Celebration Pro Podcast
Celebration Pro Podcast
#73: Mastering Online Paid Ads in the Wedding Industry with Mark Chapman
MEET MARK:
Mark is the wedding industry's leading expert on paid advertising. He and his team at The I Do Society help wedding businesses use Google Ads, Meta Ads (FB/IG) and TikTok Ads to reach and convert their ideal couples at scale. While hustling and working hard to grow his family's wedding business in his early 20s, he discovered advertising. Over time he learned how to use ads to reach and convert the right couples. He turned this new skill into a system so he could help his friends in the industry succeed with ads too. Today, thousands of businesses of all types in the wedding industry have been helped by Mark's expertise in advertising.
IN THE CONVO:
- General overview of advertising strategies for wedding businesses in 2024
- Knowing when and how to start using advertising if you've never done it before (Google Ads, Meta Ads, TikTok Ads)
- What the future of advertising looks like for the wedding industry this year
CONNECT WITH MARK:
📸 @theidosociety
🌐 https://theidosociety.com/
CONNECT WITH CARIN:
Hey CEO! Join us over at our new membership the Success Cellar 🍾 - exclusively for growth-minded wedding pros just like you!
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📸 - @celebrationpros
🌐 - www.carinhunt.com
All right, everyone, we are back on the podcast for Celebration Pros. This is Karen Hunt, your host, as always. And today is really fun because, as all of you know who are listening in, I am huge on word of mouth marketing. I am huge on making connections in this industry to help you to get where you're going, to get the word about what you do. And lo and behold, a good friend of mine, Heidi Thompson you know her from her summits got me in touch with Mark Chapman, who is our special guest today on the podcast. And if it weren't for the fact that, you know, I put my boots on the ground and found the people that I found to make connections and move forward, we would have never connected. So, Mark, I'm so excited to have you here and that we've been brought together in this way. It's so much fun.
Speaker 2:Thanks. I'm thrilled to be here. I really, really love what you bring to your audience in terms of insight and education, so being a small part of it is awesome, thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and Mark is from a small town as well, up in the mountains on the West Coast, so we're on opposite ends of the earth.
Speaker 1:It feels like it's very early here but we still have that small town vibe. But that being said, uh, mark Mark is the wedding industry's leading expert on advertising and what's exciting here is again, I love word of mouth marketing. He is going to bring us into some of the ads of his team and himself at the I do society help wedding pros to use google ads, meta ads for facebook and instagram and tiktok ads to book the right couples at scale. Now, I will tell you, I'm always weary about ads because I I'm not the expert, which is why we bring someone like you, mark, on. So I'm really excited to dive into today's conversation. I think it's going to enlighten not only myself. This is a little selfish today, which is why we bring someone like you, mark, on. So I'm really excited to dive into today's conversation. I think it's going to enlighten not only myself. This is a little selfish today but also for everybody who is listening in.
Speaker 1:But before we get started, Mark, if you could tell us a little bit about how you got into the industry and focusing on this topic specifically for your career.
Speaker 2:Yeah, picture this it's the early 2000s and I'm a young wedding photographer and I'm hustling in the Chamber of Commerce and BNI and all the local networking groups and things. And I reached a point where I was working seven days a week and just had no life really. And the breaking point was that I actually was awarded the chamber of commerce member of the year, um in Huntington beach, california, which was a super great honor. Um, and I and I was really involved in the community and everyone knew who I was. Everyone knew I was a wedding photographer and I got this award and there's this big thing ceremony and I brought the award home to my crappy apartment and I kind of looked around and I was like, how have I like reached the pinnacle of all the networking that I can do? And I'm still honestly like kind of poor and living in a crappy apartment and I and I.
Speaker 2:It was for me a turning point where I really needed to figure out how to get my time back and at the time, like Google ads was pretty new and so I took this like online course on Google ads and it's very different now and we'll get into all that but I took this course on Google ads and I learned it and I used Google ads for my own wedding business and I remember when the phone rang for the first time and someone's like I found you on Google and I was like, and so fast forward.
Speaker 2:Many years later I started helping other people with their Google ads in the wedding industry and it turned into a business and it really turned into my passion, where I put my camera down and picked up a laptop and really leaned into that because I was like I don't know, it was really just about like getting my time back and getting my life back and not letting my business run me. And so that's the story of how I became an advertising expert. And it's been 15 years and totally different business now, of course, and all we do is help businesses in the wedding industry with advertising.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. So many different things to take away and what a moment to receive an award and be like this is great, but it's not. Yeah, it was so wonderful is great, but it's not like how like to have a realization like everyone's celebrating you and you're like, hmm, not quite where you thought it was going to take you.
Speaker 1:Um yeah, and and yeah, tech has changed so much over the years, so I I'm excited to talk, especially in the last couple of years. Um, so we're going to dive into some of that, but here let's see, of course I have too many windows up, per usual. Oh, and I was going to say too, when you're mentioning time management, that's actually something. So we're recording right now, on March 7th, and this entire month we're dedicating to time management. So a lot of the conversations we're having around that, and I was a little surprised that you brought that up specifically, because I don't think of ads being something that is going to help save me time.
Speaker 2:And so that's going to be. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that part of our conversation today.
Speaker 1:Cool, yeah, I'm looking forward to that part of our conversation today. Cool, well, if you could maybe give us just a little bit of insight around the landscape of what ads looks like, just as like a start just assuming that the people listening in aren't privy or literate in that part of the tech world, I think that would be an awesome place to kick us off.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 2:I'm going to actually start with the landscape of when I started doing advertising and then paint the picture now, back in the day, and there's a lot of wedding businesses, wedding business owners, venue owners, bridal store owners, even planners and things that understood advertising in like 2010, were like you could put an ad out there and you probably were one of the only people who were advertising.
Speaker 2:People would click on it and call you, and that was super cool for a really long time.
Speaker 2:But today's couples are super internet savvy.
Speaker 2:They're scoping out every inch of your business within five minutes on their cell phone, and so the role of advertising now really is to expand your audience, to reach and engage potential couples at scale, and what I mean by at scale is beyond your warm referrals, which are amazing and obviously like the foundation of the growth of your business. Right, if you want to grow your business faster, if your vision and goal is to grow faster and beyond your warm referrals, like advertising is the place to do it, because you can use advertising to create an autonomous system for your business that doesn't rely on those referrals, it doesn't rely on wedding wire and the knot. You take control of your lead generation by using Google ads and meta ads, but it is a complicated place these days because of privacy, because of the fact that, like couples, don't just click on it, or probably doesn't click on an ad, to visit your website and call you. And so you know, before I go too deep into the weeds, I'll let you ask questions about that so far.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's. You know, we've talked so much. I just had a conversation two conversations yesterday about how it's so different from before. Like you're saying, it was easier for people to just click on an ad, but there's so much noise now that it's less likely for you know, for that to happen right off the bat. So my curiosities here are you know what are some? Well, and you're going to get into this but what are some of the benefits of marketing through paid online advertising? So one thing that I heard you saying was that it actually lets you take control.
Speaker 2:Can you?
Speaker 1:get into that a little bit more Because I feel that's where I'm like. I like word of mouth marketing, because I feel like I can control that right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Where the whole ad space. It might just be that you have to be educated, but like directories, like you're saying, you don't have as much control. So I'm curious a little bit more about what that looks like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm going to, um, I'm going to throw a wedding wire in the knot under the bus for a minute, and only because there are realities there that are not great for every wedding business and in the terms of control, we're like wedding wire in the knot. When a bride goes on there she fills out a form to contact a business and then there's like this pop-up window that says do you want to send your information to 20 other businesses? And she says yes, of course, and when that happens, she doesn't know anything about the business that she's sending her information to. She's just putting it out there, and so you, as the recipient of that lead, are so excited you got this lead, but she actually doesn't know anything about you.
Speaker 2:And when you are advertising on Google and Meta and TikTok, it's a one-to-one. It's like you are directly reaching that bride or groom or couple in that space and in that moment, so they do know who you are. And also you get to control how much money you spend, like you're not beholden to a certain budget that a certain company requires you to spend. You get to say, hey, I want to spend $500, or I do want to spend a thousand dollars, or maybe I don't this month, and so it gives you the ability to take control of the lead generation process and the reach that you have of couples.
Speaker 1:Yeah, having that flexibility is so important, especially, I feel like, in our industry where it's so unpredictable, where sometimes you may want to, you know, put your foot on the gas because you know that you're booking brides a year out and you really need to fill that quarter. Whatever that year out quarter is Right, you know, and yeah, there's a lot of different planning tactics that you can do with your marketing in that way. What strategies have you found that are most effective for specifically targeting the right audience, because I know you had mentioned, like the not isn't necessarily for all vendors Like of course nobody has a business.
Speaker 1:That's like oh, I'm for everybody, right, Like that's everyone. So how do we target that person?
Speaker 2:You can use different demographic options in all the advertising platforms. You can target by income level. You can target by specific zip codes. You can target by interests. One of our members at the I Do Society is actually a Disney hotel and we have this amazing meta ads campaign where we're targeting engaged women of a certain age range, of a certain income level, who love Disney, right, and that's a super obvious example. And that might not be relevant to everyone, of course, but, like, you can do that to make sure that the right people are seeing your ads and not just everyone. You know, wrapping this in the context of time management, like when you have fewer, fewer, higher quality leads to spend your time nurturing. You get to spend your time doing other things in your business or spend time with your family, and that's what I'm so passionate about about the advertising platforms, because you don't. You're not spending your money on everyone. You're spending your money on the right audiences by employing that demographic targeting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I had a little behind the scenes training recently on Facebook ads specifically and they you can actually put in like people who are engaged and people who are parents of a certain age range, right. So you put in the parents that have kids that are in their twenties to thirties and it's like, okay, so those parents are going to see the ad and say, hey, honey, have you checked?
Speaker 1:out the venue or whatever that is, and so it's. It's an. It has come such a long way from where ads first started, from what I've seen, to how much more in each down we can get to speak to the right person.
Speaker 2:And that is brilliant to be able to speak to the right person and not just like throw everything out there to everyone and hope for the best. It's very powerful and it does come at a cost, and we'll talk about like pricing for ads, things like that. It does come at a cost, but if it's done correctly, reaching your ideal couple I hate that word's a little bit overused, but like reaching your ideal couple is really possible through these platforms.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's. It's pretty incredible and we were going through a shift right now because our ideal couple, I mean I'll say I'm a millennial. So I, in my stint as a wedding planner, I was advertising and marketing to my own.
Speaker 2:Your peers Right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:So I'm like well, I know what I like, so that's easy enough. But now we're going into this shift to Gen Z, of course this is like the big buzz thing right now that the conversation everyone's having.
Speaker 1:So when it comes to ads, you know kind of like what you were saying before, it was easier for people to say like oh, there's a you know a promotion for this planner, click, let's see what it is. It's easier to talk to that person. Things are changing a lot more with the way that Gen Z shops. Do you have any insights on how we can navigate that?
Speaker 2:Definitely. You actually brought up the word promotion when you were just speaking there, and one thing that worked really well five years ago was actually doing promotions and having an ad campaign that was connected to an offer that you could only get at this point in time. But gen z does not want to be sold to and promotions are working a lot less. It's. It's not a blanket statement for everyone, but, like um gen z couples are, they want to, they want an experience and they want to connect with people that think like they do um, and so I'm gonna rabbit trail real quick.
Speaker 2:Like, advertising is a super cold audience that gen z couple doesn't know, like and trust you at all. So when they see your ad, there's a long journey to where like they see and understand who you are, to actually liking you and wanting to contact you. So what we're seeing work with them is um being seen in multiple places, multiple times and in multiple formats like, like videos and photos, short form video, like on TikTok and things, so that you can communicate who you are and make sure that your values align with them and they make sure that your values align with them too and they can know, like and trust you. It's a longer process than ever. It's fascinating. Their decision-making timeframe is different than before. I think the pandemic and the bubble that was after the pandemic really masked a lot of problems in the wedding industry when it came to marketing, where there were just so many people getting married and there was sort of a shortage in a way. But now that's resolved. They have lots of options and you need to use your marketing efforts to win them over.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so everything that you just said, now I have to shift the way that I teach revenue goal planning, because Sorry.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, no, you're good.
Speaker 1:So this is like enlightening right, because if I say I'm speaking to, I'm just going to say a planner, because that's the easiest one right now for the conversation.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:I'm speaking to a planner and she wants to book four full planning weddings for the first quarter of 2025, right she's already behind the, behind the, the, the, whatever, but right now, like she's behind the mark.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And in reality, she should have been putting out advertising in Q4 of 2023 for Q1 of 2025, because it's going to take that much longer to get those points out. So your marketing campaigns actually have to run a much longer period, not even longer just earlier, like you have to plan earlier for whatever quarter it is you're trying to fill. So that's interesting and I think that makes a lot of sense. And I was just talking to a client yesterday about I was talking her through ideas and I said if you need to fill your summer, why don't you run a promotion with an indoor venue so that it's?
Speaker 1:not too hot, right, and and try and do it that way. And she was okay. Well, you know, do you think I should run like 50% off or whatever? And I said no, no, no, no, I'm not saying discount anything.
Speaker 1:I'm saying throw out the offer, like just say, hey, we have this package because it's a promotion or an offer. It doesn't mean that you're you're discounting or taking a percentage off or maybe you're adding a little more value or doing something like that. But it doesn't always have to be taking money off the top from your business.
Speaker 2:It's so true. There's a lot of things that we do as wedding businesses that we're going to do for free anyway, but like we don't really charge for and that's actually a super great. Like I don't like to use the word promotion or offer because I think that's like a key to Gen Z, but like that's super great way to like work into your ad campaign is like hey, if we have these open dates and this is also available to you at no extra cost if you are interested in one of these dates, and so like you're sweetening the deal by doing something that you're going to do anyway, Right.
Speaker 2:So, you might as well just like frame it as value in their minds that they can only get for a certain period of time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, exactly so I'm. I'm curious. I didn't give you this question, but I just kind of want your opinion. I am I'm anti TikTok for no reason other than I don't want to have another platform that I have to manage. I'm curious what your thoughts are on TikTok. So I've had a few people say like, at least have a profile to to like see what's happening, but I'm so glad you asked.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, there's so many pain points about TikTok, one of them being like gosh, we just figured out Instagram, so we have to do another one.
Speaker 2:There's there's there's people's political views on whether TikTok should be allowed in the United States and things like that, and so you know, putting all those aside, I'm going to frame it in where Gen Z live online and act online.
Speaker 2:Short form video is taking over the internet, like you've seen how Instagram has responded by promoting reels and stories and videos, so much more, in response to the fact that TikTok took a huge chunk of their audience and people are spending a lot of time there, and so you know, as much as I hate to say it like, if you want to reach and engage Gen Z and win their hearts over, short form video is a really big part of it, and there are fewer Gen Z people on Instagram than there are their older predecessors and they're spending time on TikTok.
Speaker 2:Tiktok is not social. Actually, it's an entertainment platform. They see themselves more like Netflix and less like a social media platform, and so one of the cool things about TikTok ads is you actually don't even need a social account to run ads on TikTok. You can have one or two short form videos that you love, create an ads account it's not even linked to anything social and you can reach those couples and those brides who are on tiktok and and win them over in that way. So it's really powerful and it took a lot of good things from meta and like got rid of a lot of things that were bad about meta. Um, so I'm a fan yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, I think eventually here I'm gonna have to at some point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, check it out, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:No, I mean and there's certain things I I like to say that everything has its place. So you have, and I've said unlike, tiktok is entertainment, um, instagram is your portfolio, facebook is your communities and your website is your home. So as long as you like, know exactly what each one is is the purpose for in your business, and some people flip flop those around a little bit.
Speaker 2:but I love that, and can I share one more thing about?
Speaker 2:like comparing TikTok to Instagram. So I was at this conference a couple of months ago and someone said we've made Instagram too pretty. And what is true is that Instagram is beautiful it is your portfolio but people want authenticity and they're finding authenticity on TikTok because it's like behind the scenes stuff or how it's done stuff, and that is really resonating with Gen Z a lot and and you know, like I don't know, like I could talk about it forever and I'm going to stop myself there and I know that the pain of transitioning and learning a new thing for your business especially for those of us who have been in the industry for a minute, it's like, oh God, another thing. But the truth is is that as business owners, it's our job to evolve and change and to go where our audience is, and I do believe that there is a future coming where TikTok is a very, very big part of that, where TikTok is a very, very big part of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know I've had conversations with people who've been in the industry for a long time and that you know you mentioned TikTok or you mentioned, you know, marketing to Gen Z and that they're coming into the workforce. There are the new couples that are coming in and you kind of get this like eye roll and I have to giggle because I'm like have you not been transforming and evolving this whole time? Like, are you still the same person that you were when you decided to start your business? No, there's no way, and so it's just something else that we're going to have to learn, and a lot of times that just means maybe even bringing on a team member, like just understanding what it?
Speaker 1:is bringing on somebody to help you. You know handle that and I've even had. I had a client one time who I asked I said why, why wouldn't somebody hire you just out of curiosity? It's like one of my favorite questions to ask people. And she said because of my age. I said but you have your daughter, you're a mother daughter team, so why don't you tag team I, I worked, I worked at Hilton and I was like the baby in the office.
Speaker 1:I was like 23, I think, and and my uh, I was doing the smaller weddings and the woman who was doing the larger weddings was around the same age as my mom and we would actually swap tours because the larger weddings were the younger couples and I would sell them and then she would manage them, and and then the, the. The smaller weddings were the younger couples and I would sell them and then she would manage them, and and then the, the. The smaller weddings were like the secondary weddings of people who were older.
Speaker 1:For, you know, most of the time and so she would do those tours because they would relate to her, and so it was. You know, when you're able to have uh different perspectives and being able to just meet them where they're at in their life, right Like it would be so helpful. So just an idea that I'm throwing out in the world.
Speaker 2:It's a hundred percent about me, and then where they're at, and where they're at is changing. And that has been the story of our journey in the wedding industry the whole time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so I'm curious about um, are there any stories like any success stories? Or, um, maybe even the other way around, if somebody, like, tried to do something that didn't work out, do you have any, uh, any real time stories in the wedding industry of using ads and how it worked out for somebody?
Speaker 2:It could even be yeah for sure. Well, I mean, well, my story is like ages ago, so it's a bit different. I feel like it's not as relevant. But you know, I'll use a venue example. We have a venue, who? They're in Wisconsin and they didn't. They didn't even have their venue built yet. And they're like can we like book tours? Or how do we use, how do we get the word out there without a venue that doesn't exist? Like it's going to happen? Um, and so we actually created an ad campaign that used renderings of their venue and talked about what the venue would be and, to be honest, I didn't even really want to work with them because I was like, well, this is a bad idea.
Speaker 2:Like your venue doesn't even exist, um, but but we did it and what was really fascinating was is that people caught the vision of the venue because of the videos and the photos that we put, the renderings, and couples started booking tours and it was really cool and they were giving tours while the venue was under construction and it just was kind of mind-blowing to me that, like a product that didn't even exist was able to succeed because we reached the right audience with advertising, um, and I love that story because it just tells me anyone, if a product doesn't even exist and you have a product that already has existed and it's proven and does well like it can work for you too, then that reminds me of like in the education space.
Speaker 1:A lot of times they say sell whatever your digital product is before you create it, because you'll actually get the feedback of what they're looking for If we create it in our own minds of what we would want. It's not always going to match what the client is hoping for the result to be. So I, actually, I agree, I I booked my wedding before it was built.
Speaker 1:Okay, perfect, it was like wobble and I'm like walking through and I'm like this is going gonna be fabulous, wonderful um, we cut it really close to open date, but it worked out yes, and you're one of the first couples to get married there, and that was really special second couple and I was like I'm bringing 200 people watch out, but they, um, I told them I'd be their guinea pig and forgive them for anything that went around.
Speaker 2:You're a good person. You're an unusually good person, because that's probably not the story always.
Speaker 1:No, definitely not. I think I was just kind of like wedding planner. Forgiveness but yeah, but no, I love that story. And then you know, with all of this, you know, as far as I'm concerned, again being selfish here, I'm like how can I dive in? What are like, how do you stay updated on the trends and the practices and the things that are going on? Is there like a certain course that you should take once a year? Is there a certain platform to be following education on?
Speaker 2:You know, you offer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we actually have a lot of free education on our website, which is super cool. Like, we keep education updated there as much as possible to help you understand and build your own campaigns, if that's what you want to do and you don't have the budget to hire someone else. Um, we keep up to date with, like, advertising industry, which is a little bit different than wedding industry because, like, algorithms change I hate throwing that word out there but, like, there's different algorithms to like bid for, do you want traffic, do you want likes? You know what I mean, and so we'd stay up to date on what's happening in the advertising industry and then we apply it to the wedding industry.
Speaker 2:There isn't really a great place, to be honest. It's one of my visions, for my business is really to be that for the wedding industry. Working on it, we're getting there at some point. But there's some free education on our website. You know, I think just talking with an advertising expert and asking them the hard questions is really going to be the best way to figure out what's right for you and if it's going to work well for you and how to do it so it works well for you.
Speaker 1:And I think too, you know, with people listening in and you think I don't want to spend a lot of money. This is the way that you can kind of play around and you get to choose how much you spend.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like when I was doing that training, you can literally see the little toggle of you could spend $5, you know a day or a dollar a day, and then you can see how it's performing and decide if you want to pause it.
Speaker 1:And so, like you said, you really do have control. So if it's something that you are listening in and you're like I'm interested but I don't have a ton of money you can start playing around with you know whatever's in your wallet. You know like it doesn't have to be this huge thousands of dollars of campaign right off the bat, especially then. The nice thing about wedding professionals is the majority of them are in a geographical location. I mean, there's people who destination and travel and things like that. Like here in the key is we have people who come from all over, but I have clients who are in Ohio and in Oregon and they're in one specific place and so they're able to kind of yeah, there's more or less a radius circle yeah, right, and and then really reach down and you don't have to spend a ton of money trying to like reach the globe.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah and one quick word.
Speaker 2:one quick note of insight for what to spend and to start small. It's important to know what will happen when you spend a little bit of money versus when you reach couples on all the ad platforms. Gen Z couples do need to see you in multiple places multiple times before they decide to book you. So if you're starting small, it's important because advertising gets such a bad rap. It's like a necessary evil or I hate advertising because it didn't work, but it does work. But if you start small, you need to know that you are probably not going to get a ton of people that click on your ad if you spend $5 a day and book a meeting with you. That's just not how it works. You need to reach them multiple times. That's just the reality of the internet and that's not me like making excuses for meta or Google or whatever. It's just how couples shop and how couples operate when it's a cold audience. And so starting small is super important, but set your expectations in the right place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree with that too, and I think a lot of times we're not looking at our internal data, so we put it out there and we don't check on it and see how it's performing. Um, so I think that happens a lot too, when they're like, oh, it didn't work and it's like, well, why like did? Were we paying attention to what we could have shifted and that that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1:This is. I mean, there's so much more that we could dive into here. I mean, but uh, for the sake of of time and uh being able, I, you know, I really kind of want to jump over to your website now and dive in a little bit more and and learn more myself, because, again, I'm on word of mouth side, so I'm like get out there and get in front of people.
Speaker 2:And word of mouth is awesome. I want to reinforce that. Well it is.
Speaker 1:I think when you marry the two not pun, not intended, but when you marry the two it really can create something powerful.
Speaker 2:It really does, because if couples like you're back to that multiple places multiple times, if they hear about you from someone but and then they see you on and they see you on TikTok, it reinforces that all that work that you're doing organically and through referrals and and that those are not, those are amazing things. The foundation of your business and advertising can work so well together with that.
Speaker 1:I always say cause. I'll have people who say, oh, I get most of my clients on through Instagram and I'll say, okay, that's amazing, keep doing what you're doing, cause clearly it's working. So, but how many of those clients do you think asked somebody else about you before they signed?
Speaker 2:110%.
Speaker 1:That's where the word of mouth, or did they look at your reviews? Or like where was it that they decided like, okay, this is the person for me. So I do think that the two together can be quite powerful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1:Well, so much here. So I'm going to drop your uh, your website, in, you know, in the show notes, obviously, um, and before we get to uh, you know where we can find you. Do you mind if we go through a few other questions? More about yourself.
Speaker 2:Sure yeah, I love this.
Speaker 1:All right, what was the last thing that you bought for your business?
Speaker 2:The last thing I bought for my business probably a plane ticket to a conference. It's all digital, there's nothing physical.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, I know most people lately they've been talking about things that are like right at their desk, like somebody got a new computer, somebody like it was all very like office based.
Speaker 2:Super boring here yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, conferences are fun though. Um, yeah, I have one coming up at the end of the month here, actually. Um, what is? Uh? Tell us about your favorite past vacation, or if you have a dream vacation that you wish you could go on.
Speaker 2:I'm going to combine the answer, because two weeks ago we just got back from Antarctica and it was a dream come true Penguins and whales, and seals and icebergs. We spent two weeks down in Antarctica and it was just like heaven, partly because we were disconnected from the internet, which was really incredible as well. But we had the trip of a lifetime and we just got back and I'm still on that like post vacation high.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, and that's like, isn't it nice to come back from a vacation and still feel good? I feel like so often we're like we need a vacation from the vacation.
Speaker 2:There was a little re-entry trauma, but to be expected.
Speaker 1:It can't all be smooth. Well, that sounds incredible In one year. If we're sitting across from each other on opposite ends of the country, if we're sitting across from each other popping a bottle of champagne for you, what would we be celebrating?
Speaker 2:they cross from each other, popping a bottle of champagne for you. What would we be celebrating? Oh, um, we would be celebrating this project we're working on I'm calling it a data infrastructure project, and this is super nerdy, but this is really cool we're. We have so many members at the adu society and we have their ad campaigns, and we get to collect that data and find out what are the industry benchmarks for advertising in the wedding industry? Because, because it doesn't exist yet, like no one's created a benchmark for Google ads just for the wedding industry, and so we've been working on this project and it's really coming to life, and a year from now, we'd be popping that bottle of champagne because we have started using that data to make our campaigns even better, and that is super exciting to me, super dorky, but it is what it is.
Speaker 1:No, I mean, that's your passion, right, that's what you're doing, and I always say we need the geeky people in this industry more than anybody else because you, you know, your brain works so much differently than you know, say, a florist or a designer. Right, like it's, it's definitely you're the yin to the yang, so where can guests find you when? And if you have anything coming up, please share that as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the ideasocietycom is our website and that's the best place to get in touch. It's got our free education courses. There's a super obvious button there where you can click and do some on-demand learning. And then, of course, if people are interested in having it like working together, then they can contact us there too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. So I always like a good action item and I think just going in and just starting to understand a little bit and diving into that education that you provide, is a good first step and I love the name of your company. I Do Society.
Speaker 2:Thank you. You know it doesn't really communicate advertising per se, but there's a vision I have for, like you know, connecting those two up or making it bigger than it is now, and I think, like you know, the whole purpose of it is helping businesses in the wedding industry get more ideas for their business.
Speaker 1:Oh tell me more right, because it it really so much I actually my business was originally celebration society and I was the business coach and she said um, check the trademark on that because it's an amazing and she's like somebody's gotta have it so I checked it out, nobody had it and or it was like it used to be a magazine and it was like inactive.
Speaker 1:Lo and behold, bravo bought it. Now I'm like, well, I can be a housewife or I can change the name, so lately I'm celebration society, cause I love the word society. I feel like that just makes you want to be a part of it. Um, yeah, I had to adjust, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:Well, you're still doing amazing things. That's still working.
Speaker 1:So so many, so many stories. Well, mark, thank you so much for being here with us today. I mean again, this is kind of a space that I think a lot of people really need to start prioritizing but don't know enough about. So thank you one for being here today, but also for just putting together education and supporting the industry as a whole.
Speaker 2:This is my pleasure. Thanks for having me.