So there is a space right now for a decent sized wedding industry conference in Europe and I hope over the next five, ten years that I can learn from the amazing things they’re doing. And what I love about Wedding MBA is they put education at the top. So if people are paying, I think if people are paying, if a vendor is coming for a day out of their business, they need to have the top of the top education. They don’t want to just have a load of rubbish that they could have found on the Internet. And so for me, I think that’s my perspective as both a speaker and attendee is how can we give maximum value for people’s time and also get them out of their houses, away from their computers and meeting each other.
And was this in London that you did it?
Yes, Central London. We did it this year at the Royal Horse Guards Hotel just off Trafalgar Square. And next year we are overlooking Tower Bridge at the Tower Hotel.
Beautiful. Beautiful. One thing, if you haven’t noticed that Wedding MBA is cutting a day shorter and a bunch of the conferences in the States that are multiple days are cutting a day off. And a part of it is cost, part of it is the investment of time of people to come. It’s not just the money, but the time. Like my National Speakers association conference, it’s costing the same, but it’s a day shorter, which is fine. Right. It’s just the way that we’re concentrating the content in there.
But Wedding MBA is cutting a day down. It’s just easier for people, you know, not necessarily the cost of the travel and all that, but it’s just easier. What I’ve found is that local people have trouble going to a multiple day event because there’s so much pulling them back to home, especially if they’re not staying at a hotel nearby, you know, because you have kids and it’s like, oh, kids stuff and whatever. I can’t do two days, I can’t do that. But when you fly to Las Vegas or if you go somewhere, you’re already away, so it’s really, it’s what happens. And then it’s also the draw. You know, Vegas is a draw for a lot of people. Not for me, but.
But for a lot of people. I’ve been saying when I stop going to Vegas for work, you will never see me in that town again. And I have some friends there. Maybe I would go visit my friends, but there’s no draw for that. For me. It’s like Orlando and Disney, like you said, the theme park. Maybe when my grandkids get older, maybe I’ll take them there. But for myself now, no, there’s just too much going on there.
If people want to find out more about you. Where should they go?
Best place to find me is my website, beccapountney.com. I’m sure it will be linked in the show notes because that’s a difficult surname to spell. Or just connect with me on Instagram. I love to chat. Is absolutely me in my DMs. It’s not an assistant, it’s not a virtual assistant. So if you’ve got a question, want to chat, drop into my DMs and we can chat there.
I love that I. I’ve had people messaging me and then I respond and they say, is this the real person or. It’s not my Ask Alan alter ego. No, it’s really me and it’s really you. She actually does answer. I can vouch for that. And then the information about the conference is on your website as well.
Yeah. So all of the information about the conference is on my website. Or you can go to wedproslive.com for the latest information.
Perfect. Perfect. Well, maybe you want to get it away from home, cross the pond, go there. I know people listening from the UK and Ireland and other parts of Europe. A lot of people in the us you want to go to London, especially overlooking the Tower Bridge. I mean, that’s. What a. What a beautiful place to be over there.
That sounds pretty. It’s pretty iconic. And we did have some people come from the States this year from venues of the States because they wanted an excuse to come and visit London and they could make it a business.
Exactly. Exactly. Well, thanks so much for joining me. Thanks, everybody for listening.
I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is [email protected] or you can text, use the short form on this page, or call +1.732.422.6362, international 001 732 422 6362. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
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