Video: Three Myths About Wedding Shows
Have you heard these myths? Do you have any myths of your own that you’ve debunked?
Comment below with the common misconceptions you found when you started presenting at bridal shows!
Video Transcription:
In this video, we’re going to look at the three myths about wedding shows.
Myth number one: with all the online resources for planning a wedding, face-to-face interaction is no longer important. It’s no secret that most couples use online resources to plan their weddings, but 97% of them will not make a major purchase decision without a face-to-face meeting. It’s an online world, but wedding shows are still an important method of marketing because they are the most efficient way of making that personal connection, and making that connection with lots of prospective customers in just a few hours. In fact, shows are the only form of advertising that provides that connection from the very beginning. Print advertising, websites, and social media—they all rely on the wedding professional to put their message out there and then wait for someone to respond. With wedding shows you get instant interaction with the prospective customer. They get to taste your cake and smell your flowers. They get to see the true beauty and quality of your photographs, and most importantly they get to meet you. Make no mistake, more than anything else, you are selling you. The couple will only buy from you if they like you, if they trust you, and if they feel comfortable with you. Wedding shows allow you to sell yourself in a way that you simply cannot do online or in print. If you’re searching for something online, you have to have some idea of what you’re searching for. So, if you sell a unique product or service—something that the couple might not even know exists—they can’t really search for it online. At a wedding show, something that a couple might never consider, or did not even know was out there can quickly become something that they have to have for their wedding. There are many online-only companies that will probably never open a storefront, but they still see the value of the face-to-face contact that they make at wedding shows. The online tuxedo companies., the online gift registries, companies that do all of their business online still see the value of exhibiting at shows. The efficiencies of online selling and the personal connection made at shows—that’s a powerful combination.
Myth number two: people only attend wedding shows for the freebies. Do you really think that someone would invest their valuable time, drive down to the convention center, pay to park, and buy a ticket just to get a free luggage tag or a piece of cake? This observation that people only come to the shows for the free stuff usually comes from someone who exhibited at a show and saw that their neighboring exhibitor, who was giving away something, was getting a lot more traffic. It’s human nature to like free stuff, but that does not mean that someone would go to a show just to get free stuff. Giving away some sort of sample or promotional item is a proven method of increasing booth traffic and might be something to consider if you can turn that increased traffic into increased business.
Myth number three: Only people with low wedding budgets go to shows. Research shows that the primary audience of a wedding show is the middle 80% of the wedding budget spectrum. Those with the lowest 10% of budgets don’t go because they aren’t focused on spending. Those with the highest 10% of wedding budgets don’t go because they buy differently than anyone else and they usually rely on wedding planners and referrals. But that middle 80%, that’s the space that most wedding professionals target and that’s exactly what you’ll find at a wedding show. What is a wedding budget anyway? Most couples have no idea what things cost when they first get started, and wedding budgets tend to increase as the couple is faced with the reality of their local market place. You shouldn’t concern yourself with the total wedding budget anyway, just the part that is allocated to your specific product or service because every wedding is a high-end wedding in some element and every wedding is a low-end wedding in other elements. Every couple has one or two parts of their wedding that they don’t care all that much about, where they won’t spend much. And every couple has at least one or two hot buttons—parts of their wedding where they will spend a disproportionate amount of their wedding budget to get what they want. There is a lot of money spent as a result of connections made at weddings shows, the savvy business is there to get a share of it.
