photo by Kimberly Motos for The Venue Report
Weddings
The Best Way to Grow Your Venue Business
You have an awesome venue – whether it's a hotel, event space, restaurant, café or glampsite – that the world needs to know about. Maybe you're a new venue that's just getting started and need to get...
photo by Kimberly Motos for The Venue Report
You have an awesome venue – whether it's a hotel, event space, restaurant, café or glampsite – that the world needs to know about. Maybe you're a new venue that's just getting started and need to get the word out. Maybe you've been in the wedding business for 10 years and want to branch out to corporate events. Maybe you're a restaurant that just opened an exclusive new private dining room. Whatever your venue's story is, you want to share it with the world and get in front of celebrators of around the globe. And you know that joining a curated collection of venues is the best way to gain the trust of potential clients, instantly. Maybe you have a corner café perfect for birthday parties or a ranch fitting of family reunions or a boutique hotel set-up for intimate weddings, we love connecting people to the world's most special places to celebrate, getaway and gather.
The Venue Report is transforming the way people find venues for their celebrations, gatherings and group experiences. We are here to guide you with tips and tools to assist you in marketing your venue at all stages of the planning funnel so that you can get discovered by the millions of people looking for extraordinary spaces.
Treat Your Social Media Profiles like Your Website
Photo by Kimberly Motos for The Venue Report
Often users may find your venue on Instagram or Facebook before they ever see your website. In fact, celebrators may not ever make it to your website, which means your social media feed may be the only thing that is a representation of your brand. Keep the content fresh, beautiful and authentic to your brand. Additionally, our rule of thumb for staying on brand is that if a photo isn’t something you would put on your website, you should think twice about using it on your social feed.
Be Vendor-Friendly
Photo by Adam Szafranski for The Venue Report
While it’s important to market your event spaces digitally, don’t forget about the old school way: word of mouth. It’s very important to have incredible customer service for your clients, but don’t forget about the vendors! This is a very important and often overlooked portion of marketing your venue. The vendor world is very small: they talk to one another and they talk to clients. Treat all of your vendors – from the photographers and planners to the florists and caterers – with the utmost respect. Not only will this ensure that they sing your praises to one another and potential clients, but it will ensure that you all work like a well-oiled machine on event day, and deliver an unforgettable event experience to your clients (who will then also sing your praises!). This is the type of marketing that money cannot buy.
List Your Venue in a Marketplace
Photo by Kimberly Motos for The Venue Report
It's important to have an online presence outside of your own website. Joining a curated marketplace like The Venue Report tells users that you have already been vetted by a third party. Step one of tapping into the millions of celebrators on The Venue Report: set up a custom venue profile, managed directly by you! Through a custom venue profile, your venue can showcase everything that makes your space unique and attract group business for all types of meetings, events and getaways. You’ll receive direct inquiries from qualified users, requests for venue tours, favorites, shares and traffic right to your website. Inside tip: Unsure where to begin? Check out this handy guide on building your venue’s photo gallery and professional tips on social media marketing.
Celebrators are often in a hurry, so look to marketplaces like The Venue Report and The Knot to be able to quickly filter by key features such as ‘curfew’ or ‘rentals.’ The more details you provide to potential clients, the less work they will have to do upfront! We know that we have less than a second to capture their attention so don't lose them because you lacked info. When filling out your profile, share as many relevant details as possible for your venue. From logistical information like capacity of guests, to policies on alcohol and music cutoff, sharing key details will help celebrators better understand your space and send educated leads.
Marketplaces are a wonderful tool as mentioned above, but the power of storytelling cannot be ignored. That's why The Venue Report has a media to marketplace approach, where users can contact you and view your venue info straight from media! Maximize your exposure with storytelling that ties right back to your profile (and lives there forever). By sharing your venue’s story through our digital magazine, users can take action to contact you, view rates and save your venue info right from content.
Utilize Advertising Tools for Every Stage of the Funnel
Photo by Adam Szafranski for The Venue Report
Through custom organic and social marketing, media and product offerings, we have the tools to reach the right audience at all stages of consideration, from awareness all the way through conversion. Inside tip: The venue tour is where you’ll seal the deal with potential clients (here are 9 ways to make your venue tours awesome), and we suggest utilizing 360' venue tours as a powerful way to bring in more destination weddings and events from people who can't view your space before booking (contact us for pricing).
Measure Your Results
Photo by Nathan Mueller for The Venue Report
Data is key, and that’s why The Venue Report offers a business intelligence platform to help you make data-driven decisions to optimize your venue business. As a venue member, you’ll have instant access to your tailored dashboard that allows you to communicate with leads, analyze venue performance and learn about your customers in one easy-to-use place. Inside tip: To convert more leads, we strongly recommend responding as quickly as possible to leads though our site with a great reply including sending over an informational booklet/info on pricing and special offers wherever possible and following up on lost leads.
Set Growth Goals for Each Vertical of Your Business
Photo by Nathan Mueller for The Venue Report
Setting growth goals is a great way to ensure that you are staying on track with your growth. First, start with how many events you would like to book each month, then work backwards. Based on how many events you would like to book, how many phone calls and site tours do you need to conduct? How many of your calls and tours are converting into bookings? Where are these leads coming from? Doing this type of math will quickly help you realize if your goals are realistic and where in the funnel you need to tweak and operate the current way you are doing business. Perhaps you are seeing a large drop off during site tours – now you can dig in and find out why so you can improve those metrics. Analyzing your business this way and optimizing each part of the sales funnel will help you grow month over month!
Your tailored dashboard will give you real-time information on leads, venue performance, and customers, but we also recommend diving into other sources of data like Google Analytics to learn more about who your customer is (Where are they located? What is your average customer’s age?), or Facebook Insights to learn what your customers want to engage with on social media.
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Optimize Your Performance
Photo by Adam Szafranski for The Venue Report
Through built-in performance tracking tools and a constant stream of new marketing opportunities that help you expand your reach, you’ll always be sure that you’re receiving the ROI your incredible venue space deserves. Good to know: We use data and analytics from inquiries to inform our curation process and optimize your profile according to our content editors’ in-depth performance knowledge.
Apply to Join (Do It, Do It)
Photo by Adam Szafranski for The Venue Report
Our collection of venues features the best spaces around the globe, each of which has been vetted by our team of experts. Tiered profile options and monthly or annual membership payments will help you meet your goals and increase your bookings, no matter the size or stage of your business.
Learn more & submit your venue here →
Learn more & submit your venue here →
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