If you’re like most venues, you’re beginning to feel a change. Just slightly, like a little breeze picking up on an otherwise clear day. But you’re starting to feel it.

Let’s face it: the last 2 years have been tumultuous.

Web traffic slowed to a halt in spring of 2020 then sped up hugely by the beginning on 2021.

Even more significantly, leads trickled to a stop in that same spring of 2020 (insert terrifying music) and then, thankfully, became a deluge, overwhelming us. Most venues have struggled to meet the demand even whilst being so grateful to have the problem of too much business.

But now.

Now things are starting to normalize.

We know from a logical perspective that it makes sense. The pent-up demand from the pandemic weddings has been largely booked. Couples in the market now are looking to get married mostly in 2023 and there are just normal numbers of them.

But the problem now is that normal feels… weird. Slow almost.

We need to give ourselves grace and realize that, as an industry, we’ve been through a lot. You’ve been expected to deal with more in the last 24 months than we’ve ever had to manage before.

So now, we need to realize that normal is normal and we need to use the time to take a breath and do a few things to get our feet under us:

• Take a fresh look at your offerings. Are they mirroring what engaged couples want for 2023?
• Is it time for a photo refresh on your social and advertising platforms?
• Do you know what advertising is actually working?

That last piece is a kicker, but it’s key as we normalize.

You need to spend your marketing dollars intelligently, which means knowing where your actual bookings are coming from.

You can look at your RFPs, but my strongest advice is this:

Make sure you look at your website’s analytics and see who your top Referring Sources are.

That will tell the tale. Because couples are, more than in the last year, clicking through to your website to get more of a sense of your venue and THEN sending you an email from there.

TO DO FOR YOU:

Check on your website’s Referring Sources regularly. 

• To find this information in Google Analytics UA, go to Acquisition » All Traffic » Referrals
• In Google Analytics 4, go to Reports » Acquisition » Traffic Acquisition » Type “referral” in the search box » press Enter

This will help you with wise ad spends.