Most Wedding Venues are likely to do as we do - namely search for the top ten or so Directory Websites on Google and advertise on those, then review every few months. Plus Google Adwords, facebook and the usual social media channels. No point being on a wedding directory website that is not on page one of Google, given that for most searches we will be somewhere in middle of page one anyway, in our own right (or a high page 2), depending on the search words used. Right now of course, weddings are effectively banned. It is not economic for a larger wedding venue to host a socially distanced wedding for max of 30 guests with no evening party or drinking and hence low spendd levels. We can lose less money being completely closed than trading unprofitably at non viable levels of income relative to staffing and running costs. Hence we have shelved some £100k of annual advertising spend, coming off all Adwords, out of all printed media and off all directory sites (though we remain on some for free as the directory sites want our business in the future). There was one website that charged a commission for leads that went to sale (Celtic Castles) but identifying the original source of a lead that can come to your own site via multiple other links and sources and on different dates would make it difficult for a specific site to prove they were the originator of the enquiry. We did not like the high commission charged in the one instance above, but given we probably spend £150k normally on advertising and marketing weddings, and have 150 weddings a year, the acquisition cost per wedding is pretty obvious. Now though, with all of 2020 weddings pushed into 2021, there is little room for new weddings to book until 2022, not least, even some of the 2021 weddings may still need to postpone again due to COVID. So until 'normality' returns and a normal wedding can go ahead, and the wedding industry has cleared the backlog of some two years worth of weddings cramming into summer 2021 onwards, there is not going to be much need for any advertising for a while. We will at some point resume the main directory sites, but with our finances decimated by the complete shut down of our wedding business for probably a whole year, our whole business model will change with every penny being earned being put towards debt repayments and we will be much more selective with our advertising. Facebook is often more effective a source of new sales than Google and Directory sites. We do find Directory sites have a very low conversion to sale rate compared to direct searches from Google and referrals from Facebook. This means we will not return to the high levels of advertising we had pre-COVID for some years.
- wow thats low! In my opinion.
