7 Wedding Marketing Ideas To Help You Get More Bookings

Weddings provide restaurants and function venues with a great opportunity to boost revenue. An effective wedding marketing strategy is critical for venues who want to fill their calendar with bookings.

It’s the bride and groom’s special day and many couples want to host an extravagant celebration they will remember for a lifetime. Promoting your restaurant or function space as a wedding venue requires planning and taking time to do this properly could be rewarding for your business.

Things To Consider When Planning Your Wedding Marketing Strategy

Before you start planning your marketing campaign, it’s important to consider the following points:

• Who will be the primary decision maker, the bride or groom? More often than not, it’s the bride who is the key decision maker.
• Are you promoting your venue as a same-sex wedding venue?
• What types of weddings your venue is best suited for?
• Do you have ceremony spaces available, or is your venue appropriate for receptions only?
• Do you have space for outdoor receptions, or indoors?
• Can you offer both seated and cocktail style receptions?
• What the seating and standing capacities of your venue?
• What packages will you offer and at what price per person? Most venues offer a range of multi-course set menus, cocktail menus and a buffet option.

Peak Season For Wedding Enquiries: January – March

The number of people searching wedding venues reaches a peak in January each year. As a result your campaign must be up and running during this period. The demand for weddings is lower outside of the peak season, in response to this some venues may consider offering incentives to drive enquiries during the middle of the year.

Wedding Marketing Tip #1. Social Media Marketing

The social media presence of a wedding venue has a strong impact on its perceived credibility. Social media is also the platform where a wedding venue can accurately communicate its branding and imaging, attracting brides with similar styles. Your Instagram account should be regularly updated with images of the venue, catering and examples of weddings or events held on location.

The Instagram story tool can be used in a variety of ways, particularly now with the pinned stories function. These pinned stories are another way to showcase your venue and can be used to:

• Show behind the scene videos of venue styling
• Highlight previous weddings and functions at your venues
• Promote deals and incentives
• Promote upcoming wedding showcases

Wedding Marketing Tip #2. Facebook & Instagram Advertising Campaigns

Facebook’s advertising platform offers businesses a variety of ways to target potential brides. The detailed targeting system provides the opportunity to reach people who are specifically interested in weddings or actively looking to plan a wedding.

On top of targeting specific geographic locations, genders and age groups, the following demographics and interests may help your venue to generate more wedding enquiries:

• Females who are newly engaged (1, 3 and 6 months)
• Friends of people who are newly engaged
• People who have set their relationship status to engaged
• Engaged females who have shown interest in weddings

Wedding Marketing Tip #3. Google Ad Campaigns To Generate More Wedding Leads

Google is another platform that is effective in driving more leads for your wedding venue. There are two key channels for advertising on Google: the display network and the search network. Using keywords that suit your venue, your ads can be set up to appear as:

• Banner ads on the display network
• Banner ads on related sites due to placement targeting
• Text ads on the google search engine

Using Google Ads with correct keywords ensures your venue is placed directly in front of users who are searching for wedding venues and reception ideas.

Wedding Marketing Tip #4. Wedding Open Day

Wedding open days are an excellent form of experiential marketing. This is an influential way to convert potential clients who are in the process of planning their wedding.

Open days will give you an opportunity to partner with industry suppliers who will further promote your business to their networks. These suppliers may include photographers, stylists, makeup artists, celebrants and entertainers.

Incentives can be used to drive attendance for your wedding open day. These incentives could include package upgrades, discounted services from suppliers or venue hire offers. Exclusive promotions can be provided to couples who attend the open day. These offers can expire within a set timeframe following the open day to encourage bookings from potential brides.

Data from the open day registration forms can then be used to re-target customers with follow up EDMs or digital marketing campaigns.

Wedding Marketing Tip #5. Wedding Directories

Adding your venue to wedding directories will help you to get in front of brides and grooms who are actively searching for wedding venues online. Most directories already rank highly in search engines and have their own databases, which will help to drive traffic to your venue. On top of this, having multiple backlinks to your site from relevant, high-quality wedding directories will help boost your own SEO.

Wedding Marketing Tip #6. Collaborative Photoshoots

Staged photo shoots are an excellent way to promote your venue. Collaboration with suppliers, stylists, florists, designers and models will provide your venue with a library of images that can then be shared across media channels of all brands involved.

Wedding Marketing Tip #7. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) For Weddings

The final aspect to consider when marketing your venue is the Search Engine Optimisation of your website. Optimising your content for search engines will result in a better placement on Google and other important search engines. Boosting your organic rankings will lead to improved visibility from brides and grooms.

To ensure your website is correctly optimised, consider the following:

• Metadata is correctly formatted for search engines and has been written to attract attention from people searching for wedding venues.
• Images are optimised for mobile devices with relevant titles and alt tags.
• Website content includes phrases and keywords that are used by brides who are searching for wedding venues.
• Content is regularly updated and well written.
• Backlinks to the site are in place from relevant websites and directories.