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Lets dominate engagement season. For us wedding pros, November to January is prime time engagement season. And I'll never forget when I actually first realized that engagement season was a thing. When I very first quit my corporate job and slow season hit, which is usually November to January, I'm on the east coast. It gave me freaking nightmares, to be honest. If there was one thing that would have held me back from going full time into my bridal hair business, slow season would have been it. It was December 2018, and I was doing the damn thing for at least six months now. But still, as a newbie bridal business, it took me a little while to catch on to trends. AKA it being December. I didn't even realize that it was engagement season until I was halfway in it. Once I realized that it was and that all these brides were getting engaged around the holidays, I got so excited because I was like, oh my God, I'm not gonna have to worry about income because I'm gonna be getting all these inquiries from people getting engaged. I thought, I'll get cash from their deposits. And I got really excited. So here's what I did to prepare for my very first engagement season. I immediately went to my email and I emailed every single pro photographer that I did weddings with asked for galleries for my brides. I also went to my brides and asked for reviews. I started working on my website to put all of these pro photographer photos. And of course, I absolutely did go on YouTube. And I youtubed what the perfect Instagram aesthetic would be so that way I could take all these photos and put them on there. And of course, I signed up for wedding wire at 200amonth just to be on the third page winning with all of my ducks in a row. For engagement season, I started posting all those pro photographer photos on Instagram. Of course I was doing three in a row. If you know, you know. And I thought, let's go, girl. Girls, I am open for business. I'm ready for this engagement season. I'm gonna dominate. But here's what really happened. I did not, in fact, dominate that season. I didn't get any rush of inquiries and I heard absolutely crickets. I cried more than I smiled that month, and I got maybe five inquiries over the next couple months. I was constantly living in anxiety that I thought I would have to go back to my corporate job when it finally hit January because I thought that I couldn't even make things work when it was supposed to be engagement season. And that's not what I want for you. My friend. So we're gonna dominate engagement season together and we're gon get really strategic and tactical so that way you can have a killer engagement season. But before I get into the strategies with you, I want you to know where I went wrong so you don't go there either. Here's what I did wrong and why I didn't dominate engagement season. Number one, I assumed every single bride who inquired with me was ready to book with me. I didn't prepare for engagement season in adequate enough time ahead. I also assumed that my wedding wire account was going to bring me in a rush of inquiries without me having to lift a finger or do anything. And I also assumed that my wedding wire page would be enough for a bride's to land on to want to trust me enough to sign a contract as well as pay a deposit and then meet me months later. I thought that was enough to have in place. With that in mind, my favorite way of figuring out how to do things is inverse thinking. How you do inverse thinking is take what you want to do, such as have a bunch of bookings for engagement season and ask yourself how would I not do that? So how would I not get any bookings through engagement season? So here's what I wouldn't do to not dominate your engagement season and not get any bookings. Never follow up with clients and ask for reviews. Never talk about on your social media how to book with you. Never talk about your services that you offer or only show up and talk about them one to two times and expect that that's enough. Only post professional photographer photos and hide your rates from your website. Never share reviews to your website or on your Instagram. Never respond to anybody's DMs and ignore them because they're not going through your inquiry process. No social media content plan in place for December, January, February, March. Stop posting at all because you're not getting the engagement you want on your post right now. Okay, so that's how I want to dominate engagement season. Now I could take you through the strateg the first way to dominate your engagement season is start preparing your social media like yesterday. What I want you to know is it takes someone seven times of seeing something in order to take action to want to buy it. That's how long it's going to take someone to trust you. So they're going to need to see something from you seven different times in order to inquire with you for your services and book with you. Think about it. Have you ever bought something the very first time you heard about it without even reading reviews or diving deeper into it. Or the very first time you saw an Instagram ad, have you clicked that button and bought something? Probably not. When I very first started looking into the Baes brand, I really wanted to get the BAES Weekender bag. Now I absolutely stalked everything about the BAES Weekender bag. I looked at all their reviews, I looked at every single thing on their website. I looked at all the photos and videos so that way I could see inside the bag to see if it would work for me. And for my hair kit, I was getting ads on Instagram, on TikTok, on my Google, for the Baze bag. They were sending me emails and I was getting this a good 6 months before I decided to invest in this bag. And this bag is a hundred dollars. And imagine in your client's point of view when they're investing thousands of dollars with you. So for you, you want to get ahead of engagement season. Even if we're in it right now, you want to make sure that you are constantly showing up and talking about your services. So here's my strategy. Hot take for this get your content visible by consistently posting the signature styles that you offer and how your wedding services make your bride's wedding morning an absolute breeze. The purpose of posting content is to get awareness out about your brand. It's not to get likes. So please don't stop posting just because you might not be getting the ENG engagement that you want. Next, you want to focus on getting reviews from your past brides. Think of it this way. Would you sign a binding contract as well as pay a deposit without reading any reviews from somebody? Not me either. Even for me, when I was a bride and I personally knew a lot of the wedding vendors that I hired, I still read all of their reviews. Why? Because it builds my trust and further confirms that I'm making a good buying decision. Now here's where I see bridal beauty pros go wrong with reviews. Either not asking their brides for them because they feel like that's icky, or they feel like they're waiting for their brides to leave them a review. And that's why you feel like brides are never reviewing me and you never even follow up and ask them for one, or letting them sit on your not profile or on your Google profile or on your wedding wire profile, and not promoting them on your Instagram as well as your website, believing that your future client is going to take those extra steps to read more reviews for you. They might. But why not place them on your Instagram where they're finding you. So here's how you can do reviews the right way. Ask for them. Remember, it takes people seven times to want to take action, so don't be afraid to follow up with them and ask them to review you again. Now here. Here's my strategy. Hot take for this. Reviews don't need to just live on your Google profile. Take a screenshot of that and post it everywhere. They don't need to be pretty. Even if a client just texts you a screenshot of that and putting it on your Instagram is just good enough. The Next way to dominate Engagement season is the Limit the Pro Photographer Photos Now I know this is going to ruffle some feathers, but here's why I believe in this. Personally, I feel pro photographer photos have a place and that place for me is on your website. If these are the only photos that you're posting to your Instagram, I personally believe this is a lazy Instagram strategy. Now hear me out. It's because their content and their photos is meant to showcase the couple. It's meant to showcase their story. It's meant to showcase the entire wedding day. It is not necessarily meant to showcase your hair work or your makeup work. Now if you are lucky and you have a good two to five photos that are showcasing up close your hair work or your makeup work, sure, fine, post them. However, if your Instagram feed is just full of pro photographer photos, you're going to want to limit that. Now here's my strategy. Hot take on this. If you don't have the content you want, create it. Have that friend over, hire a model, hire a studio, rent something out and make sure that you're getting the content that you want if you don't have it already. Because imagine buying a house and the only photo you have of this house is the outside from a street view. You have no idea what the bathroom looks like. You have no idea what the bedrooms looks like. Does it have a basement? Does it not? What does the backyard look like? You just have one view from across the street of this house. This is how your clients feel when all you're doing is posting those professional photographer photos of all the bridesmaids lined up or something that is far away of what you're actually selling, which is the hair and the makeup. If there's no close up shots of the hair and the makeup makeup, you're not doing your services justice and that is ultimately what you're selling next. One of my favorite ways to absolutely dominate engagement season is Think like a client when you're creating your website content as well as your social media content. So here's what I mean. Back in 2018 when I was posting on Instagram, I was thinking from my point of view and what I would like and what I would interact with. Instead, what you want to do is change to the mindset of your client and what do they want to say for your Instagram stories, your captions on Instagram as well as your website copy. What I want you to think think of is what does my client need to know about my services? What questions does my future client have about XYZ with my services? How can I make it easiest for them to inquire with me? That last one goes hand in hand with ignoring people who are DMing you about inquiring with you. Now here. Don't get me wrong, you don't want to be booking people in your DMs. However, the easiest way when somebody's finding you on social media, the easiest way for them to get in contact with you is to just shoot you a dm. So the simplest way you can do is just respond to them. Even if you're just giving them the link to your inquiry form. This is going build trust from the jump and this is going to make it super easy. Yes, they could go over to your link in bio and click that. However, what's easier for them is just to hit the message button and say hey, are you available on my date? And then you can send over your inquiry form. Now here's my strategy hot take on this. Thinking like a client is the content that is actually going to convert best for you. I hope these strategies got your gears in motion and you can start thinking of how to dominate your engagement season now. If you love this topic, make sure you follow along on my Diary of a Bridal Pro newsletter because I share topics like this every single week, sometimes even when I don't show up on YouTube. So make sure you click the link down below and you sign up for my newsletter so we can be besties and I can be in your inbox every single week with strategies and CEO hot takes. Thank you so much for being here with me today and I will see you in the next one. Bye.