Part 5: Wedding Directories
Wedding directories can be a tempting place to advertise as a wedding videographer. With all the traffic being engaged couples looking for wedding suppliers, it's easy to see the potential for success. However, the cost of advertising on these directories has been increasing year over year, and can be several thousands of pounds to get top spots in each county, and we have found the request-for-information/quote-request systems have made things a lot harder for suppliers to obtain bookings.
The added frustration with wedding directories is the need to set up and then maintain a different micro-website of your company on each directory, with each having a different login, system and requirements. If you don't revisit each in regular timeframes they look outdated quickly; most now also have a place to submit real weddings, and this has to be done on each site separately.
One thing to keep in mind is the quality of leads. Many of the inquiries you receive will be through Request for Information (RFIs), which are often generic and don't give you much to go on. We've found that out of the RFIs we receive, we only hear back from about 9% of them and ultimately book 3% of them. Our cost per booking in 2022 through Hitched was £333.
When a couple puts in an enquiry for a supplier on many directories, they're encouraged to batch-send it to multiple suppliers to get a better quote — some directories even have a "quote from supplier" option to receive price quotes from multiple suppliers at once. As a supplier this is frustrating as it pushes couples toward focusing on price rather than the strength of your profile page, images, packages and film examples.
We've found a few ways to increase conversion rates with wedding directories: reply quickly and follow up with a phone call or text message, and consistently follow up with the couple until they respond — this seems to matter more than the quality of your listing, description, video or photos.
Recently Hitched, the largest wedding directory in the UK, was taken over by The Knot Worldwide, a US company, and has been making positive changes like improving client communication and their "Hitched Campus" resources for suppliers. Hitched drives a lot of traffic and dominates search results, though we think they could improve on their lack of information on enquiries and on not batch-sending enquiries to extra suppliers. We are currently deciding whether or not to renew with them due to increased cost, a frustrating system and low conversion rates.
The cost of wedding directories: to get a top/gold spot near the top for a county on a large wedding directory like Hitched, Bridebook or UKBride will cost upwards of £1000 per year per county as a wedding videographer.
We've had 1-2 bookings per year through Bridebook on their free tier and find the quality of enquiries high; we're considering their paid option but find it a big jump from free to £180/month, with mixed reviews. Our photography partner 2020photos has tried UKBride and found the system unique (adverts you design yourself) and less frustrating, with higher quality enquiries — their cost per booking from UKBride in 2022 was £400.
Smaller wedding directories have rarely brought us success apart from the occasional random booking. Older directories can carry SEO weight and bring a useful backlink at relatively low cost, and some do bring traffic which may lead to a booking.
While we've had success with wedding directories in the past, overall the time spent creating/maintaining listings and the money spent has never really paid off, and there are now lower-cost ways of getting leads. It's important to weigh the cost and time investment versus the potential benefits to see if advertising on a wedding directory is right for your business.
In Part 6 we will be talking about when wedding fairs and shows have worked for us and how and when they just didn't.