Wedding Business Solutions

Stop marketing like it's 2005!

• Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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Stop marketing like it's 2005!

Are you still reaching out to potential clients like it's the early 2000s? Are you adjusting your marketing approach to align with the evolving digital habits of Gen Y and Gen Z? In this episode, I dive into adapting your digital strategy to meet the needs and expectations of today's couples for better conversion rates.

Listen to this new 9-minute episode for insights on modernizing your communication style and turning more inquiries into booked clients.

Episode Summary: 

In this episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast, I discuss why it's crucial to stop marketing like it's 2005. I've had conversations with people struggling to get couples on the phone, and I explain that Gen Y and Gen Z are more comfortable with digital communication. I share advice on crafting better digital conversations and adapting to clients' preferences using tools like ChatGPT. By personalizing communication and following up more frequently with concise messages, you can improve lead conversion rates. My goal is to help you enhance your marketing tactics, engage better online, and make the most of the leads you already have.

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

Stop marketing like it's 2005. Find out why I'm on my soapbox today. Hey, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. I have had a couple of conversations this week with people that are still wishing things were the way they were. And I recommend to anyone that has not read who Moved My Cheese? A little tiny book, who of my cheese read that because your cheese got moved. Get over it. When you read the book, you'll find out what I'm talking about there.

In this case, it was somebody that wanted to know why is it so hard to get couples on the phone? And I wrote back to them and I said, conversation. This was a digital conversation. This was not on the phone, but it was a real conversation. And it's interesting because we weren't on the phone having a conversation about why won't people people get on the phone. I just thought about that and I said, Gen Y is phone averse. That is known fact. Because they are digital natives, conversations for them do not have to be on the phone. Gen Z is even more phone averse because they're even more tech savvy, because they are even more of a digital native.

I am a digital immigrant. Doesn't mean I don't like tech. It just means it wasn't there when I started. There was no Instagram or Facebook or things when I started in this industry. I had a cell phone. It was in my car. It didn't come out right. So I had tech tack.

It just wasn't there. So if you think about this in terms of why won't they get on the phone? Stop worrying about that and start learning how to have better conversations so that they'll want to get on the phone with you because it's to their benefit and they'll do it later. So they will get on the phone, but it has to be on their terms, on their time and because they feel it's necessary, not because you. So if you are still responding to an inquiry, a digital inquiry on your website, on the not wedding wire, weddings online, on social media, whatever, and you're saying, when do you want to have a phone call and you're getting ghosted, that's your fault. It's not their fault. Because them doing, doing business for them, it's natural to do business digitally. So that's not them, that's you and you have to adapt to them. And then somebody else was asking, you know, why doesn't the not provide me with all this information about couples and all these other details because it's not their job.

Right? And I don't say that because I used to work there. And I don't say that because I used to publish wedding magazines. It's not the job of a media company to sell for you. You're buying access to their audience. So whether it's a billboard on the highway, that's access to the people that drive by or whether it's a booth at a trade show because that's access to the people that come to the show, or whether it's a website where you're paying for access to the audience that they get or at a print media where the people that read that print media. You're always buying access to the audience. It's not their job to pre qualify people. You have to decide if the audience that they get is the audience that you want.

And I always start with anything in my business, if it's not working, I start by looking in the mirror and saying, you are the problem here. You need to change something. It's not about other people. I can't change anybody else except me. But I can change the way I market. I can change the wording that I use. I can go into ChatGPT and take all the text from a page of my website and say, just update this for a Gen Y audience. In my case, little Gen X, little Gen Z.

And I did that. And it, it didn't change my words. It massaged them to say, okay, this is a little bit more up to date. You could do that too. I actually did that with one of these people. I said, send me messages, send me an email to show me how you're responding. I took that, I put, I could have just done it myself, but I said, I'm curious here, what if I gave them a tool? So I put it into chat GPT and I said, shorten this, make it fit on one screen of a phone and make it for a Gen Y, Gen Z audience. And it massaged the words that were this person's words and it shortened it up and I sent it back, I think maybe with one, just one or two little tweaks that I did.

Because you should always not just edit, you should not just take it at face value that I'm going to say what ChatGPT or what Claude said and I'm going to use it. You should read it through and say, I'm going to massage this a little bit if it makes it more like me. And I said, this feels a lot better for this audience. Than what you were sending. Okay, that's it. You could do the same thing over there. But so many people, because we do so much secret shopping, We've shopped over 500 companies between last year and this year. Their messages just feel too formal, too canned, too impersonal compared to others that we see that are more personal.

Now, your messages might be nice, but we see a lot of other ones that look just like them and therefore it doesn't look personal to that person. Just like you've heard me say before, don't say congratulations on your recent engagement because they're going to see it so many times. It's the same thing with your messages. They feel very standardized as opposed to personal. And what we know about Gen Z and Gen Y and really people in general is they want it to be about them. And everybody listens to radio station wiifm. What's in it for me? That's what we care about. So if you have not changed the way your messages are that you're sending to people through Facebook, Instagram, the Not Wedding Wire, your website, you not change those in a few years.

You need to do that. And now's a great time to be doing that while you have time to test and play. Because your biggest opportunity, and I hope you've heard me say this, your biggest opportunity is the people that have reached out that have not yet told you no, because they've already put you on a short list of possibilities. And just because you haven't heard from them doesn't mean they've chosen someone else. There are people that have to postpone what, you know, the shopping for your particular service. Right. My son got married in September, but they were originally going to get married in March. March became June, June became July, July began September.

Nobody was following up with them anymore. Somebody could have gotten some business from them had they been. So if you have not heard no, that's a great thing to do, is to market to them again. But it's not another long message with attachments and links. It's a single sentence. Are you still looking for a creative florist to bring beautiful flower floral design to your wedding? Right. Some statement. Are you still looking for a talented videographer to capture the sights and sounds and emotions of your wedding day? Right.

That's a better sense. But one sentence, right, that. That's a way to do it. And then how many times are you following up? Once or twice and you're giving up. That's what most people do that we've been shopping. Right. Of all the companies we've shopped over 500. The average number of times following up is two.

So if you do three, you're already 50% better. If you do four, you're doubling them. By the time you get to five, more than 80% have given up at point and you're in rarefied air. That's why my system sends at least six messages, right? Because I want to get into that rarefied air. And I'm about to add 7 and 8 to that to spread it out a little bit longer, assuming that, you know, the need is further in the future. So, again, are you marketing like it's 2005 or even 2015, right? When we're in 2025, are you marketing like it's in 2020, where we're in 2025? You can't do that. You have to do something different. And if you have people that you follow up with and they have never gotten back to you, that's a good sign.

You need to change what you're doing. Because those ghosts, right, those are not fake leads. Those ghosts are people that put you on a short list and have not connected with the way you're responding or something else is taking a priority right now. And you following up more will get you more conversion on those. So I hope they give you something to think about. And if it hurt a little bit because you haven't changed what you're doing in a few years, good, good. Because we, when we get that pain, we realize that we need to do something about it. What I want you to do is convert more of the leads you're already getting.

So you don't need to keep trying to find more leads when you're already getting enough. If you could just have better conversion, let me know how I can.

​​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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