How Do Celebrants Market Themselves?

If you are new to Celebrancy or considering it as a career move, then you might be concerned about getting the bookings to make it a successful proposition. Many prospective and new celebrants ask us the same question - ‘Once I have trained and completed my qualification, how do I get bookings? What is the best way for a celebrant to promote themselves, especially if they are brand new to a flourishing market?’

We’ve got the answers for you. 

What Does Marketing Involve?

Marketing refers to the promotion of a service or product. It might include print media (like a magazine advert or a flyer), digital media (like a website or online advert) or social media (Facebook page, Instagram feed, etc). There’s also, of course, old fashioned word of mouth marketing (gaining a reputation, being referred by past clients to new clients, developing relationships with funeral directors). 

Celebrants won’t need to utilise every marketing avenue out there. Some will be more appropriate than others. For example, word of mouth marketing is more suited to the funeral space. When you gain a good relationship with a Funeral Director, they can promote you as a celebrant to the customers that walk through their door. For weddings, you might find that social media marketing works best, as many couples  are using the internet to find their wedding suppliers. 

Events like wedding fairs allow you to incorporate several types of marketing. You can hand out fliers and cards (print media), talk to prospective couples (word of mouth marketing) and refer them to your website and social pages (digital / social media). 

There’s no ‘one’ way of doing this. You can be as active or inactive as you like, and use marketing strategies that you feel work best, and feel most comfortable with. However, the more you put into your marketing activity, the more you will get out of it. 

What Resources Do You Need?

It can be scary getting started with marketing, but once you get the hang of it, you will discover it’s easy. To market yourself as a celebrant, you’ll need:

A computer or laptop / tablet

A phone (smartphone preferred with a working camera)

A printer or access to a printing service

Wifi

You’ll also need to conduct basic research into:

Your nearest Funeral Directors

Wedding fairs near you

Networking events near you

Wedding suppliers you can connect with to gain access to their customers

As an addition, you could hire a website designer or social media manager to take charge of your marketing - but this is not necessary as doing it yourself is very possible. 

The Support We Can Offer

At the International College of Professional Celebrants, we often meet new celebrants who don’t feel confident using a computer, let alone setting up a social media page or managing a website. But this is ok. We offer marketing support as part of our residential training, as well as further post-training support in digital marketing for celebrants. We can teach you:

How to find your target market

How to create a social media page

How to customise your language and messaging to your target market

How to get customers coming back 

And much more.

If you are still on the fence about training with us, we have a quiz you can take to decide whether or not celebrancy is for you. Take the quiz here.