I was watching an Instagram post by my friend Vanessa Joy where she was discussing the wedding gap. It intrigued me as I had heard some rumblings about it, but hadn’t had a chance yet to discuss it and find out more. So, I invited Vanessa on for her take on it and what it means to you.
Listen to this new episode for some clarity on what the wedding gap is, and what you can do to prepare and thrive through it.
About Vanessa Joy
Since 2002, Vanessa Joy has been photographing weddings and portraits and educating pros worldwide. She focuses her business in the Austin, NJ and NYC area, and alongside her partnerships as a Canon Explorer of Light, Profoto Legend of Light. She helps photographers take their craft to the next level at www.thephotoinsiders.com. To learn more visit: vanessajoy.com.
Social Links:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/vanessajoy
Instagram: http://www.Instagram.com/vanessajoy
Tiktok: https://vm.tiktok.com/7cqGn8/
Facebook: http://www.Facebook.com/VJoyPhoto
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/vanessa__joy
Link to Vanessa’s Books:
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– The wedding gap, what is it, and should you care? Listen to this next guest and find out. Hi, it’s Alan Berg, welcome back to another episode of the “Wedding Business Solutions Podcast.” I am so excited to have my friend Vanessa Joy on to talk about the wedding gap. Vanessa, how you doing?
– I’m doing really well, how are you?
– I am great, I saw an Instagram, I think it was an Instagram thing that you did-
– Probably.
– That you talked about the wedding gap. And I’m like, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no,” this is not a conversation, I’m just listening. We need to be talking about this, because I’ve seen other people mention it, and it’s kind of on the sidelines, like people, there’s something there, but they don’t exactly know what it is. So tell me first, you talked about this a little bit on your Instagram. What brought this up to your attention?
– A jeweler, actually, massive jeweler, whose name is escaping me right now. But they own like Zales, and all those types of jewelers.
– Right.
– They are announcing it, because they’re the first line of defense, if you will, for the shifts that are happening in the wedding industry, because they see engagement ring purchases. And that’s a pretty big indicator on how many weddings are going to be happening. So they have done studies, as they should, being a massive jewelry company in the U.S., on how many years are people typically together before an engagement ring is purchased, or a wedding happens. And they have told us that it’s 3 to 3 1/2 years. 3 to 3 1/2 years ago, we were all stuck inside, which means relationships that should have started were not starting. Or relationships that were together broke up, because let’s face it, being locked down with anybody, besides yourself, even with yourself, it’s just a little bit stressful. So there’s a huge shift.
– So the gap is what? How is this defined?
– The gap is three years later, there are not as many weddings, because there were not as many relationships 3 to 3 1/2 years ago. And it’s not going to be forever. I think it’s exasperated by a few things. So it’s not just that, but it’s also the fact that there was a surplus in weddings, right, for the past two years because all the reschedules, and then people that, you know, were getting married, or maybe engaged, almost got rushed into doing more weddings because there’s like panic of available dates. And I think we had that influx. But also cultural in general. I mean, people are doing a lot more of elopements, or they’re just not getting married, I think, culturally. So those three things combined are now producing this gap. And we’re calling it a gap, because it’s not forever. It’s probably going to be for the next 18 months or so of a lot less weddings than normal.
– Yeah, my older son and his girlfriend met during COVID online, so maybe the exception.
– Yeah.
– No engagement yet, but they’ve moved in together, so again, next step. But again, where’s that delay, right, the delay of what happened? So they were fortunate to be able to do that, but I guess it was what we, 2023? So that was 2021, so it wasn’t the beginning when we kind of didn’t know, but was into that. Interesting, and for you as a jersey person originally?
– Yes.
– And me living in New Jersey, it’s funny, ’cause they met in California, yet he’s from New York, and she’s from New York, about a half a mile from where I grew up, which is like crazy.
– Oh, wow . Small world.
– Yeah, one of these crazy things. Yeah, it gets smaller and smaller. So the idea of this gap, and then this, we’ll call it trough maybe, right? Because it’s not a forever, it’s not going down.
– Valley .
– Yeah, we’ve been seeing over the years the number of weddings, again going down, as a percentage of the population, and like you said, cultural norms. The idea of having children outside of wedlock is not a stigma anymore. So it’s like, “Oh, no,” you know, I guess maybe not as many shotgun weddings, I don’t know?
– Yeah, yeah, or just not the same order of events in life.
– Right, right, so what do you see? Again, your business is very boutique. It’s very, very exclusive. But you work with a lot of other photographers, ’cause you teach other photographers, and you’re doing classes. You told me you’re going to Italy, jealous. Going to go to Italy. Wait, do you need somebody to help out, maybe? Anyway. But what are your students, clients, people in the industry you’re seeing, who are more, I’m not going to say mainstream, because you’re in the mainstream, but you’re at a different strata of it, let’s say.
– Right, yes.
– What are you seeing for that meat of the market, the middle of the market? Are your clients seeing that as well?
– They are, so I wanted to, you know, before I talked about this, I wanted to just check, because what is happening first, and what’s happening with a lot of wedding professionals is your bookings start going down, and we, of course, start blaming ourselves, right? And like, “Oh, it must be something wrong with me, and something wrong with my marketing,” and that’s actually a good thing to do, versus, I don’t know, look at the competition, and say they’re bringing down the market, right? So we all have done that for probably the past, like, two to three months, and we’re looking inward and that’s good. But now people are starting to look outward. So I have posted like Reddit polls, I’ve posted on my own social media, talking to people, and everyone across the entire market, ’cause I am more luxury, but I have friends in L.A. who are luxury, I have friends in L.A. that are volume studios. And I really asked a lot of people just to confirm what this jeweler’s study is saying, and everyone is seeing about 65% is what I’ve been seeing, about half of what they usually book. And now it’s not everyone. So there’s certain people, if you’re a volume wedding industry, let’s say venue or florist, and you’re in the big part of the bell curve when it comes to pricing, you’re probably not going to see it as much as the people that are on either end of the bell curve, on the top or on the bottom, because there’s less of a pool to grab from. So if you’re a wedding professional that’s, you know, turning away jobs on a regular basis, you know, you might not see as much of a decline, but you will probably not be turning away as many jobs for, you know, dates that you’re already booked on, things like that. So I’m seeing it across the board, but just where you are, you know, is going to make a difference, how long your lockdown was, right?
– Well, you’re in Texas, so that was a good two weeks, wasn’t it?
– It was a good two weeks, I heard. I wasn’t in it for that, I was in Jersey for lockdown.
– Yeah, so we had a lot more than that. What I’m seeing is people complaining about less bookings, complaining about less inquiries. Now less inquiries I don’t think is a bad problem, because people always complained about having too many inquiries, which was a bad problem, right? A good problem, but a bad, whatever it is. I did a podcast about that. I said, “You don’t need more leads.”
– Right.
– Right? You need better conversion.
– You need the right amounts.
– Right, and then I asked about, you know, if you converted most of the people that inquired, you probably couldn’t handle the business.
– Right.
– Right?
– True.
– You’re not supposed to close everybody, that’s not the way it’s supposed to work. But we don’t have, you mentioned this, we don’t have a good comparison. Like 2023 to 2022, is not, you can’t compare.
– No.
– Well then you can’t compare to 2021 either. And then you can’t compare to 2020.
– Right.
– Your 2020 bookings that would’ve happened were 2019s, right?
– Yes.
– So we really have to kind of look to 2018 and say, “What was your volume of inquiries?” Which, let’s face it, not everybody was in business in 2018, some people-
– Right, or had a very different business then, that was a long time ago.
– Right. So, to me it’s about right sizing. It’s about saying, “I want to do X number of events,” which might be less, certainly less than 2022, ’cause some people just, you know, like, pulled your hair out, and started looking like me then.
– Yes .
– Right? But what is the right number that you can do comfortably, profit comfortably, raise your prices, because you’ve lowered your inventory, that’s the right sizing. What are you seeing with some of the photographers you’re talking to? Did they, like 2022 kind of wore ’em out?
– Oh yeah, 100%, and even, you know, ’21, ’22, and even a little bit of ’23 was way above the norm. I mean, to the point of some 200, 250% of what they were used to. And it wore a lot of people out. It changed some businesses, maybe for the better. So mine, for example, instead of all these reschedules, some I was already booked for, I started an associate team, and now I have associate team that shoots weddings for me at a little bit more reasonable price, we’ll say, than having me come out personally. But, so businesses shifted a lot, but if you didn’t die during that year, you sort of got used to that quality of life. Maybe not used to how much you were working, because that sucked, but you were making a lot of money. I used to joke, I said, “Yeah, wedding professionals, we’re just rolling in it, rolling in the money, but we don’t have any time to spend it.”
– Right, right, which is the challenge everybody has is you want to be busy, you want to make more money. But then my 2019 was most people’s 2022. I raised my rates, and people kept saying yes, and I’m like, well, they’re saying yes, so great. And I looked at the calendar, and the calendar just looked great, oh man, you know, like there’s no gaps in there. And then you had to live it.
– Yes.
– And I was away 178 nights in 2019.
– Awful.
– Yeah. Now the P&L looked great, ’cause it wasn’t just top line, it was also bottom line. It set us up well for 2020, because we paid off both cars, and the last of the student loans and stuff. So we had, it was easier to go into that. But it also proved that I don’t want to do that, like-
– No, it’s no life.
– Yeah, if Carol’s not going to come with me, you know, ’cause I was in Australia twice, and well she did come, she came that year to Maui, Sonoma, London. She picked a couple of, you know, a few nice places.
– The good ones .
– Yeah, I mean, Australia was nice. She just doesn’t want to get on a 15-hour flight. There you go. But again, the quality of life that it is, yeah, 2020, 2021 proved to us we can live and still save money on less, and have more time. ‘Cause I went from being away 178 nights to being home 16 months straight. And we’re still married, so there you go.
– Isn’t that nice?
– Yeah, we hit 40 years, and she didn’t say, “That’s it, we’re done.”
– Congrats.
– There you go.
– That’s exciting.
– Yeah, that that was great. So this gap, what are you seeing in terms of the photographers you’re working with? Because that’s mostly who you talk to. I know you talked to venues and stuff like that, but mostly photographers, are you seeing them saying, “I need to manage my inventory, calendar inventory better?” Or are people not really paying attention to that?
– You know, it depends on the type of photographer, right, and how much they’re trying to do. What I’m encouraging people to do is to make the most of every client. And that means, especially now that you’ll have enough time to do this, that means working on your pre-sales, or pre-event and post-event sales, and working on your branding. Maybe that’s doing more cost analysis on what it is that you’re offering and selling, and how much you’re charging for it. And it’s also, you know, maybe it is raising your prices, but in a way where it’s because you’ve worked on your branding, and you’ve looked at getting to the next level of wedding client. And I think that’s across the board, whether you’re an officiant, whether you’re video, I mean hair, makeup, pick anything. You can do all of those things to elevate each person that comes through your door, each couple.
– Yeah, you can’t just look up and say, “Okay, there’s a luxury brand that’s charging twice what I’m charging, three times what I’m charging,” and just raise your prices.
– No.
– Because to get there, you have to look the part. So when I go to your website, when I look at your marketing, right, if I look at your social, wherever your presence is, what are you putting out there? And then are you delivering the luxury experience? I spoke about this when Lexus cars first came to the U.S., they needed to do their showrooms, so of course, they looked at BMW and Mercedes, I’m sure, but they looked at Ritz Carlton. And so what is the experience that our customers that we’re looking for have, when they are customers? So the Ritz Carlton experience is different than Hilton. Not that Hilton is bad, but if you’ve been to Ritz Carlton,
– It’s different.
– It’s different.
– Right.
– And the difference is something you can’t put on paper, because it doesn’t look any different, right? Like, we greeted the customer, and we had a beautiful room, and we gave, you know, great service. That’s not on paper, that’s a feeling that you get, and your customers are going to, your personal customers, get a different feeling when they spend the kind of money that they do for you. And it’s not just beautiful pictures, ’cause I’m sure you see a lot of photographers who are really, really talented, who don’t charge nearly enough.
– No, no, it’s the whole experience. It’s the feeling and it, yeah, you can’t really explain it. But I will say, in order to create that experience, you usually need more time to do it. You need more time to get to know your wedding couples. You need time to add that personal touch. And I feel like this is a benefit. The wedding gap can give you that time that you’ve needed to up your branding, that time you’ve needed to connect with your clients in a more meaningful way. I think it can be revolutionary for a lot of wedding businesses.
– Early on, I think it was in 2020, I did a webinar basically saying, “You’re going to have a lot more time on your hands, what are you going to do with it?” I don’t think it was called that, but it was basically that.
– That was the gist.
– Yeah, that was the gist, and you always complain, “I don’t have enough time to do A, B, C, D, whatever,” well now you do. So what are you doing? And some people took that opportunity and did that. I mean, I wrote another book, I was halfway through another one there. Just finished, one is out, just finished another one here. So for all those people that say, “I don’t have time to write a book,” you do, it’s just priorities.
– Right.
– And that’s with anything. If you’re going to prioritize a better customer experience, you have to start thinking, “What does that mean?” I think that’s about awareness, ’cause we know when we get good customer service, and we know when we don’t.
– Oh yeah.
– But do you stop and say, “What made that so good?” Or, “What made that bad?” Or do you just fluff it off, and go on to the next experience, right? What makes the Ritz-Carlton great, or what makes a Nordstrom experience, or whatever your benchmark is, a fine restaurant, you know, do you sit and go, “Oh, okay, wait a minute, that was really good.” because that’s what those customers expect, ’cause that’s their benchmark.
– Right, and it’s outside the product you’re offering. Like, if it’s a restaurant, it’s not the taste of the steak. If it’s a Prada shoe, it has nothing to do with the shoe. I mean a little bit to do with the shoe, but like, you know. There are just things outside of that, and if you want to start doing this in your business, think about all the things that are not your product, that you can do to add value and experience to all of your clients.
– Right, if you’re selling products and services, I mean, we can’t say this enough, if you’re selling products and services, somebody else sells it cheaper, right?
– Yes, yes.
– And I always like to point out that most people listening, when you were new in business, it was you that was cheaper.
– Right, of course.
– Like you, right? You started there, you know, you didn’t always charge what you did. You didn’t always deserve that price either, because you work your way up, well some people do, some people stay where they are and they’re comfortable. But if you think about it, every venue that complains to me about the new venue that just opened up, I say, “And when did you open your doors? When was that?” Because you were the new kid in town at one point, right? You were the new officiant, you were the new florist, you were the new invitations and flowers, or whatever. So there’s always going to be somebody new. That’s never an excuse, always going to be somebody new.
– Never.
– You just, if you think about it, what tiny percentage of the market, in any market, that somebody’s trying to get, right? Like if you’re trying to do 50 weddings a year, 20 weddings a year, 100 weddings a year, whatever the number is, is a fraction of the ones that happen. How much better do you need to be than other people to get your fraction, right?
– So few, and especially when it comes to weddings, ’cause let’s just face it, there’s not like repeat clients. Like you don’t, you don’t need to keep the experience going for years to have continual customers for years, it’s a blip of time.
– Right, but, if you’re a venue, if you’re somebody that’s physically at the wedding that they’ll see the work, ’cause what what you do, they don’t see your work at the wedding. They see you, but they don’t see your work-
– Well, they do.
– And actually, if you’re doing your job-
– Just saying .
– Right, okay, well it-
– But yeah, you’re right, they don’t experience my product, I would say.
– Right.
– At the wedding.
– Although I remember being, Suni from WeddingWire, I was at his wedding, so it was a Friday, Saturday thing, Indian wedding. One day, American wedding, the next day, whatever, and they did a same day edit on video. And we did experience the videographer’s work right there at the wedding. Well, you’re auditioning for those 100 and whatever people that are there, so they might, right? And then it’s, actually, I was at my cousin’s wedding earlier this year in L.A., and the DJ was someone that they had experienced at somebody else’s wedding, right?
– Right.
– So, yes, you’re not getting that couple again, hopefully, they want them to stay married for a long time, but you are potentially getting other people through them, and all that word of mouth. And that’s experience too. They’re going to talk about the experience. I always say when it comes to reviews, people don’t post a review when they just get what they expect.
– Right.
– You have to fall way short, or go way over, right?
– Yeah.
– Because you have to move the needle, otherwise it’s like, it’s just another experience that just goes away.
– Right.
– So what gets them,
– You post about, like your trip to Kmart, or Target, or like, unless something crazy happens or amazing happens.
– Right, right, I mean, I have a stack of receipts, when we travel, I’ve personally posted over 650 reviews on TripAdvisor .
– Wow.
– You could’ve probably posted just as many with as much as you travel. And I’ll keep the receipt from the restaurant to remind me, “Hey, I want to post a review about them,” right-
– How nice.
– ‘Cause I don’t always get to it. And I don’t always get to it, but you know, some of them I do, and some of them, it’s like I want to, like the distillery experience we have, I want to post a review about that. This little crepery in London that we ate at, we already did, I already went, he asked us, “Would you go on Google and do this?” I did Google, I did TripAdvisor, I did Yelp. There you go, right?
– All of it.
– You want to give them that, because you felt like you got the attention, you got something else.
– And you know how much it supports them being a small business yourself.
– Right, somebody that wants reviews, and somebody that asks reviews, when somebody asks you, it’s like, “Do I want to give that to you,” right? Did you earn, move the needle enough for me to want to do that? And put your personal capital, that’s what you’re doing.
– Oh, absolutely.
– You post the review, you’re putting your personal capital behind that. So do I want to do that? It’s not ’cause you asked me, it’s ’cause you earned it and you asked me, that’s it. Lesson for everybody about reviews. Just keep asking, keep asking, there you go. So when do you think this gap that we’re in, right? When do you think this gap started? So if it is about 18 months, so we can maybe see the other side of this?
– Yes, I think, I think 2023 for the most part was pretty normal, getting back to pre-COVID normal. And then I would venture to guess we’re going to start seeing it around January of 2024, probably halfway through 2025. That would be my guess. Obviously it’s all hearsay, but if you look at trends, and when people book wedding vendors, and all of those things, I think probably mostly for photographers, we’re going to see it through mid 2025. I think venues are only going to see it maybe for 2024, because venues are some of the first to get booked, right? So they’re going to have it go away a little sooner. And then maybe for hair and makeup, or officiants, or invitation designers, people that are kind of on the lower, I don’t want to say lower, I hate that, later.
– Later, later.
– Later end of the planning timeline, they’ll probably not see it actually in the beginning of 2024, but more see it through the rest of 2025.
– Right, and that was why we had the backup, ’cause 2019 was all the weddings that were booked for 2020 into 2021, and kept getting kicked down the road, kicked down the road. So I think this, I’m telling my clients, let’s pay attention to this engagement season, because let’s not hide under any rocks, because if there are fewer people, the last thing you want to do is be less accessible, to fewer people.
– Right.
– The worst thing to do is hide under the rocks at that point. Invest wisely, but not just in advertising and marketing. Invest in how you respond to inquiries. Invest in your website. I was just talking to a client, a venue out in California, I was looking at their website. They had a professionally done video, but there were no people in it. So this video’s playing of a venue, and I’m looking at chairs, and I’m looking at the venue, I’m like, and you can tell it was professional, right? You can tell it wasn’t done with their iPhone. And I said, “Got to go, I don’t care what you paid for it, that’s a sunk cost, got to go,” right? They’re telling me about a competitor, who people are perceiving the competitor to be higher end than them, and they said, “But they’re not.” I said, “Well, their website looks it, it looks higher end, and we are what we dress ourselves in, and they’re dressing themselves in designer clothing, and you’re not.” So this is a podcast they did, “If You Can’t Walk a Mile in Their Shoes, At Least Take a Few Steps.” What does it look like to them when they go to your website, when they look at your ads, when you respond to their inquiries at Wedding MBA? Are you going to be at Wedding MBA this year?
– I’m not this year.
– No, no?
– That was something I had to say no to this year, sadly.
– I’m doing a presentation on secret shopping, and our experience, and we’re currently shopping between 150 to 200 companies. And as of now, little sneak peek, about 20% never responded to us at all.
– Whoa, that’s crazy.
– Yeah, yeah. And you would expect a little bit, right. But not that big.
– Like a one in five chance, like you will not get an answer?
– At all.
– That’s nuts. And so are you doing this within the wedding industry, or like everywhere?
– This is wedding industry.
– Wow, that’s insane.
– Yeah, right, right.
– Huh.
– Yeah, I had a client that brought me in for training, and we shopped a bunch of their venues. And a third of them didn’t respond to me at all, a third of them. And yeah, that was a whole ‘nother thing. There was some talking to going in by the managers of that one. But it’s not as uncommon as you would hope it would be, that it was a technical issue or whatever, you know? But I’ve done this with DJs, I’ve done this with photographers, I’ve done this with florists, I’ve done this all across the board for this one-
– Hopefully not with me. I think I answer every lead that comes in the door. But now I’m like, “Oh god, where’s my spam folder?”
– But we’re also looking at if you respond, and they don’t respond, what are you doing? And I had somebody the other day who said to me, “Well, if they don’t respond, you know, they’re probably just, you know, price shopping.” I said, “No, you don’t know that,” right, but that’s-
– Yeah, could be going to their spam.
– Well, what does Brene Brown say, you know, the story I’m telling myself? Well, the story you’re telling yourself is that they’re price shopping, ’cause they didn’t respond to you. The story I’m telling you is your competitor’s getting the business. That’s it, ’cause the bar is so low, it’s just so low. So what I think people need to do is if you get less inquiries, those are people that put you on a really short list. You just need to work ’em better. And I love my photographer friends, because you’re just, you see the world differently than I do, but I see the world differently than you do. And somebody inquires, you grab onto that, like a dog with a bone, and you don’t let go until you hear no, right?
– Yeah.
– In a nice way, in a nice way.
– Yeah.
– But you need to do that, and I think marketing is something that the creatives that I know, you know, the artists that I know, so the photographers, the entertainers, the videographers, the florists, your brain works differently than the business brains.
– Yes, very much so.
– And you need to squeeze those leads like a sponge, until there’s nothing left. And then I think you can fill your calendar, even when you’re getting less leads.
– Yeah, yeah, and find ways to creatively do it, and in the way where they want you to, you know, talk to them, because I do find that people get turned off by certain communication. So it’s a fine line.
– Yeah, a little, this is coming out before or after MBA? It might be right about MBA, I’m not sure. So one of the things I’m going to do, as I say, when you’re a customer, you go to somebody’s website, you have the choice of calling, emailing, texting, filling out a contact form, whatever. And you choose to fill out the contact form. Do you want to immediately have to get on the phone with a salesperson? Right, but yet what do 70% or more of wedding professionals do? Soon as they get an inquiry through email, “Let’s have a phone call or a meeting. Let’s come in for a tour,” and they wonder why they don’t get a response. And funny thing is that same day I was making this slide for MBA, I filled out somebody’s contact form, and I just had a question, right? I had just been in the UK, and I couldn’t use Square for credit cards. I couldn’t use whatever, PayPal gave me a QR code, but you have to have a PayPal account. So people are scanning it, and then they had to log into PayPal, and then they had to approve paying by QR. And then .
– Gosh.
– You know, thank goodness people were very patient with it. But it’s not like, “Tap my card and I’m done.” So I wanted to know with this company, can I use your tap-my-card in the UK and Ireland or whatever? I don’t want to get on the phone, just answer my question. I went to your FAQs-
– Yes or no.
– It wasn’t there, right? You know, I get an email back, here’s my calendar, let’s get on the phone, let’s talk about your business, talk about your needs.
– Oh my gosh, that’s so annoying.
– But it’s exactly what wedding professionals do, right? I didn’t call, right? I did call another company, but they were only open Monday through Friday from 6:00 a.m. Pacific time, until 8:00 p.m., or something like that. So I couldn’t ask the question, so just email. And the guy wants me to schedule a call.
– Unreal.
– Fortunately I went back to him and said, “Thank you very much, I’m not ready for a call. Please answer this question. If you answer this with this way, I’ll be happy to talk to you.” But just answer my question .
– So true.
– So, but this is again, what wedding professionals, so I say, “Let’s look in the mirror, and say if that would tick you off, like it ticked me off, right? Don’t do that to your customers,” right? Just don’t do the same thing. So your business, I know you’re going to Italy with people, you’re telling me about this? So quickly, tell us what you do, besides being an amazing wedding photographer, what else do you do to help others in the wedding and event industry, so that they could find out more about you?
– I would love that. So you can just head simply to vanessajoy.com. You will see my wedding website, but in the menu it says, pro edu, or photog edu, or something edu. And you can head to there, and then that’s just where all of my education, there’s free education on there, for things like social media. It’ll get you my YouTube channel, which has a ton of business stuff on there. So yeah, that’s really where you can find me. And I’m always on Instagram. Marketing is so important these days, and just kind of being everywhere. I heard a statistic recently, I thought it is good for this audience to hear, you know how marketing used to be like, oh, you got to get in front of them seven times before they recognize you? New studies are showing it’s 28.
– Oh .
– 28 times. I’m like, oh, even I’m annoyed with myself by then .
– 28 Times, well, but again, I think it’s because stuff is coming at us so fast.
– It is.
– You know, when they made that stat of seven times, how many different ways could somebody have found out about you back then?
– Yeah, and social media didn’t exist. First world problems.
– Right, it was a newspaper, Yellow Pages, you know, when they made that number, it was probably, and then it became 12, which was probably the early days of internet, and then now 28 times, so.
– That’s crazy.
– I’m getting-
– So now they have thousands of companies trying to reach you 28 times, and we wonder why we’re like throwing our phones in the toilet.
– Right, well again, what makes you stop and take notice? That’s really what it comes down to. Well, go to the show notes. You can find more again, vanessajoy.com, you can have that over there. If you are getting married, somebody listening might be getting married, want an amazing photographer, you also know Vanessa Joy over there. Thank you so much for joining me. I’m glad this worked out, it’s great to see you.
– You too, thanks for having me.
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]. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
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