What are your best marketing tools?

[Bill Edmunds]

Four years ago I started 'easing off' on weddings. Now I'm looking at getting back in the game. But in those four years I let my website get stale, my contacts lapse, and my marketing in general wither. I'm really out of touch with the big changes of those interim years, especially using the website to show off your stuff.

What are you currently doing to successfully market yourself? Have you built your website yourself? If you are shooting with DSLRs, has that been a marketing tool? If so, how? How are you reaching your brides? Are you using theKnot.com or other wedding sites?

Tell me anything and everything.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Bill

For me it's definately online wedding directories BUT only those that also have a discussion forum attached. Brides just love talking to other brides as well as vendors and probably new clients who are not referrals find me on the directory site forums. You will find more often than not that for you as a vendor to be allowed to post on the forum you will first have to advertise with them but it is worth the cost!!

Your ad and forum posts obviously need to link to your website!!

Chris

[Michael Johnston]

I have two websites that I built myself, one for my main video production business and one for weddings. By far, most of my wedding business cones from bridal shows and being the only one there still handing out demo DVD's with pkgs and prices on it. Everyone today wants to direct the brides to their websites and online demos but brides get thousands of pieces of literature with websites and they are not going to go to all those websites. They want something in hand with everything they need to make a decision. That had brought more wedding business than I could have ever dreamed of.

[Danny O'Neill]

Website
Blog
Networking

[David Schuurman]

my best marketing tools are my past clients. 80% of my brides are referrals. the rest I get from stumblers on my website I suppose. My blog gets more hits than my twitter has followers, and my twitter has more followers than my facebook page, but my facebook page has more clout regarding my content than twitter does.

I also have a fb ad which I havent gotten a booking from yet..but I just started.

[Philip Howells]

Bill, you broadened out the topic in your last sentence making David's clients (and I guess the same goes for everyone) legitimately his best "tool" - I think you'd mean promotional USP in marketing terms.

Our best tools in the true sense are:

1 our double demo disks - people love seeing more

2 our brochure and value comparison chart - people love reading and browsing

3 our single, comprehensive price and top value - when budgets are tight people look for the price to include more.

If you're interested Bill, our least favourite marketing tools ie least effective are:

1 print advertising - hardly surprising except to print advertising sales people.

2 Google adwords - no-one bothers with the paid listings

3 wedding fairs - here I should specify cost-effective - the organisers are becoming too silly and unrealistic for words, £300 for a stand for four hours and all they do is hang up a banner outside the hotel.

The interesting thing I'll bet as this thread develops is how much we all, (obviously from our individual experiences) disagree.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Philip

I spoke to a fellow photographer who had a stand at our main bridal fair this year...apart from a stall cost coming close to $4K for the 2 days he figured out his time loss and having to hire someone to man the stall while he took a break for meals and practical reasons was almost as much again!!, He was told when a bride wanted to book him that it was "advertising material only" and all you could do is take email details...no sales, no contracts and no exchange of funds.

He managed to get thru it with a total of 20 contact details of enthusiastic brides (at the time) and the day after the fair closed he sent enquiries to all 20 and lost every single one!!!

They might work elsewhere but he said that was definately the very last time EVER!!!

I found that most wedding directories (the online malls as you call them) offer free listings to try them out..I started with around 10 nationally and after 3 months kept just the 3 that gave results....you have to be VERY careful too that leads are not "generated" by the people that run the place.. I subscribed to one for 3 months and my inbox was always full of enquiries...BUT not one ended as a sale.... I suspect that new vendors were being sent bride details whether they enquired about video or not.

Chris

[Michael Johnston]

The Dallas Bridal Show just ended yesterday (2days). My total investment in the show was $1300 and I have 82 leads from the show with 15 who were really sold on what I have to offer. I give them 10% off if they book in the next 30 days, which means paying a $300 non-refundable deposit. Last show I booked 15 weddings directly from the show and expect probably around 20 from this show. At the last show, I offered 20% off if they booked that day and had five book and pay at the bridal show. Three biggest reasons brides gave for choosing me was 1) I was the only videographer who had prices posted and could tell them how much it would cost. Others told them they'd have to sit down to discuss the wedding before they could give a price. 2) I was the only one giving out a demo DVD and they watched that before looking at videos on other videographer's websites. My video set the bar and most said they would check out about three other websites but the videos did not compare so they just booked me instead of looking at more sites. 3) I was the only one that does not charge travel fees. I booked one wedding five hours drive away and did not charge extra like all others will do. In addition, I was the only one offering a cheaper one videographer pkg, which is VERY popular. It's 5 hours of coverage, covers the ceremony and reception, and costs what others charge for ceremony only pkgs. I love these pkgs. Easy shoots and easy edits and the brides love it.

[Michael Johnston]

Let me just also say that, in this economy, you're not going to have a lot of brides out there interested in you if you are pushing $3G-$6k pkgs. They say the wedding industry is recession proof but that's just not true. Yes, they are willing to spend $3000 on photography but not video. You can try to justify those prices all you want but 90% of brides aren't buying it. Yes, you will find brides with unlimited budgets but most have about $15k-$25k budgets and video is usually near the bottom of the priority ladder. My experience tells me that, right now, that $2000 is the max for the average bride with most not wanting to spend over $1250 on video.

[Michael Simons]

Originally Posted by Michael Johnston

Let me just also say that, in this economy, you're not going to have a lot of brides out there interested in you if you are pushing $3G-$6k pkgs. They say the wedding industry is recession proof but that's just not true. Yes, they are willing to spend $3000 on photography but not video. You can try to justify those prices all you want but 90% of brides aren't buying it. Yes, you will find brides with unlimited budgets but most have about $15k-$25k budgets and video is usually near the bottom of the priority ladder. My experience tells me that, right now, that $2000 is the max for the average bride with most not wanting to spend over $1250 on video.

No offense, but I'd move out of Dallas.

[Michael Johnston]

Weddings are not my primary business. I view a booked wedding as extra income and use just about all the profit on new equipment, vacations, & taxes.

[Jawad Mir]

It all depends on your strategy but for us 90% of our clients come from referral and the rest through Facebook. I am not talking about Facebook advertising but simply having a presence, adding videos, tagging people or having couple tag their friends etc. It's simply Ripple Effect.

We don't do trade shows and we are listed on only one website as a cinematography vendor. I am not saying this is the way but for us this has worked from get go.