When you become a marriage celebrant – you’ll  need to consider how you’ll market yourself

In 2016, I got married.  Unlike some women, I didn’t have a big scrap book filled with cut-outs of everything I wanted. I genuinely had not thought about the dress, the hair and the venue. Not to mention, I certainly had not considered the marriage celebrant.

So essentially, you could say I went into the wedding planning phase pretty fresh. Guided purely by friends who were married already, online forums and directories.  I was given a list of critical things I needed to co-ordinate straight away (being the venue and the celebrant) and so off I went on my search.

Having never really thought too much about marriage celebrants – other than appreciating a good service at weddings I’d attended, I was pretty amazed at the number of celebrants available.  It also became apparent that I shouldn’t just be choosing any celebrant.  Each celebrant seemed to have a style and I needed to spend time hand-picking the person that I could connect with and that could deliver they type of service I wanted.

Given the number of celebrants out there, I think it’s fair to say:

If you’ve become a marriage celebrant and want to grow your business, you’re going to need to stand out from the crowd.

To kick the process, a friend gave me a wedding magazine.  I skimmed through the directory and googled the ones I liked the sound of. I then stumbled across an online celebrant directory and followed the same process there.

At this stage of the game I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed with the amount of choice, so to help me narrow down my options, my cull process went something like this:

1. Do they have a marriage celebrant website? If no – they were immediately overlooked.
2. Does their marriage celebrant website look good? Some of this actually boils down to personal taste. I saw the sites as a peek into their personality and the type of celebrant they might be.  Outdated sites or site designs that didn’t match my personality were quickly exited.
3. Can I find what I am looking for?  Information is key. Remember – I knew nothing about marriage celebrants. I needed hand holding to know what to expect, how much it would cost, and most importantly, insight into the person that would be marrying us.  If this information wasn’t easy to find – the marriage celebrant website was closed.
4. And from here – I picked up the phone and started calling my shortlist.

When you become a marriage celebrant, your website becomes the gateway to your brand.  

So its pretty important to get it right… right? Here are a few key things that separated the good from the bad…

Decent sized font

This sounds really simple – but many of the sites I visited had such a small font size that I gave up from the effort of squinting. This was even more apparent on sites that were not mobile responsive. For the simple pleasure of viewing the content (picture me madly researching on the commute home), I had to continually expand the page size on my phone. Result? I left those sites. Your site must be mobile responsive.

Easy navigation

As you know – I was planning a wedding – so this was one of the million tasks I had to do. To help your time poor visitors, you need to enable them to efficiently find their way through the site. Display the information in a way that makes sense for someone that knows nothing about marriage celebrants – not in a way that makes sense to you – someone that does the job day in and day out. And make your call to action clear. Your site structure should be built to transform a page visitor into an enquiry.

Images

Excited bride-to-be’s love seeing images of other happy couples on their day. It inspires them. Pending you’ve done a great job on the day, many of your brides will be happy to share their professional snaps to be displayed on your page. We’re handing out bonus points for video. We want to see you in action!

Testimonials

It’s one thing to be impressed by what a business is telling you about themselves, but what truly impacts our decision in today’s day and age is real customer reviews. When comparing service providers, my final choice is always influenced by what others are saying.

Of course there is more to creating a marriage celebrant website that converts prospects – to happy customers.

If you are ready to generate volume and quality business through your website – get in touch.  We can tailor a realistic quote based on your needs to get up and and running quickly. It’s time to move forward on doing the thing you love.