Are you ready to say ‘I Do’ to digital? Get more bookings for your wedding venue and grow your business with expert marketing tips.
Booking a venue for a wedding is exciting, but can be very stressful for many people! Often, a venue is the first thing that people will think about securing during their planning process, so it’s important that your website alleviates their anxieties and gives them confidence to get in touch.
Take a look at our expert marketing tips for your wedding venue, so you can stand out from your competitors and attract more bookings.
Wedding Venue Marketing Ideas
Local SEO & Google My Business profile
Before you can encourage a couple to come along to a venue open day or make an appointment to discuss their big day with you, they need to be able to find you online.
Your target audience are likely to head straight to the search engine on their laptop or mobile phone and type in something like:
- ‘Wedding venues in London’,
- ‘Best barn wedding venues near me’,
- ‘Most beautiful wedding venues in the UK’.
You need to make sure that you’re showing up for searches (that are relevant to your venue) and the best way to do that is through local SEO and correct keyword targeting in your content.
Why is local SEO important for wedding venues?
Often, local SEO is important because couples generally want to book a venue that is reasonably close to them or their family, so they’ll be making searches related to venues in their local area, or they’ll have a specific location in mind. Make sure that your content targets location-based keywords.
Setting up or optimising Google My Business
Make sure that your Google My Business profile is set up correctly. This profile can appear for relevant searches in the right hand side of Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), and allows you to share important information such as your address, phone number, photos of your venue, a little bit of blurb about you, and your Google reviews.
Struggling with the terminology? Take a look at our handy SEO glossary
Customer research
Now, think about the keywords or phrases that people might type into a search engine to find your website. Put yourself in the shoes of a newly engaged couple looking for a wedding venue.
- What would they type in?
- What’s important to them in a venue?
Then work out whether your content already includes these words or phrases, or if you could create new landing pages or blogs to help your website show up for them.
Analyse your website’s existing keyword rankings
Once you know how your customers search, you’ll need to check your website is targeting these keywords or phrases. This could involve optimise existing content, or creating new landing pages and blogs. Our website copywriting and on-page SEO services can support with this – SEO copywriting is no easy feat.
Top tip: You can take a look at keywords your website is already getting impressions or clicks for using Google Search Console
User friendliness and accessibility
Once somebody has landed on your website, you need to keep them there so they can start forming an opinion about you. First opinions matter – especially when making a decision about something as emotional and important as where you’re getting married!
Is your website user-friendly?
Signs of a bad user-experience:
- Visitors find it hard to navigate your website,
- Pages or links are broken,
- Images don’t load,
- Slow loading speed,
- They just can’t find the information they’re looking for (e.g. wedding packages and prices for different times or days of the year).
All of these offer a bad user-experience and could frustrate your customers – this isn’t the emotion you want couples to have when looking at your website!
Is your website accessible?
Another blocker could be whether your website is actually accessible enough to people with visual impairments. For example:
- Is your text incredibly small, or are you using a swirly font that is hard to read?
- Do you have important text in a colour that doesn’t show up easily against the background colour of your website?
- If somebody was colour blind, how easily would they be able to interact with your website?
There are many elements that you’ll need to think about for your website. Learn more about SEO accessibility with Steve Job, our Technical SEO Manager.
Inspirational venue imagery and wedding content
Most wedding venues have access to absolutely beautiful imagery – so make sure you’re using it correctly! Think about:
- Showcasing the best photo locations around your venue in the very best way – couples will want to envision what they might look like having their photos taken there.
- Using photos from each season so couples can imagine what it will look like at the time of year they get married.
- Using a range of photos from throughout a wedding ‘day’ so that couples can see every element of a typical wedding at your venue, from saying ‘I do’ to what the canapes, wedding breakfast, cake, flowers, and first dance might look like.
- If you are a venue with rooms, get a professional photographer to shoot each room (if possible) or a selection of your rooms.
- When you upload images to your website, make sure they are the right pixel size. Too small, and the resolution means they will be blurry, too big and they might impact the load speed of the page, as well as your digital sustainability. Also, make sure you’re writing Alt Tag descriptions of each image, for accessibility purposes.
Build your wedding venue’s online presence
Social media, user generated content and testimonials
Your online presence is not limited to your website. You need to make sure you’re thinking about your social media platforms too (we suggest Instagram and Pinterest for wedding venues, and potentially even TikTok as the younger generation start planning weddings or looking for inspiration for future wedding venues!)
User-generated content
Weddings are visual, and pretty much every guest will take photos (with many of these being uploaded to their social media). Think about how you could use this user-generated content to encourage word of mouth, so more people will want to enquire about your venue. Make sure it’s easy for people to tag your venue in the ‘location’, create a social media profile that’s easy for people to find and tag, and think about having a hashtag that everyone can use so that engaged couples can easily see all of the photos of your venue.
Testimonials
Testimonials on platforms such as Google are really important, because couples are likely to trust what other couples and guests say about your venue much more than what you say about it. Make sure that you’re using Google reviews in your social media posts and on your website, and encourage each of your newly married couples to leave a review.
Optimise your wedding venue website for mobile devices
Most people make searches using their mobile phone or other similar device, like a tablet. However, many wedding venue businesses will only consider how their website looks on desktop. That means you might be creating a beautiful desktop experience, but neglecting how your website performs on mobile. Try to take a mobile first approach, and ensure that every image, every piece of content, and every contact form looks good and works properly on mobile.
Top tip: User-testing (as part of our conversion rate optimisation services) can use real-life engaged couples to test how easy they find your website to use on mobile.
Virtual tours of your wedding venue
A virtual tour of your venue could help couples who can’t attend an open day see what your venue is actually like. These tours are also hugely useful for couples who have been to an open day and want to refresh their memory about certain aspects of the venue, or show their parents and wedding party what it looks like. Consider whether this type of technology is useful to you, or even set up a poll or ask for feedback from couples as to whether this would be useful for them.
There are companies and videographers who can make high tech virtual tours for couples to explore on your website, or you could start off much more simply with an iPhone and film your own short tours of each room, which can then be uploaded as TikToks or Reels for really nice social content.
Content marketing and blogging
A big part of being visible online is having enough high quality, relevant, and thought leading content on your website. You are the experts in weddings, venues, and what couples need to know, so write about it! Develop a content marketing and blogging strategy to make sure you’re releasing regular thought-leading pieces about your industry. This tells Google that your website provides valuable, helpful content to couples who are looking for their dream venue.
The more helpful your content = the higher Google will want to rank your content
Make it easy for couples to get in touch
The big one – if you make it easier for people to get in touch with you, then more people will get in touch with you! Gone is the generation who likes to ring up and have a chat over the phone. Couples today are much more likely to want to fill out a contact form or send you an email to arrange a time to come in and see the venue. Provide different ways for people to get in touch, and make sure that you respond to them in a timely manner – otherwise they might go and see another venue that they fall in love with!
Regularly test your contact forms and phone numbers. Every month or so, send a ‘test’ contact form to make sure everything is working as it should. If you’re still not getting many enquiries, try some contact form optimisation.
Need extra support growing your business?
If you’d like support with improving your wedding venue’s SEO and usability – get in touch! Our team can support you with local SEO, technical SEO, content writing, paid ads and more.
