Wedding Business Solutions

Marketing is like a relay race!

• Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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Marketing is like a relay race!

Are you dropping the baton in your marketing efforts? How many potential clients are you losing at each stage of learning about your services? In this episode, I explore why a seamless handoff is crucial in every touchpoint of your marketing, from your website to your social media. Discover the steps to ensure you’re not losing potential clients and how to make your marketing efforts more synchronized and effective.

Listen to this new 6-minute episode for tips on improving your marketing handoff and increasing conversions without needing more visibility.

Episode Summary: 

In this episode of the Wedding Business Solutions Podcast, I dive into the idea of marketing as a relay race. I talk about how marketing involves passing prospects through various stages—from social media to your website, and then to personal contact—much like handing off a baton in a relay race. I emphasize the importance of reducing the number of "dropped batons" by maintaining consistency across all platforms and making it easy for prospects to contact you. I also highlight the significance of follow-up strategies and engaging content to convert inquiries into business. Ultimately, the key is optimizing the steps you already have rather than focusing solely on increasing visibility.

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 Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com 

Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review (thanks, it really does make a difference). If you want to get notifications of new episodes and upcoming workshops and webinars, you can sign up at www.ConnectWithAlanBerg.com  

View the full transcript on Alan’s site: https://alanberg.com/blog/


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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 Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com

Marketing is like a relay race. Listen to this episode. See where I'm going with this. Hi, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions Podcast. I've used this phrase for many, many years, and I don't remember if I've ever spoken about this on the podcast. So I had this on my list to talk about. So if you think about a relay race where you have multiple runners running the same race, but they have to pass a baton from one runner to the next runner to the next runner until they finish the ra, marketing is the same way, because it's rarely just like a sprint from one point to the next point, and then that's it.

You've probably heard me say this phrase or read it in one of my books, that you don't get business from your website. You get business through your website. They had to come from somewhere to your website and then your website to you. Well, that's like a relay race, right? The baton gets handed to your website, your website heads the baton to you, then you have to respond to them. There's the next one, and you keep going like that. The thing is that there's always a lot of batons being passed here, metaphorically, of course, until they get to you. And along the way, that baton is getting dropped a lot. In other words, people that go look at your socials and they're not moved to contact you or to go to your website, baton got dropped.

They go to your website and they not moved by what they see, baton gets dropped. They look at one of your ads or they look at your reviews, and maybe you didn't respond to reviews or maybe you don't have recent reviews, or for whatever reason, not move to say, I want to find out more about you. And this is what I mean by this metaphorical baton being passed from one runner to the next, because at every stage, we're losing people. And this is everybody, including me, right? Not everybody that goes to my website has moved to contact me. Not everybody that looks at my socials or gets my emails will open them, right? So this is happening to all of us all the time. And that's why we need to have multiple exposures to people, because maybe they're not moved to contact you today or to take the next step today, but they might the next time. And this is why following up is so important. And this is why being everywhere that your target audience could be looking for you is also important.

And you want to make sure that you have the right impression. Every place that they go. You want to have a consistent branding, consistent impression, consistent looks, consistent fonts. Everything that you do should be consistent. So if they like it in one place, move to the next, to the next. You don't lose them at those points. Now, the hard truth, which I already said, is that we're all losing people at every stage of this. The key is to lose less of them.

The key is to respond better to the way your, your, your email inquiries are, to have your socials be more engaging or have better calls to action there and on your website and in your marketing materials is to be talking about results instead of talking about products and services. Because somebody always sells the products and services. Something that looks similar, they sell it cheaper. Therefore, if somebody can't perce a difference between your results and someone else's, they're going to go for the cheaper ones because they should. If we don't perceive a difference in results, why would we pay more? The only reason we pay more is because we perceive a difference. Some of those being tangible, some of those being intangible. And if you think about buying a car, every new car is going to get you from point A to point B. Why do people pay more? Well, sometimes they have a physical need, they have more people, they need to carry or they need to tow something.

There's something like that that requires vehicle. But even with that, there are always other options that cost more. Some people go for them, some don't. An intangible would be the branding, right? I want to be associated with a certain brand. Therefore I'm going to pay more. Because even though that other new car, look at the list of features, looks pretty much the same, I'm going to go for this one that cost more because I want to be seen in this or this is the brand that I identify with. And that's the same with you. You want them to say, I want your results.

Because if you heard me say this, another podcast, we don't know that your results are better because no one else would get a chance to do them. They have to perceive that your results will be better, and that's why they choose you. So no one else will be able to play the music or take the photos or videos or cook the food or be that venue or provide the fashion or the invitations or do the ceremony or any of the things that are involved with a wedding or event because that event's going to happen once and that's it. So their perception is, I'm choosing you, and hopefully I'm paying more. For you than someone else, because I perceive that yours are the results I want. So now's the time to take a look again at every place they can go. And I said this on a podcast. If you can't walk a mile in their shoes, at least take a few steps.

Let's try not to create friction at any of these points. Let's shorten that contact form so we'll get more inquiries. Let's have more transparency in our pricing, whether it's. They have to inquire about it, but you're. You're making it easy for them to do that and telling them why and then being somewhat transparent in that, or some of you are being fully transparent, putting your pricing out there. And this is where you have to be careful. Again, if your full prices are on your website and you're talking about what you do, not why they should choose you, they still will shop you against other people and you could still lose them because of your transparency, because you didn't talk about why, you talked about what. So think about this.

Every time you get an inquiry, there's been many steps before that. That's that metaphorical relay race to passing the baton again and again. The key is to have it dropped less. Let's do this better. Let's follow up more times. I have cadences with my emails. If someone inquires certain ways, there are automatic series of emails that go out until someone replies. I just added seven and eight to a cadence that had six.

Right. So if you inquired certain way, checked a certain box, you would get an email. If you don't respond, you get another and another and another. I had it out to six, now it goes out to eight. Why? Why not? What's my phrase? If you don't ask, the answer is always no. So think about every way that somebody can get to you. Think about the different steps there. That's those relay races, that baton getting past, and let's try to lose it a little bit less and tighten that up.

And this way you get more conversion from the inquiries you're already getting and the traffic you're already getting and the visibility you're already getting. Instead of trying to go get more visibility when maybe you don't really need it, maybe you just need to capitalize on what you have. Better hope it gave you something to think about. Thanks.


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 Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com 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.

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com


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Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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