The Benefits Of A Wedding Marketing Agency
The majority of the best wedding venues succeed with the help of a wedding marketing agency. The sector has become increasingly saturated, and competitive as a result. In turn, effective marketing for your wedding venue has become near-essential. As a second wave of COVID-19 rears it’s expectedly ugly head, restrictions have inevitably tightened. This means that many wedding venues will have no choice but to close their doors for the time being. Sad as this may be, it presents an excellent opportunity to reassess your marketing strategy.
The restrictions of the pandemic will, eventually, lessen once again. When this happens, you will want to emerge with a running start. Many of your competitors may be biding their time, waiting for all this to blow over. The sensible thing to do, however, would be to work on your marketing. The team here at our wedding marketing agency, VerriBerri, have prepared this blog. Read on to discover how you can get your venue noticed, even when it’s doors are closed.
Assess Your Website
Your venue may be the most beautiful location imaginable. It could be the wedding venue of a potential customer’s dreams. But if your website doesn’t match your venue in looks and accessibility, then you won’t attract many soon-to-be newlyweds. You need to ensure that prospective couples linger on your website until they’re hooked. This initial ‘hook’ is so important for wedding venues. Many venues, however, do not appreciate its necessity. To make sure potential customers stay on your website, there are several criteria you must consider.
Too Much Text?
First off, consider the quantity of text. You want your website to convey the level of elegance and beauty that should be associated with the venue itself. If the homepage (or any other page for that matter) is overflowing with text, this will immediately turn people away. It’s very likely that the text holds a lot of important information. But you need to convey this information through other means to avoid a high bounce rate. A mixture of lush imagery and enticing infographics would be a huge benefit to your website. A wedding marketing agencywould be more than happy to develop some infographics for your venue.
Get Your Camera Out!
To build on the above point, it is absolutely essential that your venue is well-represented by beautiful imagery on your website. Most of the decisions a couple will make will be down to what they see, rather than what they read. As potential customers may not be able to actually visit your venue over the coming months, you’re going to want to give them the best possible impression.
With this in mind, it’s highly recommended that you utilize the services of a professional photographer. They will be able to showcase every delightful corner of your venue and the associated services you offer. Hiring a photographer, however, can be very expensive and some venues may not be in a position to splash out. In this case, you can still produce some excellent imagery using a smartphone. As long as the lighting and camera work is good, most website visitors won’t know the difference.
User-Friendly Website
If your website isn’t user-friendly, your bounce rate will go through the roof. Nobody wants to try and navigate through slow, unintuitive web pages. Plus, as previously mentioned, if your website leaves a bad impression, this will be associated with your venue as a whole. Your venue is essentially the ‘product’ that your website is promoting. This means that the end goal is, of course, to get a visitor onto the contact/booking page. Every other page on your website needs to contribute to this goal.
One such way of doing this is to incorporate a little ‘call-to-action’ at the end of each blog post you produce. Our wedding marketing agency does this a lot. In fact, you will find exactly that at the foot of this blog! You should also ensure that all of your social links are as clear and accessible as possible (without being intrusive). Social media is a perfect way to boast of the impressive services you offer. Not to mention the luxurious location. Instagram is especially good when it comes to showing off pictures of your venue. A well-managed social media account will do a lot to help convert a visitor into a booking.
Website Layout
It’s incredibly important to consider your website’s layout. As touched on multiple times, couples will visit your website to gain an impression of your venue. Not just to read a list of reasons why they should book your venue. You’ve considered the amount of text on your site, and the beautiful imagery that should be on display. Now you need to make sure these two things work in unison. Make sure to put a focus on the negative space. The areas without text or information of some kind are just as important as the information itself. The layout of your website should function as a sultry, beckoning finger; enticing a visitor to explore deeper into your venue.
If you need help with this, a wedding marketing agency would be able to point you in the right direction. They will be able to give your website an interesting and aesthetically-pleasing design. Sleek and stylish motifs are most prevalent in the wedding industry at the moment. A wedding marketing agency will be able to work with this and create something original, yet in-keeping with this popular trend. This may go against your venue’s rustic (perhaps) style, however. If you have a certain style, a wedding marketing agency would be more than happy to accommodate this theme when designing your site.
Aside from the above, it’s also essential that you network. Don’t expect everyone to come to you; reach out to the public and make an effort to establish your venue amongst the big names of the industry. Work on location based marketing too. Your venue will inevitably be in one, immovable place (as venues tend to be). So, focus on marketing to the local areas. It just makes sense.
All of the above are things that a wedding marketing agency would be more than happy to help with. If you would like some help in improving your marketing efforts, or completely re-evaluating your marketing strategy during this difficult time, don’t hesitate to get in touch! Call-to-action, as promised: Contact VerriBerri today on 01376 386 850.