Exercises: Marketing and Getting Your First Clients
Part A recall · Part B application · Part C field work · Part D critique · Part M mixed review · Part E extension.
Starred (★) problems have worked answers in appendices/answers-to-selected.md.
Part A — Recall and Comprehension
A.1 ★ State the chapter's threshold concept. Why does a recommender outweigh a client?
A.2 Rank the six recommender types and give roughly how often each is asked.
A.3 ★ Work the Delphine arithmetic: thirty recommendations, three names, 35% conversion, $8,400 fee. What is being one of three worth, and what does it cost?
A.4 Give the six steps of mapping your market. What is the column that turns a list into a plan?
A.5 ★ Name the six things that get you onto a coordinator's list. Which is 70% of it?
A.6 What is wrong with the standard introduction email, and what replaces it?
A.7 ★ Why is a referral given worth more than one asked for? What is the asymmetry?
A.8 Give the five portfolio routes with an honest assessment of each.
A.9 ★ Why is a portfolio of tablescapes the wrong portfolio? Give the caption that works and say what it sells.
A.10 What is a planner's website actually for? Give the four questions a referred visitor is asking.
A.11 ★ Give the argument for and against publishing prices, and the position the chapter endorses.
A.12 Distinguish conversion from performance on social media. Give three of each.
A.13 ★ Roughly what share of a new planner's first ten clients comes from social media, and what does that make it?
A.14 State the cold-start problem plainly. Give the four ways in, ranked.
A.15 ★ Give the CPA method. In the worked table, which channel is most expensive and which appears free?
A.16 What two questions must you ask to attribute a booking, and why does the second one matter?
A.17 ★ Give the eight-step enquiry sequence. Which step is highest value and what does it save?
A.18 Name the three objections the follow-up call should name out loud, and say why naming them works.
A.19 ★ What makes a review travel? Give the script for asking for a specific one.
A.20 Give the four things that partially make invisible work visible, and the line you must not cross.
Part B — Application
B.1 ★ Map your market. Every venue, the named person at each, the photographers, the caterers, the busier planners — and the next specific action for each.
B.2 Write the introduction message to a venue coordinator at a venue where you are working in three months. Ask for nothing.
B.3 ★ Write six months of touches for one venue relationship: what you send, when, and why — none of them a request.
B.4 Write three portfolio captions in the decision-describing form, for events you have run or can construct.
B.5 ★ Design a one-page website that answers the four questions. Write the actual copy for the first screen and specify the five form fields.
B.6 Compute CPA for every channel you use or would use, with your own time at your required rate. Rank them.
B.7 ★ Write the qualifying reply for an enquiry with no details, doing all four things §38.7 requires. Under 140 words.
B.8 Write the discovery call structure: what you ask in the first ten minutes, and the value question, in your own words.
B.9 ★ Write the follow-up call script that names the three objections. Then write what you say to each of the three answers.
B.10 Write the review request script, and say why the second sentence is the technique.
B.11 ★ A planner has 200 non-billable hours and $2,500. Allocate both, and state what you would drop entirely.
B.12 You have no network at all. Write your first six months, using the four ways in.
B.13 ★ Write a referral-out message to a competitor, and the message to the enquiry telling them you cannot take it.
B.14 Design the attribution column and the two questions. Then apply it retrospectively to five real or constructed bookings.
B.15 ★ Write the consultation hour for a specific enquiry, block by block — including the one specific observation about their event that you would make in the 35–45 minute block.
Part C — Field and Practice
C.1 ★ Identify the person at three local venues who is actually asked "do you know a good planner?" Report how you found out.
C.2 Ask a venue coordinator how many planners they can name, how often they are asked, and what got those planners on the list. Verbatim.
C.3 ★ Ask a photographer or caterer the same three questions. Compare the answers.
C.4 Find five planners' websites and score each against the four questions. Report how many answer all four above the fold.
C.5 ★ Price a wedding fair stand and a directory listing in your market. Then ask two planners who used each what it produced.
C.6 Track your own hours on social media for two weeks. Extrapolate to a year and compute the CPA at your required rate.
C.7 ★ Read twenty planner reviews. Count how many contain a specific thing that happened. Report the ratio.
Part D — Critique and Judgment
D.1 §38.1 says you are not marketing to couples. Argue that this is only true in a referral-dominated local market, and name a market where it would not be.
D.2 ★ The chapter is dismissive of social media as an acquisition channel. Build the strongest case against that, including planners for whom it demonstrably works.
D.3 §38.5a admits the strategy has a bootstrap problem and disadvantages people without the right network. Is naming it enough? What would actually address it?
D.4 ★ §38.2a recommends referring work to competitors. Argue that this is naive in a small market where there is genuinely not enough work. Then decide.
D.5 The chapter says a portfolio of tablescapes is a florist's portfolio. A client might reasonably want to see that the events look good. Answer that.
D.6 ★ §38.9 warns against manufacturing visible crises. Where exactly is the line between reporting your work and performing it? Give a case on each side.
D.7 The CPA table costs the planner's own time at $68. **Attack that.** Is time spent on Instagram in January genuinely worth $68?
D.8 ★ Chapter 37 said the market cannot see the difference between competent and excellent. This chapter offers four partial fixes. Evaluate each honestly — do any of them actually work?
Part M — Mixed Review
M.1 ★ (Ch.12) How are vendor management and marketing the same activity? What is the uncomfortable corollary?
M.2 (Ch.30) Why is the wrap-up a marketing activity? Give the CPA.
M.3 ★ (Ch.36) What does this chapter add to the first-ten-clients ranking, and what emphasis does it correct?
M.4 (Ch.37) Where does the decline script from §37.9 reappear here, and what does it build?
M.5 ★ (Ch.37) How does a niche help with the invisible-work problem specifically?
M.6 (Ch.2) What is a planner actually selling, and why does it not photograph?
M.7 ★ (Ch.27) §38.9 says the debrief is where visibility belongs. Which Chapter 27 principle does that protect?
M.8 (Ch.3) At which step of the enquiry sequence should you be assessing the client, and what are you looking for?
M.9 ★ (Ch.35) The productive struggle's error — optimising 27% and ignoring 73% — has appeared before. Where, and in what form?
M.10 (Ch.29) What does specificity have to do with both reviews and referrals?
Part E — Extension and Synthesis
E.1 ★ Build a complete twelve-month marketing plan: the map, the touches, the portfolio work, the website, the channel allocation with CPA, the enquiry sequence, and the attribution system. Then show it to a venue coordinator and ask what they would ignore.
E.2 Interview three planners about where their work actually comes from. Ask them to check their records rather than answer from memory, and report the gap between the two answers.
E.3 ★ Write 800 words on the ethics of marketing a service whose quality the buyer cannot evaluate. Use Chapter 37's credence-good argument and reach a position about what claims are defensible.
E.4 Research how referral networks work in an adjacent profession — architecture, medicine, law, or trades. Report two mechanisms this chapter does not use.
E.5 ★ Design the attribution and follow-up system a solo planner would actually maintain. Under ten minutes a week, and it must survive a busy September.
E.6 Take the cold-start problem seriously: design a twelve-month route into this industry for somebody with no network, no capital, and no relevant employment. Be honest about what it costs and whether it works.
📐 Mini-Project
Build the marketing plan and run one week of it.
- The market map — every venue, the named person, the photographers, the caterers, the planners
- The ten that matter, with the next specific action for each
- Three portfolio captions in the decision-describing form
- The website's first screen, written
- The CPA table for every channel, with your time costed
- The allocation — cash and hours — and what you are dropping
- The enquiry sequence, with all four scripts written
- The attribution column, added to whatever you use
Then do one thing from item 2 this week.
Send the photographs. Make the introduction. Ask the question.
And record what happened — because §38.6's whole argument is that the relationship channel produces more than everything else combined, and the only way to believe that is to have done it once.