Getting more wedding enquiries isn't always the answer to getting more bookings.
In the first episode of The Wedding Venue Sales & Marketing Podcast, Nikita Thorne is joined by wedding sales expert Kelly Mortimer to explore where wedding venues could be losing potential bookings - and why improving your existing sales journey should often come before investing in generating more leads.
With more than 25 years' experience in luxury hospitality and wedding sales, Kelly has worked with venues to improve conversion, increase booking value and generate additional wedding revenue.
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Her message to venues is simple: before putting more leads into the top of your funnel, understand what is happening to the couples already in it.
Do You Really Need More Wedding Enquiries?
When bookings are down, it can be tempting to immediately focus on generating more enquiries through advertising, directories, social media or other marketing channels.
But what happens after a couple discovers your venue?
Kelly explains that venues need to understand the entire wedding sales journey, from the moment a couple first lands on the website through to downloading a brochure, booking a viewing and ultimately confirming their wedding.
If couples are reaching one stage but consistently disappearing before the next, increasing your marketing spend may simply send more people into the same problem.
As Kelly puts it:
"There is no point in me putting leads into a funnel that is not converting."
Instead, start with your existing data and identify where couples are dropping out.
Where Could Your Wedding Sales Journey Be Losing Couples?
Throughout the episode, Kelly highlights several areas venues should examine.
Your website is one of the first. Couples need to quickly understand what their wedding could look like at your venue. Kelly recommends making wedding sales imagery heavily product-led, clearly showing spaces such as ceremony and reception areas rather than relying predominantly on photographs of couples.
The next step also needs to be obvious. Rather than presenting couples with numerous different calls to action, Kelly recommends consistently guiding them towards actions appropriate to where they are in the buying journey, such as downloading a brochure or booking a venue viewing.
And don't overlook follow-up. Kelly explains that today's couples can take considerably longer to move from initial research to a venue viewing, meaning one initial email and a generic "just checking in" follow-up may not be enough. Her approach is to nurture couples with useful, visual content that continues to build their understanding of the venue.
Find the Biggest Gap in Your Wedding Sales Funnel
You don't need to overhaul your entire sales process at once.
We've created a free Wedding Venue Sales Journey Audit to help you take the ideas discussed in this episode and apply them to your own venue.
Using your last three months of data, the audit helps you:
- map your journey
- calculate conversion between each stage
- identify your biggest drop-off
- review potential friction within that part of the journey
- choose one change to test, rather than trying to fix everything at once.
Free Download: Wedding Venue Sales Journey Audit
Find out where you could be losing potential wedding bookings.
Complete the form below to receive your free Wedding Venue Sales Journey Audit and identify the part of your sales journey to focus on first.
Once you've identified the gap, you can focus your team's time and budget on improving the part of the journey that could make the biggest difference to conversion – before simply chasing more enquiries.
Listen to the Full Episode
Listen to the full conversation with Kelly Mortimer on The Wedding Venue Sales & Marketing Podcast for more practical advice on website journeys, wedding venue imagery, follow-up, pricing, buyer behaviour and converting more enquiries into higher-value bookings.