How to increase wedding bookings with social media
Love it or loath it, social media is taking over the world. With 2.3 billion active users, it’s a marketing channel that’s become too large to ignore. It’s a great marketing channel, and an ideal one to attract couples to your hotel wedding venue.
We have looked into four of the most popular social media channels, and outlined how you could use each to potentially increase wedding bookings at your venue.
Facebook continues to be the most popular social media platform with 1.71 billion users. There’s numerous ways to get the most value out of your Facebook profile to increase wedding bookings at your venue:
- Utilise your cover photo- you could advertise your wedding packages or feature photography from a previous wedding to showcase your services.
- Frequently posting updates, engaging content and videos will increase your chances of appearing in your follower’s news feeds.
- Sharing third party content such as popular wedding forums and expert magazines will gain you recognition and credibility. It may also help you form relationships within the industry which could lead to future collaboration or third party promotion.
- Competitions, whether a simple ‘like & share’ or a more sophisticated app, could potentially allow you to reach a phenomenal number of people, while also gaining their details so you have the opportunity for direct marketing in the future.
- Facebook’s targeted advertising allows you to serve your ads to specific people. E.g. engaged couples within a certain distance of your venue. You also don’t have to throw a lot of money at it- you might be surprised the reach you’ll get with a small budget.
Images and video can really sell a wedding venue and Instagram is all about visuals. With 90% of users younger than 351, and with the majority of people getting married also in this age bracket, Instagram is an essential platform for all wedding venues.
Instagram is fun and should be used to showcase yourself as an approachable and welcoming venue. Use hashtags such as #TransformationTuesday to show how your venue looks before and after décor preparations have been made, or #TBT (throwback Thursday) to showcase previous weddings and the quirky ideas various couples have used.
As well as being a resource for potential brides & grooms searching for their dream venue, Instagram should also be used to interact and network with other vendors and wedding magazines by tagging them in your posts and highlighting them to your followers. These kind of partnerships are highly valuable and shows that you are actively involved in the wedding community.
Another image based platform, Pinterest is a quirky way to engage with brides in particular, and establish yourself as a resource- not only as a venue but in other aspects of their wedding such as invitations and wedding favours too. Create multiple boards relevant to your own venue and to other vendors in the industry. These boards can be used to pin real life wedding images from your website, which in turn drive visitors back to your site where they can obtain further information. As well as promoting your own venue, Pinterest is a prime forum to credit other businesses through tagging and pinning making it a great networking opportunity.
Through 140 characters or less, this real time social platform is a fun way to interact with potential customers and showcase your wedding venue. By using popular wedding hashtags, you can increase your visibility to engaged couples. Like the other social channels mentioned, Twitter too is a great way to credit other vendors or share funky wedding ideas by retweeting. It’s a great idea to tweet current news, blogs and photos of your venue and link back to your website to increase exposure and drive traffic.
A common mistake businesses make is to spread themselves too thin across as many social platforms as they can. You don’t need to have a presence on them all- choose one or two and do them really well.
Determine which channel your target market is most active on and base your social strategy around this. Each campaign may vary and you may decide particular platforms work best on different days or depending on the campaign. The most important thing is to not give up if your initial results aren’t as expected – it’s all about trial and error.
Are there other social media channels you find effective to increase wedding bookings at your venue? We’d love to hear your feedback below!
Sources:
1Brand watch
