Module 1 workshop: a one-page marketing snapshot

Pull everything from Module 1 onto a single page: who you serve, where clients leak from your journey, your seven-P scores, your demand split, your five numbers and your compliance status. Finish with one priority for the next 90 days, using Lantern & Lane's completed snapshot as the model.

Read the transcript

Module 1 workshop: a one-page marketing snapshot.

You now have the parts: a definition of marketing, a client journey, the seven Ps, the two kinds of demand, the five numbers, the legal ground rules and a daily routine.

On their own they are ideas.

What the snapshot is for.

A snapshot is not a marketing plan.

A plan says what you will do for a year.

Gather your material first.

Before you start writing, spend thirty minutes collecting the raw material.

Your inbox or CRM for the last 12 months, to count inquiries and their sources.

The eight-part template.

Copy this table onto a single page.

Fill in the right-hand column for your own business.

Worked example: Lantern and Lane's snapshot.

Priya and Marco filled in their snapshot on a quiet Monday in January, using the figures from the earlier lessons in this module.

These figures are illustrative.

Put a price on the priority.

A priority is easier to keep when you know what it is worth.

Here is the arithmetic Marco did, using the studio's own funnel rates from the numbers lesson.

That is the lesson. The worksheet and the quiz are just below this video.

What you will be able to do

• Complete an eight-part marketing snapshot for your own business using real figures from your records
• Identify the single biggest leak in your client journey and estimate what fixing it is worth in dollars
• Choose one 90-day marketing priority and attach it to your daily marketing hour

You now have the parts: a definition of marketing, a client journey, the seven Ps, the two kinds of demand, the five numbers, the legal ground rules and a daily routine. On their own they are ideas. On one page, side by side, they become a diagnosis. The marketing snapshot is that page. It takes about two hours to complete the first time and twenty minutes to update each quarter, and every later module in this course will ask you to come back to it.

What the snapshot is for

A snapshot is not a marketing plan. A plan says what you will do for a year. A snapshot says where you stand today, and it points to the one thing worth fixing first. Most small event businesses try to fix everything at once: a new logo, a new website, a TikTok account and a newsletter, all in the same month. The snapshot stops that by making the weakest link obvious.

Keep it to one page. If a section runs long, you are writing a plan, not a snapshot. Use numbers wherever you have them and honest estimates where you do not, marked as estimates.

Gather your material first

Before you start writing, spend thirty minutes collecting the raw material. You will need:

• Your inbox or CRM for the last 12 months, to count inquiries and their sources.
• Your calendar, to count consultations, calls, tastings or site visits.
• Your invoices, to total revenue before HST and count bookings.
• Any money you spent on marketing: listings, ads, wedding show booths, printing, gifts to referral partners.
• Your worksheets from the earlier lessons in this module, especially the journey map and the seven-P audit.
• Your email list, your inquiry form and your published prices, for the compliance check.

The eight-part template

Copy this table onto a single page. Fill in the right-hand column for your own business.

Worked example: Lantern & Lane’s snapshot

Priya and Marco filled in their snapshot on a quiet Monday in January, using the figures from the earlier lessons in this module. These figures are illustrative.

1. The business in one line. A two-person planning studio in Toronto’s west end that plans weddings and milestone parties, plus a few corporate holiday parties, across Toronto and the west GTA.
2. Main client types. Weddings, about 72 percent of revenue. Milestone birthdays and anniversaries, about 12 percent. Corporate holiday parties, about 16 percent.
3. Journey leak. Inquiring to consultation. Of 80 wedding leads last season, only 36 reached a call. Slow first replies are the cause: the inbox shows many replies took more than a day.
4. Seven-P scores. Product 4, Price 3, Place 3, Promotion 2, People 5, Process 2, Physical evidence 3. Total 22 out of 35. The weakest are Promotion and Process, tied at 2.
5. Demand split. Full planning is searched for, so capture comes first. Month-of coordination is not well understood, so it needs demand created. Split: about 60 percent capture, 40 percent creation.
6. The five numbers. 80 wedding leads; 27.5 percent overall conversion; $5,800 average booking value before HST (about $7,600 for a wedding); cost per booking $200 from venue referrals and $1,500 from Instagram; wedding lifetime value about $9,900 including referrals.
7. Compliance status. CASL consent: red, because the newsletter list mixes wedding show sign-ups, old inquiries and real opt-ins with no dates. Prices: amber, because none are online yet, and they must be all-in when they are. Privacy: amber, because the website has a privacy page but no named contact person.
8. The one priority. Fix Process before Promotion, because it is cheaper and it sits exactly where the journey leaks. Goal: reply to every inquiry within the same working day and lift inquiry-to-consultation from 45 percent to 60 percent. It lives in the reply block of Marco’s daily hour.

Put a price on the priority

A priority is easier to keep when you know what it is worth. Here is the arithmetic Marco did, using the studio’s own funnel rates from the numbers lesson.

• Leads: 80. At 60 percent instead of 45 percent, consultations rise from 36 to 48.
• Consultation to proposal stays at 89 percent: 48 x 0.89 = about 43 proposals.
• Proposal to booking stays at 69 percent: 43 x 0.69 = about 29.7 bookings, against 22 now.
• Extra bookings: about 7.7 x $7,600, the average wedding fee, = roughly $58,500 in additional planning fees for the season.

No new followers, no ad budget and no price change. Just a faster first reply. Promotion still matters, and it becomes the priority for the following quarter, once more of the existing leads are being converted.

Choose your priority well

Use these tests on the priority you pick:

• It fixes the weakest link that the snapshot shows, not the one that is most fun to work on.
• It moves one specific number, and you can measure that number every Friday.
• You can do it inside your daily hour without new money.
• You will know within 90 days whether it worked.
• Any compliance item marked red is fixed first, before you send more marketing to a list you are not sure about.

Date the snapshot and keep every version. In a year, the stack of four snapshots will tell you more about your marketing than any report a platform can produce.

In Canada and the GTA

Fill in your service area honestly. Part one of the snapshot asks where you work, and in the GTA that answer is a marketing decision. Toronto, Peel, York, Durham and Halton behave like different markets. Downtown is dense with corporate offices and hotels. Peel and York host many large, multi-day cultural weddings, where community word of mouth carries enormous weight. Halton and the west end lean toward smaller weddings and suburban social events. If your bookings come mostly from two or three of these areas, say so on the page. Later modules will use that answer to decide where your website, your Google Business Profile and your partner outreach should focus.

Time the snapshot to the local calendar. The best months to complete or update it are January, before the wedding inquiry rush and the winter wedding shows, and late August, before corporate offices start planning holiday parties in September. Updating in November or December, when many event businesses work most nights, rarely happens and is rarely honest. Compare each snapshot with the same quarter last year, not the one before, because seasonality in this market is strong enough to make a normal February look like a crisis.

Note your languages. If you or your team can serve clients in French, Portuguese, Punjabi, Tagalog, Cantonese or any other language common in your area, write it on part one. In a region this diverse, a language you share with a family is one of the strongest pieces of proof you have, and later modules will build positioning around it.

The Canadian lines on your snapshot

Part seven, the compliance status, should check the specific Canadian rules that apply to everyday marketing. Use the same three colours: green for done, amber for partly done, red for not done.

HST belongs on the snapshot. The Canada Revenue Agency says you remain a small supplier only while your worldwide taxable supplies, including those of associates, are $30,000 or less in any single calendar quarter and over the last four consecutive calendar quarters. If you exceed $30,000 in a single quarter, you stop being a small supplier immediately and must register within 29 days. A successful marketing priority can push you over that line in one busy season, so record your trailing four quarters on the snapshot. Once you are registered, HST in Ontario is 13 percent, and your published prices must tell clients whether it is included or added. The rules are in the CRA’s RC4022 guide.

Fix the red lines first. If CASL consent is red, as it was for Lantern & Lane, do not email the doubtful part of the list a promotion while you sort it out. Send one message asking people to confirm they want to hear from you, and keep only those who say yes. The fightspam.gc.ca page on consent and message requirements explains the difference between express and implied consent. For prices, the Competition Bureau’s guidance on drip pricing sets out what an all-in price must include.

This is general information, not legal or tax advice. Check the official sources named here, or ask a lawyer or accountant, for your own situation.

Worksheet

Download the worksheet and complete it for your own business, using Lantern & Lane as the model where it helps. Keep it with your marketing plan. It takes about 15 minutes.

Download the worksheet (PDF)