- Because hundreds of brides will be walking the isles looking for qualified wedding professionals. Don't miss the opportunity to connect with so many potential customers.
- Because wedding shows are the most cost effective way to get your business name in front of brides.
- Because as long as you select the right shows for your business and do the necessary before, during and after show follow-up - you can almost guarantee you'll make your investment back many many times.
- Because wedding show leads are easily trackable. Unlike most other types of advertising you'll be able to easily calculate your roi.
- Because wedding shows give you access to FACE TIME with hundreds of brides. More face time equals more bookings!
- Because your competition is there! Many of your competitors will be there meeting hundreds of your potential customers. By not attending you are automatically giving them a huge advantage.
Monday, March 8, 2010
6 Reasons To Attend Your Local Wedding Show
Wedding show season is in full swing here in California. As we prepare to attend several shows I've noticed the large number of wedding professionals who do not attend. A little research showed that many of those not attending are the ones who need the business most! In today's economy I understand that advertising and marketing dollars are limited - but here's a quick list of reasons why you can not afford not to book a booth at your local wedding show...
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I agree with some of your bullet points, but not all. I have done several shows and have had little ROI for them. Many of the brides are only interested in the give-away and not necessarily you. But even more frustrating is the fact that you have these warm leads, follow-up several times only to have "0" call you, email you, text you - whatever. They even go so far as to give you wrong information so you will not be able to contact them. I am not against bridal shows, but for the money that they ask you to put out, I haven't seen much in return.
ReplyDeleteThanks Diane for the great feedback and comments. You make some great points. Although wedding shows are a huge source of business for us - we have had to work at finding the right shows. We've also spent a lot of time developing the follow-up strategy that works best for us. I believe that wedding show sucess varies depending on the service you provide (we're videographers). My research shows that wedding planners benefit least from these shows. I'm looking forward to seeing the final results from our wedding show survey and will be sure to post the results.
ReplyDeleteThanks again.
Julie
If you only get 4 brides through the doors all day - and half of those have already booked the particular service you offer - ie photography and video - would you still say its good for business? In the UK wedding Fayres seem to be where the bride goes just to get wedding ideas/favours/nick-nacks, as everything else is sourced at least, online! It may be different where you are but here its a dying art!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for your input Elaine - I'm posting my reply here as well as the Linkedin group so it can be read by everyone else:)
ReplyDeleteI agree - does not seem worth while if the attendance is so low in th UK. Almost half of our bookings come from wedding shows - but we really try to pre-qualify the shows before signing up (we've videographers). I usually contact a non competing vendor who attended the last show to check how the attendance was and the quality of the mailing list. I also agree that it wedding shows are more beneficial to certain types of wedding vendors. Hoping that the survey were doing will give more info (I'll post the results).
Thanks again for comments.
Julie
Julie, there is one bullet point that you missed... in a highly selected show, meeting other vendors and networking has brought me more business than the attending brides. I am a JP/wedding coordinator and my services are initially based on "face time" and personality. When a vendor meets me, I invariably am asked for business cards to hand out to their customers. Of course, I reciprocate. I have started to build a fantastic vendor data base, which has allowed me to be creative and customized in my wedding offerings. Thanks for the discussion.
ReplyDeleteThese are great bullet points! Our company is going to a bridal show in June. I think doing a giveaway at your booth helps as well. You can get email addresses for your newsletters (huge benefit for potential customers) I know I do love giveaways but it really brings in the traffic. Thanks for your information! Jessamyn @ 365-Cards
ReplyDeleteChristine - great point - I should have included this. Vendor networking is a huge source of business for us too. I left this out as I have prepared a blog post dedicated to this topic as.
ReplyDeleteJessamyn - Thanks for mentioning the email list. This is also a huge benefit of attending wedding shows. More about email marketing to come soon:)
Thanks for the information. I really appreciate all your points. We are photographers and doing our first wedding show the end of the month. We chose to do a show that was not offering freebies. Even the producers of the show said in their opinion they have found that not offering "prizes" narrows it down to those who are really looking for services not freebies. At our booth we will offer a couple of give aways.
ReplyDeleteToni Nelson www.specialweddingmemories.blogspot.com
Great point Toni - we do not offer freebies at our booth as we have found that this does not increase the amount of bookings we get from the show. Correct follow-up from our sign-in sheet and attendee list does increase our bookings - more on this very soon. Good luck at the show.
ReplyDelete