Part 1: Venue Publications and Wedding Magazines
As a wedding videographer, advertising can be a tricky and expensive business. In this series we're sharing our own experiences and opinions on what has and hasn't worked for us over the past 20 years in the industry (from 20 20 Video, Your Wedding Filmed, and now Snowbird Films). From traditional forms of advertising like brochures and written media, to more modern methods like social media influencers and paid wedding blog posts, we've tried it all. We've had our successes, but we've also wasted a lot of money on tactics that promised the world but delivered little.
Venue Publications and Wedding Magazines
Full page ads in venue publications: a publishing company salesperson calls promising the world in exposure, wanting anywhere from £900 to £2000 for a spot in a venue publication that's supposedly actively handed to every couple. We've tried several of these and found they all yield about the same result — silence. One publication we paid £1500 for; four months after it went live we heard nothing, and when we spoke to wedding couples at the venue they said they were never handed the brochure. Often these brochures are provided to the venue for free to hand out, with the advertising money going to the publishing company — leaving little incentive for the venue to actually hand them out. Our average cost per booking from venue brochures: £600.
Wedding Magazine Adverts and Articles: we've tried different types of ads — clean, stunning-image adverts and cheesy multiple-image ones with offers of free stuff. Both types yielded similar results: 3-6 enquiries for a monthly publication. The enquiries tend to lead to bookings, and sometimes further recommendations, but each booking cost us between £300 and £1000 across different publications — expensive, and a quick way to go out of business if you're not careful.
Article and Advert Combination: we did have success with a wedding video guide handed out alongside a national wedding print publication. We wrote an article for the guide with an ad for our business alongside it, and received 5 enquiries and 3 bookings from it. Cost was £600 (discounted because we wrote the article), for around £3000 in revenue — a cost per booking of around £200. We think combining useful advice with the ad helped couples get to know us before committing. Unfortunately the guide wasn't repeated, but it's worth actively seeking out opportunities to write articles for publications even at a cost — it can offer a decent return.
So, is advertising in written publications and brochures worth it for wedding videographers? If you can secure a discounted rate by writing a supporting article or providing useful content, it might be worth a try — just be prepared for the possibility of a poor return.
Next: your website, SEO and article writing.