A Lot of Couples Are Newly Engaged – Here’s How You Can Engage Them

in Event Venues, Social Media Marketing by Hawthorn Editorial

The holidays are prime time for couples to get engaged, which means an influx of new leads for wedding venues in the months that follow. If you’re a venue with a long list of potential new customers, how do you make sure that each one gets the attention it deserves?

First, it’s essential to understand the level of importance couples place on their wedding venue. On average, they’ll spend half of their entire budget on the perfect place to tie the knot, making it one of the most important decisions of the entire process – and the central focus for everything else, from the decor to the menu selection.

With that in mind, your job is to show prospective couples that not only are you their dream venue, but they’re your perfect customer. It’s a nurturing process that requires attention, timing, TLC, and getting to know each other. And if that sounds a little bit like dating, it is! Here are a few ways to turn interested potential customers into raving fans.

1. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes.

Whether you’ve been married yourself, attended the weddings of friends/family, or even dreamed of the perfect party weekend, one of the best ways to ensure that you’re giving potential customers the experience they’re craving is to think about it from their point of view.

First, imagine the ideal customer in your head, because you’ll want to examine these questions through that lens. (If you’re a pet-friendly, rustic outdoor location, for example, the qualified leads who seek you out aren’t going to be interested in the glitz and glam of a club-style party.)

Ask yourself questions like What are their top priorities right now? What are their worries? What do they want to see and feel when they tour a venue? The better prepared you are with the answers, the easier it will be to overcome objections and ease concerns.

2. Stay on top of trends.

This is an extension of the first point, because what couples are looking for today is quite different from what they might have sought pre-pandemic. When you’re aware of the latest wedding trends, you can use follow-up communication to let qualified leads know that you have what they’re looking for.

One trend that’s hot in 2023 is an emphasis on the party over the ceremony, which gives you the perfect opportunity to show off your dance floor. Couples are also turning away from anything seen as wasteful, so be sure to highlight your sustainability efforts. Finally, charcuterie is all the rage this year. Be sure to include the selection in your venue’s menu options.

3. Get your entire sales team on the same page.

It’s important that everyone is working from the same playbook so that potential leads aren’t accidentally contacted twice – or worse, not contacted at all. The use of a good customer relationship management (CRM) platform can help keep everyone on track and make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

In the same vein, it’s equally important that your sales and marketing teams are working together. Those trends we talked about earlier? It’s your marketing team’s job to know those like the backs of their hands. They can help the sales team hone their follow-up communications to speak to what’s relevant and trending. And in return, the sales team has a better read of what customers are responding to. Reciprocity can streamline your entire funnel.

4. Use a lead-scoring system.

Not all leads are created equal. In fact, you can generate a score for each lead based on the quality of interactions a lead has already made with your website, social media posts, emails, or other marketing materials – the higher the score, the better. Ideally, you’ll expend most of your effort going after the leads who look like your ideal client.

Check out our blog post on how to calculate the value of a site visit inquiry, which includes the questions you need to ask yourself and how to run the numbers based on your answers. Going after more-qualified leads is likely to bring in a better ROI than casting a wide net.

5. Be excited…but not too excited.

Back to that dating analogy – even if things feel pretty favorable with a lead, it’s probably not a good idea to push too hard in the beginning. We’ve found that the best practice is to stay top-of-mind for 30 days after the initial inquiry, but avoid reaching out every day.

When you do send a follow-up email, be sure that it’s filled with new and valuable information each time. Remember those questions that you know your ideal customers have? Use these emails as an opportunity to answer them, and to paint a picture of what getting married at your venue will be like.

6. Make sure your website is inviting and valuable.

Planning a wedding has a lot of moving parts, and couples are often overwhelmed. The easier you can make the process for them, the more likely they are to want to work with you. If you don’t have one already, gather your team and come up with a thorough FAQ that answers all the questions you’ve heard, then make it readily available online.

In addition, provide value-add resources that show them all the reasons to choose your location over those of your competitors. Put today’s trends front and center to show that you’re in tune with what couples are looking for from a venue like yours, and avoid making these 10 mistakes.

7. Help them imagine the perfect wedding.

Turning shoppers into buyers (as the saying goes in retail) is about more than just providing information. For wedding venues, it’s about creating a feeling of “home.” It’s that feeling a couple shares when they walk into the space where they would tie the knot, look at each other, and say, “This is it.”

This is where high-quality, stunning photography that showcases your venue comes in. Whether you point them to your Insta account, Pinterest page, or share via your website, imagery plays a key role in the story you build for potential customers.

Seven Ways to Create Authenticity in Your Hospitality Marketing Campaigns

in General Marketing Insights, Marketing Topics, Social Media Marketing by Hawthorn Editorial

If you’re in hospitality marketing, take note: Consumers are fully aware when they’re being fed some slick brand marketing piece that doesn’t always represent reality – and they aren’t impressed. What they want in 2023 and beyond is an authentic look at what your brand values, and whether they feel a connection. Recent research shows that 82% of consumers want a brand’s values to align with their own. And they’ll vote with their wallet if they don’t feel a match.

When travelers come across your brand on social media, they want you to tell them – for real and in plain language – why your destination is right for them. They want to interact with brands that truly align with their values…not just say they do.

And for travelers who are seeking truly immersive experiences when they’re on vacation, their lodging is an integral part of that. They want their time inside the walls of their hotel to be as magical as the time spent adventuring, so they’ll choose accommodations that complement their story.

Here are seven ways to create authenticity in your hospitality marketing campaigns to let travelers know that you are who you say you are.

1. Be true.

Tell the truth. Be up front about pricing and policies. Respond in earnest to comments on social media. Be willing to admit when you messed up – and be willing to admit when you’re so proud of something you could burst. Be good stewards of your surrounding community and the planet as a whole.

This is a concept that’s simple in theory, but can be difficult to execute when times are tough. However, sharing with a voice that’s honest and humble (even when it’s a humblebrag) goes a long way toward showing travelers that you walk the walk.

2. Promote what you’re proud of.

Have you recently invested in touchless technology? Create a demo video and show it off on social media. Do you think your breakfast is to die for? Interview guests as they’re eating and get their genuine reviews. The key here is to say, “Isn’t this so cool? We love it!” in a conversational (even giddy!) way that lets your audience know that you’re just as in love with travel as they are.

You can use this technique not only with the things your property is already known for, but those little-known perks that will surprise and delight.

3. Use real people in your marketing.

For years, the trend has been to hire beautiful models to represent hotel properties, but what guests want to see now are people who look like them, having fun at your property. It creates a sense of relevance and shows potential guests that they’ll truly feel comfortable at your destination.

Take a look around your property – what do your guests actually look like? How old are they? What do they wear? We’re not suggesting you part ways with high-quality imagery or mood-inducing videos – those are still essential for giving guests a feel for what their stay will entail. What we are saying is that within your content, choose voices and faces that truly represent your guests.

One great example is this video from Skylodge Adventure Suites that shows real guests enjoying their time at this unique, experiential destination.

4. Assure your guests that it’s safe to visit, and back it up.

While travelers are once again hitting the road in droves, that doesn’t mean they do it without some hesitation. According to a recent survey, more than 70% of travelers said they expect information on things like rebooking options, cancellation policies, and cleaning protocols to be readily available before they book.

Meltdowns in airline operations, skyrocketing prices for gas (and everything else), and the knowledge that the pandemic isn’t quite a distant memory are the likely reasons for wariness. One way to be authentic is to show them that you truly understand where they’re coming from. Use your marketing campaigns to be loud about your flexible policies, and be committed to reassuring guests that if the unforeseen happens, you have them covered.

5. Show off your personality on TikTok.

With all the trends, challenges, user-generated content, and influencer opportunities, brands are realizing that TikTok is no longer just for the Gen Z teen set. Travel-industry site Skift.com reports that hotels are flocking to the vastly popular social media app and seeing great success – particularly the small luxury properties.

While it should only be one slice of your hospitality marketing pie, it’s absolutely perfect for showing off who you are as a brand and letting guests know what they can expect from their visit. One example from the Skift article that especially stood out to us is this influencer video for Ladera Resort in St. Lucia.

6. Authenticity is internal, too.

The Great Resignation showed us that after generations of “traditional” work life, employees understand that they deserve better from their employers. Investing in your internal teams will reflect outwardly in the way they deal with customers on-site and the enthusiasm they share for the property. A well-loved workforce can become your biggest cheerleaders.

You might even consider turning them into the stars of your social media campaign to serve as an authentic voice from someone on the inside.

7. Make it personal.

A simple question on an online reservation form like “Are you traveling for a special occasion?” opens the door to make a guest feel welcomed and relevant at your property. If it’s a birthday, put a card inside the room or leave a cupcake with a sweet note. If it’s an anniversary, offer the couple a voucher for a meal. If it’s a girls’ weekend away, suggest an itinerary that showcases not only your property, but the surrounding area.

This is one way to succeed at personalization without having to read guests’ minds. Simply ask them why they’re coming, then make it special when they arrive.

To Show Pricing or Not To Show Pricing? The Big Question for Event Venues

in Event Venues, General Marketing Insights, Websites by Ally Cardello

As proven marketing experts in the wedding and event venue industry, our clients come to us looking for advice and strategy on a wide-range of topics. One of the most common queries we receive is: “Should I show my pricing on my website?” While it seems like this question should have a simple yes or no answer, it’s more complicated than you’d think.

The reason this answer is complex is that prospective couples will react to rates differently as they move through the three phases of their buying journey before making a final venue selection. These stages are: Awareness, Consideration, and Decision. In this post, we’ll explore the pros and cons of displaying your pricing at each stage of the customer journey so you can make an informed decision.

First, let’s pinpoint where the concern comes from. A common fear is that displaying a price range on your website could inadvertently close the door to under-budget prospects. The alternative is not displaying prices which can generate more inquiries and allow for the opportunity to upsell clients later on in the sales process. However, if your resources are stretched thin, do you want to dedicate time and effort to nurturing a prospect who can’t afford to host with you? If you’re still debating, keep reading.

Initial Survey of Venues

AKA the Awareness Stage

We’ve said it once and we’ll say it again: A thoughtfully designed, informative wedding and event venue website is key to attracting clients at the outset of their research. According to Pardot, 72% of all prospective buyers turn to Google as they commence their research for a purchase. But, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re looking for pricing specifically. In fact, it’s probably the furthest thing from their minds.

At this stage, potential clients are looking for basic information about your venue. They want to dig into the details about what services you provide (as well as those you don’t). They’re also looking at how successfully your venue and staff have executed events in the past via evocative imagery, testimonials, videos, and galleries of real weddings.

Right now, your clients are dreaming big and your job is to prove that your venue is their dream come true. It’s not that budget isn’t a priority for couples at this stage, it’s just not as top of mind as envisioning their perfect wedding. High quality design, photography and videography, and strategically optimized site content go a lot further than price points at this initial stage.

Displaying pricing at the Awareness stage works for: Smaller venues who can’t dedicate resources to nurturing leads that may not work out, venues seeking “off-season” clients and are consistently booked the rest of the year, banquet halls and restaurants as weddings are not their bread and butter.

A List of Prospects

AKA the Consideration Stage

Once couples begin to consider your venue as a potential setting for their wedding, cost becomes more of a priority. It’s during the Consideration phase that venues can begin presenting options regarding everything from catering to entertainment and guest lodging.

Full-service or all-inclusive venues tend to be more expensive because they offer their couples so much more than just a setting. However, seeing that pricing in the initial Awareness stage before you’ve had a chance to really demonstrate the value you offer can result in sticker shock among those couples who have just started their search. The goal is to make them fall in love with your venue at first sight and then discuss the details once you’ve already made their list. Gated content and e-brochures are the perfect tools at this Consideration stage. You can offer a pricing sheet or brochure for download on your site in exchange for some basic contact information. In this piece, it’s important to try to highlight what couples will get when they book a package with you versus other venues. They’re already comparing you to your competition, so make your venue the obvious choice!

Displaying pricing at the Consideration stage works for: Medium size venues, destination wedding venues, and venues with several upsell options to offer clients such as on-site lodging, spas, hosted attractions and activities, and more.

Choosing a Venue

AKA the Decision Stage

Once your prospective couples have reached this phase they should already know a good deal of information about your venue. You’ve likely even discussed pricing organically with them, even if it’s just via a brochure or pricing sheet. So, at this stage, you really just want to make everything crystal clear for them so they feel confident that they’re making the right decision in choosing you. Now is when you’ll want to present them with a customized and streamlined price list so they can determine the final cost of their wedding or event. Presenting too many options (and price ranges) can lead to decision paralysis and your emails and calls will start to go unanswered.

Displaying pricing at the decision stage works for: Large or very high-end venues with target clients to whom pricing is no object and is often an afterthought.

So, What Now?

At Hawthorn Creative, we understand why event venues struggle with the choice to communicate pricing parameters to customers. Competition is fierce and every couple is different. However, when you sign on to create a beautiful and powerful website with us, our team of designers, content creators, and strategists will guide you to ensure you’re giving your prospects the information they need every step of the way towards “I do!”

The Elements of Good, Modern Website Design: Inside LaBelle Winery’s Website

in Event Venues, General Marketing Insights, Hotels & Resorts, Photography & Video, Websites, Wineries by Catherine Shane

LaBelle Winery may have started in the backyard barn on the owner’s residential property back in 2008. But, much like a fast-growing grapevine, the operation has remarkably outgrown those meager beginnings. Moving into their 11-acre Amherst, New Hampshire, headquarters in 2012, the boutique winery now boasts more than just award-winning red and white blends made from hearty grapes grown on-site, but an entire brand. We’re talking a farm-to-table bistro, culinary line and market, cooking classes, art gallery, and one of the most beautiful settings for weddings and events in the Granite State. The growth didn’t stop there either: In addition to acquiring their Portsmouth-based tasting room and store in 2017, they also opened a third location in Derry in 2021, home to another market, restaurant, winemaking facility, tasting barn, and a nine-hole, par-3 golf course.

So you could imagine the surprise when a visit to their winery website didn’t exude the same level of quality that exists in all their stunning facilities and operations. In fact, instead of growing with the brand as it evolved into this leading New England food and beverage experience, the website felt a bit like it was stuck – back in the days of 2008 when the brand was still working out of a barn. And not only did they have just one dated site, but three: one dedicated to the wine brand, one to the restaurant bistro, and one to the event and catering side of the operations. Here’s a look at how Hawthorn Creative, a full-service marketing agency specializing in website design, built a new site that brought all aspects of the brand under one umbrella while staying true to the principles of good website design.

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The Old Website Design

In short: The websites felt a little dated with not a lot of customization. A bright yellow header (the brand’s color) and footer took attention away from the content, which, in some places – like the “Our Story” page – was also excessively heavy, causing the reader to become unfocused and abandon the page. And while the sites did feature images, there was little use of hero images – big eye-catching images that, in good website design, are usually seen in the above-the-fold zone of the webpage to capture the user’s attention and compel them to want to click around. Rather, they were small and resembled thumbnails, with placement and size that felt like an afterthought.

The New Custom Website Design: Starting with the Navigation & User Journey

Yes, multiple sites can be beneficial, especially for companies made up of multiple brands or offering different products to wildly different customer bases. But since LaBelle is one brand with the same target audience across their offerings, they really didn’t require all the different domains. And by bringing their entire brand under one umbrella site, it would surely help their SEO. The challenge was determining how we were going to incorporate all elements of the three sites into one that was also easy to navigate and intuitive to users.

That meant looking closely at how we were going to organize the navigation by pages. Here’s what we landed on:

“About”
“Experience LaBelle” – Outlining the different winery locations.
“Wedding & Events”
“Public Events” – The brand’s event calendar and upcoming cooking classes.
“The Winemaker’s Kitchen” – The brand’s culinary line.
“Shop” – The e-commerce portion of the site, where people could actually buy the wine and culinary products online.
“Contact”

We then used a mega menu – a type of expandable menu in which multiple choices are displayed when you hover over a certain label. This helped to accommodate a large number of options and for revealing lower-level site pages at a glance.

A Few Other Examples of How We Did It: The Elements of Good Website Design

Splashy Show-Stopping Visuals

When it comes to websites, images serve as both eye candy and informational tools – helping to increase time on site by capturing the attention of the visitor and causing them to linger longer, as well as conveying messages without lengthy copy.

In the case of LaBelle Winery, they came with a library of roughly 20 strong images, which we planned to use large to draw people into the winery and brand experience, unlike their previous website’s “thumbnail-image” approach. And to better round out that collection and what we were working with, our agency also reached out to local photographers who had shot weddings and events at the venue to source additional images – not just for the wedding and events pages of the website, but just any general vineyard or property photography that we could use on other pages of the site. Showing diversity and inclusivity was also at the forefront of our image selection, something that is expected in this day and age.

Animation & Movement

Animating elements of a website offers designers and developers a powerful tool for increasing engagement. Sure, it generally looks cool, but it also makes your website feel more responsive and intuitive to your users. However, there is such a thing as too much movement or animation, resulting in confusion or distraction.

With so much content that was going to live on LaBelle’s website, we wanted to use animation not just because it’s en vogue, but as a way to guide users through the pages. Images and text appear to fade into the page, blocks slide in from offscreen, images move slightly when hovered over, buttons morph in response to clicks. The key is that it’s all done in a subtle and intentional way to help move the users along through the site. One of our favorite features is how when you load a new page, the logo set below the hero image bounces ever so slightly so that you feel compelled to scroll down and follow it.

Updated Color Palette that is WCAG Level-A Compliant

Never underestimate the power of color in website design. Color increases brand recognition, attracts attention to important website elements, and can even stir emotions within the users.

The issue with LaBelle Winery’s old site is that it didn’t really have a color palette: just their main LaBelle yellow and then a bold black. In fact, as we were designing the new site, we found that the particular yellow often failed to pass WCAG compliance when used as a hover feature. So, while we made sure to work in that Labelle yellow in various places, we also built out a palette of complementing colors in shades of taupe and grey that did pass contrast standards.

Integration of Other Parts of the Website through Card-Based Design

Popularized by the image-sharing site, Pinterest, card-based web design has been steadily growing in popularity over the past few years. In LaBelle’s website, we use a series of image cards – an image plus basic information, such as a title, contained in a block, a.k.a. “card” – at the top and bottom of main landing pages to help guide users into the natural next step of the buyer journey.

For example, when you load the About page, the image cards slide in below the header, offering up links to other pages that a user might naturally take the next step to, such as “Our Wine Collection,” “Tasting & Tours,” “Weddings & Events,” “Becoming A Member” and “Products & Gifts.” So users are not just hearing the story of how the winery began, they are then being chauffeured to additional core pages on the website to streamline their journey to conversion.

Sidebars That Lock & Guide You

An additional component of website navigation, a website sidebar is a column placed to the right or left of a webpage’s primary content area that is commonly used to display supplementary information for users, like email signup forms, social media links, and navigation links to key pages.

In the case of LaBelle, we used sidebars as navigation menus to quickly guide the visitors to the other sub-pages within that page. Utilizing fixed-positioning, these sidebars lock into place – meaning they stay fixed on the screen as you scroll – so they are ever-present, helping to encourage clicks to other parts of the site rather than a user finishing their perusal of the content, then abandoning it.

4 Destination Marketing Campaigns We Dig Right Now

in Brand Strategy, Content Marketing, Destination Marketing Organizations, Hotels & Resorts, Photography & Video, Real Estate Management Companies by Catherine Shane

Do you feel it? Like a toddler taking his or her first tentative steps, slowly but surely, traveler confidence is returning – and it’s ramping up as more and more people receive their COVID vaccinations. IATA’s latest traveler poll backs this notion, even noting that 68 percent of those surveyed say their quality of life has suffered from the lack of travel. They’re rearing to get back out there and make up for lost time.

So for DMOs (destination marking organization), tourism agencies, travel brands, and even hotels, after a year of pivoting, reimagining, and relaunching your campaigns, it’s time to start thinking about your content plans and messaging – yet again. Which is why we’ve compiled this list of the latest and greatest travel marketing campaigns that our destination marketers have recently taken note of, plus some key takeaways from each to inform and inspire your own upcoming strategies.

“The Saskatchewander”

By TourismSaskatchewan

While this annual campaign was actually first spearheaded back in 2011, it’s reinterpreted each year in a new and colorful way. Created by the travel authority for the Saskatchewan Canadian Province in collaboration with the region’s Ministry of Economy, Ministry of Agriculture, and Ministry of Parks, Culture, and Sport, the campaign awards one lucky content creator the title of “The Saskatchewander,” in which he or she is tasked with exploring the beautiful prairie province over the course of one full year. While the “job” includes a small salary and all expenses covered, in exchange, each Saskachewander is required to blog about their experience, promote the destination, and capture a wide variety of content (which actually fulfills certain content needs for all four of the partnering organizations). The campaign’s hub lives on a separate micro-site, with that year’s featured Saskachewander’s content living on the main homepage, followed by separate pages that catalog all previous content from previous ambassadors. The content is also pushed out by The Saskatchewander’s social accounts, which currently boast a collective amount of 130,000 followers across its primary channels of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Key Takeaway: Working with a tight budget? The beauty of an ambassador campaign like this is it allows you to harness the power of high-quality user-generated content to help tell the story of your destination or hotel. The fact that it’s supported by multiple organizations makes it all the more achievable to do, as well.

“Can’t Skip Tomorrow”

By Visit Portugal

Launched in January of 2021 by Portugal’s tourism board, the series of 1-minute-30-second videos targets the country’s core visitor markets of the UK, France, Spain, Germany, and Spain to promote not just a return to the destination through breathtaking scenery, culture, and experiences in stunning videography, but responsible, sustainable tourism. Each video is narrated by the voice of a child, speaking in that country’s native tongue, while talking about Portugal’s natural wealth. The voice says it “comes from the future” and wants nature to be cared for, so that we can all continue to travel and discover new destinations.

Key Takeaway: The series serves as a rallying cry for unity, which is something particularly powerful right now, given how much the pandemic, among other things, has drastically separated the world. Rising together, working together, and coming together (safely, of course) is a powerful campaign theme that is ripe for destinations to play up.

“What If”

By Visit California

Since 2013, Visit California has centered its inspirational travel messaging to California as a place where everyone can “Dream Big.” To reignite lust for travel and get people thinking about coming to the Golden State, this latest campaign poses a series of questions that center around “What If?” For example: What if money was no object and you could splurge your way across the state? Or what if you could travel back in time to explore California’s fascinating history? What if you could experience total isolation or nonstop adventure? Informative travel-related content aimed at answering these questions live within each pillar on the campaign’s dedicated “What If” page.

Key Takeaway: People are eagerly daydreaming about the next getaway, so the more you can feed into their aspirations and promote the power of possibility through your destination, the more likely you are to hook them.

“Helsinki Freedom”

By Helsinki Marketing

Launched sometime in late 2020 by the marketing company that is owned by the City of Helsinki, this mini-documentary series is aimed at those considering making a permanent move to Finland’s capital by celebrating what life really is like here. Their unique approach to doing so? Enlisting a selection of five hand-picked creators – all transplants to the city actually – to explore the concept of what Helsinki freedom means to them. The episodes each tackle specific pillars about what makes the city unique, like the freedom to have access to nature, the freedom to have a high-quality education, and the freedom to love whoever you want. The result is a powerful and comprehensive form of storytelling that is 10 times more effective than a basic list of reasons about why you should live here.

Key Takeaway: Don’t be afraid to leverage your local ambassadors in your marketing. They are the ones who know your destination intimately and have the best stories to share that will motivate and inspire your audiences.

7 Ways that Wedding Venues Should be Using Instagram Stories Highlights

in Event Venues, Social Media Marketing by Catherine Shane

Maintaining a cohesive Instagram grid, frequently posting, and responding to those who engage with your venue is essential to scoring a strong social media strategy. So give yourself a pat on the back if you’re doing that and doing it well. But then, it’s time to get back to work. Because maintaining your grid is only part one if you want to reach more couples on Instagram. Next, comes harnessing the power of Instagram’s Stories feature. If you’re not already regularly posting to your Stories, you’re missing out on two additional and critical touchpoints: A way to bypass Instagram’s algorithm by putting your content quite literally at the top of their feed when you post frequently and using those Stories to grow the content that you pin to your Highlights Reel – the latter which we are focusing on in this post.

Take Control of Your Wedding Venue’s Social Media Strategy: One-on-One Social Media Consultations

So why the need to maintain and create content for a Highlights Reel in the first place? After all, isn’t capturing and telling the story of your venue experience the whole point of maintaining your account’s photo grid in the first place? Yes, it certainly is, but think of your grid more like a hand-selected portfolio of your best content and photography, whereas your Highlights can cover more ground and share more insights into your property that might not naturally make it into your grid because, well, it would interrupt the flow or it simply doesn’t have visual pizazz.

So without further adieu, here are seven ideas for content that wedding venues should be featuring in their Instagram Stories Highlights that couples crave. Some you may be doing already (pat yourself on the back again), while some you may want to add to your arsenal asap.

Virtual Tours of Your Venues

This is perhaps one of the most obvious ways to use this feature, yet one so many wedding venues don’t do, which is quite a misstep especially given the recent pandemic, where couples want to be able to scope out your venue before even thinking about touring the grounds in-person.

You can create a Highlight category simply titled “Venue,” like historic Spanish revival Muckenthaler Mansion has done in their reel, then pin any Story content that has broadly shown off your venue here. Or, if you’re a property with multiple venues or spaces, you can go the route that Southern Cali’s Rancho Las Lomas has and create independent Highlights for each, allowing couples to get a great sense of each of the individual spaces, like how they’ve been used, decorated, and enhanced by other couples. Remember, the content here can be a combination of still photos and videos, and they don’t have to be perfect – the quality of the imagery in Highlights is always much more forgiving than what’s expected in your grid.

Real Weddings

Couples – particularly those of the millennial generation – love to see examples of real weddings, especially as they’re researching a wedding venue. And why wouldn’t they? It’s a way to help them not just get a sense of the experience at your property, but how other couples used it as something to envision or aspire to.

While you can certainly work in real weddings into the posts on your grid, it’s almost easier for a user to locate them and flip through them all at once when they live in your Highlights. In fact, when revitalizing and re-launching the social media presence for one of our clients, The Vine, a vineyard wedding venue in Houston, Texas, this was the approach we took. Within the Highlight, each featured real wedding couple receives their own set of slides, first featuring their photo and name in branded typography (you can use a tool like Canva to do this), followed by various wedding detail shots from their big day.

BTS, Better Known as “Behind the Scenes”

People would rather do business with people, not faceless companies, and posting behind-the-scenes moments further enhances this feeling and can work wonders for converting followers to customers.

For venues, that might mean posting a behind-the-scenes look at your wedding planning team in action the day of and during a wedding. Or, if you do all food and beverage on-site, your chef discussing a main entrée as he/she plates it up for an event. Or even just showing a nook on property where you like to finish up your paperwork. It could also be just a magical moment captured impromptu on your property, like, say, the fact that your property’s rose garden suddenly bloomed overnight or there was a paddling of ducks passing through to a nearby pond. One venue to take BTS notes from: the North Carolina farm wedding venue of The Barn of Chapel Hill.

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Reviews & Testimonials

It’s no secret that when considering a big purchase – such as booking a wedding venue – potential customers rely heavily on what other customers have to say in the form of testimonials. It’s a big part of why The Knot even exists – to rate vendors and venues based on the opinions and experiences of other customers.

So when you receive a glowing review – whether in the form of a personal email, text, or online review on such platforms as The Knot, Wedding Wire, Facebook, and beyond – a natural place to share it is in your Highlights. Simply screenshot it (careful to block out any personal info if the praise was sent via email or text) and share, much like Crossed Keys Estate’s “Reviews” Highlight does. In fact, this New Jersey-based 200-year-old estate venue shares everything from their latest reviews on The Knot and Google to personal ones sent from past clients via emails, texts, and even hand-written letters.

Sharing UGC (User-Generated Content)

The beauty of UGC is that it’s content you don’t have to create (saving you much-needed time), plus, much like a testimonial, it shows your venue from your customer’s perspective, which can be more validating and trustworthy to your audience.

While you can work UGC content across Highlights, you can also feature one individual Highlight dedicated solely to this kind of content. Again, we do just this for our client, The Vine, with their “@TheVine” Highlight that shares content that users have either tagged or featured an @ mention for the venue.

Inspiration & Ideas

You know weddings, and you know the latest trends. In fact, you see them all the time captured in the very weddings you host. Position yourself as resource couples need by creating a Highlight around wedding inspiration and ideas exclusively.

Philadelphia Terrain Events does this with their “In the Field” and “Winter” Highlights, where they show inspirational tablespaces, floral arrangements, ceremony seating, creative signage, food displays, and more under the respective themes of outdoor weddings and winter weddings. The more informative info you can offer, especially when it comes to planning their wedding, the more couples will engage with your content.

FAQs or Q&As

Get a lot of the same questions from couples? What better way to answer those questions preemptively than with a dedicated Highlight. Of course, it’s not to deter them from reaching out – engagement is key – but it can help save you and them some time.

Nestled in the hills south of Nashville, Tennessee, Allenbrooke Farm features a FAQs Highlight that lists information like available wedding dates for the remainder of the year, when they are officially booking out for the following year, and other random facts like that they offer flexible payment plans, property tours via Facetime, and that half of their bookings are for destination weddings. Other ideas might include fun facts about your property or general need-to-know information. Or, you could put your followers in the driver’s seat by using the questions sticker feature to allow them to submit questions for you to answer, which you then later pin to this Highlight.

Our Favorite (Free) Tools to Have in Your Content Marketing Toolbelt

in Content Marketing, Destination Marketing Organizations, Email Marketing, Event Venues, General Marketing Insights, Hotels & Resorts, Medical Aesthetic Spas, Practices & Suppliers, Photography & Video, Real Estate Management Companies, Search Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Wineries by Catherine Shane

Y ou know the value of creating and distributing content for your business or brand. It’s what powers your SEO, social, and email strategies, bringing consumers to your website. But content marketing is not just reserved solely for top-of-funnel tactics, it’s what moves your consumers into the consideration phrase, bringing your brand to life in a way standard marketing simply can’t, finally leading to conversion by aligning the topics you talk about with perfectly matched CTAs. Heck, this very blog post is a form of content marketing.

So how do you develop a great content strategy that is going to achieve results? For one, you can partner with a content marketing agency, like Hawthorn Creative, to do all the heavy lifting in terms of strategy, development, implementation, and reporting, so you can better focus your energy on other important business needs. But if that doesn’t seem to be in the budget (and it actually might, don’t be shy about reaching out), then you need to strap on that tool belt and get to work. What’s that? Your toolbelt’s empty? Here are some of our favorite free tools to help you hammer down a beautiful content strategy.

For Content Creation & Writing

HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator or Portent’s Idea Generator

We can’t even begin to tell you how many clients come to us scratching their heads over what they should even write about (our team of content experts – adept at finding the most novel and intriguing angles with regard to any subject – practically have content ideas coming out of their ears). If doing it yourself, the smartest approach is to take stock of what are some of the most common questions, challenges, pain points that come directly from your audience and shape your content ideas around that.

However, if you simply need some inspiration or some help crafting catchy titles for your next blog post, these two topic generator tools can help. Just type in a noun related to your topic (up to five nouns in Hubspot’s tool), and see what they spit out to find something that sticks. Just be aware: These tools don’t do any research around keywords or give you any information on top content in your market. Which leads us to our next tool.

Answer The Public

There are dozens of keyword research tools out there, everything from Moz Keyword Explorer, Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, SEMRush’s Keyword Overview, to good’ old Google Search Console. While many of these applications start with free queries, they usually eventual require some sort of paid subscription to search more queries or get more insights into the volume and competition level of keywords.

However, such tools can be overwhelming if you’re not already relatively steeped in keyword research. For a very user-friendly and visual keyword tool compiler, Answer The Public, visualizes search questions and suggested autocomplete searches in a “search cloud” image that tackles the five Ws (who, what, when, where, why, plus “how,” “can,” “are,” “which,” and “will”) that people are currently searching around the topic. So like Portent, all you have to do is input a topic, brand, or product (we suggest one to two words for best results) and it will spit out instant, raw search insights.

Grammarly

While we have staff copyeditors who get their eyes on every bit of content we pump out, this might be a bit luxury for your company. Still, the value of good grammar can’t be understated when it comes to best presenting your business or brand.

Enter this digital writing assistant that acts as a personal copyeditor, from grammar and spelling to style and tone. In the desktop app, simply drop your document (upload or copy and paste) into the online editor and let the AI get to work analyzing each sentence and looking for ways to improve it, whether it’s correcting a verb tense, suggesting a stronger synonym, or offering a clearer sentence structure. There’s even a browser extension that allows you to check your writing in email, Google Docs, and within your website CMSs.

SOLUTION

Take Your Content Strategy into the Stratosphere

Content marketing is the engine powering all of your digital channels – without it, you’re going nowhere

Create Content That Compels

For Visual Content Development

Unsplash

We live in the age of Instagram, where stunning visuals aren’t just a treat, they’re an expectation. That’s why when brands boost their content with graphics, visuals, and images, they see higher engagement, more shares, and more actions taken. So what do you do if you don’t have a photographer or designer at your fingertips? At the very least, you should always be pairing your blog content with high-quality imagery. Unsplash is one of the best places to find free images, plus one of the largest (it is now used more than Getty, Shutterstock, and Adobe Stock combined) that is constantly growing. In fact, brands – like S’well, The New York Public Library, and Curology – are now even using it as their own visual marketing channel, proving that this is a visual content resource you’ll want to keep your eye on.

Adobe Spark and Canva

Both these tools are great for people who need to create visual content rapidly without a professional graphic designer, with thousands of pre-designed templates to choose from and a drag-and-drop editor that allows you to customize your creation. As for what you can create, with the exception of Adobe Spark also allowing you to create web page designs, both are used for anything from flyers to logos to cards; however, they are particularly popular when it comes to creating video and graphics for social posts. Our opinion is that Canva is a bit more user-friendly with an interface that is more intuitive.

ThingLink

One of the features that Canva and Adobe Spark lack is the ability to make your graphics interactive – after all, one of the ways to get consumers to engage more and longer with your content is to make it interactive. Skyrocketing in popularity during the pandemic among teachers as way to create audio-visual learning materials for remote learning, this software provides users with the ability to make interactive images, videos, and 360 content with links to share on social media (or you can upload your own images, add icons, and link back to your website or blog). It’s also easy to customize so you can match the look and feel of your brand.

SOLUTIONS

Eye-Catching Visuals is a Marketing Must

Turn browsing into booking with photography and videography that captures your unique brand experience.

Elevate Your Arsenal of Imagery

For Content Distribution

Really Good Emails

No, it’s not an email marketing software – just our content and email strategists’ favorite resource for curated email inspiration (not to mention, we love the brand’s killer tone – think informative, but cleverly funny). Essentially, they’ve taken thousands of real-life email examples and cataloged them across industries and types (everything from marketing newsletters to product launch emails to password resets to customer appreciation, and on). Not only can you access any email in the collection to see a visual design, they also provide insight into the frequency of email sends, the email service provider, the readability of the email (like whether or not images have alt text, etc.), plus, the actual code behind each design. So when it comes to pushing out your content via email, this is a resource that shows what’s on trend in terms of email strategy, why it works, and how you can do it for yourself.

Linktree or InstaBio

Gone are the days of having to constantly change your Instagram bio link if you’re looking to share more than once piece of content (and after all, so many businesses would rather reserve that one linkable feature for their website url). However, thanks to new bio link tools, like Linktree or Instabio, brands can now easily create a landing page – kind of like a micro page – containing all your pertinent links (so think homepage URL, latest featured blog content, various pages from your website) to encourage clicks to other places. Then, the link to that mini-page is what you then put in your single Instagram link. The only con is that the landing page in these tools is often not super customizable to your brand style guidelines, unless you’re willing to pay for a subscription.

For Overarching Strategy

For additional content marketing insights, we’ve created a handful of our own downloadable guides, covering a range of subjects from how to make your social media account stand out (types of posts, ideal frequency, other ways to use Instagram or Facebook features) to managing a blog as your content hub and distribution point strategies. While we’ve catered the following guides to a few of our core client types (hotels and event venues), there’s still translatable lessons to be learned no matter your industry.

A FEW OF OUR DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT GUIDES

Syncing Paid & Organic Social Media Strategy to Fuel More Conversions

in Event Venues, Hotels & Resorts, Medical Aesthetic Spas, Practices & Suppliers, Social Media Marketing by Corey Scarano

“I f you build it, they will come.” That line may have worked for Kevin Costner’s character in Field of Dreams, but such advice doesn’t quite ring true for social media strategy. That’s because you could quite literally build the most beautiful Instagram or Facebook presence for your business, but still not see the followers. Why? Because you’re likely missing out on the other important half of social media strategy: paid social.

This was an issue that The Vine, a wedding venue in Houston, knew they needed to address. While they had worked with Hawthorn for at least a year – first on improving their brand presence in both print marketing materials and with a new website, as well as paid social – it wasn’t until June 2020, when they handed us control of their organic social media strategy, as well. And by allowing us to take over the tactics to sync both paid and organic social for their brand, they actually booked twice as many weddings as a result. No, you didn’t misread that: Twice as many weddings in 2020 – with COVID in full force – than in 2019. In fact, the average monthly leads more than doubled in 2020, while the conversation rate of completed wedding inquiry forms on their site from organic social media traffic more than tripled in that same time frame.

Here’s how we did it…and how you can do it, too.

But First, Why Synced Social Efforts Matter

When you sync your paid social media and organic social media strategies, you maximize your overall presence. The two ultimately go hand-in-hand, they are two sides of the same coin. Your organic content is the driver behind community engagement and brand loyalty. Your paid content is the driver behind finding and growing that community. If one suffers, they both suffer, and when one excels, they both excel.

For example, let’s say someone discovers your brand through a Facebook ad. That user then proceeds to browse your brand through your social profiles. The ad sparked interest, but if there isn’t a solid organic presence that shows new users what you’re about within a few seconds, you lose that lead before you even knew they existed. In short, organic social is where users will choose to convert or not, paid is how you get more users there and fast.

SOLUTIONS

Social Media Marketing That’ll Stop Their Scrolling

Explore our highly successful newly engaged social campaigns

Let’s Get Social

The Vine: Synced Social Scores Double the Bookings

With acres of stunning indoor and outdoor space to celebrate, The Vine wedding venue and vineyard truly is the Houston-area’s hidden gem. Couples, guests, and community members alike are all quick to gush over the sheer magic and unrivaled experiences this venue has to offer… but being the “hidden gem” of a city packed with other wedding venues poses the challenge of creating brand awareness. Especially to the right audience, at the right times.

In June 2019, we began managing the venue’s paid social media campaigns, targeting newly engaged brides in the Houston area among other Texas cities. After initial optimization, their campaign continues to consistently see between 15-20 wedding inquiries per month.

In June 2020, The Vine transitioned their organic social efforts over to Hawthorn, providing us with the ability to sync ongoing paid efforts with a new, fine-tuned organic strategy to elevate their Instagram and Facebook presence that lacked organization and strategic structure.

The Results?

2020 generated 55 booked weddings for The Vine. That’s double the weddings generated in 2019. And 2020 was a pandemic year!

Paid efforts were responsible for 249 inquiries in 2020, averaging over 20 leads a month. These efforts have continually been growing month over month despite the many challenges of 2020.

Website traffic from Instagram and Facebook combined increased by 203.5% in the first 6 months of managing The Vine’s organic social media channels.

Of that new organic social media traffic, the conversion rate of completed wedding inquiry forms more than tripled, with a growth of 326.3% compared to the previous period (116 v. 27 leads).

For the first time ever, The Vine is booked straight through the upcoming year, and are already booking weddings for 2023.

OUR WORK

Get Ready for 2021

How our paid search strategies helped position these two wedding venues for a successful 2021

Seize the Moment

So How Did We Do It?

1. A Purposeful & Cohesive
Social Presence

Any Instagram account can have great photos that generate a lot of “likes,” but if the engagement stops at just liking your photos, it isn’t enough. In the case of the Vine, we immediately wanted to show off all the unique draws of their venue through Story Highlights. Using elements of their new website and logo designs, we created cohesive icons and image templates to make their highlight reel feel akin to flipping through a brochure. Testimonials, Real Weddings, Property Details, and more are all now right there for couples to click through during their first views of the Instagram page. We also created more specific content pillars to assure a variety of imagery, content, topics, all while having one aesthetically pleasing grid.

2. A Clear Path of Conversion
for New Users

So, we elevated the Vine’s social accounts and captured an organic audience with the use of highlight reels and thoughtful content. Now what? Brand awareness is important, but it’s just one piece of the social strategy puzzle. Don’t let any agency tell you otherwise. The ROI lies in turning Instagram followers into leads – whatever that may mean for your business.

For the Vine, that meant wedding inquiries that lead to bookings. The venue has a new and beautiful website with great landing pages that we were eager to drive organic traffic to. Instagram is known for poor conversion rates due to the inability to use a link in grid posts and only allowing one link in a page’s bio. But there are ways to turn that low conversion rate on its head. With the combined use of frequent CTAs within captions and the optimized Link in Bio that actually brings users to multiple links (through using tools like Linktree) to choose from, we saw (and continue to see) great success on Instagram conversions.

3. Divide and Conquer

While Instagram rates are only going up for brand marketing and organic engagement, Facebook’s are going down (its organic engagement has been on the decline for years). But when it comes to paid ad campaigns, Facebook is the place to post. With paid and organic social media now both under Hawthorn’s management, we were able to strategically play to the strengths of each platform. That means we are able to excel at both platforms by allowing organic strategy to prioritize the Instagram brand while our paid efforts assured the effectiveness of Facebook ad campaigns. That way, no matter where the initial user saw The Vine – be it targeting by a newly engaged ad or on the Explore page of Instagram – the other online outlets are as cohesive and sophisticated as the first interaction.

Does all the above sound great, but you’re not sure how to put it into action (nor have the time)?

Our team of designers, writers, and strategists are at your digital disposal. Just drop us a line any time.

Full-Service Wedding Livestream Platforms Your Venue Should Know

in Event Venues, General Marketing Insights, Photography & Video by Catherine Shane

Livestreaming video has absolutely flourished during the coronavirus pandemic – and for good reason. Whether you are the one creating it or consuming it, streaming content has been a prime source of escapism. But if you think the livestream boom will quickly be abandoned once larger in-person gatherings – such as weddings – are once again safe and acceptable, you probably have a different reality coming.

According to an Insider September article covering the recent rise in livestreaming weddings, planners are predicting that livestreaming is here to stay long past this pandemic. Why? Well, why not? It provides another added benefit – a safeguard even – for couples to ensure that their loved ones will be able to experience their special day. And as the pandemic has shown us, we’re often living in an uncertain world, leading to reasons someone (or multiple someones) can’t make the wedding, whether that’s an elderly grandparent, a pregnant friend, relatives who live too far away, or even natural disasters stepping in to spoil things (in fact, 2011’s Hurricane Irene is what led to the creation of popular streaming service, LoveStream, after one-third of the guests couldn’t make the app founder’s wedding as a result of the storm).

As for what this means for you, the wedding venue, it can’t hurt to make streaming options a part of your recommendations to couples now (as many wedding planners already are). Especially, as you’ll undoubtedly be seeing future couples coming to you with the question of “how to stream a wedding?” or “what’s the best way to livestream a wedding?” While the most ideal option would be to build your own venue-branded full-service streaming service right into your wedding package, just simply knowing what’s out there in terms of platforms and technologies, the different features, and how they could benefit certain prospective couples can go a long way in positioning you as the venue they need.

For Your Couples Who Want All the (Wedding) Bells & Whistles

LoveStream

Built by the wedding pros at Bustld, this easy-to-use streaming service is like the Rolls Royce of live-streaming platforms. That’s because it doesn’t just provide user-friendly, one-click HD streaming access for your client’s unlimited guests (no downloading necessary), but it offers a customized website that can include a live chat, virtual guestbook, Spotify playlist, and specialty cocktail recipe. There’s also a built-in production team to control video feeds at important moments during your client’s day, like switching between camera angles or featuring a remote guest’s reading for a ceremony. And proof that this particular service is the crème de la crème (and that this trend isn’t going away): They have had wedding inquiries for dates as far out as October 2021.

Intrigued? Lovestream also offers a venue and vendor affiliate program, which provides you with a 10% discount code for your clients, a custom link with 120-day cookie tracking, promotional marketing materials, and even a 10% commission paid monthly for each LoveStream purchase completed using your link.

SOLUTIONS

Eye-Catching Video is a Marketing Must

Turn browsing into booking with videography that shows off your unique venue experience

This Way to Better Video

For Your Couples Who Want More Interactive Elements

Wedfuly

Collaborating with video meeting platform Zoom, Wedfuly – previously an online wedding planning service that has shifted its focus almost entirely to virtual wedding livestreams – pulled off its first virtual wedding in March of 2020. What’s particularly unique about this platform is the way it leverages different features of Zoom to makes events interactive. For example, coordinators use screen sharing throughout the entire event for visuals including videos and slideshows, the “raise hand” feature is great for open-floor toasts, and it even places guests into Zoom breakout rooms that function as reception tables, so the bride and groom can then pop into these rooms and speak with smaller groups individually, just like they would at a regular wedding.

For Your Couples Who Want Their Livestream to Look Ultra-Professional

Married LiveStream

This Pacific Northwest-based videography company makes livestreaming look, well, like a professionally constructed video shoot – just all managed to be done live and in-person. Multiple cameras and high-quality audio help tell the full story of the couples’ wedding day from afar, from the start of the ceremony to the last lingerers on the dancefloor at the end of the reception. Not to mention, the full recording is also available to clients quick – within 24 hours. See an example of a previously recorded livestream here.

For Your Eloping Couples Who Still Want a Few Virtual Witnesses

Simply Eloped

Simply Eloped is a wedding planning service dedicated to making eloping easy for couples. So, as other livestreaming providers came into the picture as a result of the pandemic, they, too, began offering virtual ceremonies performed through Zoom, Skype, FaceTime, or the couple’s other preferred video conferencing tools. Multi-tiered packages include virtual tech-support, officiation services, even a one-hour photography portrait session after the ceremony.

CASE STUDY

Red Ridge Receptions

A boutique website and brochure for a breathtaking venue.

See the Journey

Other DIY Wedding Livestream Platforms Worthy to Note for Them

They may not be full-service, but they still are getting plenty of use by couples nationwide.

Wedsites – A wedding website builder that allows couples to embed links to their virtual wedding right on their wedding website.
Lovecast – A mobile app that features one-click streaming access for guests in HD video, plus a live chat feature.
Joy – A wedding website builder that supports live streaming through pretty much any platform out there: Zoom, YouTube, Google Meet, Facebook Live, and more.

What High-Quality Blog Posts that Convert Look Like: AW Plastic Surgery

in Content Marketing, Destination Marketing Organizations, Event Venues, Hotels & Resorts, Medical Aesthetic Spas, Practices & Suppliers, Real Estate Management Companies, Websites by Catherine Shane

High-quality, well-written, informative, and purposeful blog content is like going fishing with the best bait imaginable. Not only are you going to attract more fish to your line (yes, an analogy for visitors to your website), but they’re going to stick around, do some exploring, try a few nibbles until you eventually hook ’em (read: convert).

However, blog content that is lacking a focus, overly-promotional, and outright uninspiring will do just the opposite – not motivate those who come across it to take any further action. Picture it like fishing with spoiled or the wrong kind of bait. Users are going to quickly bounce from the post once they realize it’s not giving them what they need. And when their desire to hang around goes out the window, so does any possibility for a path to conversion.

So how do you give them that delicious bait they so crave? You work on upgrading your blog content. It’s something that AW Plastic Surgery in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, knew they needed when they started working with Hawthorn Creative to improve their overall website visibility, user-experience, and conversion rate. While our work with the boutique practice has included restructuring their website to make it more user friendly (also improving their path to conversion), search marketing (including on-page SEO and ongoing SEO to bring more traffic in), as well as organic social media management, in this particular post, we’re going to look at their blog performance in particular – and how re-strategizing vastly improved the amount of “contact us now” clicks they saw.

First Off, Why Does Blog Content Even Matter?

After all, isn’t having a company website with a strong homepage enough? Yes, while your homepage is probably the most visited page on your website (in fact for majority of websites, the homepage typically receives more than 50% of all visitor traffic), it’s usually various blog posts that make up the other core points of entry through search engines. Essentially, the more blog content you have and continually add, the more opportunity for your company to show up in search engines and drive traffic to your website in organic search – that means more visibility. (Not to mention, Google recognizes the frequent posting of quality content and rewards it with higher search rankings).

SOLUTION

Take Your Content Strategy into the Stratosphere

Content marketing is the engine powering all of your digital channels – without it, you’re going nowhere

Create Content That Compels Action

So How Do You Create Blog Content that Converts Traffic into Leads?

In the case of AW Plastic Surgery, they had a previous blog managed by another agency that was producing regular posts. And, they were actually seeing a good amount of traffic. But when it came to conversion, the issue didn’t live in the traffic; it was the bounce rates, time spent on page, pages per session, and average time per session – they were too low, a sign of low-engagement that was a result of dry copy, lack of CTAs, or links to additional blog posts to read.

After taking over the management of AW’s blog content in July (where an on-staff content writer with a background in journalism and years of writing for the web began cranking out new monthly blog posts for the brand), by November, we were able to already see a vast improvement in our new content versus the previous content created by the past agency. Our newer posts were showing these key indications:

A Lower Bounce Rate – On average, a bounce rate of 60.4% versus the previous agency’s 92.2%.
Users Exploring More Pages Per Session – On average, 1.78 pages per session versus the previous agency’s 1.13.
Higher Overall Session Time – On average, a session duration of 1:20 versus the previous agency’s 0:29.

This meant that, after entering the site via our blog posts, users were engaging and exploring more of our client’s site over longer periods of time more often than they were through these previous posts produced by the former agency. It also showed that, in that same span of time (July through November), our content was producing more conversions (which, in this case, was someone eventually filling out the “contact us” form after initially landing on the website from one of our blog posts).

So How Did We Do It?

To be honest, the previous agency had good subject potential and keyword research (which is why their posts do see a good amount of traffic), but it lacked the following four critical elements that make for good content that engages a user for a longer period of time and encourages them to spend more time exploring the overall site:

1. Copy that Sets Up AW as the Authority

While the past agency worked with AW to develop the blog’s content angles, they didn’t actually interview anyone at the practice before writing. They simply researched the subject and wrote it, sending the content to Dr. Anthony Wilson to review and edit prior to posting.

“I used to have to do a lot of rewriting,” says Dr. Wilson. “I don’t do that with Hawthorn. Their writers and editors are skilled, taking the time to personally communicate with either myself or the correct member of my team to truly understand the treatment we’re talking about – from surgery to skincare – and the target audience. The results are well-crafted, purposeful material well worth the investment.”

For example, on-staff experts are always quoted in the content, like in this post “Your Essential Fall Skincare Checklist” featuring direct insight from Tracy Thaden, a clinical aesthetician and medical assistant at the practice. Not only does this approach put a face to the very staff potential patients would be interacting with at AW, but it builds the entire practice as a trusted interpreter to digest and distill the latest trends for them – and that’s key to keeping them coming back.

2. Well-Written Engaging Copy

Since AW is a practice offering cosmetic surgeries as well as non-invasive treatments, to some degree, you can expect the copy to read a little “medical.” And while that’s certainly okay, it doesn’t mean you can’t add some flavor to the content, particularly to the headlines, excerpt, and intro.

See an example of one of our posts, “How to Get Rid of Jowls: 4 Treatments for 4 Stages of Sagging” versus an older post like “Why Are Women Electing Smaller Breast Implants?” We’re selecting these two posts in particular because, across the timeframe of September (when our post first went live) to the end of October, both of these posts saw roughly the same amount of sessions. However, our post saw an average bounce rate of 59%, 2.48 pages per session, and session duration of 1:27, while the other saw an average bounce rate of 86%, 1.23 pages per session, and session duration of 0:16. Our post also earned AW three conversions in this time frame, while the other saw 0.

3. Blog CTAs (Call to Action)

Within all of our posts, we design and include a “button” that, using snappy copy, instructs a user to take a certain desired action – i.e. read more about Dr. Anthony Wilson on the About page like in this post or book a consult related to the topic like in this post. The previous content did not, therefore, missed out on a vital opportunity to encourage users to engage with other parts of the website.

MORE INSIGHTS

5 Tips for Writing Irresistible CTAs

Meet the bit of copy that is one of the most important elements in a business’s digital marketing arsenal.

Master Magnetic CTAs

4. In-Text Links and Concluding “Additional Reading” Section

Similar to the concept above, if you want users to stay on your website and look around, you’ve got to give them the means to do so. Therefore, wherever it makes sense, we always include text links to other sections on the website (i.e. if we mention a skincare product or a service, we link to where you can find more info about it under the skincare store page or services pages). Lastly, at the end of each article, we always provide a list of “related reading,” essentially three additional articles in a similar vein to encourage a reader to keep reading.

Next Up: We Refresh Their Older Content

But, when it comes to these previous agency’s posts, we’re not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, of course. After all, many of these posts had good angles and subject potential that were clearly drawing readers in through organic traffic. So, in addition to continuing to generate new blog content, we are also revising/refreshing AW’s older pieces of blog content with higher traffic/pageviews, but lower engagement. That way, we can ensure that readers are truly getting the informative read that they want, while AW – a leading medical aesthetic practice on the New Hampshire seacoast – continues to get the leads that they deserve.

Does all the above sound great, but you’re not sure how to put it into action (nor have the time)?

Our team of designers, writers, and strategists are at your digital disposal. Just drop us a line any time.

5 Wedding Venues with Killer Instagram Accounts that Market to Millennials

in Brand Strategy, Content Marketing, Event Venues, Photography & Video, Social Media Marketing by Catherine Shane

According to The WeddingWire, the millennial segment makes up 80 percent of today’s marrying couples, resulting in a total transformation of wedding traditions and how these events are planned. But not only are millennials changing the way weddings are done, they are changing the way venues are shopped for (check out our post, How Millennials Shop for Wedding Venues, to learn more). And one of their biggest resources that informs their buying decision: Instagram. It’s not just being used for wedding inspiration but scoping out venue experiences (notice we said, experiences, not just settings).

What this means for your wedding venue? That your social media marketing strategy should be primed to capture their attention. Because it’s often the first (and potentially only) touchpoint they’ll have with you online. So, to help inspire your strategy or re-evaluate your content pillars and what you’re posting, we vetted various wedding venue Instagram accounts to bring you these select five that are ingeniously interwoven with smart marketing features that encourage conversion.

Use the Highlights Feature to Provide a Virtual Tour of Your Venue

Example: @rancholaslomas

Especially given the recent pandemic, couples want to be able to scope out your venue before touring the grounds in-person. Rancho Las Lomas, a private resort and zoological garden in Southern California’s Lawrence Canyon, gives them just that by exclusively using their story highlights section to provide a virtual tour of the property, as well as virtual tours of each of the separate on-site venues. So couples don’t just get a great sense of the spaces, but specific past video examples of how each specific space had been used, decorated, and enhanced by other couples – offering a value that couples wouldn’t glean from an on-site grounds tour. Especially if professional videography to showcase your property is out of the budget, this is a great alternative to deliver similar value.

Focus on More Than Just Your Venue Spaces – But Amenities – In Your Feed

Example: @terrain_events

Yes, like our previous paragraph pointed out, seeing your various property spaces is numero uno. But, remember, millennials tend to value experiences over material things – and their weddings are evolving into bigger and better ways to create amazing experiences for their guests (especially now, with micro-weddings being mainstream, which leaves more opportunity for couples to use their budget on ways to lavish their guests). Terrain Events, with two event venues located outside of Philadelphia, does a great job at it hitting home how they offer more than just picturesque horticultural settings, but that they build the amazing farm-to-table dining experiences to accompany them. And the way they do it is by being sure they have a good balance of drool-worthy examples of the kinds of amazing event cuisine they serve in their permanent Instagram feed. Moral of the story: Don’t forget to showcase the various unique experiential amenities couples will only and additionally receive if they book your venue.

SOLUTIONS

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Showcasing Real Couples & Real Weddings in Scrollable Posts

Example: @allenbrookefarms

Millennials have birthed something of an “age of authenticity,” – essentially, they value “real and organic” over “perfect and packaged.” So, sure, there’s no harm in showing a model-perfect bride and groom in perfectly posed positions, but examples of real couples in real moments – moments that matter – have more weight with this generation. Leveraging this fact, Allenbrooke Farms, nestled in the hills south of Nashville, Tennessee, spotlights a different couple and their past wedding each Wednesday for their “Wedding Wednesday” posts. Sure, there are detail shots of cakes and stationary in the mix, but what you’ll see most are honest, experience-evoking images of couples sharing candid moments with friends, family, and each other. No, they’re not always perfect, but that, in its own right, is very much what makes it so perfect.

OUR WORK

Get Ready for 2021

How our paid search strategies helped position these two wedding venues for a successful 2021

Seize the Moment

Serviceable Posts that Build You as a Wedding Expert

Example: @dewsall.court

Rather than just simply trying to sell couples on the gorgeousness of your venue, serviceable bits of wedding planning content sprinkled throughout your feed help to establish you as an expert in weddings. Therefore, they will be more likely to check back to your account for tips as they go through the wedding planning process…and look at your venue as more than just a place, but a resource they need to help guide them through this process. Dewsall Court, a venue tucked away in Herefordshire, UK, does this regularly within their account. For example, a recent November 11 scrollable post shared examples of bridal looks incorporating fur, leather, wraps, and jackets for brides not looking to wear long-sleeve gowns during the coming cold months.

TIP Another popular topic to focus serviceable posts around right now are micro weddings. As couples find themselves trying to reimagine quintessential wedding elements as they plan (or re-plan) to meet social-distancing regulations, showcasing creative ways to do smaller weddings – in terms of arranging the ceremony or reception, creative ways to do the food, virtual guestbooks, satellite dance floors or bars, etc. – are invaluable pieces of content. And they showcase how a micro wedding can beautifully be done and beautifully done at your specific venue.

Consistency in the Overarching Feed, But Not Necessarily in Your Type of Posts

Example: @vanderwendeacres

Millennials won’t spend too much time on an account that feels messy or redundant in nature. They want a carefully curated variety of content. So, while we know the above post types – when mixed together – won’t mean the photos all naturally go together, you should still try to retain an overarching photo grid that feels consistent.

Vanderwende Acres, a premier Delaware wedding venue, achieves consistency and variety in an uncanny way in its Instagram account. As you scroll down through their feed, you’ll see the color scheme – utilizing the venue’s branded color palette – evolve over the course of the year. A series of inspirational quotes, backed by a color block, are what establish the shift in color and all subsequent and surrounding images feature correlating colors.

While we know this level of curation sounds complicated (something tells us that a designer is in charge of this account), creating a similar cohesive vibe can be as simple as picking a filter that feels like your brand and applying it to each image you post.

What The Knot’s Top 2021 Wedding Trends Mean for Your Venue

in Content Marketing, Event Venues, General Marketing Insights, Photography & Video, Social Media Marketing by Catherine Shane

It’s that time of year again. No, we don’t mean engagement season – although that is very much in full swing, too. We’re talking about the time where, as we transition from one year to the next, all different kinds of industry resources are cranking out their 2021 trend predictions on what’s hot, what’s not, what’s in, and what’s out to inform, not just for consumers, but the businesses targeting them. And the wedding industry is no different.

But this coming year is undoubtedly different, given how much the coronavirus affected and transformed weddings in 2020, building the foundation for what 2021 weddings will look like. And you see that weighing heavy in The Knot annual’s Top Wedding Trends for the Year report, which overall brands 2021 as “the year of intentionality.” While, traditionally, this report encompasses color palettes, cake trends, floral inspiration, now, more than ever, “couples have leaned into experiences over aesthetics, creating hyper-personalized affairs and curated guest ‘moments.’” Here are a few of the key takeaways and how your venue can lean into them, as well.

Going Big in Smaller Ways

Just because wedding guest counts are down – giving rise to the popularity in micro weddings – doesn’t mean that the details associated with a bigger bash are down, too. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: Couples that opt to keep their guests lists down often do so in order to really lavish their guests with details and accompanying experiences (see our blog post “How to Leverage Micro Weddings to Upsell Couples” to learn more). The Knot annual trend report states that they’re seeing couples go really “deep into the details” with regards to florals as big-budget décor statements, elaborate and sentimental tabletops that don’t spare any details, welcome boxes packed with more goodies than ever and customized to guests, custom canned ready-to-drink cocktails to go, and additional fun and unexpected forms of entertainment (i.e. having a mentalist perform or a celeb sing your first dance song over Zoom.)

How a Wedding Venue Can Lean into This Trend

For one, simply having your finger on the pulse of this trend (and all those that follow in this article, too), allowing you to suggest ideas to potential couples, makes your venue all the more valuable to them – and your blog content is a perfect place to serve that up to them (see our post “Blog Content Ideas – that Couples Will Actually Value – to Push Micro Weddings at Your Venue”).
Secondly, find ways to partner and build packages that couples can build right into their wedding pricing when they book with you – a few examples: custom calligraphy from a preferred vendor who can do handwritten invites, personalized place cards, menus, and more; a vendor who makes amazing custom welcome boxes; and unique forms of entertainment (cigar-rolling demos, floral-crown making sessions, magicians and illusionists, etc.)

SOLUTIONS

Be the First in Their Feed

Pandemic or not, newly engaged couples are still shopping for wedding venues.

Reach Them With Paid Social Campaigns

Putting a Focus on the Outdoors

Open-and-airy environments not only allow for the appropriate social distancing, but it makes guests feel at ease to be able to enjoy themselves. For that reason, welcome events, ceremonies, cocktail hour, receptions, are all being held outdoors through the event, and The Knot also reports predicting “a curation in weekend itineraries to help guests take advantage of nature’s splendor.”

How a Wedding Venue Can Lean into This Trend

Invest in ways to be able to offer couples more ways to maximize your outdoor space, like providing lawn games (something super trendy with micro weddings as is), firepits throughout the property with custom s’more kits, more whimsical and elegant tented or covered spaces (after all, tents are the new ballroom). But you should also reevaluate what you can offer couples in terms of your outdoor ceremony spaces as well, especially as many of your potential scenic locations and sites may have once been out of the question for 150 guests but are now perfect for a party of 15.

Visual Planning & AR Technology

Virtual technology is playing a huge role in how couples plan and experience their wedding days – for example, brides can now try on dresses virtually, weddings are streamed live through a variety of platforms, even guestbooks are now virtual. Naturally, couples also expect it from their venue.

How a Wedding Venue Can Lean into This Trend

You’ve likely already offer one-on-one virtual site tours via FaceTime, Skype, or Zoom, where you virtually “walk” couples through the event spaces so that they can ask questions and address concerns as they come up in real-time. But you should also consider building a virtual tour that couples can access at any time (Matterport is one such virtual software with 3D cameras that help you to virtually record your property and various venues). If you haven’t already, share videos of the spaces transformed during real weddings on Instagram, Facebook, and your website (and, as forecasted by our digital media manager in our upcoming Digital Marketing Trend Predictions for 2021, TikTok, too, will become more of a player for this specific feature in the future).
One such wedding venue collection that nails the virtual trend is Bijou Weddings based in the UK, with several of its venues, like Cain Manor, featuring website pages dedicated to “Take a Look Around” and “Real Weddings & Films.”

Weekday Weddings & Brunch Weddings

Weekday weddings have been on the rise in the last few years, but they’re expected to rise even more in 2021, according to The Knot, a result of the increase in smaller weddings and couples really wanting to use their budget to really luxuriate their guests with details and experiences. The same goes for brunch weddings, where “couples are taking advantage of daylight and sun-kissed experiences, including lush garden brunch parties and mouthwatering brunch boxes under airy tents.”

How a Wedding Venue Can Lean into This Trend

If you don’t already, offering weekday and brunch weddings can help make up for lost revenue in 2020. So how do you book more guests within these timeframes? Our post “How to Book More Weekday Weddings” serves up several ideas, including how to reposition a weekday wedding/brunch wedding as a bold, deliberate alternative.

Personally Portioned Plates

A safer way to serve guests at your cocktail hour or reception, “smaller plates and individualized portions are on the upswing with examples including single-serve grazing boards, mason jars supplemented by dips and dressings and, even, picnic baskets (to stay or to go),” reports The Knot.

How a Wedding Venue Can Lean into This Trend

If you’re a venue that provides your own catering or has couples select from a list of preferred caterers, the key isn’t just to say “yes, we do this,” but showing them the amazing presentation that accompanies these smaller, individualized portions. Think mini-gourmet mac ‘n’ cheese bowls that come covered in their own personal glass covers, different skewered bites arranged artfully on individual plates, and more.

OUR WORK

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Tinymoons & Nanomoons

Even as travel restrictions lighten, couples will still opt to consider more local destinations for their honeymoons as opposed to the far-flung dream destinations. The Knot reports “local exploration is on the rise among newlyweds, whether it be a short trip to a local wine country or an extended road trip to a nature-driven destination near a U.S. National Park.”

How a Wedding Venue Can Lean into This Trend

First familiarize yourself with the differences between these two types of honeymoons: tinymoons are small honeymoons immediately following the wedding where couples stay in the same city where their wedding for a few days, while nanomoons are road trips to explore more local destinations – like a drive through wine country while staying at local inns – not immediately following the wedding.
If you’re a venue with rooms for rent, the tinymoon is the perfect feature to leverage to get couples to stay a few extra nights on property (which, obviously, means more money in your pocket). If not, it’s the perfect time to consider building special packages with a few of your preferred local hotel or resort partners to add more value to your venue. Lastly, create service-driven content around things to do in your destination on a tinymoon in the form of printed collateral or blog content to entice them to extend their stay.

10 Things that Didn’t Suck About 2020

in General Marketing Insights by Catherine Shane

2 020 felt like the longest year of our lives. In fact, we don’t think there have ever been more memes or gifs created around one subject more than what happened to us in 2020. But, hey, isn’t that in itself a show of our strength? That we were able to find, shed light on, and SHARE moments of humor even in our darkest hours as a nation, a world, a human race?

Being able to see the good among the bad is what separates survivors from the victims. And we refuse to see ourselves as victims in 2020. We want you to, too. That’s why we’re temporarily interrupting our regularly scheduled digital and content marketing posts to bring you this collection of our favorite feel-good fodder – under no particular theme, in no particular order – to fuel your 2021. Because 2020 was certainly unprecedented, but we like to think of it as unprecedented in the way we came together and cared for each other.

Pet Adoptions Soared When the Opposite Was Expected to Happen

©BarKPost via GIPHY

Once stay-at-home orders hit in early March, many rescue organizations and shelters braced themselves for an inundation of animals due to an increase of abandoned pets – the usual scenario when crises arise.

But, in fact, the complete opposite occurred: According to a report shared out by the ASPCA, animal welfare organizations across the country saw a spike in adoptions during the second half of March, with an estimated national adoption rate of 58% at the beginning of the month, jumping to 85% by the end of the month. By July, that initial sudden surge in demand had proven itself to be a bona-fide boom, with rescues still reporting dozens of applications for individual dogs.

“We’ve seen an incredibly compassionate response from people willing to open their homes to foster and adopt vulnerable shelter animals during this period of uncertainty,” said ASPCA President and CEO Matt Bershadker. “This unprecedented compassionate response […] reflects widespread appreciation of the invaluable role pets play in our lives.” Read: Rescue dogs rock.

Crayola Colored Outside the Lines with the Launch of a Box of Multicultural Crayons

In July, the major art supply company launched a box of crayons called “Colors of the World,” featuring 24 new crayons designed to mirror and represent over 40 different skin tones. Wrapped in a gradient skin tone label with each color name – Light Golden, Deep Almond, and Medium Deep Rose to name a few – in multiple languages, the pallet intends to allow children with diverse skin colors to “accurately color and see themselves into the world.” We see something instrumental to raising our kids with a greater sense of belonging and acceptance.

We Spent More Time Appreciating our Momma – Mother Nature, That Is

©Jimmy Fallon via GIPHY

Admit it: How many times did you happily walk your dog to your local park during the shutdown? Or how many more people did you witness in your local greenspaces firsthand? While, for years, studies have shown the mental and physical benefits of spending time in nature, the amount of time people spend outdoors had still been declining all over the world. So, when stay-at-home orders hit, it made the act greatly missed – and feel like a necessity for our overall health. And hopefully, it sticks.

“Ironically, the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, as tragic as it is, has dramatically increased public awareness of the deep human need for nature connection, and is adding a greater sense of urgency to the movement to connect children, families, and communities to nature,” said Richard Louv, author of “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder” in a New York Times article.

A Single Dad Adopted Five Siblings to Keep Them Together

After becoming the foster father of three brothers in 2018 and learning that they had yet another two sisters in the system, Robert Carter of Cincinnati, Ohio, made it his personal mission to reunite the quintette. Having grown up in foster care himself, which separated him from his own siblings at a young age, Carter located the girls after six months of the group being apart and began fostering all five children together last summer. Then, in an emotional court ceremony this past October, he officially adopted all five kids, permanently ensuring that the siblings will grow up together.

“My boys never talked about mom, they never talked about dad, just [their sisters], so I knew I had to make that happen,” Carter said in an interview with People, as he recalled the reunion at the girls’ elementary school. “We cried the entire time and that was the moment I was like, ‘Okay, I have to adopt them and keep them together.’”

Women Made History in the 2020 Election & Will Continue to Do So

©mtvstyle.tumblr.com via GIPHY

As a woman-owned and predominately women-employed company, this one really resonated with us: A record number of women ran for office in 2020, surpassing the record set just two years prior. This has teed us up for these landmark stats for 2021:

At least 117 women will be serving in the U.S. House (previous record: 102 set in 2019), including 48 women of color (previous record: 44 set in 2019).
24 women will serve in the U.S. Senate (current record: 26 set in 2020), including 3 women of color.
We will see our first female, first black person, and first Asian-American, take office as the Vice President.

This all coming in the year that marked the 100th anniversary of the Women’s Suffrage Movement’s greatest victory: women achieving full voting rights following the ratification of the 19th Amendment.

The Nostalgia of Drive-In Movie Theaters Came Roaring Back into Style

The crackle of a radio coming to life, the smell of popcorn in the night air, blankets piled high in the bed of a truck – such is the scene of a classic drive-in movie theater. Depending on your age, though, you (or your kids) may not have ever had the opportunity to frequent one of these distinctive slices of Americana – until now. Originally designed for the suburbs of the 1950s, these open-air lots to take in films from the comfort of your car had just about all died out by 2020. But given their COVID-safe sites for collective entertainment, many of these dust-gathering meeting places were recently revitalized, leading to quite the comeback– selling out shows weeks in advance. Who knows, it may have just sparked the birth of a whole new generation of moviegoers.

A 102-Year-Old from New Hampshire Proved She is a Total Badass

©Joyner Lucas via GIPHY

As a New Hampshire-based marketing, design, and creative agency, this one definitely made headlines in our neck of the woods in September, when a 102-years-young Mildred Geraldine “Gerri” Schappals of Nashua, New Hampshire, successfully beat COVID-19 after testing positive for the virus in May.

But get this: This wasn’t her first rodeo. Back in 1918, she – along with her mother – also caught and beat the Spanish Flu of 1918. “Her mother and her were basically given up for dead,” said her daughter, Julia, in an interview with USA Today. “When the doctor came back, he actually started crying and said, ‘We licked it, we licked it.’ Those were his exact words.”

As for what “Gerri” thinks of the whole thing? She jokes that Mother Nature must’ve gotten mixed up and marked her down as dead back in 1918, and that’s why she survived this most recent illness. We just think she’s more of a tough chick than she knows. And she should definitely buy a lottery ticket.

Air Pollution Was Down…Inspiring Us to Do Better

©The Hills via GIPHY

With city streets eerily quiet as lockdowns shuttered businesses and people stayed home across the globe, pollution levels from traffic-related emissions naturally plummeted accordingly. In fact, in India, where air pollution is among the world’s worst, people reporting seeing the Himalayas for the first time from their homes. In the US, in early April, NASA published satellite images of pollution disappearing over New York City.

Although, with the lifted lockdown and cars once again returning to the road, the declines are sure to be only temporary. But it gave us a glimpse of something – a brief respite that may offer lessons for the kind of world we want to build after the pandemic. Not to mention, with more people still working from home – and potentially planning to do so for the foreseeable future – cleaner air in our future no longer seems like a hazy impossibility.

A 12-Year-Old Boy Used His Ingenuity to Raise Money for Victims of the Derecho Wind Storm

After a rare storm packing 100-mile-per-hour winds – similar to an inland hurricane – swept through The Midwest this past August, resulting in widespread property damage from downed trees and flipped vehicles, a 12-year-old Tommy Rhomberg of Iowa took it upon himself to make lemonade out of lemons. Well, actually, in this case, it was baseball bats out of downed wood – more than 200 30-inch long bats, that is, handmade from downed branches from the storm, using his grandfather’s whittling tools and sandpaper. Selling for $100 per piece, a portion of each of the gleaming sluggers’ sales go to helping his local community through the Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation Disaster Relief Fund.

Generating a waitlist of more than 600 people looking to purchase the bats, he’s still hard at work lathing and, if you follow his journey on Facebook, has even enlisted the help of some classmates. As for those customers still waiting, Tommy’s reply has been steadfast: “I am 12 years old and my parents won’t let me drop out of the 6th grade.”

We Survived & Came Out Stronger, Pretty Much Proving We Can Do Anything

© Funny or Die via GIPHY

Here’s the thing about 2020: Where many just see the face of a deadly pandemic, countless amazing things still happened. People still got married, babies were born, more dogs were adopted than ever, birthday parades gave kids the surprises of a lifetime, artists made some of the best work of their life, families spent more time together (even if, for some, it was through the screen of a computer) – the list goes on.

The bottom line is that care and compassion blossomed in 2020, unlike any other year. And while everyone wants to bury this “dumpster fire of a year” deep in the ground never to be found again, we hope this newfound care and compassion stays in the light as we embark into 2021 and beyond.

From all of us at Hawthorn Creative, here’s to a happy, healthy, and safe holiday with those who matter most.

Our Digital Marketing Trend Predictions for 2021

in Brand Strategy, Content Marketing, Destination Marketing Organizations, Email Marketing, Event Venues, General Marketing Insights, Hotels & Resorts, Medical Aesthetic Spas, Practices & Suppliers, Real Estate Management Companies, Search Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Websites, Wineries by Catherine Shane

As a marketing agency specializing in content marketing, brand strategy, website design, social media marketing, SEM/SEO, and more, 2020 was not at all the year we thought it would be. In fact, once the pandemic hit, we found ourselves having to scrap and pivot many of our meticulously-mapped out client marketing plans. But being flexible and re-strategizing at a moment’s notice is something we’re always equipped to do – after all, no good marketing plan ever stays exactly the same over time. It can’t be if looking to sync with consumer behaviors and the latest trends.

So with this in mind, we used the giant monkey wrench that 2020 threw into our marketing plans to bring you this list of 2021 digital marketing trends that we see sticking around or unfolding further in the year and beyond. It’s certainly not all you can expect – as 2020 has taught us – but, rather, some of our most intriguing findings to inform your own strategy, especially as your own marketing rulebook may be way out of date.

Virtual Events are Not Just Here to Stay, But the Technology Will Continue to Evolve & Grow at a Fast Rate

From Jessica Kaiser, owner and CEO of Hawthorn Creative

“At first, I think there was this initial thought that once the spread of COVID got under control that being entirely in-person would once again return to being the way events are conducted. But, really, being forced to figure out how to build events in a virtual medium – and do it well – has created some really amazing opportunities and experiences in this space. So not only do I see virtual components sticking around and being worked into parts of in-person events as they do return (resulting in what are now being called “hybrid events”), I see the technology continuing to grow and be adopted by this industry at a faster pace.

For example, I think AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality) are eventually going to become event program must-haves. In fact, one full-service production company I follow, Simple Multimedia (they’ve worked with global brands like Google, Nat Geo, Nike, and more), creates VR Lounge Experiences and VR Interactive Booths for their clients, where they can virtually interact with others in a virtual space and share information. They also produce AR content that digitally brings to life once dull meeting packets or instructional documents through the lens of your phone. Such technologies open up a wider way to experience the information being shared, ultimately making meeting and events that much more layered and that much more effective at engaging attendees.”

“At-Home” Content Taking a Permanent Place in Content Marketing Strategy

From Catherine Shane, Senior Marketing and Content Manager

“I see more brands continuing to develop and push out digital content that helps their consumers to maximize ‘life at home’ – whether that’s in blog content, larger campaign efforts, or by other means. So think blog posts that detail recipes, mindfulness exercises, even at-home style and design tips – the kind of content that brands switched to almost exclusively once 2020’s stay-at-home orders first came into effect since a lot of their previous strategy suddenly felt insensitive (just two examples: “At Home with Six Senses” initiative and “The Belmond Care Package.”).

While I don’t think it will be as large of a focus by any means, I do think many brand marketers saw its merit and will continue to make it a permanent piece of their content strategy because, really, it never goes out of style – pandemic or no pandemic. In fact, creating serviceable or lifestyle content that consumers value and associate with your brand is smart marketing at all times.”

SOLUTION

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TikTok Evolving as a Popular Top-of-the-Funnel Marketing Tactic

From Matt Lawson, Digital Media Manager

“I expect TikTok to rise for hospitality and luxury brands that are focused on full-funnel marketing. Yes, the main audience for TikTok right now are users in their teens, but I see older audiences increasingly adopting the platform. According to Statista.com, 10- to 19-year-olds account for 32.5% of TikTok users, but this is quickly followed by ages 20 to 29 (29.5%) and 30-39 (16.9%), so these audiences are right in the sweet spot for many businesses and brands.

As for how they would use it? At the moment, purely for awareness, allowing companies the opportunity to showcase ‘experiences.’ For example, wedding and event venues can showcase actual weddings or the different areas of their properties; hospitality brands can share experiences relating to their property or ‘things to do’ in surrounding areas. The options are limitless. The main goal behind all of this – paid and organic-wise – is to build an audience that views your video and wants to be there, not so much lead generation, but I imagine this could be paired well with other lead-gen tactics.

Lastly, advertising on TikTok is still fairly new. This means less competition and lower costs!”

Squarespace Securing its Spot as a Preferred CMS thanks to New Scheduling Features

From Ally Gerlach, Web Strategist

“Back in the spring, Squarespace purchased one of the most popular web scheduling apps, Acuity. This made a whole new bucket of functionality available that we can implement out of the box as opposed to creating something custom (which means more $) or connecting with other CRMs/scheduling systems (also more $).

Here, at Hawthorn Creative, we’ve found this functionality particularly helpful for our wedding and event venue clients because they can now easily book tours and meetings with their own prospective clients seamlessly. But, I don’t see this stopping there at all. These features are ideal for other industries as well – like wineries booking tours and tastings, independent healthcare providers and medical aesthetics practices booking virtual appointments, and even enterprise businesses booking calls or meetings with potential clients, just to name a few. In addition to scheduling, Squarespace has also seriously bulked up on the number of systems that they can connect with natively. Overall, these changes are making Squarespace an even more viable CMS option for businesses outside of the small business and freelancer space.”

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Brands Promoting Social Justice, Diversity & Inclusion in their Social Media Messaging

From Corey Scarano, Social Media Manager

“In 2020, we saw social justice going from an effort to a movement. And since consumers are more likely to purchase from companies that take a stand on causes that align with their own values, more brands are putting social justice higher on their list of importance. In fact, brands who were silent or tone-deaf during many of the events of 2020 were naturally judged by their audiences, losing customers, investors, and revenue as a result (remember the Facebook advertising boycott this past June?).

That means companies will be baking more of these values into their overall brand presence, social media marketing messaging, as well as more inclusive influencer marketing campaigns. The key, however, will be how they do so, so that it is viewed as genuine and not as ‘woke-washing.’ It’s a delicate tightrope that brands will have to walk and one that will require thoughtful strategy and implementation.”

Web Designs Moving More toward Minimal but Oh-So Purposeful

From Kristen Ritzenthaler, Creative Manager & Lead Web Designer

“2020 presented many unique challenges for businesses around the globe. As a society, we had to make many shifts in the way we work and play and, inevitably, web design followed suit. More than ever before, websites are needing to serve multiple purposes and can no longer just be ‘pretty’ or aspirational. Thoughtful and strategic web design is going to be key in 2021. We’re seeing mobile responsiveness take center stage as more and more users are browsing the web on their mobile devices. In terms of web design, we’re seeing asymmetrical layouts and organic grids, creative typography, colorful shapes, and use of textures. Overall, the 2021 web design mantra is: minimal, eye-catching design meets modern functionality.”

Does all this sound great, but you’re not sure how to put it into action?

Our team of designers, writers, and strategists are at your digital disposal. Just drop us a line any time.

How to Vet a Top Web Design Agency: 6 Vital Questions

in Destination Marketing Organizations, Event Venues, Hotels & Resorts, Medical Aesthetic Spas, Practices & Suppliers, Real Estate Management Companies, Websites, Wineries by Hawthorn Editorial

Who are some of the agency’s previous clients? How will they measure the success of your website? Are they full-service (meaning well-versed in doing all things website-related – not just design, but writing content that is on-brand and primed for SEO, knowledgeable in SEM, etc.)? These are just a handful of the most important questions you should be asking of a web agency when considering handing them the reigns to your website.

“I’ve heard this same story from too many of our clients, where, when working with a previous developer or agency, they paid an arm and a leg for a new website, only to have to start all over again with a new agency a year later because they just weren’t seeing high enough conversion rates,” says Ally Cardello, Hawthorn Creative’s web strategist who has spent the last decade studying how different consumers journey through company websites and how to design that experience into one that turns visitors into customers. “That’s why it’s so critical to be vetting them before putting your trust – and your future business – into their hands.”

But what are the right questions to ask? We only listed a few above, but there are several key additional ones – and subsequent follow-up questions – that you should be bringing to the table. To hear Ally’s personal insight into the rest, follow the link below to download our latest e-book: “6 Essential Questions to Vet a Website Design Agency.”

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A Website Redesign Success Story: Fathom Companies

in Hotels & Resorts, Real Estate Management Companies, Websites by Ally Cardello

We’ll be the first to preach it: If there’s anything a business needs to be willing to pour a little extra marketing dollars into, it’s a well-designed, professional company website. It is, after all, your most essential marketing asset.

That’s not to say, however, that you can’t revitalize your web presence without completely draining your marketing budget. In fact, with the right hospitality marketing team, it’s possible to upgrade your site for a fraction of the cost. And we’ve got just the example to prove it: Fathom Companies. Unhappy with their previous site, which felt stale and off-brand, the hospitality and real estate management company just premiered a brand new website – with custom animation and movement, to boot – in November of 2020.

But here’s what users would never know once arriving to the site: It cost Fathom 1/10th the price of a new site. That’s right, one little sliver from a 10-piece pie. And, most importantly, the new design and improved functionality allows them to do what they need to: Bring in more business by showcasing more than just their hospitality management know-how, but their other available services, including development, as well as capital and equity investments. Here’s how they did it.

THE SITUATION: A Website Lacking the Essentials to Book Business

Best known for managing The Press Hotel, an upscale, boutique Marriott Autograph Collection hotel in the heart of Portland, Maine, Fathom Companies also focuses on ground-up, historic renovations and repositioning of hotel, office, residential, and mixed-use properties.

But within their previous website, the above breadth of services wasn’t being showcased. While the former site did have a page dedicated to “What We Do,” it focused more on company values – important, yes, but misleading for a prospective client. And since the original site was developed quickly by a freelancer on a shoe-string budget, it also lacked gusto in everything from creative to copy. It felt more corporate, less in line with what the company prides itself on providing its clients: a curated aesthetic and attention to detail.

SOLUTIONS

Are You Losing Visitors to a Muddied Website Design?

Visitors should understand exactly what your business does within 3 seconds of landing on your homepage

Websites that Engage

While they knew they needed a new website, COVID, however, had put a vice grip on their marketing budget, as so many other businesses across the country have had to do. So, in order to best position the company as the industry recovers, they came to us here at Hawthorn Creative. As the website agency redesigning The Press Hotel’s website (scheduled to go live in March of 2021), they had already seen proof of our skill. Not just skill in design, but skill in finding unique solutions that meet their particular needs no matter the obstacles – whether that be lack of budget, lack of their own on-site staff, or lack of their knowledge. And if there’s one thing you should know about Hawthorn’s digital marketing team, it’s this: We don’t back down from a challenge. So, our designers, strategists, and developers got together to figure out how we could set Fathom up for success at a price they could afford.

THE SOLUTION: A Marketing Agency that Will Seek Custom Solutions

Fathom automatically assumed that a refreshed design wouldn’t be in their budget, just the updating of the site to build a better, more obvious services page that could be brought to the forefront. But we don’t like to leave any stone unturned, so we asked if we could take a look under the hood of the site. While we weren’t surprised to learn that it was built on a templated WordPress theme (many freelance developers utilize out-of-the-box themes when building sites to save their clients’ money), we also knew we could use this setup to our advantage. After a little bit of digging, we saw that if we simply upgraded their theme, we would have access to a library of more unique, modern design elements and animations. And that translated to a more custom approach, and custom design – something Fathom thought totally out of the question.

So, in addition to redesigning their navigation, rewriting their services section, and optimizing their site content and metadata (something else their previous developer neglected to customize), we went page by page and identified which new theme elements we’d use to bring their new look and feel to life. The result: An online experience that better served up the company’s services with a design that they had only dreamed about. And like we said, it was done at a fraction of the price of a new custom WordPress website.

THE RESULTS: A Month Out from the Site’s Live Date

But the proof is in the performance, right? Within the first four weeks alone, Fathom’s new site saw:

An 8.56% increase in sessions compared to the previous month
A 12.6% increase in the number of sessions per user compared to the previous month
A 35.8% increase in average session duration compared to the previous month

As users and search engines alike begin to discover how much the site has improved, it will only yield greater success with time.

Moral of the story? Don’t be afraid to ask or advocate for your marketing needs – even in tough times like these. Because a good website agency or developer well-versed in doing all things website-related will know how to create custom solutions that fit your needs and budget.

Ally Cardello – the author of this post – is a web strategist at Hawthorn Creative, with more than a decade of website expertise in the hospitality industry and beyond under her belt. Her spirit animal is Tina Fey, and you can always count on her to supply a witty GIF at any moment’s notice.

Top Traveler Priorities to Inform Hotel & DMO Marketing Strategy in 2021

in Content Marketing, Destination Marketing Organizations, Email Marketing, Hotels & Resorts, Photography & Video, Social Media Marketing, Websites by Catherine Shane

In 2021, travelers are planning to get back out there – at least, that’s according to Expedia’s recently released 2021 Travel Trends Report, which taps into its own massive database of search and demand data.

While the report predicts that 2021 will still be filled with road trips to nearby small towns and other regional remote destinations, it also showed that vacation-deprived Americans are once again returning to research far-flung destinations and larger cities. So much so, they grouped the top-researched destinations by two types of travelers: island escapists and urban returners – you can see the full list of Expedia’s 11 most-searched destinations as reported in this Condé Nast Traveler article. The top five alone: Cancun (#1); the neighboring resort towns of Riviera Maya, Playa del Carmen, and Tulum (#2); Las Vegas (#3), Orlando (#4), and Punta Cana (#5).

But destinations aside, the report also detailed the latest in traveler priorities – essentially, what travelers are taking into account as they plan future trips, like refundable booking, average booking windows, and the kind of accommodations they are looking for. So whether you’re a DMO (destination marketing organization) or a hotel/resort in a small town, a tucked-away remote destination, an island, or a large city, this is the part of the report you should really be tuning into. Because if you’re not responding to these traveler priorities and preferences, you’re missing out on potential visits to your destination and bookings. We outline each of the listed priorities and how your property should be planning your strategy accordingly.

Flexibility Isn’t a “Nice-to-Have,” It’s Required

In 2020, travelers booked refundable rates 10 percent more often than they did in 2019. While this is purely related to how they booked on the OTA, what hotels should be taking away from this is that flexibility in reservations and booking is going to continue to be key in 2021. That means lowered or none-at-all cancellation fees (within smaller windows of before arrival time, say 24 hours, rather than 48), shorter required stays, pausing or lengthening the expiration date of hotel reward points, even rolling out “Book Now, Pay Later” rates or certificates valid for longer periods of time (Six Senses Hotels Resorts Spas offers a Plan Now, Play Later deal that offers an additional 20 percent bonus that may be used towards upgrades or on-property purchases that its valid for three years).

No, your hotel shouldn’t be giving too many things away for free or completely getting rid of penalties, but simply relaxing the rules and restrictions – and showing that you are – will go a long way with future guests.

SOLUTION

Make Meaningful Connections Through Email

Leverage sales, generate new customers, and help retain them

Check Out Our Email Marketing Solutions

Health & Safety Advancements

This was a big concern as hotels and resorts reopened in 2020 and it will continue to be so in 2021. Yes, that means continuing the enhanced cleaning, social distancing, and other guest safety measures, but also the latest ways to show your still prioritizing the effort, like exploring these in the rapidly evolving trends in the world of touchless tech.

In fact, there are now-available technologies that allow lobby doors to slide open by holding a phone to a scanner, contactless check-in via a facial recognition software, keyless entry that requires just a press of a button on your phone, elevator sensor panels that know when a finger hovers over a button (without having to actually touch it), and contactless concierges that provide digital travel information (no more paper brochures or maps at the front desk).

Majority of Travelers Booking Less than a Month Out

Before the pandemic, the average U.S traveler was booking his or her flight 46 days in advance of their departure date, but the new normal (since August) is showing average bookings of just 29 days out – according to Expedia, this is the first time in years that that number has dropped below the 30-day mark.

This spontaneous trip-taking and shorter booking window means that hotels and DMOs need to be syncing their marketing materials to these buying patterns accordingly. For example, when you might have previously tailored much of your content and email marketing sends to talk about all there is to do in your destination starting in three months to the coming season, now is the time to not shy away from what’s immediately happening in the coming month, whether that’s local events, current seasonal to-dos in full swing (peak foliage, animal migration, etc,), or special deals or rates (your own and of local business partners).

SOLUTION

Hook Guests with Your Own Destination Blog

Give them the experiential content they crave while connecting them with your hotel

Create Content That Compels Action

Growth in Alternative Accommodations

In 2020, retreats like castles, ranches, cabins, chalets, and cottages saw the biggest growth when it came to types of accommodations that travelers were searching for most, and it’s a trend that is expected to continue in 2021 as people look to travel safety. Whether you’re a small hotel or B&B that can be booked out entirely or a resort property that offers stand-alone lodging, the name of the game is, again, tailoring your hotel marketing strategy and messaging to establish yourself as a dream social-distancing property and pushing that out.

For example, that might mean revisiting your website landing page to show splashy images or video that largely focuses on your collection of stand-alone accommodations, whether cabins, cottages, bungalows, villas, or casitas – much like how Sorrel River Ranch in Moab, Utah, and Alisal Guest Ranch & Resort in Solvang, California, do. Or, if you keep a blog, create posts around why you’re a “social-distancing dream resort” and pushing that out via your various email campaigns, social channels, and even paid campaigns. If you have no time for blogging, there’s also been an onslaught of digital listicles from a multitude of travel resources sharing their top social-distancing resorts – chances are, you could be on one or even several, much like Garden of the Gods Resort & Club in Colorado Springs is (which is something they point out on their website landing page).

Maximizing the Trip

While many travelers gravitated to virtual tours and activities to satisfy wanderlust during the lockdown, Expedia reports once again seeing more and more activities being booked (their top-trending activities include the Philadelphia Flower Show, boat tours of Biscayne Bay, and ATV and ziplining adventures in the Ruta de los Cenotes).

What this means is that hotels should be delivering the information potential guests are craving by integrating local to-dos into your website (if you don’t already). A couple of obvious ways to do so: mix it into the content of your landing page (Barnsley Resort in Adairsville, Georgia, does a great job of this) and build a destination-dedicated page (or pages) that are rife with insights about the status of local events, restaurants, tour operators, and hidden gems (i.e. Phoenix Park Hotel’s “Drive DC” page).

Marketing Essentials that Medical Aesthetic Suppliers Need to Be Providing Clients

in Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Medical Aesthetic Spas, Practices & Suppliers, Search Marketing, Social Media Marketing by Catherine Shane

As a medical aesthetic supplier, we know you develop the latest and greatest in medical aesthetic products or devices – whether that’s a skincare solution, a device, or some other technology altogether. But do the would-be consumers of that product – meaning the patients of the practices that purchase your product – know this, as well? They likely won’t or, at the very least, would certainly struggle to understand it.

That’s because so many medical aesthetic practices – your clients – don’t have the time, nor know-how, to create an in-house marketing plan that effectively leverages interest and educates their own targeted consumers about your unique product or technology. So how do you expect them to feel confident about selling your product, let alone want to make the purchase investment in it, to begin with?

You need to craft and hand them a turn-key solid marketing strategy that pairs with your product. No, we don’t mean a meager selling script. We’re talking about a multi-faceted results-driven digital marketing package that incorporates content marketing, social media marketing, and paid Google ad campaigns. Do this, and it won’t just make buying your product more of a worthy investment for them, it also helps to earn their repeat business as you add more inventory or newer models to your own line.

A Common Marketing Misstep They’re Missing That You Can Leverage

On average, 66% of medical aesthetic revenue comes from existing customers: Customers book a specific service, then learn about additional services or products during their visit through a personal consultation and promotional material.

The problem is, most practices rely on upselling customers once they’ve arrived for their treatment. This can make customers feel like they’re being “sold on the spot.” But with the right marketing strategy, practices can reach and educate customers off-site – in the form of blog posts, email marketing, and social media – while positioning themselves as a trusted source to help guide buying decisions related to your product, device, or technology.

The Solutions You Should Be Providing to Sell Them (&, Therefore, Their Prospective Patients)

It depends on your client’s unique needs, but here is a roundup of the core collection of solutions you should be offering to empower your client after the purchase of your product or medical device.

1. Blog Content

Whether your client is a plastic surgeon or a med-spa or offering some combination of similar services, their prospective patients look to them to be a trusted interpreter to digest and distill the latest trends for them. When they receive this information, it’s precisely what makes them loyal to that practice and trust them with whatever their future aesthetic treatment plan may hold.

So how do you help your client through that process? You arm them with a series of high-quality blog posts to help beef up their blog presence with content around your unique product. Learn more about how to build a digital marketing strategy in our blog post Content & Email Strategy for Med Spas: Part 1 – Content. And as a bonus for your client, regular blog posts primed with keywords also drive potential new patients to your clients’ websites – meaning consumers organically find their website when searching for content about your devices or products. Posting new and frequent content also boosts your clients’ Google website rankings.

SOLUTION

Take Their Content Strategy into the Stratosphere

Content marketing is the engine powering all of your client’s digital channels – without it, they’re going nowhere

Create Content That Compels Action

2. Email Marketing

The two most effective ways for practices to communicate with existing customers outside their offices is through email and social media. But get this: 48% of consumers prefer to interact with brands via email with conversion rates being three times higher than social media. Therefore, you need to be working with your client to create a solid email marketing strategy build around your product or device. Learn more about developing an attractive, on-brand vehicle that chauffeurs this information straight to their inboxes in our post, Content & Email Strategy for Med Spas: Part 2 – Email.

3. Social Media

While the average American spends almost two hours a day engaging with social media, many practitioners see it as a confusing landscape and are uncertain about the most effective strategy. For that reason, they’d be all the more confident when buying your product if you can equip them with all the social assets they need: creative, copy, and targeting. But we’re not just talking assets that promote the blog posts around your product, nor general materials to help your client regularly promote your product in a savvy social format – although, these are very important. We also mean paid social campaigns that let them hone in on specific audiences to deploy a series of ads that put the treatment or procedure that utilizes your product right in front of them.

4. Paid Google Ads

Last month there were 554,000 Google searches for “Botox,” 146,000 for “hydra facials,” and 21,000 for “body contouring.” Imagine if you could help your client capture just 2% of this audience? That would bring 14,000 potential customers straight to your client’s website.

While SEO is a long-term game to move websites up in the ranks, paid Google campaigns advertising your product will rocket your client’s website to the top of page-one search results, streamlining their consumers’ paths to conversion. Pair this with a low-cost, high-impact retargeting campaign, and they can expect new customers through Google search each and every month.

Does all the above sound great, but you’re not sure how to put it into action (nor have the time)?

As a full-service marketing agency, Hawthorn Creative manages the marketing plans for various medical aesthetic practices, with proven results that you can check out on our case studies page. And we’re here to help you do the same – just drop us a line any time.

How to Leverage Micro Weddings to Upsell Couples

in Content Marketing, Event Venues, Knowledge Drop by Catherine Shane

It should be simple math: The bigger the wedding, the bigger the budget, and the smaller the wedding, the smaller the budget – right? Not necessarily. Because couples that really want to pull out all the stops to really give their guests a lavish experience often intentionally opt for more intimate affairs to do so. By keeping their guest list down – say from the average 100-plus people to 30 – they are able to take that same “big-bash budget” and invest in more amenities to treat themselves and their guests to a high-quality event.

What this means for wedding venues? That micro weddings have the potential to bring in a similar dollar amount as a bigger bash. And especially as COVID has made more intimate affairs a must, wedding venues that aren’t leveraging the “luxuriate-your-guests benefits” of a micro wedding are missing out on an opportunity to not just to book more guests, but book more guests with a big-bash budget to pour into an intimate affair at your venue. The key is arming them with the experiences to inspire, excite, and, in many cases, upsell them on additional services and amenities your venue offers. Here are a few ways micro weddings allow couples to go all-in on the details…and how wedding venues can use them to sell more features.

Personalized Wedding Touches Galore

Traditionally more expensive, custom touches – like handwritten invitations in beautiful hand-lettering, custom-curated welcome boxes for guests, and elaborate escort displays – are all the more possible when being created for a much smaller guest list.

How Wedding Venues Can Leverage:

Build Custom Packages/Special Add-Ons – Worked with a calligrapher in the past who can handle all stationary or signage (invites, personalized place cards, menus, etc.)? Or a vendor who makes amazing custom welcome boxes? Rather than simply recommending them as one of your preferred partners for couples to look into on their own, work with such partners to brainstorm and create special packages or a-la-carte add-ons that the couple can build right into their micro-wedding pricing package when they book with you.

SOLUTIONS

Be the First in Their Feed

Pandemic or not, newly engaged couples are still shopping for wedding venues.

Reach Them With Paid Social Campaigns

Big-Budget Décor Statements in Ceremony, Lounge Areas & Reception Spaces

Not having to outfit a massive ceremony site or ballroom with décor means more opportunity to go big with decorative statements in smaller and more unique spaces.

How Wedding Venues Can Leverage:

Think Outside of the Box with the Spaces You Offer – If there are beautiful places on your property that you don’t normally advertise since they aren’t naturally conducive to larger groups, it’s time to take a second look to see how smaller groups could use them. Because many venues are full of unexpected spaces often overlooked that are perfect for creating separate mingling areas – like a library within a large historic estate, courtyard nooks, smaller galleries, etc. And if a couple is looking to book multiple smaller spaces – for the ceremony, reception, and smaller lounge areas – it can all add up to a similar price of booking your biggest, most expensive event space.

Thoughtful Entertainment, Activities & Ways to Mingle

At smaller weddings, many couples opt to forgo many of the traditional wedding elements, including common entertainment go-tos, like dancing to a deejay, to really customize it and make it their own.

How Wedding Venues Can Leverage:

Invest in Easy Ways to Provide or Bring in Those Unique Experiences to Sell A-La-Carte – For example, lawn games are super trendy when it comes to micro weddings (as everyone can actually participate). So by purchasing all the equipment and games once – we’re talking bocce ball, horseshoes, life-size Jenga, and more – it’s an easy additional amenity you can sell to couple after couple, rather than each couple having to bring that feature in.

CASE STUDY

The Vine

Inside our dramatic rebrand and new website for this premier Texas wedding venue.

See the Journey

Ability to Really Splurge on Food & Drink

When couples don’t have to feed a huge crowd, that means more room for a creative and detailed menu.

How Wedding Venues Can Leverage:

Creative, Multi-Course Menus – If your venue handles the food, these smaller events are the time to let your chef get really creative with what you can offer. And if you can, offer the option of having the chef work personally with the couple to create a totally custom menu (yes, it may mean the same amount of work as preparing food and beverage for 100-plus people, but the price tag the couple will be paying will also match that).
Partner with Local Experts to Bring in Memorable Food Options – Have connections with a local winery or distillery that could provide a custom tasting? Or is your venue located within a destination that has access to some really amazing food trucks? Establish relationships and talk partnerships to create custom offerings that couples can factor into their micro-wedding package with you.

The Lasting Takeaway

With experts predicting that even after big parties are deemed safe again, smaller, intimate ceremonies are likely to persist, so now is the time for wedding venues to think outside the box and get creative with what they offer to make small the new big. Not just because couples are looking to go all out on the details and create experiences for those select friends and family that they hold nearest and dearest to themselves (after all, quarantine made a lot of people realize how much they want to be around certain people in their lives), but because wedding venues can be the ones to give that them – and that can be a way to make up for lost revenue that was typically associated with the bigger bashes of the pre-COVID era. Need help brainstorming experiences, promoting them, marketing them, and more? Our creative team of strategists, brand experts, writers, designers, and more are at your disposal.

Hotel Digital Marketing Campaigns That Creatively Respond to COVID

in Brand Strategy, Content Marketing, Destination Marketing Organizations, Hotels & Resorts, Marketing Topics, Photography & Video, Websites by Catherine Shane

At this point in the pandemic, you’ve probably read a million-and-one hotel marketing blog posts about how you should be altering your digital messaging during the current crisis. But how many successful examples of marketing campaigns or initiatives have you actually come across, let alone had the chance to actually look at and digest? We did the digging for you to bring you these five examples of creative messaging and campaigns to inspire your own savvy spins.

“The Betsy Was Built for This”

By The Besty Hotel

Rather than just creating your typical safety and protocol website page, The Betsy, a South Beach, Miami, boutique hotel, is ingeniously using this moment to also craft a message that focuses on the ways that the hotel was already uniquely equipped for meeting social-distancing and isolation requirements. Using the tagline “The Betsy Was Built for This,” an additional page (separate from its safety and protocol page) touts its “two four-story buildings with 130 rooms spread over a full city block that outpaces vastly larger properties,” “plethora of outdoor spaces all washed by a perpetual Atlantic Ocean breeze,” and “multiple key-activated entrances easily, avoiding unwanted interaction with other guests.” The brand then supports the message with a newly minted promotional video showcasing the open and airy spaces of the hotel, so that guests can get a sense of exactly what a stay would be like.

SOLUTIONS

Travelers Are Ever Cautious

Does your current hotel photography or video assets give them the peace of mind to go from browsing to booking?

See Our Solutions

“Plan Now, Play Later”

By Six Senses Hotels Resorts Spas

Properties may be open, but it’ll be some time before the general population at large returns to being comfortable with travel. That’s why Six Senses Hotels Resorts Spas, a collection of 18 hotels and resorts and 30 spas in 21 countries, created the “Plan Now, Play Later” campaign that, with the help of a seriously wanderlust-inducing video on its main page, encourages people to start planning their next trip – whether that means next year or three years from now. And to really give guests an extra nudge, the campaign is propelled by a special offer of an extra 20 percent bonus certificate (that can be used toward room upgrades or other on-property amenities) when they book now and stay later. But get this: Those certificates are valid for THREE YEARS. Talk about a good way to secure future bookings and drive incremental revenue.

“COVID-19 Prevention Plan”

By Hotel San Luis Obispo

Website pages dedicated to detailing a hotel’s safety and protocols won’t be going away anytime soon. Which is why Hotel San Luis Obispo, a new boutique hotel in Central California, decided to have fun with its approach. Rather than listing out the steps in bullet points of copy, as so many other hotels do, they mined from their playful brand style and created a visual way to, quite literally, illustrate their safety and protocols. It’s fun, on-brand, and, most importantly, informative.

“The Floor is Yours”

By The Hoxton

The Hoxton, a London-based hotel collection with locations in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Brooklyn, in addition to throughout Europe, is no stranger to uniquely branded packages paired with amazing creative. One initiative they launched this past summer (but not currently being offered at the moment) was “The Floor Is Yours.” Targeting group travelers (whether family reunions or corporate) with social-distancing in mind, guests could book an entire floor of one of their properties at a discounted rate to play (or work) as hard as they like.

How to Stay Relevant with Couples Who Haven’t Rescheduled Their Wedding Date Yet

in Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Event Venues by Catherine Shane

Couples with scheduled weddings had it rough in 2020. And while majority of them – even after the heartbreak of postponing after all that planning – have long re-booked their wedding dates with venues in 2021 or opted the quick-hitch courthouse or virtual marriage route, there is still likely a segment of stagnant folks in your client list. They might be those couples still set on hosting a big bash when everything finally blows over. They might be those couples heeding warnings about ultimately needing to postpone again in 2021. And they might be those couples who now have other, bigger things to worry about in comparison to what boils down to be a one-day event.

Whatever their reasoning may be, if a client hasn’t rescheduled their date yet, here are a handful of touchpoints to help your venue stay relevant so that when they are ready to finally reschedule their date, it’s definitely still with you.

Leverage Nostalgic Dates to Show You’re Sincerely Thinking of Them

By now, their originally-scheduled-but-now-postponed wedding date has probably come and gone. If you were able, you used this date as a time to touch base and let them know you were thinking of them with a memento, card, or even just a personal email. So even if you missed out on this first milestone, you still have the opportunity to send something on what should have been their six-month anniversary. Or better yet, on the anniversary of the date they got engaged (if you have that information). Sure, it can smack a little bit of those one-size-fits-all holiday cards you get from the dentist, but if it hits all the high notes of sincere, hopeful, and maybe even a little funny (cue the hundreds of tongue-in-cheek “2020 sucks” memes for inspiration), it can go a long way. At the very least, it demonstrates empathy, but it can also rekindle the relationship between the couple and your venue.

Position it as You Want to Ensure Them “Wedding Date Dibs”

Yes, this is a classic sales tactic, but it’s a very real risk they run if they wait too long to re-book. Because once things begin to approach “normal” again, the floodgates will really open and you’ll be inundated with new wedding inquiries. If they don’t seem to have a sense of urgency when it comes to rescheduling at all, this is a good approach to use when you are checking in with them, whether via phone, email, or, if they’re that unresponsive, carrier pigeon (just kidding…kinda).

SOLUTIONS

Target Your Unique Client Segments via Email

Stay top-of-mind with couples who haven’t rescheduled their wedding date.

Check Out Our Email Marketing Solutions

Share the Advantages of a Micro-Wedding

A focus on safety may be the underlying aim of a micro-wedding, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be as creative or memorable as a bigger bash – especially to couples that might be opting to hold out on when bigger bashes are back in style. So your ultimate place to prove that to them: your blog, pushed out in targeted email campaigns. Not only does this kind of content equip your clients with how to get creative with a micro- or socially distant wedding, but it also shows how it can be done beautifully at your venue. Not sure what to post? Check out our post, Blog Content Ideas – that Couples will Actually Value – to Push Micro Weddings at Your Venue, for topics you may not have even thought of yourself.

Use Examples of How Your Venue Has Been Able to Flex & Add Value for Other Couples

Using real-life examples from your recently hosted weddings is another great way to demonstrate your mastery in all things new on the nuptial front in the age of COVID. For example, perhaps you were able to help one couple set up a live feed thanks to a local videographer partner so that the oldest members who could not attend could still be there to witness the action. Or perhaps you came up with a totally new way to use one of your function spaces in a creative and not something-you-typical-offer way. Or maybe you were able to create a custom payment plan. While you might not offer all these services or features for your typical clients, if it’s a hard re-sell, you might as well pull out the big guns.

CASE STUDY

Red Ridge Receptions

A boutique website and brochure for a breathtaking venue.

See the Journey

But Be Careful to Not Overdo it

If you have issued refunds in full or mostly in full with the postponed couple already and they aren’t being motivated by some sort of contract, keep all the above touchpoints in your tool bag for sure. However, it can be like having to make a sale all over again, so you don’t want to overdo it and potentially run the risk of turning them off entirely (after all, COVID has caused many people to re-evaluate their priorities in life). Just try things here and there and trust the process. After all, they said, “I do” to your venue once before.

1. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes.

2. Stay on top of trends.

3. Get your entire sales team on the same page.

4. Use a lead-scoring system.

5. Be excited…but not too excited.

6. Make sure your website is inviting and valuable.

7. Help them imagine the perfect wedding.

RELATED READING

1. Be true.

2. Promote what you’re proud of.

3. Use real people in your marketing.

4. Assure your guests that it’s safe to visit, and back it up.

5. Show off your personality on TikTok.

6. Authenticity is internal, too.

7. Make it personal.

RELATED READING

Initial Survey of Venues

AKA the Awareness Stage

A List of Prospects

AKA the Consideration Stage

Choosing a Venue

AKA the Decision Stage

So, What Now?

RELATED READING

The Old Website Design

The New Custom Website Design: Starting with the Navigation & User Journey

A Few Other Examples of How We Did It: The Elements of Good Website Design

Splashy Show-Stopping Visuals

Animation & Movement

Updated Color Palette that is WCAG Level-A Compliant

Integration of Other Parts of the Website through Card-Based Design

Sidebars That Lock & Guide You

RELATED READING

“The Saskatchewander”

By TourismSaskatchewan

“Can’t Skip Tomorrow”

By Visit Portugal

“What If”

By Visit California

“Helsinki Freedom”

By Helsinki Marketing

RELATED READING

Virtual Tours of Your Venues

Real Weddings

BTS, Better Known as “Behind the Scenes”

SOLUTION

One-on-One Social Media Consultations

Reviews & Testimonials

Sharing UGC (User-Generated Content)

Inspiration & Ideas

FAQs or Q&As

RELATED READING

For Content Creation & Writing

HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator or Portent’s Idea Generator

SOLUTION

Take Your Content Strategy into the Stratosphere

For Visual Content Development

Adobe Spark and Canva

SOLUTIONS

Eye-Catching Visuals is a Marketing Must

For Content Distribution

Linktree or InstaBio

For Overarching Strategy

A FEW OF OUR DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT GUIDES

But First, Why Synced Social Efforts Matter

SOLUTIONS

Social Media Marketing That’ll Stop Their Scrolling

The Vine: Synced Social Scores Double the Bookings

The Results?

OUR WORK

Get Ready for 2021

So How Did We Do It?

1. A Purposeful & Cohesive Social Presence

2. A Clear Path of Conversion for New Users

3. Divide and Conquer

Does all the above sound great, but you’re not sure how to put it into action (nor have the time)?

RELATED READING

For Your Couples Who Want All the (Wedding) Bells & Whistles

SOLUTIONS

Eye-Catching Video is a Marketing Must

1. A Purposeful & Cohesive
Social Presence

2. A Clear Path of Conversion
for New Users