I can’t afford to give up prime dates.
Photo by Cameron Clark
A Splendid Note from Liene:
I’ve been fortunate to have worked with wedding pros from 94 countries over my career and I’ve heard from a ton of them this past month – all with similar questions, stories of lost business, uncertainties of what to say to clients who are completely stressed.
We’re all in this together. If you have questions on Coronavirus and your wedding business, feel free to email me at hello@thinksplendid.com.
I’ll be sharing my answers here on the Think Splendid blog so that everyone can benefit. I’ll also keep your name anonymous. Totally free, no strings attached – I truly do not care if you never hire me.
Focus on the Splendid
We're an industry that makes our living by celebrating life's milestones, so I'm going to start each of these update posts with a few positive COVID-19 things we can all smile about:
TOTAL GLOBAL RECOVERIES
The number of global recoveries is now more than 1,185,000 people, up from 973,000 on Thursday.
Introducing the Illinois Events Coalition
Since many of the laws and policies in the US get decided at the state and local levels, Chicago wedding pros Ali Phillips, Michelle Durpetti, and Collin Pierson have launched the Illinois Events Coalition as a way to advocate for the event industry in Illinois and appeal to their local lawmakers to provide realistic relief for wedding and event professionals. They encourage wedding professionals in other states to do the same.
From the Illinois Events Coalition website: “We have a shared belief: this coalition can offer support within our industry and educate those outside of our community too . . . We are eager to be a part of the conversation, we are committed to being part of the solution, and we are determined to find a path forward preserving our businesses and the industry we all cherish.”
This question is from a wedding venue owner:
I had booked 85 weddings this season and through the winter. We’ve already carefully rescheduled 25 through the end of June.
In all of those 25, I’ve only had three difficult conversations where I was threatened if I did not offer a prime open date as an alternative to the original date. I am covered legally but we have never had a bad review and I’ve also been threatened with those.
I cannot afford to give up prime 2021 dates that I could otherwise sell. I would love any advice possible.
Answer from Liene
Having to run a business for two years off of one year’s worth of income is a situation that the majority of the wedding industry has found themselves in. As a venue, you are in a particularly tough position because you have a tangible, finite product and cannot double up on dates by hiring an associate to cover the event like a planner or photographer may be able to.
Here are a few of my thoughts on how to best navigate this situation:
CONSIDER THE ACTUAL COST
What is the potential cost of a bad review to your business? Does it mean you book one less wedding if someone sees it and decides on someone else? Five less weddings? 20 less weddings? More?
I know you haven't had one yet, but if you can sit down and do some math that tells you the financial impact a negative review may realistically have, you may find that it isn't as terrible as you imagine. This is especially true if you have a ton of positive reviews for a bad review to get lost in.
Another thing to consider while figuring this number out is how unique your wedding venue is to your area. If you're the only or one of a very small handful who can offer the type of space you do, then people will want it because a ballroom or the other alternatives may not fit their vision. A couple negative reviews out of a lot of positive ones are unlikely to sway them.
Also, if the review is on The Knot, WeddingWire, or Bodas.net, you can appeal to the reviews team for Covid-related negative reviews. The email to do so is reviewinquiry@theknotww.com.
REMIND PEOPLE THAT HIRING YOU IS A GOOD DECISION
If you have a reviews page on your website, keep it. I'd also recommend sprinkling reviews throughout every page on your site in a way that makes sense with its flow and design.
The reason for this is because when people search for a wedding venue, they will land on whatever page of your website Google serves up depending on their keywords, which may not necessarily be your home page.
Potential clients usually do not move through your site in the way you want them to and a significant amount will never read your reviews page.
Because of this, you want every page to include a call to action as well as third-party validation (reviews) that lets the potential client know that getting married at your venue is a good decision for them to make.
If possible, use the name of the person and their role in the wedding. It can be only their first name, but you do not want it to be anonymous. For example: Jessica, bride; David, groom; Natalie, mother of the groom; etc.
KEEP PEOPLE ON YOUR WEBSITE
Delete anything that says "read more reviews" and then links out to a review site such as WeddingWire or The Knot or a wedding blog’s vendor directory. You want to do this for three reasons:
The real purpose of your wedding venue’s website is not to make the sale, it is to get people to send an inquiry so that you can start a conversation. The chances of someone clicking out, scrolling through another site with its own calls to action, and then coming back to fill out your inquiry form are statistically very low. Keep people on your company’s site.
Do not actively send potential clients to another site where they can see a competitor's listing or ad on the same page as your wedding venue’s reviews. That may be the business model of that particular site, but it is not yours.
You are paying those websites to send YOU traffic and inquiries, they are not paying you to send them traffic. Why would you pay them to promote you and then turn around and do free marketing for them? That is not a fair exchange.If you end up with negative reviews, you don't need to actively send people to find them. If they want to research more, they will.
BE REASONABLE
When you say “non-prime date,” does that mean a weekend date that's typically less popular than the other weekends?
If so, it may not be an exact trade, but it is still realistically doable for the client as those are days most of their wedding guests will have off work. It may not be a perfect solution for them, but nothing about this pandemic is fair to anyone. Your wedding clients will have to compromise, too.
If you're trying to move a bride or groom to a Tuesday or Wednesday instead of a weekend date however, I do feel that can be beyond the scope of a reasonable compromise, especially if you’re not in a position to offer any type of financial incentive like a partial refund. I understand the economic aspect of it from your end, but it is generally not realistic for the client.
The idea that "if someone loves you, they will come to your wedding" isn't true, especially now when people are trying to save their jobs. Their wedding guests may not be able to take off one or two weekdays (or possibly more) from work. No one wants to risk being the "needy person" who is top of mind for being laid off and everyone is currently trying to prove their value in the workplace.
Sure, they may be willing to lose some people from the guest list, but if the person is a parent, or a favorite aunt, or their best man or maid of honor, they aren’t going to be willing to switch when they’ve already paid for a weekend rate – and that’s understandable.
APPEAL TO THEIR COMMON SENSE
Depending on what your wedding clients do for a living and your relationship with them prior to this, you could explain the broad finances of it – that you depend on that income and cashflow to cover your operating expenses and the impact of COVID-19 basically has you running your business for two years on the income of one.
I say “depending on what they do for a living” because I find that people whose careers involve making the financial decisions for a business tend to "get it" better than clients whose jobs may not involve that type of work.
If they went from 0 to 90 on threatening a negative review however, I wouldn't necessarily recommend this approach as they likely won't care.
Questions from Wedding Pros
When I say we’re all in this together, I mean we are all in this together. I am not a blogger, I am a business consultant and speaker. This blog is not sponsored nor ad supported and is not how I make my income. Since we are all in this together, I am not charging consulting fees to answer questions related to COVID-19.
I will continue answering Coronavirus-related wedding business questions from ANY wedding, event, or hospitality professional, located anywhere in the world, here on the blog over the next few weeks and possibly longer, so that anyone, anywhere in the world can access the information they may need for their business at any time.
I’ll be continuing to work through the questions sent in so far here on the blog so that we can all navigate this together as best we can. Please send any questions you have to hello@thinksplendid.com and remember there is no such thing as a dumb question.
I’ll be keeping the names anonymous so you don’t have to worry about being attached to a question in a Google search or in case you don’t want a colleague or competitor to know what’s on your mind.
Written by
LIENE STEVENS
Liene Stevens, the founder and CEO of Think Splendid, is an author, speaker, and award-winning business strategist. Armed with $2000, a healthy work ethic, and an undeserved dose of privilege, Liene bootstrapped Think Splendid from a scribble in a notebook to a successful wedding business consulting firm with a client list spanning 94 countries.
