What do you think the most important focus-point of your wedding venue marketing effort needs to be? If you said your Google My Business listing, then you are 100 percent correct. It can actually be more impactful than your actual company website.
So, why is your Google My Business listing so important?
It’s quite simple, actually. Google wants to provide its users with the most accurate information regarding anything they search for on the internet, including information about local businesses. The information contained within GMB profiles is the information that Google uses for everything search-results related.
Google is the number one search engine on all devices – from desktop home searches to mobile searches while on the go. Having your information listed in its indexed directory is step one to being discovered. Step two involves optimizing your listing so it ranks high in the results – both Search and Maps.
It’s important that the wedding venue marketing focuses on regular search and mobile search, as they can both drive new customers to your wedding venue. Your Google My Business profile also offers you several ways to communicate with, and convert, interested prospects into completed wedding venue bookings. This is done through things like appointment scheduling and chat – all of which are available directly through your listing.
There are multiple ways we are able to enhance your GMB listing in order to help grow your business, and we are going to highlight five tips below that are highly effective at attracting new wedding venue customers.
1. Optimize Your Google My Business Description
In order to experience amazing wedding venue search engine optimization results – AKA top rankings on Google – you need to optimize your Google My Business description. It needs to tell your story (to help attract and convert customers) and it needs to help get your listing to show up in the results (by helping to tell Google what your business does).
Your GMB description is shown right below your reviews, which are typically the first part of your listing that a potential prospect will engage with. So, the description is located in prime real estate.
There is only a limited amount of character space allowed (750 in total) so it’s important to understand how to take advantage of all available rooms. In the Knowledge Panel, only the first 250 characters will show up, so this is something else that needs to be taken into consideration when writing the business description.
The most important search phrases and location-identifying terms relevant to your wedding venue need to be included toward the beginning while not appearing to be spammy. Don’t feel overwhelmed – we are experts at writing descriptions that thrive in the organic results.
Following Google’s guidelines when writing descriptions is very important – they often review them manually. The last thing you want to experience is a manual Google penalty. That can result in significant drops in traffic.
2. Ask for and Respond to Wedding Venue Google Reviews
The wedding venue Google reviews on your listing are going to be the first thing potential customers click on when they discover your business. Reviews are important for any business, but especially when it comes to a wedding venue.
Poor reviews, or lack thereof, will quickly cause a potential customer to leave your listing and engage with the next available option. Let’s assume every customer that rents your wedding venue have an amazing experience – you need to catch them while they are still feeling the excitement.
We have several effective methods to help ask for, and secure reviews from your clients right after the event. Not only does this result in a higher capture rate, but it also helps attract more in-depth reviews filled with emotion and passion.
These are the kinds of reviews that help book your wedding venue.
Why?
Consumers trust third-party reviews from complete strangers the same way they would trust a review from a close friend. A wedding is a once in a lifetime experience, so booking the perfect wedding venue is one of the most important aspects of wedding planning.
Reviews that go above and beyond will help you convert more leads and eventually more bookings. You also want to make sure you take the time to reply to every review. This really helps to build consumer trust.
When your reviews give off that one-on-one attention vibe it gives the potential customer the feeling that you are going to be there to ensure that their experience is the same – amazing. It only takes a few minutes, and those replies do a wonder, helping to build your wedding venue image.
3. Book More Wedding Venue Dates Using Appointment Links
Did you know that you can set up bookings directly via your Google My Business listing? This is an incredibly effective wedding venue local marketing tool that can help you convert leads that are hot and ready to take action.
Booking links can be enabled right in the GMB settings, and this allows interested consumers to book a time to come visit your wedding venue without even leaving your Google My Business profile.
This is yet another reason why a fully optimized GMB profile can be so effective. Oftentimes you can create a listing that sells your wedding venue to the point that the interested party books an appointment to check it out on the spot. Then, it’s up to you to close them when you have them face-to-face.
During our optimization process, we will configure this option for you and all you have to do is sit back and watch appointments to view your wedding venue roll in.
4. Publish Posts to Improve Your Wedding Venue SEO
Google My Business recently announced that it would allow businesses to post updates and news directly on their listing, and in addition to the listing itself, they can appear in your Maps listing as well as in the Knowledge Panel.
Publishing posts to your GMB listing is a smart strategy to help your wedding venue SEO, simply due to their ability to help you attract more clicks and interest. While they won’t contribute to your wedding venue SEO the same way the blog posts on your website do, they do help to improve other aspects that directly do help your search visibility.
This is an opportunity to post news and updates relevant to your wedding venue, announce open house tours, or just share images from previous events. Think of these posts as little social media style updates, similar to a Facebook feed. You will want to take the fact that posts disappear after seven days into consideration, so plan your posting accordingly. If you need them to disappear sooner than seven days you can adjust for that in the settings before you publish it.
There is also a word count limit, capping posts at 300-words. These are designed to be a way to make announcements and share information. This isn’t the place for long-form, optimized content.
Think of posts as another way to occupy real estate in the Google search results – via the Knowledge Panel and Maps. Anytime you can attract more attention it’s an opportunity to increase your traffic, leads, and ultimately bookings.
5. Communicate with Your Customers Directly with Messaging
In order to close more bookings, your wedding venue company marketing must focus on communication – across all formats. You might receive phone calls, emails, contact form submits – and you need to be able to provide answers to questions and address common objections if you want to convert more wedding venue bookings.
You also need to realize that not everyone likes traditional communication. For example, many consumers would rather text than talk on the phone. This is an increasing trend, and Google took action – giving you the ability to enable messaging directly from your Google My Business profile.
In our opinion, this is a gesture you need to enable. If not, you are giving those that prefer to communicate this way a reason to find another wedding venue. It allows them to easily communicate with you via their cell phone. This can help your inbound inquiries increase dramatically.
It’s simple to set up. All you have to do is enter in the cell phone number you want to handle your replies through, verify the number, and then set up a custom welcome reply – that is it. Now you offer your potential customers a way to easily communicate with your business – in a way many prefer. Final Thoughts
Google is a platform that presents you with an opportunity to place your business directly in front of customers looking to rent a wedding venue. In order to do that, though, you need to make it easy for them to find you.
It all starts with a wedding venue marketing campaign structured around the optimization of your Google My Business listing. When done properly, it results in exposure at the top of the Google Search and Google Maps results.
Attracting interested prospects to your GMB listing allows you to interact with them and present information about your wedding venue, helping to push them towards committing to a booking.
Contact us today to learn how we can help improve your online visibility on Google and attract new bookings for your wedding venue. We are more than happy to explain our process and give you a free online marketing analysis and audit.
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