Each year, WeddingWire releases their Newlywed Report, offering key insights based on data collected from over 25,000 couples throughout the United States. These statistics can inspire venues with creative ideas for their content, as well as how to align their event venue marketing plan to reach more of today’s couples in a meaningful way. In reviewing this year’s stats, here are six ideas to enhance your venue’s online content. After all, 88% of all wedding planning today is done on the web.
1. RAMP UP SOCIAL CAMPAIGNS DURING SPRING
December is still the most popular month to pop the question, with January and February following suit. Since couples will start to focus on their planning shortly after their engagement, early spring is a great time to boost paid social campaigns. This is a vital time to get exposure and remind your audience how perfect your venue could be for their special day.
Facebook and Instagram have some of the most advanced targeting abilities on social platforms. These sites have the ability to filter your audience by segments such as age, gender, location, and change-of-life events, so you can even serve ads to those who have recently changed their relationship status to “engaged.” Use geotargeting to advertise to an audience in a certain state, city, or even within a specified mile-radius of your venue. Carefully filtering your audience will allow your advertising budget to go a long way, as you’re spending less money on a smaller audience, but achieving a higher return because the audience you’re reaching is well-targeted. You know your target market better than anyone, but keep in mind that according to this year’s report, 25% of couples will opt for a hometown wedding, so it could be worth including local areas in your paid social campaigns.
2. TELL YOUR BRAND STORY THROUGH PINTEREST
The #1 Pre-Engaged Planning Action is creating a Pinterest board; it’s often the first place couples turn to begin dreaming about their big day. Pinterest is the ideal space to excite and inspire couples about your venue’s unique touchpoints and tell your brand story. Leverage Pinterest to expand awareness of your venue and brand, create more website traffic, generate leads, and ultimately boost sales. This platform is not only useful for capturing the attention of current couples, but also for creating brand awareness in a younger generation: 2 out of 3 couples start gathering wedding inspiration and planning before getting down on one knee.
Pinterest is the third most powerful search engine in the world, behind only Google and YouTube. When couples log on to Pinterest, they use keywords to find what they are looking for, so it is your job to optimize your keywords to make it easy for them to discover your pins and lead them to your website. For example, instead of a caption like “Amazing wedding at Rosemont Resort,” a better option would be “Amazing blue-and-silver-themed winter wedding at Rosemont Resort.” And, of course, you’d have these photos on your website so you’re pinning from your site, not uploading the images within Pinterest, right?! Choosing your keywords with care will not only improve Pinterest results but organic search results with Google as well.
Digital Marketing Solutions – Focus on creating events worth celebrating, we’ll take care of the rest
3. HIGHLIGHT PERSONALIZED WEDDINGS
Newly engaged couples find significant value in personalizing their wedding and are more than willing to shell out the extra cash to do so.
In fact…
- 45% of couples increased their total spending to account for “must-have” items they fell in love with during their planning
- 34% stretched their budget to add personalized elements to their big day
- 62% of newlyweds admit they don’t regret allocating the additional funds and would do it again
Millennials especially do not want a cookie-cutter wedding. With this in mind, focus on creating content that sparks inspiration and can provide couples with some ideas and guidance on how to make their big day unique. Share photos from other couples at your venue who used personalization to show off their distinctive style, personality, and love story.
4. SHOWCASE YOUR REVIEWS
Couples today are highly influenced by the endorsement and opinions of others. Reading reviews comes in at #7 on the list of the report’s “Top Pre-Engaged Planning Actions.” WeddingWire’s findings revealed that 70% of couples find the most value in the overall review rating, photos submitted by real couples, and the recency of a review. Consequently, ensuring your reviews are easy to find is a key piece in successfully marketing your wedding venue. Social media is an ideal platform for showing off your glowing client testimonials. In order to keep your reviews relevant, try to incentivize couples to leave their feedback and experience on popular sites such as Facebook, Google, and WeddingWire.
5. CREATE WITH TODAY’S COUPLE IN MIND
Understanding today’s couples is vital to create content that is relevant and relatable. The average age of engaged couples is 32 and they fall squarely into the millennial generation. This generation does their research, so always make sure authenticity shines through your creative content. It is important to also remember that today’s couples are diverse, coming from all different walks of life, cultures, and backgrounds. Creating content that is inclusive will allow a larger and more diverse audience to establish a personal connection to your brand and nudge them to reach out.
6. STREAMLINE PLANNING & BUDGETING
Even though couples today are way ahead when it comes to planning, they still say the most difficult challenges they face are “knowing where to start” along with “planning within budget.” This creates a valuable opportunity for venues to find ways to streamline this process online and build a simpler way to guide couples through planning. Despite wedding spending being up, couples are more likely to book if they feel you understand their unique needs and financial situations. The average millennial couple pays 42% of the bill for their big day; even with parents chipping in 56% and others contributing the remaining 2%, they are still stretching to come up with the funds for their dream wedding, all while trying to balance paying their student loan debt and even saving for a mortgage.
Again, millennials place a lot of value on authenticity, so being transparent about what you charge and sharing pricing on your wedding venue’s website will go a long way toward building trust. Today’s couples are also tech-savvy, so implementing electronic payments, digital signatures, and Facetime or Zoom communication options will also ease the process. Create content that speaks to your seamless service because, ultimately, it’s all about convenience!
We hope our 6 ideas to boost your content marketing get your creative juices flowing and assist in shaping your event venue marketing strategies. To discover even more insights, check out the full WeddingWire 2020 Newlywed Report. We wish you the best of luck on your content creation journey! If you’d like content marketing help or ideas to fuel your website, social media, and other channels and drive leads, be sure to get in touch.
Like what you see?
Be sure to check out our new video, Getting Instagram Right: What Works for Wedding Venues, in which two digital natives share their best advice on how to optimize your Instagram presence and take full advantage of all the platform offers. And check out these other blog posts that cover other digital marketing topics for wedding venues: