We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Trista Croce . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Trista below.

Trista , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you think folks should manage their own social media or hire a professional? What do you do?

My social media platforms are huge for my wedding planning business. I do not allocate any money towards advertising and marketing so the only source we relay on to generate clientele is social media. We have outsourced this work to a marketing company in the past, but we currently do this on our own now and have for the last several years. I have been in business for over 10 years and can honestly say that is is very important to have guidance and education from professionals on how to properly and effectively run your pages but I feel It is most impactful to run your own or have someone from your team run It. There is nothing more authentic and relatable to using your own voice, expertise and opinions on your pages. This, to me, is the best way to connect with your future, present and past clients. Through social media, we have been able to build a very effective brand that targets our key desired audience. When doing consultations, we have a 95% booking rate and I firmly believe this is because of how strong our brand is on social media. When potential clients come to us, they are already set on being one of our couples, which to me, is a huge confirmation that we are doing our branding on social media right! We had our instagram page up to 57k followers and our TikTok page is currently at 335k followers. Unfortunately, in the last couple of weeks, our Instagram page was hacked. We are currently in the process of trying to recover the page. While we are doing this, we have started a new page with a new handle and have been diligently working on building It up! I share this story because social media can have an incredible impact on your business, but there are many ups and downs to It. I strongly suggest having at least two platforms that you focus your energy on, in case one of them goes down for some reason, you still have a voice and a strong following in another area. Other key pieces of advice I have for social media is to be consistent in posting, make sure your photos and videos look great (good lighting and angles), and be yourself. If you follow these pieces of info, you are certain to build a loyal following that will easily convert into a customer base.

Trista , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Trista Croce and I am the owner of BTS Event Management, a luxury wedding planning and design company. I started BTS over 10 years ago and have worked relentlessly to get to where I am now. Myself and my team work with a very elite, high end clientele that often bring us around the country and even to other countries to plan the most special day of their lives. I have an all female team of 8 fierce, educated and very talented ladies that help make this all possible. My company is different than other wedding planning companies in the sense that we do It all for our couples. We plan, coordinate and manage their weddings as well as design and create the setting their wedding will take place in. We have an in-house graphic design team that creates all save the date, invitation and wedding day printed items, as well as an in house bridal fashion stylist for all wedding attire needs. We pride ourselves in giving amazing service and making just about anything happen for our couples. myself and my team pour every bit of ourselves into creating our client’s weddings and I feel It really shows with how incredible our weddings turn out and through the amazing bonds we build with our couples. If you are in the market for a wedding planner, you definitely want to be a #BTSbride!

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Consistency! Hands down, the only secret or special ingredient to any successful business. Do what you say your going to do and do It in the timeframe you say you will do It in. Owning your own business is filled with ups and downs and I have always been asked, “what’s your secret?” Since the first time I was asked this question, I started paying attention to what I did different than what a lot of other people did and what I did similar to what some really successful companies did and the one thing that runs true across the board is to be consistent and follow through with what you say. Accidents and mistakes will happen along the way, to everyone. I can honestly say, I’ve never seen a business measured off of these downfalls, I have seen time and time again, people rate, evaluate and talk about companies that they can consistently relay on. Its huge!

If you have multiple revenue streams in your business, would you mind opening up about what those streams are and how they fit together?

Yes! We have our wedding planning and design, then we have our graphic design team that creates save the dates, invitations and wedding day printed items. We also have two photo booths, a 360 photo booth and a regular photo booth. We have rentals like chairs, chargers and champagne flutes and we have cold spark machines. I feel its crucial to always save up and set aside business funds to invest into new ideas or products that can be added on to your services to then generate more revenue. Its an incredible snowball effect and I recommend It to any business owner!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.BTSeventmanagement.com
• Instagram: @luxurybybts
• Other: TikTok: @btseventmanagement Podcast: The Aisle, a Wedding Planning Podcast