Weddingwire, talk me down

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rickryan.com

DJ Extraordinaire
ODJT Supporter
Dec 9, 2009
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Hendersonville, TN
www.rickryan.com
The WW has just sweetened the pot a bit. She's offering me a 50% discount, or $225/month. I have to admit, I'm REALLY tempted. I spoke with my venue manager friend last weekend, who said they've historically gotten most of their leads from WW, like 500/year. Somebody talk me down off the cliff or tell me to jump.......
 
Send me $225 a month and I'll get you the same results as WeddingWire gets me. Imagine... all this for $2700 a year!

FireShot Capture 075 - Weddings, Wedding - WeddingWire.com - www.weddingwire.com.png


Don't be fooled thinking those are great numbers. So far in 2020, they've delivered me exactly 11 inquiries. Most of them couldn't reply to the easiest of questions: "Where is your wedding reception taking place"?
 
Yea, I ran DJ ads with them and TheKnot for about 8 years and the results were always spotty. It pretty much paid for itself, but that's about all. I've heard though that they generate a lot of venue leads, but since they screwed up the search mechanism (they lump oneonta in with all the birmingham venues), it's questionable. I asked the rep to tell me how many leads a specific competitor has gotten in the past 90 days. Let's see if she at least answer that one.
 
Remote, faceless and monetarily motivated generation of your potential customer sources is likely to result in faceless and remote opportunities.

Unless your client base is of the "Cheap is better segment", The kNOT & WW won't likely be a profitable investment.

Good Luck with your decisions.
 
You should spend the money!

That way you will be able to make a thread on here a year from now about how crappy Wedding Wire is because the ROI sucks, but at least it was a tax deduction! :)

All it takes is one good booking that came from wedding wire to pay for the ad itself for your venue, so what is there to lose? ...
 
Remember post 13?


Or Post 14 here


Or even this thread


If that doesn't work take Rickys advice ;)
 
Rick Ryan Point of View in 2017 in regards to Wedding Wire



Rick Ryan in 2020: Should I pay Wedding Wire again? :scratchhead: 🤔

That's my hesitation but, in all fairness, they seem to be better at generating leads for venues than they do for DJs.
 
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All it takes is one good booking that came from wedding wire to pay for the ad itself for your venue, so what is there to lose?

You sound like the WeddingWire reps.
 
Actually it takes many more than 1 WW generated booking ... that 1 booking might cover the cost of the ad, but then you'd be doing an event for no net profit .. so the reality is you need several to "break even".
 
I'm not going to tell you what to do... but I believe different vendors need to find different ways to market.

A venue is often the first thing booked. They are in a position to make all sorts of other referrals. That's why for my business, getting on their list is more important than being on WeddingWire.

But for a couple that is just starting their search of "what wedding venue do we use?" I would expect that search to be a lot more digital than referral driven.

I don't know if WeddingWire is the right spot for your best ROI. But I do think my marketing mix would be very different if I was a venue versus a DJ.

I'd be focused on hosting open houses, getting couples in as early in their decision making cycle as possible. Put yourself in a position to feature other vendors as well in doing so.
 
I'm not going to tell you what to do... but I believe different vendors need to find different ways to market.

A venue is often the first thing booked. They are in a position to make all sorts of other referrals. That's why for my business, getting on their list is more important than being on WeddingWire.

But for a couple that is just starting their search of "what wedding venue do we use?" I would expect that search to be a lot more digital than referral driven.

I don't know if WeddingWire is the right spot for your best ROI. But I do think my marketing mix would be very different if I was a venue versus a DJ.

I'd be focused on hosting open houses, getting couples in as early in their decision making cycle as possible. Put yourself in a position to feature other vendors as well in doing so.

Right now, I'm just trying to get some inquiry forms filled out. It's been pretty slim this past couple of months. My venue mgr friend said her inquiries never slowed down during this entire Covid scare. I still haven't made a final decision, but I'm leaning towards doing it.
 
Right now, I'm just trying to get some inquiry forms filled out. It's been pretty slim this past couple of months. My venue mgr friend said her inquiries never slowed down during this entire Covid scare. I still haven't made a final decision, but I'm leaning towards doing it.

Right, so if you're worried about the top of the funnel, it's just a matter of channel. If you're going to invest $270 per month, where is it the most effective?

You could allocate across Google/Facebook/Instagram yourself. Or you can give that money to WeddingWire and let them drive traffic to you and others. I'm not good at the social media marketing so I'd probably choose WW. But I'd bet an effective marketer can do more with that cash independently.

And just know that getting a lot of leads, you'll have a lot of junk. It's a matter of sorting them as quickly and effectively as possible.
 
Right, so if you're worried about the top of the funnel, it's just a matter of channel. If you're going to invest $270 per month, where is it the most effective?

You could allocate across Google/Facebook/Instagram yourself. Or you can give that money to WeddingWire and let them drive traffic to you and others. I'm not good at the social media marketing so I'd probably choose WW. But I'd bet an effective marketer can do more with that cash independently.

And just know that getting a lot of leads, you'll have a lot of junk. It's a matter of sorting them as quickly and effectively as possible.

Yea, it's a head-scratcher. I've been doing FB ads and spending $300/month and the results aren't stellar. My profit runs $2500-$4500 (or is projected to) per gig, so a couple of gigs really does take care of the cost. BTW, I hate it when they use that line in sales.
 
Yea, it's a head-scratcher. I've been doing FB ads and spending $300/month and the results aren't stellar. My profit runs $2500-$4500 (or is projected to) per gig, so a couple of gigs really does take care of the cost. BTW, I hate it when they use that line in sales.

My response to that is always "If I just wanted to break even, I could spend no money, earn no money, and we can call it a day right now."
 
You could allocate across Google/Facebook/Instagram yourself. Or you can give that money to WeddingWire and let them drive traffic to you and others. I'm not good at the social media marketing so I'd probably choose WW. But I'd bet an effective marketer can do more with that cash independently.

An effective marketer would charge him accordingly too so it would be less spent on ads or more put out but I agree it's a better avenue...

Rick do a Google search for venues in Oneonta, AL. From here I see 6 ahead of your site and it's right behind Wedding wire...There are 2 Facebook pages and the Knot plus one of your competitors above that. A little SEO and some Facebook work you are on top of them....or you can spent $270/month to be right 5th and lumped with all those other venues
 
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An effective marketer would charge him accordingly too so it would be less spent on ads or more put out but I agree it's a better avenue...

Rick do a Google search for venues in Oneonta, AL. From here I see 6 ahead of your site and it's right behind Wedding wire...There are 2 Facebook pages and the Knot plus one of your competitors above that. A little SEO and some Facebook work you are on top of them....or you can spent $270/month to be right 5th and lumped with all those other venues

Last week, I went thru the entire SEO checklist on Wix and fixed everything they suggested. Not sure what else I can do at this point. A WW ad might indeed be foolish money but a half-off offer doesn't come around very often with these guys. I imagine Covid is really putting a dent in them and as soon as it picks back up, they'll be back to full price. The real gamble is, will it produce leads? In the Nashville market, I have 2 venue owner friends who bought ads ($500/mth). One of them swears by it and the other just started recently. I also spoke with a competitor in Oneonta. She down-played it ("yes, we've gotten some leads from WW") but she's also stepped up her business in the past 6 months, big time.
 
Last week, I went thru the entire SEO checklist on Wix and fixed everything they suggested. Not sure what else I can do at this point. A WW ad might indeed be foolish money but a half-off offer doesn't come around very often with these guys. I imagine Covid is really putting a dent in them and as soon as it picks back up, they'll be back to full price. The real gamble is, will it produce leads? In the Nashville market, I have 2 venue owner friends who bought ads ($500/mth). One of them swears by it and the other just started recently. I also spoke with a competitor in Oneonta. She down-played it ("yes, we've gotten some leads from WW") but she's also stepped up her business in the past 6 months, big time.

At a quick look, and I might have missed it, it doesn't appear your photos are tagged. Rename them RyanAcres.com Oneonta wedding venue and number them. I'll look more later see if there is anything obvious
 
At a quick look, and I might have missed it, it doesn't appear your photos are tagged. Rename them RyanAcres.com Oneonta wedding venue and number them. I'll look more later see if there is anything obvious

Done. Good catch. I nuked some of the gallery shots and have added a few ones that I got from this weekend. I used a fisheye lens on these and it seemed to help make the room look a bit bigger.

RyanPhotographyDJ-1.jpg
RyanPhotographyDJ-1-2.jpg
RyanPhotographyDJ-1-3.jpg
RyanPhotographyDJ-2-2.jpg
 
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Might want to look into renting a tilt-shift lens. Architecture or room shots look better with an identified horizontal or vertical point of reference. The top and bottom inside shots and the exterior look tilted. Artistic poses when people are included or when the focus isn't walls and ceilings are OK with skewed shots .. not so much buildings. Fisheye or extreme wide angle tend to overemphasize that .. just my opinion.
 
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