If your idea of developing a website strategy is leaning over in your chair and trying to sneak a peek at the paper of someone whose career you covet, we need to talk.
Emulating another wedding creative’s website strategy, even if they’re super successful–maybe especially if they’re already successful–is not necessarily a recipe for success in your own business.
What even is website strategy?
Before we go any further, let’s get clear on what I mean by website strategy.
We have your messaging, then we have the actual pages that we create, and then we have the copy that goes onto those pages. (Yes, design also plays a role, but we’re not talking about that here.)
When I talk about website strategy, I’m referring to the specific pages that we choose to include, and the copy that goes on each of those individual pages.
So why can’t you swipe someone else’s website strategy and expect it to work for your business?
Not everyone books clients the same way
Ever noticed that many high-end, well-established wedding photographers have websites that are, um…minimalist?
Their homepage is little more than a cascade of images from their portfolio, and their About page consists of nothing more than an admittedly great photo of them and a paragraph-long bio written in the third person.
Do they list their packages and pricing? Nope. Do you get a sense of their personality? Also nope.
Will this work for you if you’ve been in business for 2 years and book most of your clients directly?
You guessed it: Nope.
This kind of wedding photographer can get away with having a basic site because they don’t depend on SEO—or their website at all, really—for leads. They book couples through relationships they have with wedding planners and venues. Word of mouth may also play a big role (you see these kind of websites a lot with people who’ve been in business for a decade or more).
But if you’re not getting enough leads, or enough of the right leads, you need to take a different approach when it comes to your website.
You don’t know if someone else’s website strategy actually works
Unless you’ve managed to wrangle access to someone’s data, you don’t have any idea if what they’re doing is working for them or not.
(And no, just because they‘re all over Instagram talking about how successful they are doesn’t make it so.)
It might look pretty, it might be fun to read, but it also might be totally unfindable in search. Or unappealing to their target audience.
They might get potential clients on calls, but then they ghost 75% of the time.
The point is: you don’t know.
Your ideal client isn’t the same as someone else’s
Close your eyes for a second and think of the absolute reddest flag someone could come in waving on a discovery call.
Now guess what?
Chances are pretty high that somewhere out there is another wedding creative who’s thrilled to work with that person. Wants more clients just like that, in fact.
Which is why your website needs to be created to resonate with your ideal client – and to repel people who aren’t a fit for you and your business goals.
Determining your ideal client starts with hard facts – their location, their budget, their identity – and then branches out. You need to know what stresses them out, what they’re dreaming of, and how they make decisions if you want to sell to them.
TLDR: Your Website Strategy Should Be Based On Your Own Business Goals
This is the meat and potatoes of the whole thing.
(A brief digression: as a vegetarian, it’s kind of weird to use that expression—but I do love potatoes in all their forms, so here we are.)
To figure out what content you need on your site, and how to shape your customer journey, we first need to understand who your people are, what your personality is, how your process is unique, and what kind of work is in your portfolio.
When I’m working with a new client, we dive into questions like:
- How would you describe your favorite clients?
- What does your client experience look like right now?
- What percentage of your leads are a good fit for your business, in terms of budget? Timeline? Style?
- Are you booking every client you get on a discovery call with?
- What locations are you looking to target?
Together, we create a website strategy based on your goals. Maybe you need a landing page that’s focused on your favorite destination, so that you show up when couples Google “wedding planner Adirondacks.” Maybe you need minimalist copy written in the third person, or maybe you need a chatty website that makes couples feel like you’re their BFF. It all depends on you and what you want to achieve.
Learned something? I love to hear it.
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