6 New Year’s Resolutions for Marketing Wedding Venues

in Event Venues by Catherine Shane

If you haven’t noticed, we talk a lot about wedding venue marketing. As a hospitality marketing agency, it’s one of the markets we know best. But it’s easy to miss a post of ours every now and then – so we decided to share some of our best nuggets from the last year to help you establish your marketing resolutions, so you’re able to take full advantage of engagement season.

1. Invest in Social Media Ads

With just a small ad spend (and a management fee, if you’d rather we do it) you can reach newly engaged couples in your area and drive them to your weddings page, achieving a towering ROI, like this venue.

Excerpt: “In just the first month of Bluemont Vineyard’s social ad campaign, they saw 24,005 impressions, 4,210 people reached, 210 clicks, and a whopping 31 leads (brides and grooms who filled out the site inquiry form on their website) – all thanks to a $400 ad spend, plus our management fees. All told, the first month saw a whopping 33x return on investment.”

The Full Story: How Social Media Ads Delivered a Massive ROI for This Wedding Venue

2. When it’s Time, Follow These Steps to Nail Your Photo Shoot

High-quality photos are the lifeblood of wedding venue marketing, so we put together a list of things that anyone – even those of us who aren’t professional photographers! – can look for and request to ensure the perfect venue photo shoot.

Excerpt: “If your wedding venue recently had a big renovation, your old photos are looking a little tired, or it’s just been a few years, it may be time to hire a photographer to do an original shoot of your venue. These shots will make your marketing team’s job easier, as they’ll better reflect your property and be specifically composed to portray it in the best light, as opposed to a real event, in which certain elements out of your control. Here are some tips to help the photographer capture the photos that’ll put a punctuation mark on your wedding venue marketing and help you capture bookings.”

The Full Story: 10 Steps to Nailing an Original Venue Photo Shoot for Wedding Venue Marketers

3. Understand Exactly – Down to the Dollar – How Valuable Site Visits Are

Venue tours are valuable – we all know that. They’re almost always a prerequisite to booking, so it’s logical that you should try to drive as many qualified venue tours as possible. But did you know it’s possible to assign a dollar value to those visits, making it easier to determine your marketing spend?

Excerpt: “After answering just four questions, there are a couple of simple calculations you can perform to figure out how to put a dollar value estimate on each step in your sales funnel. From there, you can dive deeper to figure out how different marketing tactics for your wedding venue are performing, based on how qualified those leads are. The result is a simpler, smarter, more informed marketing plan that you can tackle, regardless of how much time you have to devote to marketing.”

The Full Story: How Wedding Venues Can Simply Calculate the Value of a Site Visit Inquiry

4. Make Sure Your Brochure is Worthy of Your Venue

When you have the right kind of wedding brochure, it’s doing a bunch of vital jobs for you – not just showing off pretty pictures of your venue.

Excerpt: “Wedding planning is inherently social. We talk to our friends and family and bounce ideas around regarding the guest list, color scheme, food and beverage, and perhaps most importantly, the venue choice. The wedding brochure can serve as a talking piece and a focus for the couple’s conversations with others – both those who may have attended the venue tour and also those who didn’t. When the bride describes the perfect spot that she’s thinking about saying “I do” at, she’ll be able to tangibly hold it in her hands, pass it to a friend or parents, and bring it alive more fully by pairing her description with your visuals.”

The Full Story: The Five Jobs Your Wedding Brochure Should Be Doing for You

5. Remember: There are Different Kinds of Millennial Brides

There are different kinds of brides and grooms, and different marketing materials that appeal to them. In this piece, we match personas with the ideal marketing tactics.

Excerpt: “Many wedding venue marketers may bemoan the millennial generation with their quick, staccato, and often incomplete requests for information that then require near-instantaneous responses. But there’s also so many new opportunitiesto find and engage with today’s millennial brides. And while no two brides fit perfectly into any one bucket, the three personas we’ve outlined should sound familiar to anyone who has been involved in marketing a wedding venue. (For the record, we say bride, but this could just as easily be the groom.) Here, we share a particular marketing tactic to focus on when trying to reach each persona.”

The Full Story: How to Market to Three Types of Millennial Brides

6. When in Doubt, Use This Scorecard

The marketing tactics on the scorecard linked below total 100 points – if you tally up the ones that you’ve got covered, how close do you get to a perfect score? This is a quick exercise to see where you’re on the right track and where you should spend a little more time.

Excerpt: “Are you confident that you’re doing enough with your wedding venue marketing? We thought through the whole process – from that moment just before the newly engaged couple finds you to the point after the vows have been said, the cake has been cut, and the wedding is over – and took a go at giving you a scorecard to vet your current marketing efforts.”

The Full Story: Wedding Venues: Are You Nailing Your Marketing? Use This Scorecard to Find Out

5 Creative Ways for Hospitality Marketers to Use Instagram

in Social Media Marketing by Hawthorn Editorial

“OK,” you say, “I’ve posted pretty pictures. Now what?”

It’s true – whether you’re a boutique hotel or a regional DMO, hospitality marketers understand that a strong Instagram presence requires compelling visuals. There are other things you can do, too, though, and with time spent on Facebook down and time spent on Instagram up, the younger, fast-changing platform demands your attention. If you see Instagram as a place to re-post your Facebook content, you’re doing it wrong. The good news? There are new tools in place to let anyone (even those of us with little time to spare) put together an engaging Instagram marketing strategy.

Here, we profile some of the best ways beyond the PPP (posting pretty pictures) method that can make your hotel or destination stand out on Instagram to potential new and repeat visitors.

1. Enrich Your Stories with Visitor Posts

Many of the people who follow you do so because they want a little glimpse into what’s happening on-property (or in a destination) at this place they care about – either because they’ve already been there and hope to return, are visiting soon for the first time, or are thinking about visiting someday. The right sort of pictures can transport them for a moment and allow them to daydream about their next trip. Who better to get these inspirational photos from than visitors in the thick of experiencing your destination? For example, if you’re responsible for a DMO social media strategy, and you get tagged in a post (or someone uses the hashtag for the destination), Instagram now lets you quickly add that post to your story – just tap the messaging icon on the post and select “Add to Story.” This is a low-effort way to keep your story filled with interesting, relevant content – and you’re also free to annotate the person’s post with text, GIFs, or other stickers to help give your followers some context.

2. Make Instagram a Two-Way Channel

Social media can often feel like a broadcast medium, so it’s notable that Instagram has introduced ways to hear from your followers (in more sophisticated ways than the old standbys of likes, comments, and messages). Three quick examples: The polls sticker lets you pose a this-or-that question. It’s a quick way for you to engage your followers, who can’t help but choose one of the answers so they can feel heard and see how many agreed with them. The emoji slider helps you gauge how strongly your followers agree with something. The slider works by dragging an emoji left to right, making it bigger in size, and lets you stop somewhere to indicate how much you agree with (or like) a statement or picture. Finally, the questions sticker gives your followers the power to ask you a question – when you answer, your response shows up to your entire audience, and the person who asked is made anonymous.

SOLUTIONS

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Let’s start building authentic connections with your guests

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3. Use Story Highlights Like a Mini Brochure

Make it easy for those who visit your Instagram profile to find what they’re looking for and maximize the time they’ll spend there. Creating and organizing Story Highlights as if they are the pages of an immersive brochure spares your visitors from having to sift through your feed to find what they’re looking for. For example, if you’re building a hotel social media strategy, and you have an amazing rooftop pool with sweeping panoramic views, make one of your story highlights “Pool,” making sure to include the best shots of the view in there. You could do the same for your rooms, the restaurant, spa, the destination, and so on. Now, when people visit your profile in a quest to get a feel for your hotel, they’ll be able to explore some of the main elements that best define your property. Last tip: Keep the names of these Story Highlights short – never more than one word. You want people to be able to read them from the profile view.

4. Make Smart Use of Your Profile

You don’t get much room to tell your organization’s story in your Instagram bio – which is why it’s so important to maximize the space that you do get. The goal is to give visitors context – if their first point of contact with you is your Instagram profile (which, in 2019 and beyond, it very well could be) are you doing a good job sharing the essentials? Start with your Instagram name (not your username, though that’s important, too.) This should be the full name of your organization. When it comes to your bio, remember: you only get 150 characters. You don’t have to use every character, but consider how you can best use the space to share your greatest value proposition. Remember to include a hashtag. Finally, use that link box religiously. It’ll become your best friend, and you may change it frequently, depending on promotions, or content you want to share – at least until you hit the 10,000-follower threshold required for posting links within stories.

5 Take an “All-of-the-Above” Approach to Growing Your Following

Many of our clients are eager to grow their Instagram followings. You can do so organically –
by following these guidelines and other Instagram best practices – but if you want to spend to get there, know that there’s no specific ad unit for growing an Instagram following like there is on Facebook. However – you can run ads to people on Facebook (maybe your followers and their friends) and Instagram in an effort to entice them to tap over to your profile and then follow you there. The bottom line: To grow your following, make your existing followers happy (they’ll like, comment, and share), cross-promote on channels where you have more followers, and, if you can, put aside some ad dollars (or work with us) to develop a campaign designed to show a targeted audience why they should follow you.

OUR WORK

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See how we reached over 900,000 users through strategic social tactics

Take the Plunge

10 Little Things That Can Derail Your Website’s Design

in Event Venues, Hotels & Resorts, Websites by Hawthorn Editorial

There are many details you can get wrong with your event venue or hotel website design – some functional, some aesthetic. Remember – design isn’t just how something looks, but how it works, too. Whether you’re a wedding venue, DMO, or boutique hotel, you’re in the business of customer service and attention to detail, meaning, these are things you should be getting right. The good news? You don’t need to be a hospitality marketing agency to quickly evaluate your website for the following ten (very fixable!) flaws.

1. Failing the 3-Second Test

Can a visitor who has little-to-no context understand exactly what your business does when they land on your homepage? You have 3 seconds – if that – to make your case. There should be text (no more than a sentence) and an image that, together, tell your story effectively. To measure this, keep an eye on your bounce rate in Google Analytics. This is the percentage of visits in which the people browsing your site leave without exploring it any further. The lower the bounce rate, the better.

2. Using an Email Address Rather Than a Form

You should always use forms on your website rather than just directing people to an email address. It’s the only way to get complete visibility into what’s converting business on your website and what’s not when looking at your analytics. If you just feature an email address and a phone number, you’ll never know! And remember – there’s an easy way to calculate the value of one of these leads.

SOLUTIONS

Take Control of Your Digital Marketing Efforts…Starting with your Website

With SEO/SEM, strategic storytelling, and one-of-a-kind creative

Check Out Our Website Design Solutions

3. Looonngg Forms

Now that we know you’re using forms, the question is whether your form is serving you well. You need fields for name and email, but beyond that, ask yourself if you really need the field, because you want to limit the friction to someone pressing that “submit” button. Do you really need a phone number at this stage in the qualification process or will your potential customer find it obtrusive? In our messaging-dominated world, some people get skittish about the idea of a business calling them, so they may abandon your form. Also, carefully consider what other information you need to begin a conversation. If you have a long form, but only a few of those fields are required, it will still look daunting, and many will skim past it. Depending on the quality of the leads you’re receiving, tinker with the length, format, and fields of the form to strike the right balance between volume and quality.

4. Fumbling the Navigation

Hopefully, you’ve only included the most important things in your navigation – and hopefully, that navigation is at the top of the page. Assuming you’ve done that, remember that people generally scan left to right. Put the most important things on the left, in descending order of importance. Also, if you have drop-down menus, put navigation links in there that make sense – don’t use any of them as a junk drawer. Finally, label menu items clearly. Don’t get too cute or vague with any of them. The point of menus is to help people find what they’re looking for quickly. Don’t get in the way of that.

5. A Buried CTA

CTAs are supposed to funnel people into the behavior you most want them to take at a particular stage. If you have a CTA in your header (and you should, since it’ll be consistent on every page) make sure that it’s a different color (or at least bolder) than the other menu items, ideally in the form of a button. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but most people expect CTAs to appear on the far right of the navigation.

6. Hard-to-Read Typefaces

The rule of thumb: Any more than two typefaces on a page (one for headers, one for body text) is probably too many and detracts from readability. If you’re going to use a serif font for body text, make sure it’s not too busy – some old ones have a lot of curvature and flair that make them hard to read. In the same vein, don’t use fonts that are too thin, or too light-colored, and avoid lots of text in all caps (it’s hard to read). Your webpage’s text may look great on a big, high-res iMac screen, but how does it look on an old monitor, or a phone? To sum it up: Keep the body text between 12 and 16 points, make sure it’s easy to read, and test it on different types of screens to make sure you get it right.

OUR CLIENTS

Kennebunkport Resort Collection

How a collection of new websites finally made waves for this Maine-based boutique hotel collection

See the Journey

7. Daunting Walls of Texts

Never trust that your visitors will read a passage of text. Tell the essential story with your headers. Assume that they’ll scan your page, and make it easy for them to do so by breaking up text with subheads. Otherwise, long blocks of text are one of the dead giveaways that you have a DIY website.

8. Poor Photos

If your photos look like (or are!) old iPhone pictures, they’ll send the wrong message to visitors, particularly for those marketing wedding venues and destinations. Make it a priority to get higher quality, updated photos – even the iPhone camera has improved by leaps and bounds over the past few years. Just look for detail shots that will still be relevant and make sense for your business. A restaurant, for example, shouldn’t use a photo of a wedding-dressed dinner table. It’s OK to be aspirational, but don’t stray too far from reality.

9. Background Photos with Sloppily-Overlaid Text

The background photo with text overlaid is a popular look for websites, particularly in a lot of WordPress and Squarespace templates. The one simple mistake that way too many are guilty of is not considering whether the text will be legible with the photos you’ll actually be using. It can be tough to picture when looking at the design, but what you want to consider is how much contrast the photos will have and is there a drop shadow or other element that allows the overlaid text to be legible. If you go for this sort of design, just make sure you evaluate the legibility after you load the content, and swap (or adjust) the photo as needed.

10. External Links in the Same Window

When linking to external websites, make sure that those links open in a new tab, not load in the same window. It bears repeating: Anything that’s not living on your website should open in a new tab. You did work to get the visitor to your website; don’t let them leave unless they absolutely intend to. This is a simple step that’s easy to update when inserting links, just one that you never want to overlook.

RELATED READING

 

“What Is Content Marketing?” And Other Top Content Questions for Hospitality Marketers

in Content Marketing, Destination Marketing Organizations, Hotels & Resorts by Hawthorn Editorial

Content marketing: You’ve heard of it, you could’ve dabbled in it, but maybe you’re still on the fence – what is it, exactly? Is there a quantifiable ROI? Who else is doing it? Is it right for your hotel marketing strategy?

As Contently points out, content marketing has existed since the late nineteenth century. At that point, it was done almost exclusively in the form of magazines produced by brands like Michelin, John Deere, and Procter & Gamble. Later, it was radio and television programming. In the twenty-first century, it spans all corners of the media landscape, both print and digital, and has trended dramatically upward for most of this decade.

It’s not just big brands doing content marketing – it’s small businesses, too – and many hotels and others in the travel marketing world have reaped the benefits. For those in hotel and destination marketing who have heard all the buzz about content marketing but still don’t really get it, we distilled some of the top questions and answers you may have.

What is Content Marketing?

This blog – the very one you’re reading right now – is content marketing for our hospitality marketing agency. “But this is informative and interesting,” you (hopefully!) think. Good – that’s how it should be. Content marketing isn’t a vehicle to overtly push your products and services; it’s to bring value to your audience via information and/or entertainment, and over the long run, be seen as a trusted source that they may turn to when they’re in the market for your products and services. Practically speaking, content marketing can be in the form of a blog, a magazine, video, audio…really, any sort of media.

Why Is Content “King” Today for Hotels and Destination Marketers?

Content doesn’t just sit idly on your blog. It can power your SEO (remember to build your posts around keywords!), social, and email strategies. It’s not enough to just create content and expect bookings to flow in – content is important, sure, but distribution is the gas that makes the car drive. The payoff? Getting consumers back to your website. It’s one of the main weapons hotels have in their arsenal in their fight against OTAs. It starts top of funnel at the awareness level (paid, SEO), then moves into the consideration phase as you bring the property to life in a way standard marketing simply can’t, and finally leads to a conversion by aligning the topics you talk about with perfectly matched CTAs. In other words, content plays an important role cross-channel, and up and down the funnel.

What Are Some Top Examples of Content Marketing for Hotels and the Travel Industry?

We produce a blog for Ocean Properties called Opal Unpacked, highlighting ways to take advantage of their properties and destinations. Social media and email are then core parts of the strategy for how that content is distributed. Written content doesn’t have to take the form of a blog, though. Field Guide, which we produce for Hotel Saranac, has a handful of sections (Adventure, Explore, Drink & Dine, Unwind) that explain how to take advantage of the region. If you have an Activities or Things to Do section on your website, it’s a natural spot to build a content strategy around. Airbnb famously has a slew of content marketing initiatives, from their print magazine to their blog to Guidebooks, their version of Zagat. You don’t have to be a big brand or have a robust marketing arm to get going – you could start by publishing one piece of content per month that’s helpful, informative, and/or entertaining for travelers, see what works, and go from there.

How Can I Measure the ROI of Content Marketing?

There are a couple of ways to think about this. On one hand, content isn’t necessarily the last touchpoint in the sales funnel – it varies dramatically by industry. That means it may play an important role, but not necessarily lead directly to tons of sales. Views and unique visitors are easy metrics to look at to determine a piece of content’s effectiveness, but shares (if someone uses their personal social feed to give your content a lift, you know it has some sort of value) and time spent on page (are people just dropping in because of a well-written headline, or staying and appreciating the content?) go a little deeper. UTM codes help track referrals and make more sense of the raw numbers. Finally, for the vast majority of content you produce, there should be a CTA somewhere in the piece – near the top of the page, if that’s where most of the value is, or toward the bottom, if it’s a longer article. Maybe it’s for a special room rate that a guest could unlock, or a deal at a particular restaurant on-property. If it is some sort of giveaway, collect their email addresses and build a list. There are plenty of ways to “win” in content marketing; you just need to define what that looks like for your business.

How Is Content Marketing Evolving?

As the internet somehow gets even noisier, content needs to be better and better in order to cut through the noise. Something that grabbed our attention in 2013 won’t necessarily do the same today. Many marketers are investing in longer, higher quality “10x” pieces built around their most important SEO keywords to combat this (think: “Things to do in town X.”) Others have switched mediums and explored the promise of video and all its various-length edits for best social and web consumption. Some have even branched out into podcasts, a format that fits conveniently with many of their consumers’ media habits. One of the easiest ways to stretch your content marketing is to make it native to social media – use the space and tools these channels provide to communicate the same message, without requiring a click-through.

How Social Media Ads Delivered a Massive ROI for This Wedding Venue

in Social Media Marketing, Wineries by Ally Cardello

The family behind Bluemont Vineyard can trace the business’ ancestry back to a small homestead farm in Lincoln in the early 1970s that grew sweet corn, mums, pumpkins, and vegetables. Today, the business has extended into Bluemont, Virginia, where they’re more than a decade into a thriving wine business and produce about 6,500 cases of wine each year. In addition to the wine business, the grounds serve as a prized venue for private groups, particularly for weddings, throughout the year. Bluemont Vineyard made social media ads part of their wedding venue marketing spend and saw a massive 33x return on investment in just one month. Here’s how.

The Project

The Stable at Bluemont Vineyard has a clear selling point over competing wedding venues: the gorgeous panoramic view of Virginia Wine Country. However, in order to get couples there for a site visit, Bluemont Vineyard first has to generate leads, making them an ideal fit for our Newly Engaged Social Media Ads product, using both Facebook and Instagram and their ad networks to target couples who have changed their relationship status to “engaged” within the previous three (or six or nine) months. Combined with other targeting (age ranges, feeder markets, ad types, messaging) and lessons that we know will drive optimum impact for other clients’ newly engaged social ad campaigns, the ads put the venue front and center in newly engaged couples’ social feeds, right when they’re deciding where to host their wedding.

The Results

In just the first month of Bluemont Vineyard’s social ad campaign, they saw 24,005 impressions, 4,210 people reached, 210 clicks, and a whopping 31 leads (brides and grooms who filled out the site inquiry form on their website) generated on Bluemont Vineyard’s website – all thanks to a $400 ad spend, plus our management fees. All told, the first month saw a whopping 33x return on investment. (You can check out the Bluemont Vineyard case study here.)

Our Take

Sometimes, clients ask us: “couldn’t I do social media ads on my own?” And the answer is…yes! Facebook’s ad platform is a self-serve model – anyone can set up an ad account within minutes. If you’re curious, go in and experiment. That said, remember: When you work with us, you’re getting all the knowledge we’ve accumulated through our past campaigns. We’ve also been a fixture in the hospitality marketing world – and specifically, wedding venue marketing – for more than 18 years and understand this business intimately. Finally, the importance of good creative (which we pride ourselves on) is uniquely important in social ads. Imagine this: On TV or in print, Company A spends $500 and runs a great ad. Company B spends $500 for the same space and runs a poor ad. The ad space costs the same, no matter how good or bad the ad is. On social, it’s different. The more engaging your ad is (as deemed by Facebook’s algorithms), the less expensive it is, making smart creative especially important.

Last Thought

It’s important to remember, but easy to forget, that leads have inherent value. No, not every lead converts to a sale, but a lead does give you, the business, the opportunity to continue the conversation with an interested potential customer until you close the deal. Believe it or not, it is possible to calculate the value of an inquiry or site visit, helping you better understand the ROI you’re getting from ad channels, like Facebook ads. Use this simple formula to figure out your numbers, and let it help you guide your ad spending.

How Luxury Hotels Should Use Twitter

in Hotels & Resorts, Social Media Marketing by Kristen Noonan

Twitter may be as culturally relevant as ever, considering the obsession celebrities, athletes, and the president have with the platform, but it’s fallen by the wayside compared to Facebook and Instagram when it comes to hotels’ marketing mix. It shouldn’t command as much of your time as those more popular channels, but it can still add value. Twitter has the power to be a great customer service tool. Here’s how.

It’s Not a Megaphone

There’s a misconception that Twitter is for blasting out messages and talking at your followers, almost like a megaphone. You won’t get much traction using it like that. Your messages will fall on the deaf ears of your overstimulated followers. Instead, listening is what should shape your hotel social media strategy.

Listen to Your Guests

By listening, of course, we mean customer service. The vast majority of your time on Twitter should be spent replying and messaging with people. Your KPI on Twitter isn’t followers; it’s the number of people you can help. Sometimes, people will @mention you directly – those tweets are easy to see and will appear in your notifications. Other times, you’ll have to search for your hotel name (and variations of it) to find people who are talking about your hotel. There’ll be questions, complaints, compliments – address all of them. The person managing your Twitter account should feel empowered to do so. If you reply to a specific tweet, your followers won’t be able to see it in their timelines unless they follow both you and the person you’re responding to – so don’t worry about clogging up their feeds. If you feel more comfortable, you can always take the conversation to DM.

Listen to Others, Too

There’s opportunity to be had even if people aren’t mentioning your hotel specifically, but you have to go out and grab it. Twitter has a very powerful search functionality (twitter.com/search) – just hit “Latest” to sort it by the most recent tweets. With search, you can use queries like “traveling + [your city]” or “things to do + [your city]” or “places to stay + [your city]” to jump in and assist people. We understand that not every hotel has the bandwidth to be engaging with non-guests, but for those that do, it can be a helpful way to get on the radar of travelers who may not have otherwise considered you.

It Only Works If You Stick with It

A customer service–centric Twitter feed is only helpful if someone is actively managing it, so make sure that they’re checking it regularly. Twitter makes it easy to save searches (such as anyone mentioning the name of your hotel, or any variation of it) so you don’t have to type them in manually each time. It’s important to get to these queries as quickly as possible. Many are time sensitive, and responding days later isn’t very helpful. There are some things you won’t be able to solve on Twitter, via DM or otherwise – and that’s OK. Have a special customer service email address ready to share so that you can have deeper conversations within the privacy and space of email.

Examples of Hotels Doing It Right

Here, a concerned guest reached out to Kimpton ahead of their visit to their Washington, DC, property and received a prompt reply to their inquiry. It’s important that the person managing the Twitter feed has this sort of information in-hand, or quick access to someone who does.

London’s The Savoy was tagged in this guest photo and made sure to express their gratitude and offered well wishes, too. This light digital touch is an easy, personal way to show guests that you hear them and appreciate their business.

Hilton often gives tips to travelers, almost like a Twitter concierge. In this case, they responded to someone who didn’t even @mention them – they likely searched for some combination of “travel + suggestions + Boston” and this tweet came up.

Q&A: Wedding Marketing Expert Alan Berg

in Event Venues, Social Media Marketing by Kristen Noonan

Alan Berg has had a long, winding career in the wedding marketing industry. Since leaving his position as the VP of Sales at The Knot seven years ago, he’s become one of the world’s leading event and wedding marketing speakers and consultants. Here, he shares a veteran perspective on a variety of tactics in the wedding marketing mix from social media to reviews to your website and also drops some truths such as the underappreciated value of each inquiry and why getting your inquiring couples on the phone may be the wrong move.

How can wedding venues drive more couples at the top of the funnel and convert at the bottom?

“So there are four steps to getting more sales. Getting noticed, getting them to take an action, having a great conversation, and making the sale. By the time you get an inquiry, there have already been several steps taken. They’ve seen your wedding advertising and/or website and social media. They’ve eliminated most of your competitors from the running. So you need to take those inquiries very, very seriously.”

Do you feel like most wedding venues are not taking those inquiries seriously enough?

“We do a lot of secret shopping in our consulting, and we find that people aren’t responding personally enough. They blame it on the fact that they’re busy. But if you’re the customer, and you’ve cut your choices down to five businesses and just want a real person to respond and take an interest – not copy and paste a reply, not a 10-page PDF, no links – just reply to me like a human being. I always think, why are you dumping this content on us? We just came from your website. If the phone rang, you wouldn’t just start reading from a price list. Why is that OK in an email? It’s not.”

What about the medium that couples use to reach out? Does that matter?

“Millennials are resistant to picking up the phone. Venues always want to get them on the phone, but it’s often the wrong move. If they inquired via email, respond to them via email. 48% of brides and grooms surveyed by WeddingWire expressed frustration when you don’t reciprocate their method of communication. The more channels of communication you give them – filling out a form, texting, live chat, Facebook message, email, phone – the more easily they’ll connect with you. Some businesses like DJs and photographers don’t need to meet with you at all before booking. Others, of course – like if you’re buying a dress or booking the venue – you do. But converse with them to begin on the channel of their choice.”

Let’s switch gears. How can wedding venues market on social media?

“They need to keep their message focused. There’s so little space and such a small sliver of time in which you have their attention. What’s the one thing? Is there a certain date available, maybe Friday or Sunday weddings? A promo giveaway? Create a sense of urgency. Considering that you can target couples by their engagement status, it’s a mistake to not take advantage. You should also cast a wider net than a narrower net. I’d rather throw back some minnows than miss out on some real prospects.”

What’s the biggest mistake you see venues commonly make?

“Venues that don’t reply to inquiries at all. The one thing I thought I’d never have to track [in our audits work for venues] is ‘will they reply?’ I think part of it is that there are so many channels where inquiries can be coming from that staff may not pay attention to all of them. For one client we had recently, a business with six different venues, that we were doing some “secret shopper” testing to see how they handled our inquiries, we received two auto-replies through The Knot – and none at all from the other four. To make it easy, all inquiries should be going to the same inbox.”

Are there any specific, newer tactics you’re seeing that are working well?

“Mobile is still a big opportunity. Venues should be looking at their Google Analytics and seeing how much of their traffic is mobile. Most are at or over 50%. Some places think that they’re OK because their website is responsive, but the experience is just bad. It shouldn’t just work on mobile – it should be great on mobile.”

Any thoughts on how to close the deal?

“If you want more sales, ask for the sale. People get buying signals all the time and they won’t directly ask for the sale. Don’t sell them anything; help them buy. You’re talking because they already like something about you.”

After the event is over, how can reviews help?

“For starters, reviews should be helping you sell from the top of the funnel. Your brand is what people say about you – so reviews really do define your brand. If you’re not paying attention to what people are saying about you on different sites, you’re doing it wrong. Reviews say what you can’t say. They can be openly glowing in a way that you can’t be. According to WeddingWire, one out of every five people will post a review if you just ask once, and one out of three will post one if you ask twice. The biggest problem is that people don’t ask. Some smart venues send a personalized gift to every couple with a handwritten note asking for a review. It sort of guilts them into it. You can’t say ‘we’ll give you a gift if you post a review.’ You give them the gift regardless. You can even give them a custom URL to make it really easy. You can even ask them to post it in the same place twice.”

Is Your Wedding Venue Nailing Your Marketing? Use This Scorecard to Find Out

in Print Marketing by Hawthorn Editorial

Are you confident that you’re doing enough with your wedding venue marketing? We thought through the whole process – from that moment just before the newly engaged couple finds you to the point after the vows have been said, the cake has been cut, and the wedding is over – and took a go at giving you a scorecard to vet your current marketing efforts. You’ll see we reference some of our own products and services throughout and link to some of our other blog posts, but the main goal is to help you take stock of what you’re doing now. It may be particularly helpful as you prepare for peak engagement season. Simply check the items as you go through and tally your score at the end.

Before the Couple Finds You

The question was just popped and the couple may not know what they want yet (some will!) – but they’re looking. This is before they zero in on any one venue, and you’re simply one of many that they’re scrolling through. So, how do you get them to stop and notice you?

___ Optimized presence on wedding websites such as The Knot, WeddingWire, and Here Comes the Guide (12 points)
___ Social media ads targeting the newly engaged (8 points)
___ PR and a presence in bridal mags (5 points)
___ Print collateral for handing out at wedding expos (5 points)
___ Search Engine Optimization (SEO) (5 points)
___ Google Ad Campaigns (2 points)

Once the Couple Has Found You

The couple has started to focus on just a small handful of venues. As they take a closer look at your online presence, you have to be ready – whether they’re browsing via phone or laptop, for a few seconds or 20 minutes.

___ An easy-to-navigate, mobile-friendly website filled with gorgeous imagery (15 points)
___ Strong social media presence (10 points)
___ Content marketing including real wedding blog posts, videos, etc. (5 points)
___ Retargeting ads (4 points)

During and After the Venue Tour

You have the couple in the door – but soon they’ll walk out and be on their way. Venue tours are valuable, but it’s what the couple takes away with them that will give you a little foothold in their life as they make their decision.

___ Event Brochure (13 points)
___ Email Outreach (5 points)
___ Menus, Proposals & Other Print Collateral (3 points)
___ E-brochure (2 points)

During and After the Wedding

Aside from your wedding venue looking spectacular for your couples’ guests, you can also make sure the couples’ guests’ friends see what all the fuss is about. The key here is to have a system for enlisting couples to help spread the word about your venue.

___ Wedding website reviews (3 points)
___ Social media posts, reviews, and tagging (2 points)
___ Custom Snapchat Geofilters (1 point)

Tally Your Venue’s Marketing Score

Altogether, these tactics total 100 points. What’s your score? Do you feel like you’re doing enough? Let us know if we can help you.

 

The Best Catering Website Designs of 2020

in Websites by Kristen Noonan

As a caterer, a professionally designed website is the most important marketing tool you can have. Your prospective customers aren’t using the Yellow Pages anymore, and whether they’re looking for a wedding, corporate, or social event, they’re going to be researching you and your competition online. Websites that convey your fantastic food and services through amazing pictures are quite simply going to be most successful. We’ve been building compelling websites for caterers throughout the country, and during our competitive research, we’ve found several key elements the best websites share. Here’s our take:

4 Features the Best Catering Websites Have in Common

#1: Give people what they’re looking for
Couples shopping for a caterer are trying to establish three things very quickly: whether you do what they’re looking for, whether you’re professional and capable, and whether you’re in their price range. Even if you write like Hemingway, your target audience likely doesn’t care that much about how you got started in cooking, how hard you work, etc. They want to see that you know how to prepare and present sumptuous food for their wedding.

A good website should clearly represent what you do – if most of your work is for weddings, make sure it’s really easy for them to see that. Secondly, a well-designed website is going to establish trust by showing that you are a professional – that your food is great and that you care enough to present it nicely. Whether you put pricing on the site is up to you, but providing sample menus and price ranges are ways to make sure the right prospects are reaching out to you.

#2: High-quality, professional pictures
Large, high-quality photos have a powerful effect on website visitors. Little thumbnails won’t do anymore – today’s wedding shopper wants to scroll quickly and see beautiful detail shots.

The best sites show that you know what you’re doing. Most importantly, the best sites have professional photographs, not blurry iPhone 4 shots or uninspired compositions. For this reason, caterers who feature shots of their work taken by wedding photographers top the list (luckily, most photographers are honored to have their work featured on such websites free of charge and, at most, ask to be credited on the photos.)

SOLUTIONS

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#3: Mobile-Friendly, Mobile-First Design
The Knot’s 2017 wedding industry report, based on a survey of nearly 13,000 couples married in 2017, found that 92% of couples used their phones for wedding planning activities. This underscores the fact that successful websites have to look great and function well not only on a desktop computer but also on phones and other mobile devices. Specifically, users expect to scroll on their phones – it’s become a natural part of their daily lives, and they don’t want to wait long, so the best sites are built with responsive design and are optimized to load quickly for those times when users aren’t attached to high-speed Wi-Fi.

#4: Search Engine Optimization
90% of all website traffic comes from the first page in Google Search, and caterers are no exception. If your company is hidden on page two, your customers won’t find you. The best catering websites contain fresh, keyword-rich content and pay close attention to the other essentials of SEO, such as optimized meta tags, page speed, mobile-friendliness, user experience, and backlinks from other relevant, reputable websites.

Without further ado, we are happy to share this list of what we consider to be strong wedding catering websites out there today to serve as a source of inspiration.

 

Four Catering Websites That Inspire

Global Gourmet

What we like: Beautiful, professionally shot pictures. Interesting combination of smaller and larger photographs and a well-balanced mix of detail and event layout shots. Sophisticated choice of fonts and minimal color scheme. Very easy to navigate. Elegantly styled menus.

What we think could be better: It’s a challenge to find something wrong with this site, but one observation is that you have to scroll quite a bit to get to the text – almost as if the header images are a little too large.

Ridgewells Catering

What we like: Clean, modern design and straightforward sitemap. Very easy to find what you’re looking for from the navigation, whether you’re looking for a corporate event, wedding, or personal celebration. Minimal text makes it easy to skim. Outstanding photography that really gives you a great idea of how talented this catering company is.

What we think could be better: Not much to critique here, besides the lack of sample menus.

OUR WORK

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The Catered Affair

What we like: Custom, elegant design. Header video that adds movement, shows a level of sophistication and helps you imagine yourself in the event. Beautiful pictures. Great use and implementation of venues as a strong show of social proof.

What we think could be better: It can get a little text heavy at times, particularly on the inner pages. The first navigation item is “About,” which goes against our tenet of making the site about the user, not about you.

Kaspars

What we like: The photo quality is amazing and simply mouthwatering. The navigation is streamlined – it’s easy to get around and everything you are looking for is quick and easy to find.

What we think could be better: The “Menus” page falls apart a little bit when viewed on a phone. While gold is probably their branding color, it can be a challenging color on websites. Gold doesn’t glimmer and shine on a screen, so it can feel very brown/orange and is not all that appealing, especially when it’s used in big blocks as it is with the buttons on this site. Contrast this use of gold with the use of it on the Global Gourmet site (above), where it’s used sparingly in the logo and in thin font treatments.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our look at great websites. If your site could use a little love to compete with these, check out our website services!

RELATED READING

Inspiration: The Best Florist Website Designs

in Websites by Kristen Noonan

As a florist who does weddings, a professionally designed website is your most important marketing tool. According to The Knot’s annual wedding report, the “overall look and feel” is second only to budget on the list of most important considerations for a wedding, and flowers are a huge part of that. Since couples primarily shop for florists online, websites that convey beautiful, creative work through amazing pictures are going to be most successful. Florists are arguably the most visual of all wedding vendors, after all! We’ve been building compelling websites for florists throughout the country, and during our competitive research we’ve found several key elements the best websites share:

Three Design Features the Best Florist Websites Have in Common

#1: Minimal text
Couples shopping for wedding florists are trying to establish three things very quickly: whether they like your style, whether they can trust you with the biggest day of their lives, and whether you’re in their price range.

Even if you write like Hemingway, your target audience likely doesn’t care much. They want to see that you know flowers, not words.

First and foremost, a good website represents your style and body of work. Secondly, it establishes trust by showing that you care enough to present your work in a professional, well-designed manner. Whether you put pricing on the site is up to you, but if you’re able to demonstrate that your style is a match and that you’re professional, price becomes much more negotiable. Style and trust can both be conveyed through pictures, with minimal descriptive text.

#2: High-quality, professional pictures
Large, high-quality photos have a powerful effect on website visitors. Little thumbnails won’t do anymore – today’s wedding shopper wants to scroll quickly and see a great breadth and depth of work.

The best sites include a combination of emotional shots, such as joyful bridal parties, and detail shots (e.g., that beautiful centerpiece up close). Most importantly, the best sites have professional photographs, not blurry iPhone 4 shots or uninspired compositions. For this reason, florists who feature shots of their work taken by wedding photographers top the list (luckily, most photographers are honored to have their work featured on such websites free of charge and, at most, ask to be credited on the photos.)

SOLUTIONS

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Break through the noise in a crowded digital landscape

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#3: Mobile-friendly, mobile-first design
The Knot’s 2017 wedding industry report, based on a survey of nearly 13,000 couples married in 2017, found that 92% of couples used their phones for wedding planning activities. This underscores the fact that successful websites have to look great and function well not only on a desktop computer but also on phones and other mobile devices. Specifically, users expect to scroll on their phones – it’s become a natural part of their daily lives, and they don’t want to wait long, so the best sites are built with responsive design and are optimized to load quickly for those times when users aren’t attached to high-speed Wi-Fi.

Four Florist Websites that Inspire

Without further ado, we are happy to share this list of what we consider to be strong wedding websites out there today to serve as a source of inspiration.

Gypsy Floral and Events

What we like: Modern design, professional pictures, and straightforward sitemap. It’s obvious what they do and how to learn more about them.rn design, professional pictures, and straightforward sitemap. It’s obvious what they do and how to learn more about them.

What we think could be better: The home page is a beautiful background slideshow, but the “splash” page with a single link to “Explore” is outdated. It’s much better to help people find what they’re looking for from the home page. At least the link does go directly to the portfolio section, which is the best choice if you’re going to do a single link.

Pollen Floral Design Studio

What we like: Custom, elegant design. Smart use of the blog to keep up to date with recent weddings without having to redesign the site every time a new wedding feature comes through.

What we think could be better: Minor nit, but the green circle with the number in it, while a useful design feature, is used inconsistently from a user experience point of view. For example, on the portfolio page, the top 1/2/3 open up galleries within the page, and when you scroll to the bottom, you see more 1/2/3/4, which you would expect would show you other galleries. Instead, they take you off the page, which is a little confusing.

Zinnia Floral Designs

What we like: Beautiful, professionally shot pictures. Interesting combination of smaller and larger photographs and a well-balanced mix of detail and people shots. Works well on a mobile device. A clear description of the process of working with them (albeit a little verbose).

What we think could be better: The “New Products” link in the “Weddings” menu appears not to have any content on it. Fonts are a little small.

Ginger & Blooms Wedding and Floral Design

What we like: Elegant design, unique header graphic, custom artistic elements, great pictures.

What we think could be better: Not a great site when viewed on a phone. Seems like quite a few clicks to get through to a wedding gallery, so that process could be streamlined a little bit.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our look at great websites. Could your site could use a little love to compete with these?

RELATED READING

Before and After: The Beautiful Transformation of Ayres Vineyard & Winery’s Website

in Photography & Video, Websites, Wineries by Hawthorn Editorial

Ayres Vineyard & Winery’s blossoming relationship with Hawthorn began years ago when they first advertised in Roots, an in-room custom magazine we produce for Allison Inn & Spa in Oregon’s celebrated wine region, the Willamette Valley. Kathleen and Brad McLeroy’s story as the founders of Ayres traces much further back – almost 20 years, in fact – to when the business was just a shared dream. Today, more than 15 years after the first harvest, the winery is known for its pinot noirs and personal, memorable tasting experiences that guests can share with the McLeroys. When this family winery needed a website design that could tell their charming origin story, welcome guests, and of course, sell more wine, they turned to us.

The Old Website

The previous website was, in a word, dated. Between the yellow background color, drop shadows, confusing navigation, and broken functionality (including not being mobile friendly), it was clear that the website had outlived its usefulness. Aside from the many aesthetic shortcomings, the site also didn’t show off any of their brand’s personality or tell a cohesive story – a major missed opportunity.

The Ingredients for the New Website

The client wanted something more polished, that only a professional website designer could produce. They also wanted plenty of white space, which was a welcome request – as big believers in the importance of white space, oftentimes we have to plead its case to clients who don’t initially appreciate its importance within the larger design. In addition, they commissioned a photo shoot prior to the website redesign, so we had excellent imagery to work with, making everyone’s lives easier. Finally, the message they wanted to resonate through the website was simple and clear: they were a down-to-earth, family-oriented, non-corporate winery.

Blending Images to Add Depth

One standout element of this project was the use of collage imaging. Though the images were beautifully composed, we didn’t have access to the high-resolution versions, meaning they wouldn’t look good displayed by themselves across the page. Our solution? We artfully melded together two photos for some pages, and in that, told more of a story than one photo could on its own. The Visit page, for example, features a close-up of a pour on the left side, and the McElroys smiling on the right. At first glance, it looks like an original image, but in fact, it’s the product of two images being blended together.

Focused Product Pages

Most e-commerce pages look a little busy – but that aesthetic would look out of place on what is otherwise a sleek, gorgeous website. Instead, we stripped away the backgrounds from the wine bottle photos, giving them a bold look against the white background, and kept the text minimal. When you click on a bottle, it takes you to a page about that particular wine, sharing the year, a short description, a “Buy Now” button, as well as a specs table. The last element was a key ingredient, especially for wine nerds: We noticed that on other wine websites, they offered all sorts of details on the wine – something that was missing on Ayres’s site. So, we zeroed in on the things that mattered most to oenophiles (vintage, varietal, appellation, etc.) and shared those specs for each one.

A Seamless E-Commerce Integration

Ayres partners with OrderPort Winery Solutions, a third-party e-commerce web store, to handle all their wine orders. We worked to integrate the new website with their system and helped ensure that visitors wouldn’t notice that they were purchasing through what is technically a different website.

Telling a Story through a Timeline

Wineries, like the product they produce, are intensely unique. Everyone who visits Ayres Vineyard & Winery is warmly welcomed, and we wanted the website to give people the same sense. On no other page is this more apparent than the About page, which is built around a timeline, dating back to 1997 when the couple got engaged in the south of France and had the initial kernel of an idea for the winery. We asked them to tell us about the major milestones – when they were inspired, when they bought the property, when they first planted, when the vineyard grew – and helped them tell a meaningful story that visitors will easily be able to browse through, connect with, and appreciate via a simple, cost-effective UX.

Avoiding a “Set It and Forget It” Approach

No business can think of its website as a “build it and forget it” project. For one, there will be changes and additions that need to be made – events to be promoted, landing pages to be created, new wine releases to announce, etc. So Ayres has contracted us as their website design agency moving forward on a small monthly maintenance retainer, which means no headaches for them as together we define the tweaks and adjustments that are needed for their business. Further, any good website should be the gateway to more business, not just a static presence. That means building a digital marketing strategy that gets people to click back to specific pages of the site via tactics such as a blog, social media ads, Adwords, email campaigns among loyal customers, and so on.

Be sure to check out Ayres Vineyard’s new website.

How to Market to 4 Types of Millennial Brides

in Print Marketing by Hawthorn Editorial

Many wedding venue marketers may bemoan the millennial generation with their quick, staccato, and often incomplete requests for information that then require near-instantaneous responses from you. But there’s also so much new opportunity for how to find and engage with today’s millennial brides. A one-size-fits-all marketing strategy has never been a great plan for wedding venues, but that’s particularly true today when appealing to millennial brides. And while no two brides fit perfectly into any one bucket, the four personas we’ve outlined below should sound familiar to anyone who has been involved in marketing a wedding venue. (For the record, we say bride, but this could just as easily be the groom.) Below, we share a particular marketing tactic to focus on when trying to reach each persona.

The “I’ve Been Planning My Wedding Since I Was 6” Bride

This is a bride who knows what she wants. Long before she said “yes,” she was browsing Pinterest, creating Instagram collections, and making notes at her friends’ weddings. She already has a vision in mind; the question is whether your venue fits that fairytale.

Marketing Must-Have: A Killer Website

As soon as she’s engaged, this bride will hit the ground running – and if your website isn’t ready for prime time, you won’t get a second look. The easiest way to catch her eye is a beautiful, thoughtfully designed website. The key ingredient? Photos. The copy will help tell a story, but gorgeous, carefully-selected photos help the bride see herself at the venue and can help you separate yourself from the competition. Be honest in your evaluation of your website: Is it slowing down and engaging brides, leading to site visits, or is it simply one open tab, soon to be closed before she’s onto something else?

The “I Don’t Want to Be Doing This” Bride

While this bride is thrilled with her pending nuptials and the promise of a happy marriage, planning the actual wedding has never really been on her radar. The components of the big day will come together piece by piece and, while of course, she wants a beautiful wedding, she’s likely to follow the path of least resistance.

Marketing Must-Have: Social Media Ads

This bride may not be browsing The Knot or Wedding Wire right after getting engaged, but she’ll still be on Facebook – giving your venue a prime window to reach her before others do. Facebook remains a uniquely powerful channel to reach customers online. For example, you can target couples who are newly engaged, fall within a certain age range, and live in a specific area (or areas), among many other options. And remember: Advertising through Facebook lets you reach people on Facebook.com, on their mobile apps, on Instagram, on their messaging apps, and on the Facebook Audience Network. If you’re not sure you’re up for it, we can do it for you.

The “Someone Else is Really Making the Decisions Here” Bride

This bride is happy enough throughout the wedding planning process, but she’s being steered by a trusted sibling, friend, or parent – making the question of who you’re actually selling to a little murkier.

Marketing Must-Have: Event Brochure

One of the main benefits of getting a bride on-site for a visit is that she’ll walk away with a brochure in hand, giving you a (small) foothold in her world as she weighs her decision. A wedding brochure should be doing many jobs for you, not least of which is making the case to friends and family who may not have been on the site visit. Yes, a strong digital presence is vital, but a brochure has a durability and focus to it that is perfect for sharing with others.

The “I’m on an Abbreviated Timeline, So Let’s Get This Moving” Bride

This bride doesn’t have a year to plan her wedding. Whether by personal choice or the forces of life, she needs to get married sooner and find a venue that can accommodate her and her partner.

Marketing Must-Have: Website Booking Calendar

If you don’t have one already, add a calendar to your website that shows the days the venue is available and already booked. This only works if it’s up to date, so make sure you stay on top of that, or you’ll have to deal with some unpleasant phone calls. We see three main benefits to hosting the calendar on your site: It can get brides thinking about hosting on Fridays and Sundays, you’re saving yourself one step in qualifying the bride, and seeing availability can prompt immediate action to scoop up that spot.

5 Creative Email Marketing Ideas for Hotels

in Email Marketing, Hotels & Resorts by Hawthorn Editorial

Transactional emails are one thing, but you’re probably also doing email marketing campaigns to maintain relationships with your past guests and drive new bookings, too. According to Litmus, over 80 percent of travel email subscribers sign up primarily for promotions and discounts – and they’ve become very savvy at sniffing out what is actually a good deal and what isn’t. With that in mind, here are five ideas to help you carve out your email marketing strategy.

Pre-Arrival Email Filled with What to Do

A week or two before their arrival, send guests a preview of what they can expect – not just in terms of amenities and programming at your property, but also activities and attractions to experience in the greater destination. These shouldn’t just be links that send people to a webpage without any context, but stories that do a good job painting a picture, stoking excitement, and helping the reader imagine themselves there. For example, see what we did with this client’s pre-arrival email.

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Welcome Back Corporate Guests on Their Own Time

Once the meetings and events industry gets back to normal, you’re going to naturally be ramping up your efforts to book more corporate events. So when you do, remember to get the email addresses of the attendees themselves in order to send an email to that list in the week or two following the event to get them to come back as a leisure guest, with a promotional offer. They’ve seen your property (perhaps longingly) through the lens of work, so giving them the chance to come back and do it on their terms is something that’ll appeal to many.

Interest-Based Packages

If you’re able to categorize email lists based on what activities guests partook in during their stay, you can reach them with hyper-targeted emails. For example, maybe someone who golfed at your course during their stay receives an email a few months later with an exclusive, time-sensitive offer for a golf package. Same goes for those who have spent significantly at your spa or partook in a chef’s table dinner. The key, of course, is to not overdo these emails and define the right windows of time when they’re dreaming about having this experience again.

Locking in the Next Trip

Travel planning starts about 90 days in advance, on average, but the wider range is 30 to 180 days, and you certainly know the sweet spot for your hotel. Whatever is right for your property, send guests an email that far in advance of the anniversary of their stay last year. You want to be on their mind when the “dreaming” stage of travel starts, and people are creatures of habit – so it may be tempting for guests to go with what they know (especially if you make it easy) rather than something new. Consider experimenting with ranges of time (in anticipation of their booking) and look at what converts the best.

OUR CLIENTS

Opal Collection

How creative email campaigns extend content reach for this hotel collection

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An After-Visit Survey

We’ve heard from one client whose post-stay survey is so valuable that it drives every aspect of their operations to respond to the ongoing feedback. Take the opportunity for what it is: a chance to get real feedback from guests who just spent a stay with you and can clearly tell you what they really liked (or didn’t like) and why. But in addition to the way it can inform updates to your operations and customer service, there’s a marketing benefit as well: For those who score above a certain threshold in the survey, add them to a drip campaign that sends them a second email encouraging them to submit feedback on review sites and Facebook. Include the links so it’s as easy as possible for them to do so. The ROI on after-visit surveys is longer-term and harder to measure, but you won’t often go wrong gathering and acting on good data.

RELATED READING

WeddingWire Vs. The Knot: For Vendors, How Do They Compare?

in Event Venues by Catherine Shane

The Knot and WeddingWire help couples put together their big day and serve as valuable wedding vendor advertising channels. We spoke with a few savvy vendors about their experience with these two major online wedding marketplaces. Are they worth it? Is it one or the other? How do you succeed? Here’s what they had to say:

Yes, Invest in Both

These services are considered a necessary cost of doing business by most in the industry, and if you’re looking to make a living (or at least a healthy side-gig), you really can’t afford to not be there. For many, all it takes is one wedding to pay for the yearly membership. Plus, the longer you’re there, the more likely you are to notice a compounding effect of more reviews and increased visibility. That said, keep track of your numbers each year by channel, so that one, two, three years in, you can take a look at your return and how valuable each service is to your business.

The Value of a Good Lead

Anecdotally, we’ve heard that while The Knot drives more leads, they tend to be of lower quality. This may be an issue of scale – WeddingWire, while big, doesn’t attract as much traffic as The Knot. Unfortunately, (for the vendors we spoke to, at least) leads from The Knot are often not very qualified, and seem less likely to convert to bookings. In terms of the raw number of conversions, The Knot may be superior to WeddingWire, depending on your business, but you’ll spend time sorting through those leads, too. Remember that your profit per hour can’t just be calculated from the time you spend on the job, but also the time you spent managing leads and prepping.

Respond Quickly (without the Customization)

Since you’re very likely not the only vendor they’re sending an inquiry to, and since you may find that the inquiries you receive lack the information you need to deliver a fully custom response, time is of the essence. Hopefully you already have a boilerplate response to qualify leads no matter where they come from. If not, build one and make sure you fire it off quickly to qualify the lead. Naturally, also include your one sheet with your different pricing options. The point is, you don’t want to spend more than a few seconds on each inquiry so you can weed out those that aren’t qualified or truly interested – and get those that are into your funnel, not your competitor’s.

How Much Should You Invest?

There are different tiers that afford more visibility on both WeddingWire and The Knot. On WeddingWire, they’re referred to as Professional, Featured, and Spotlight, in ascending order of price. On The Knot, they’re Standard, Featured, and Premium. The perks occasionally change, but the bottom line is that you’re paying for increased visibility – and the price depends on the competition for your specific vendor category in your geographic area. Both services will try to hook you with discounts. One key difference: WeddingWire tends to be more expensive, but you get a representative from the company who checks in a few times a year and offers you customized tips, tailored to your needs, to help you increase inquiries and drive bookings. That’s a tough thing to quantify, but it’s certainly an advantage over The Knot’s less personal, more content marketing–driven approach.

How It Shakes Out

One vendor, a New England-based videographer, agreed to share his numbers for 2017 for each service, which were basically representative of his experience since joining in 2015. While these figures are obviously unique to his business, they may help give a sense of the economics driving vendors’ decisions to use these services.

5 Lessons on Wedding Venue Marketing from Design Companies

in Event Venues by Kristen Noonan

Wedding venue marketing relies heavily on selling visuals first. Here, we offer takeaways from design-first brand leaders like Nike and Snapchat.

User experience (or UX) isn’t just about web design. It’s the art and science of thoughtfully considering and designing every touch point a customer has with your brand. The concept of design-first doesn’t mean making things pretty above all else; it means designing things to to accomplish a specific purpose. As a wedding venue, you have many different touch points with a customer, from your listing on a referral site like Wedding Wire to your social media presence; from your brochure to a site visit, and so on. This means you have many opportunities to reinforce your best qualities so you stand out from the competition. It’s something we’re constantly looking as we work with wedding venue and hotel marketers every day.

Here, we look at four companies lauded for their design thinking and share a takeaway from each.

1. Airbnb’s Customer-Driven Approach

Some Silicon Valley companies spread designers across all their product teams or make a single design team that moves from project to project. Airbnb found that both these structures have their faults, so they implemented a new approach: Each product team has one project manager whose sole responsibility is to think like and represent the user. It’s easy to get lost in the lines of code and pixels, but it’s this person’s job to remember and remind his or her team that the most important moments of a customer’s experience happen in-person, so it’s crucial to nail that experience.

Wedding Venue Marketing Lesson

Always put yourself in your customer’s shoes as you create new collateral, update your website, or organize site visits. What information will they want to see right away? How will they want to spend their time with you? How do you want them to feel after they leave that experience? Create around their needs first.

2. The Beautiful Packaging of Apple Products

Whether it’s a Mac, iPhone, iPad, Watch, or any of their other gadgets, you’ll notice that Apple’s packaging is an experience in itself. Space is used very economically, and it’s always easy (and even a little fun) to unpack. Opening your new technology feeds into the anticipation you’re already feeling. In fact, Apple “unpacking” videos have become a YouTube genre in their own right. Talk about a marketer’s dream – people (willingly) watching someone unpack your product!

Wedding Venue Marketing Lesson

Like an Apple product’s packaging, your wedding brochure is ancillary to the purchasing experience. Neither of them are quite the “thing” – in Apple’s case, a shiny new object, and in your case, a beautiful wedding – but they add to the excitement of the experience and convey your aesthetic. When the site visit is over and all the client has in their hands is your brochure, you need it to push them over the edge and commit to your venue. Work with a partner who understands your business and will pay careful attention to the details.

3. How Snapchat Makes Things Easy for the User

Unless you’re in Snapchat’s target demographic, their interface may seem a little abstract, and you may be wondering why they’re on this list. Well, there’s one thing they do exceedingly well design-wise: They optimize for the fewest number of taps and swipes required to complete an action. Take the camera, for instance – on other apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, the camera was always a tap (or two) away. Part of the reason Snapchat was able to make inroads against their competition is because the app opens straight to the camera – no tapping required. That speed, which saves users (at most) about a second each use, is everything. For each new feature they introduce, Snapchat considers how to make it accessible in the fewest number of swipes and taps possible.

Wedding Venue Marketing Lesson

Sometimes web designers make the mistake of taking the user’s attention for granted. That’s a grave error in today’s hyperactive, multiscreen, 100-tabs-open world. Now, we’re not saying you need to cram all your information at the top of your venue’s homepage (please don’t!), but it is important to pare down all that content to just the essentials. When a couple visits your website, what will they be looking for? Always start by prioritizing that content and peeling away everything that isn’t essential.

4. How Nike Stood Out

In Nike’s earliest days, company founder Phil Knight saw rows and rows of competitors’ shoeboxes at stores. While these companies had more prestige than Nike at the time, they all blended together with their bland cardboard color. Knight introduced orange shoeboxes to help his Nike sneakers pop off those shelves, and it worked. That iconic Nike orange is still in use today.

Wedding Venue Marketing Lesson

Zig where the competition zags. When you’re at bridal expos and wedding shows, all the booths will be doing their best to blitz attendees with their offerings. What’s your orange shoebox? Consider the elements that will make your booth stand out. It may even be worth a visit to another expo beforehand so you can make note of what’s working for the successful booths, and what doesn’t seem to be working for the ones that aren’t getting attention.

5. How Chipotle Designs Their Restaurants

Have you ever noticed that when you’re in Chipotle, there aren’t any loud signs pointing out where to stand, order, and pay? Even for first-time customers, there’s no confusion about what to do. The customer experience is central to the space’s design, not an afterthought. The restaurant’s aesthetic – clean, minimalistic, natural-feeling – reflects the menu, but the actual layout is all about the customers.

Wedding Venue Marketing Lesson

When a couple comes to your venue for a site visit, you almost have them – but their presence and attention shouldn’t be taken for granted. Think about your site visits: Do you have a defined plan, from where the prospect parks, to how they’re greeted, what they’re given, and where they go? One potential standout experience: Giving the couple an iPad that’s preloaded with galleries (from your website or a Pinterest board) so you can direct them to a series of images that show what each space can look like fully designed as they walk through your venue.

Project Profile: 360 Destination Group Brand Bible

in Brand Strategy, Destination Marketing Organizations by Hawthorn Editorial

To unify this client’s brand and rally their teams in offices spread across the country, we created this visual document that addresses the company’s big picture – and smallest details.

The Client

360 Destination Group, one of the country’s leading destination management companies and a Hawthorn client since 2016, has been helping corporate event planners put on memorable events for more than 40 years. By having their finger on the pulse of destinations up and down the California coast, Florida, Texas, Arizona, and Chicago, they keenly understand the locales and combine that with their wildly creative eye to bring corporate events to life. The company’s offices in those destinations could sometimes feel isolated from one another, so they came to us to help them unify their brand.

The Project

With mostly autonomous offices all over the country, ensuring that all team members are aligned in terms of strategy and brand is an important challenge for 360DG. As a part of our work as their full-service marketing agency, one of the first big projects was creating this “Brand Bible”: a highly visual, internal-only document that offers a 30,000-foot view of the company – “this is what we’re trying to accomplish,” “this is our voice” – all the way down to the details, like photo requirements, social guidelines, and specific fonts to use. The initial sections orient staff to the history of the company and gives broad context; as you get deeper into the document, it narrows its focus to the nitty gritty for all marketing tactics.

Our Take

When you go through a rebranding process, much of the thinking revolves around communicating this newly crafted messaging to your customers – but what about those internally, within the company? A brand bible gives employees something they can rally behind and reference. It’s not something to memorize; they don’t need to know it like the back of their hand, but having a document employees can turn to when they’re having a moment of doubt about some detail or when they’re being onboarded? That’s a valuable tool to give to your team.

Last Thought

Some big brands have turned their brand bible into something that works as a casually external-facing document, too, maybe in the form of a coffee table book. It’s not meant to be something that’s picked up and closely examined – and certainly not distributed to the masses – but as a nice-looking and inviting page turn in your reception area. It can help clients, potential employees, investors, and other stakeholders get a sense of your brand in an easy-to-scan, effective way.

Project Profile: Opal Collection Pre-Arrival Email

in Email Marketing, Hotels & Resorts by Catherine Shane

The hotel email marketing campaign we deployed for Opal Collection makes sure future guests have great stays – and book ancillary revenue.

Creating content is only half the game; it’s then a question of how you distribute it to get eyes on it. We’ve worked with Opal Collection for three years, producing ongoing content for Opal Unpacked, the destination blog site we manage for them. That’s a lot of content. So we helped Opal Collection put it to use in a new set of pre-arrival hotel email marketing campaigns launching in June, tailored to each of its resorts with content that was originally published on the destination blog site. Guests receive a single email a week before their arrival with three stories covering things to do on and off the resort.

The Client

Opal Collection, the luxury segment of parent company Ocean Properties and a Hawthorn client since late 2005, is known for its 16 elite, luxurious properties located across three East Coast states – Florida, Maine, and New York. These are incredibly prime properties, all set directly on the water (either Atlantic, Gulf, or Adirondack lakes), such as The Sagamore and Lake Placid Lodge in the Adirondacks, Harborside Hotel, Spa & Marina in Bar Harbor, Maine, and a necklace of top Florida beach resorts running up and down both sides of the Florida peninsula. Despite the resorts’ reputation and wide appeal, our client knows leisure travelers often pick the destination first, hotel second so Opal builds brand loyalty and cross-promotional chops through an integrated marketing campaign anchored by the destination blog site and then powered by social media management and a multi-pronged email campaign strategy.

The Project

This isn’t the first hotel email marketing campaign Hawthorn has produced for Opal Collection. We build a monthly Opal-wide campaign to a collection-wide send list, individual property campaigns, and a thread of special groups campaigns – all of which interweave content from Opal Unpacked with strategic packages, promotions, and other conversion-centered CTAs.

The pre-arrival campaigns built for each resort have four primary objectives:

  • Help ensure booked guests have great stays with useful trip recommendations
  • Put the content that we’ve already created to work
  • Build brand loyalty and foster positive online reviews and word-of-mouth
  • Drive ancillary revenue (think: spa, restaurants, on-property programming).

Topics tend to be evergreen and useful for those who are in that pending-trip stage, such as “The Family Reunion Guide to Bar Harbor” or “8 Things Your Kids Will Love About Lake Placid.”

To be sure, this is a lot of content since 16 resorts multiplied by three pieces of unique content each means we’ve pulled 48 unique pieces of content together – of course, for just one hotel, it would be possible with just three pieces of the right content. But the beauty for Opal isn’t just in the four objectives that this pre-arrival campaign delivers on, but that once they’re built, they can run as automated drip campaigns without needing to be touched. (We’ll swap one outcome wintertime for the northern destinations in New York and Maine; otherwise, we expect that the content will be fresh for at least several months.)

Our Take

Email may be the less buzzy older cousin of social, but it remains a massive driver of business. Without revealing exact numbers, the role of email as a part of this client’s content strategy with us has grown significantly each year of the project because the results speak for themselves. Put simply: For hotel management companies and single-property hotels investing in content marketing with us, email is the single most important part of the distribution strategy to ensure ROI.

Last Thought

Yes, planting the seed for guests to book spa appointments or rounds of golf before they arrive is central to this pre-arrival strategy, but in this hotel digital marketing space, you can never overlook the power of reviews. And that’s a core function of this campaign and our other on-resort content work, such as in-room custom magazines. Give guests all the best information and entertaining insight into the hotel and destination to make sure they have an amazing stay, shout about it on social media and in online reviews, and turn into local repeat bookings.

4 YouTubers Luxury Hotel Marketers Can Learn From

in Content Marketing, Hotels & Resorts by Kristen Noonan

The word “YouTubers” may conjure images of the loud personalities that teens are glued to every day after school. And it’d probably be tough to convince you that you could improve your hotel marketing strategy by watching them. But that’s exactly what we’re promising here: actionable lessons in the world of hotel content marketing, taken from YouTubers. Here, we highlight one detail about each channel that you should take note of – and maybe even borrow in your own hotel video marketing efforts. (Breathe easy: You don’t actually have to watch them; we did that for you.)

Lesson #1: Be Helpful Like Yuya

Beauty is one of the most popular genres on YouTube, but nobody has succeeded in the space quite like Yuya, who has more than 21 million subscribers who tune in for her weekly makeup, hair, and other beauty tutorials. The videos are informational, entertaining, and inspirational – three ingredients that explain her meteoric rise. She’s genuinely helpful, but not in an academic way. The videos are conversational; you feel like you’re hanging out with and picking up pointers from a stylish friend.

Takeaway for Luxury Hotel Marketers: Chances are, you have people on-property who are experts in something, whether it’s food, drink, gardening – whatever. Find the right “star” to help you create short, simple, engaging videos to teach one-off lessons. They don’t have to be perfect. In fact, that’s part of the draw of YouTube: the little imperfections that remind the viewer that the people on-screen are human, and have a little room to show their personality along with their expertise. You can’t control whether viewers find your videos funny or cool, but you can control how helpful they are and how much value you’re bringing.

Lesson #2: Be Enthusiastic Like Dude Perfect

If you have an 11-year-old son, chances are you’ve heard of Dude Perfect. For the uninitiated, Dude Perfect is a sports entertainment channel started by a group of friends who made their mark with “trick shot” videos, in which they make long basketball (or Frisbee, or football…) shots over obstacles, from extreme distances, etc. Aside from the impressiveness of the athletic feats themselves, the channel built a following because of the group’s enthusiasm. The cheers, high-fives, fist pumps, and cartwheels that come from succeeding – that’s what make the videos infectious. The satisfaction you get watching Dude Perfect’s videos doesn’t just come from seeing the shots go in – you know they’re going in – but from seeing those over-the-top reactions.

Takeaway for Luxury Hotel Marketers: Not everyone has the charisma to succeed on video. Maybe audio (podcasts) or the written word (blogs) are better suited to your talents. The people who light up a room in person aren’t guaranteed to do well on camera, just as you shouldn’t necessarily write off the introverts on your team because you think they won’t connect with viewers. Whoever is starring in your videos must have a natural enthusiasm. Otherwise, who will watch?

Lesson #3: Be Consistent Like Jake Paul

He may be many parents’ nightmare, but Jake Paul is doing something right: he’s remarkably consistent. As a vlogger (short for video blogger), Jake uploads videos several times a week about his life. His legions of followers watch them by the millions, giving his channel numbers comparable to network television shows. There are plenty of other reasons for his success, but Jake’s consistency gives his followers something new to share with their networks every few days, and means that his channel is treated more favorably by the YouTube algorithm. The consistency also sets the expectation for his followers, so they know when to tune in next.

Takeaway for Luxury Hotel Marketers: Consistency is a good rule of thumb, regardless of medium – email newsletter, on-property schedule of activities, etc. – but we know that it can be tough to generate video ideas on a regular basis. “Regular basis” for Jake means every few days, but for you it could mean every week, or even every month. They don’t have to be big productions, either – it’s easier to document (as Jake does with his vlogs) rather than purposefully create. Why not experiment with live video? On Facebook and Instagram, it’s as easy as hitting a button to start broadcasting to your followers.

Lesson #4: (Polished) Rawness Like Casey Neistat

Casey Neistat is one of YouTube’s most well-regarded creators. He has oscillated between making insanely successful one-off videos (like this particularly memorable one, in which he snowboarded with the NYPD during a snowstorm) and a daily vlog, chronicling the building of his startups. His videos have running themes and storylines, but they’re also self-contained stories in themselves, with beginnings, middles, and ends. While he’s developed a gorgeous signature aesthetic for his videos, they’re also peppered with raw moments of him saying (or starting to say) the wrong thing, the camera dropping, and other small missteps. Rather than detract from the story, these things add to it – because they remind you that this is a real person, living a real life.

Takeaway for Luxury Hotel Marketers: Those authentic little moments in video when things go a little off script aren’t liabilities – they’re assets. In today’s media landscape where “authenticity” reigns, not every video you publish has to be super polished, even if you’re marketing a luxury hotel. Showing off your resort’s true identity may be what people will value most, and formats like point-of-view videos or live video on social are natural spots where you can – and should – be less polished.

10 Steps to Nailing an Original Wedding Venue Photo Shoot

in Event Venues, Photography & Video, Print Marketing, Social Media Marketing by Hawthorn Editorial

If your wedding venue recently had a big renovation, your old photos are looking a little tired, or it’s just been a few years, it may be time to hire a photographer to do an original shoot of your venue. These shots will make your marketing team’s job easier, as they’ll better reflect your property and be specifically composed to portray it in the best light, as opposed to a real event, in which certain elements out of your control. Whether the photos will be used on your website, in your event brochure, or as part of some other wedding venue collateral, remember that for many, this will be the only window into your venue. It could be a trusted friend of the bride looking through the photos, potentially swaying her decision. So, these shots must bring your venue to life for every new set of eyes.

Here are some tips to help the photographer capture the photos that’ll put a punctuation mark on your wedding venue marketing and help you capture bookings.

Before the Shoot

Step 1

Create a shot list and cover it with the photographer ahead of time. Some shots you’ll want to capture include scene-setting photos of the landscapes or items that are significant to the property (for example, a grove of trees, a certain garden, plaques and/or signage inside). These detail shots can work nicely in marketing material placed next to a room shot or wide-angle photo of the entire building.

You’ll also want to have each room and outdoor setting photographed from multiple angles. You may see things during the editing process and realize a certain angle is better on camera than in person, or vice versa. And also be sure to get shots of signature cocktails and dishes in the property’s restaurant.

Step 2

Build out a timeline for the shoot and run it by the photographer, so you can stay on task and don’t rush through the styling piece just to “get the shot.”

Step 3

Have your photographer hire a model bride and groom – they don’t have to be in every shot, but it gives the photos a dimension that scene-setting shots can’t.

Step 4

Walk the grounds the day before the shoot, looking for areas that shine due to a particular season or time of day.

Step 5

Make a list of areas that need to be attended to or cleared of clutter. Ex: electronics, miscellaneous electrical cords, stray nails, unsightly trash cans, etc.

Step 6

Schedule an assistant to be with you on the day of the shoot for moving items in and out of shots, staging props, fluffing pillows, etc. This is essential. A second set of creative eyes will help you capture everything on your list effectively.

During the Shoot

Step 7

Always shoot the venue’s view 360 degrees – one straight-on shot can be deceiving, and it’ll help give couples a broader idea of the venue.

Step 8

Consistently look around for any clutter, especially miscellaneous electrical cords, cable boxes, plastic trash cans, etc. and move them out of the shot.

Step 9

Capture rooms, especially lobbies, both empty and with movement.

Step 10

Spread your focus. Capturing different rooms, architecture, and landscapes are important, but so are the details. Look for small items significant to the property, such as artwork on the walls, the glint of light in the elaborate chandelier overhead, etc. Study the way guests move throughout the space and consider what is eye-catching to them.

BONUS: Always Produce a Signed Contract

If your relationship with a top photographer partner in your area means the “price” of this shoot is in ad trade or some other agreement that does or does not include a cash transaction, you may brush off the idea of a signed contract. Don’t. Particularly since you’re likely working with a top partner, it helps make sure this shoot doesn’t create a rift by clearly outlining the expectation for both of parties as well as what rights you have to the images.

United States copyright laws state that artists own all rights to their created images and can sell/transfer rights to clients and/or agencies. Most questionable negotiations historically default in favor of the artist. Even a minor use or modification of the art/photograph require the artist’s permission. It is important to remember that your business is essentially licensing, not buying, an image from the artist, unless explicitly stated on the contract. Licensing can be defined as “a legal agreement granting permission to exercise a specified right or rights to a work within certain usage guidelines.” Your fee for “licensing” the image(s) may be as simple as ad trade or free exposure, but no matter the agreement, it is important to understand the terms of the usage and agree with your photographer partner in writing what the scope of those rights are.

How and Why Your Luxury Hotel Should Use UGC

in Destination Marketing Organizations, Social Media Marketing by Kristen Noonan

Luxury hotels develop marketing strategies to ensure that their property looks and is portrayed just right, exactly as they (or their hotel marketing agency) planned, so it’s understandable that the prospect of using user-generated content (UGC) – in all its unprofessional, unpolished, sometimes off-kilter glory – can be a little scary. However, according to research firm L2, hotels that integrate UGC into their Instagram feeds generate six times the engagement over those that don’t. So, not only can it be done – the hotels we profile below prove it – it should be done, as part of any well-rounded hotel marketing strategy.

From a devoted UGC microsite to a defined UGC gallery that’s an essential part of W Hotels’ photo galleries, here are three ways top luxury hotel brands are integrating UGC with marketing strategies that align with their very high-end brands.So you think luxury hotels can’t use user-generated content (UGC) because it’s not polished enough? Take some notes from the Four Seasons, Hyatt, and W Hotels.

1. W HOTELS UTILIZES UGC IN THE FORM OF GUEST PHOTOS

Every luxury hotel brand spends a fortune on the meticulously set up room and architectural shots of their properties. Unfortunately, we all know that these polished marketing photos don’t always reflect reality. W Hotels has an interesting approach to this dynamic. When you’re browsing properties on their website, there are two photo galleries for each: one, full of professional photos, and another, called Guest Gallery, which comprises photos from guests – shots of rooms, window views, close-ups of (real!) food, and more. They even include the original poster’s caption, Instagram username, and the photo’s date.

Takeaway for Hotel Marketers: Both professional and UGC photos have their place, but keep in mind, the younger the consumer, the more easily they can tell the difference. Give people the chance to peel back the curtain and see your property through the eyes of other guests – they’ll appreciate it.

2. HYATT AND THEIR USE OF USER-GENERATED CONTENT VIA SOCIAL MEDIA

Hyatt has a full microsite dedicated to UGC that’s built around their hashtag, #WorldOfHyatt. On the creation side, this allows guests to simply use the hashtag to be included on the microsite (though there’s a filtering process) or, for those without an Instagram account, upload to the microsite directly. People browsing the site, considering staying with Hyatt, can sort by different Destination Inspirations like “Family Friendly,” “Beaches,” and “Golf,” giving it an almost Pinterest-like feel for those in the dreaming phase of the traveler journey. Visitors can also narrow their searches by sorting by locations and brands.

Takeaway for Hotel Marketers: UGC may originate on social media, but that doesn’t mean it has to stay there. While the resolution may not be high enough to include in your print collateral, don’t be afraid to incorporate UGC photos on your website.

3. FOUR SEASONS AND THEIR SUCCESSFUL UGC PHOTO CONTEST

Even a brand as buttoned up and devoted to evoking luxury as Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts sees the value – and power – of UGC as a part of their social media marketing strategy. Focus on Four Seasons (and the accompanying hashtag, #FocusFSchallenge) was a relatively straightforward UGC photo contest. And yet thousands submitted entries. Perhaps wooed by the hefty prize: Three winning photographers each were awarded a six-day vacation to two different Four Seasons properties. While other hotels do contests with a primary focus of getting guests to promote the property to their friends, Four Seasons took the smart step of defining ways to then use that content, including sharing some of the images with their more than 600,000 Instagram followers.

Takeaway for Hotel Marketers: Some people will use your hashtag, but if you’re hoping for a lot of engagement and, in particular, harnessing those who are staying at your hotel at the moment, you have to add both on-property marketing to make them aware of the promotion and an eye-catching incentive to encourage guests to take that extra step.

How Wedding Venues Can Simply Calculate the Value of a Site Visit Inquiry

in Event Venues, Websites by Kristen Noonan

Someone fills out a form on your website, expressing interest in hosting their wedding with you. Do you know how much that site visit inquiry is worth? How about when you actually host a site visit? Do you know easily and quickly how much that site visit is worth based on how many convert into clients?

If not, we’ve got you covered. After answering just four questions, there are a couple of simple calculations you can perform to figure out how to put a dollar value estimate on each step in your sales funnel. From there, you can dive deeper to figure out how different marketing tactics for your wedding venue are performing, based on how qualified those leads are.

The end result is a simpler, smarter, more informed marketing plan that you can tackle, regardless of how much time you have to devote to marketing.

Step One: Answer These Four Questions

For any of these questions, feel free to answer for the trailing 12 months, the previous calendar year, or an average – whatever method you choose, just make sure you’re consistent with it for each question. Know these will be estimates and we’ll get into vetting how qualified the inquiries are once you’ve done the quick calculations.

1) How Many Site Visit Inquiries Do You Receive Each Year? Note: Make sure you consider all sources – phone calls, emails, website inquiries, referral sites like Wedding Wire, and even in-person. Remember, estimates are fine.

2) How Many Site Visits Do You Do Each Year?

3) How Many Weddings Do You Book Each Year?

4) How Much Revenue Do You Generate Per Wedding, on Average?

Step Two: Calculate the Value of a Site Visit Inquiry

Now that you’ve answered the questions, we’ll use an example to help guide you through the calculations. Let’s call the venue “Wedding Venue A.” (Creative, we know.) In 2018, Wedding Venue A:

•  Received 500 site visit inquiries
•  Conducted 100 site visits
•  Booked 20 weddings
•  Generated $10,000 per wedding, on average

Here’s the equation you’ll use:

In the case of Wedding Venue A, here’s how it breaks down:

(20 booked weddings ÷ 500 site visit inquiries) * $10,000 average revenue per wedding = The value of a site visit inquiry is $400 ((i.e., each site visit inquiry is worth an average of $400)

Step Three: Calculate the Value of a Site Visit

As you would expect, it’s a very similar equation used to find the value of a site visit:

In the case of Wedding Venue A, here’s how it breaks down:

(20 booked weddings ÷ 100 site visits) * $10,000 average revenue per wedding = The value of a site visit is $2,000 (i.e., each site visit is worth an average of $2,000)

Step Four: Qualify Sub-Segments of Your Inquiries

The figures above represent a great starting point, but you can choose to go deeper. The key to this step is knowing where your actual brides first learned of your venue – then you can perform the same calculations based on those segments.

Now that you know how to perform the calculations, you could get a deeper look into the numbers by segmenting and tracking prospects by any number of factors – like what channel attracted their interest.

For example, if you segment prospects by channel – an ad on social, a Google search, an email campaign – you could more wisely allocate your marketing spend. You may see that prospects acquired via social ads have a much higher conversion rate than those acquired via Google AdWords campaigns, for example, and decide to shift some of your ad budget around accordingly.

Now, Use the Calculations to Evaluate Your Marketing Tactics

Now that you know how to value site visit inquiries and site visits, it may shift how you view ad spends. If you spend $300 on targeted Facebook ads (and we can help here, by the way) and get in front of thousands of engaged couples, it’d take a single site visit inquiry for the campaign to return a 1.5X ROI.

Suddenly, when you start viewing the process in those terms, you realize that your website is much more than a pretty vanity presence – it’s a real business driver that should be actively capturing leads. Speaking of capturing leads: Make sure you have a form built into the weddings page of your website, rather than just an email address or phone number. This reduces the friction required for the bride or groom to make their first contact with you and can begin to help qualify them, saving both parties time.

Bonus: Don’t Miss the Hidden Takeaways in the Numbers

Finally, consider looking at the raw numbers you provided for the four questions above as the skeleton of a sales funnel. Returning to Wedding Venue A’s metrics:

•  Received 500 site visit inquiries
•  Conducted 100 site visits
•  Booked 20 weddings
•  Generated $10,000 per wedding, on average

Sure, they were able to book 20 weddings last year, but they may look at that 20% site visit conversion rate (20 weddings ÷ 100 site visits) as lackluster, and aim to improve it in the following year by rethinking how they conduct site visits and what they can do better.

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