Time to change our marketing tactics??

[Chris Harding]

Hi David

Regardless of the media you use I find that brides tend to look for suppliers at certain times of the month of the year and other times none of them look! I find that I might get 50-60 website clicks in one campaign and get no bookings and then the next one I get plenty of results. At an average of $35.00 a week I really don't mind as I have had enquiries from ads seen sometimes 3 weeks ago and $35 isn't going to break the bank ..it does get your name out there and it is targeted advertising so a small amount of money. With something like Wedding Wire (I assume you are listed with a group of other videographers in your area?) you already have competition and the chances of a bride clicking on you drop if your ad is down the page which doesn't happen on FB ... I have yet to see competitive ads appear on my timeline so you should be fairly exclusive when you appear on a brides timeline.

I find that it also helps my bookings a lot as I can network with other suppliers I work with so brides looking for a marriage celebrant will more than often see a post I have put on my timeline and then shared with the celebrant .. that might convince her to take a peek at video too ...and sharing costs nothing!!

I certainly don't regret dropping my wedding directory last year as leads were dwindling away to nothing and costing me a fortune!!

[Kyle Root]

I'm still working on trying to build some new vendor relationships. There's this one really nice venue that I've been dying to try and get in with, and it has finally happened about a month ago, and so far they've sent me 1 referral.

The thing is, these are "higher end referrals" in my estimation and I like that because there is no haggling. It's like, "Who do we make the check out to, and how much?" lol Love it!

Over the past 2 years, I've spent almost $1600 on Facebook ads and had no tangible results. So I'm not doing that anymore.

If you're in America, you can check out the Belk Engagement show. I did 2 of them this month (2 weeks apart at different Belk Stores). I got 1 video booking off the first one and 2 photo gigs off the second. The good news, it's free for vendors to participate. The bad news is, there are on average 50-60 vendors.

There were 3 videographers at the last one and about 15 photographers.

[Steven Davis]

Originally Posted by David Barnett

Still, I re-upped on Wedding Wire for another year but not a big fan of it, did ok last year, but for the amount I paid in for the ads I'm not sure it was a win.

After years of WW, I dropped them. It wasn't easy as the thousands I have invested seemed to pay off less and less each year. One major issue was the actual listing. Most companies listed above me weren't even in my area, one guy is in New York. I spent a couple of hours explaining my issues with WW, they didn't seem to make an effort to address them.

So we'll see if the WW drop does anything. It hasn't really paid for itself in a couple of years.

[Kyle Root]

A friend of mine in Nashville dumped $2500 into WW for a 12 month plan that included 2 listings - one for video and one for photo. He got 0 bookings out of that.

We found out that when a bride sends an inquiry she is presented with a screen that shows like 6 other vendors/competitors as options to try. That just seems a little crazy to me. If I had a free listing, I could see that... but dumping over $2000, I'd expect some exclusivity at that point.

I'm on WW for free and get a handful of referrals a month. But never have booked any. I'm out of their budgets.

[Roger Gunkel]

I seem to be in a minority when it comes to wedding shows, but I mentioned on another thread a couple of weeks ago about my favourite wedding show that I exhibited at on January 27th. It cost me less than 200GBP and as of today less than 4 weeks later, I have taken 9 confirmed and contracted weddings from it, with two more viewing appointments for next week. I see that as a pretty good return and I still have another 3 wedding shows over the next 7 weeks.

Roger