Social media must be part of your wedding venue marketing strategy, but with so many options available when it comes to the platforms available, you need to focus your time and effort on the ones that deliver the best results – secured bookings.
To create an effective wedding venue social media marketing plan, you need to have clearly defined goals. What do you want to accomplish on social media? The main benefits of running active social media profiles for your wedding venue includes:
- Generate high quality leads interested in booking a venue for an upcoming wedding
- Convert warm leads into signed booking contracts via second-touch marketing on social media
- Grow a large social media following to leverage for social proof
Whatever your specific goals are, they need to be very clear. Next, you need to know who you want to target via your social media content. This includes:
- Wedding parties searching for a venue in your geographical location
- Local wedding planners
The most successful social media marketing strategies target the correct audience and convert that audience into its goals. To help your wedding venue succeed on social media we have highlighted five tips that when followed, will help you achieve all of your goals and contribute to a booked-out venue with a high demand for future available dates.
1. Be Active on the Correct Social Media Platforms
You have to know what social media platforms to be active on, and for a wedding venue, there are three that you want to be sure to include in your social media marketing strategy. Each one caters to a different audience and requires a specific approach.
- Facebook: An active Facebook page is a great way to be found locally, but it’s also one of the first social profiles a prospect is going to look for when they discover your wedding venue. Fill your feed with incredible videos and images. Over time you will see many tags appearing on your post helping to draw attention.
- Instagram: Instagram is a social media platform your previous guests, as well as prospects, will follow. This is also a great opportunity to attract tags by always including a call-to-action in your caption. Something as simple as “tag someone that would love to have their wedding here” can be directly responsible for generating warm leads.
- Pinterest: This is the most popular social media channel when it comes to anything wedding-related, with almost every bride-to-be having a “wedding board” that features images of every aspect of a wedding they desire. Pinning high-quality images that feature an intelligent tagging strategy can get you found on this platform. You may also want to consider running a paid campaign to attract targeted prospects.
2. Use Visual Content to Attract Engagement
The eyes are the gateway to attracting interest for your wedding venue, and posting visual content needs to be your social media strategy. Pictures, and a lot of them, are what prospective clients want to see.
They need to look at pictures and be able to picture their wedding in that setting. You cannot post amateur or low-quality images and expect them to make a strong impression. Spend the money to hire a professional photographer if you don’t have current images.
One mistake we often see is a venue uses old pictures that are 10 years old and when the potential client does an in-person visit they are disappointed because they were not a good reflection of the current property.
When a real estate agent is listing a luxury property they hire the best photographer available and creates images that sell the home. An expert photographer’s ability to create images that are visual masterpieces can help you convert a much higher percentage of tire-kickers into highly interested prospects.
You can then take the professional images and use a free tool like Canva to adjust their sizes for different social media channels. Make sure you use the suggested sizes for each social platform. The last thing you want is distorted images due to them being the wrong optimized size.
3. Leverage Social Media to Build Relationships with Your Followers (Potential Clients)
One of the most effective ways to build strong relationships on social media is by providing value. Instead of only posting captions that invite the individual to submit an information request form, create content that sparks engagement.
From wedding statistics and interesting information to questions that ask your followers to tag someone that would love to have their dream wedding at your venue. Try to maintain a 1:5 ratio between promotional posts and those that are pure information and value.
If you need some idea of what you can share with your social media followers beyond just images of your wedding venue here are some suggestions to help get your creative gears turning:
- Videos of past wedding receptions (with approval from the wedding party)
- Blog posts
- Helpful articles sourced from reputable publications
- Client testimonials
- Funny wedding-themed memes
- Polls and surveys
- Answers to frequently asked questions
The more genuine your content is and the less promotional, the stronger your relationship will be with your followers. A strong relationship is what results in more likes, comments, and shares, which in turn gets your wedding venue in front of a much larger audience across social media.
4. Create Advocates Across Social Media
Some of the most effective marketing your wedding venue receives will not come from your own internal or external effort, but rather from referrals and word of mouth, and not necessarily from only past clients either.
You always want to make sure each client is entirely satisfied at the end of an event, because the happier they are, the more likely they will refer your wedding venue to friends and family. Ask permission the share images from their event across your social media accounts and be sure to get their social media profiles and handles so you can tag them in the posts.
Doing this will often result in shares and an incredible amount of engagement, as wedding guests will begin to like the posts, add comments, and tag other guests. This simple strategy can get your posts a lot of organic exposure and draw more eyes to your venue.
Before you know it, many guests start to mention your wedding venue in conversation and you create an army of advocates that are constantly praising your location and encouraging others to consider it for their upcoming wedding.
You should also take time to connect with local influencers in the wedding industry. From wedding planners to wedding bloggers, these individuals could potentially put your venue in front of a very warm prospect pool. Reach out and make initial contact on social media and then invite them to come to take a personal tour of your location.
5. Engage in Conversations
Conversations on social media are what develop into an interest and open the line of communication, from phone calls to requests to view the venue. You cannot just post content and let it sit, expecting it to generate interest on its own.
Social media is an interactive ecosystem, so you need to interact with the people that express interest in what you share across your social media platforms. Replying to comments and questions or simply thanking someone for following you is a great way to kick off a conversation.
When you stop thinking of social media as just a sales channel and marketing tool you will begin to use it for what it’s the most effective at – making connections and sparking discussions.
Being active on social media in your comments and DMs (direct messages) makes your wedding venue feel more human, and when followers sense that content is being shared by a person and not just a faceless wedding venue they will be more likely to continue to follow you and continue to engage through conversations.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, a wedding venue social media strategy that involves quality content and a focus on relationship building has the potential to deliver the best results. Content that is too promotional or reads like an advertisement isn’t as effective at pulling in potential clients.
Social media provides you with multiple platforms to tell your venue’s story, from highlighting its most popular features to having the potential client envision their dream wedding taking place at your venue.
Remember, a wedding is an event that requires every little detail to be perfect. The most engaging content you can share on social media is visual, with high-quality images and breathtaking videos.
If you would like to learn more about our full-service wedding venue social media marketing or have any questions, please feel free to reach out and we will be happy to answer your questions and discuss how we can help your business grow online. Our wedding venue marketing experts specialize in driving lead generation and venue bookings, helping you maintain a fully booked calendar of events.
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