In an increasingly competitive market, marketing your venue to maximise revenue is crucial to staying ahead of the competition.
You must ensure you are not only marketing your venue to the right people, but also in the right way. Then you can improve both the number of enquiries your venue receives and the quality of enquiries too. This is the only way to guarantee that you spend time on the enquiries that will boost the bottom line.
Our top tips for marketing your venue promise more revenue, a greater quality and quantity of bookings and higher ratings after the event.
1. Who is your ideal booker?
The first step to marketing your venue is to define your audience. Consider the following aspects of your target personas:
- Industry
- Budget
- Job Title
- Location
- Event Requirements
- Goals
You must make sure that fully understand who you are targeting before you start testing the ways in which you can attract them. Personal event bookers will have different requirements to corporate event bookers. You need to gauge what each client is searching for.
Corporate bookers will often be looking to explore the more practical aspects of your venue and event support. This way they can worry less about the basics and more about their business goals. This includes capacity, additional facilities and accessibility.
When you understand the needs of each potential client, you can attract more of them with ease and approach each new enquiry with a winning plan.
Understanding your target groups is the first step to forming a relationship and winning their business.
2. Why should they choose your venue?
Now that you’ve defined a rich list of target groups, you can start building their profiles by adding in the benefits that your venue will bring to them as a customer.
Understanding the opportunities your venue creates for each of your ideal clients will help you to build your marketing strategy accurately.
This could range from being the best price guarantee in the area, the highest quality of fine dining among your competitors, or having the largest selection of additional facilities.
Think about what makes your venue stand out from the rest. Make sure it is bold and catered accordingly to each subsection of your target audience.
3. What kind of marketing collateral should you create?
Having determined who you are marketing to and what they most want and need, it’s time to create relevant collateral that communicates this en masse.
Ensure that your collateral is tailored to perfection and is as visually appealing as possible to make sure bookers keep thinking of your venue first. You can never make a second first impression, so make it count!
Consider what collateral best suits your marketing needs. Is it in the form of an online magazine that you can electronically send to customers? Or do you want to create hard-copy collateral which you can hand out at site visits? Or even both? HeadBox offers 3D tours of venues that managers can then circulate on social media and through their own websites.
This gives event managers the opportunity to see the venue without travelling to it first. In a digital age, this is a surefire way to market your venue to the height of success.
In a market that is increasingly time-poor and has come to rely more heavily on digital content, you can’t go wrong with online collateral. Your target audience will be able to access your venue wherever they are. If you use striking photography and captivating video content, you’re sure to make an impact.
We would suggest investing in a designer or photographer to help bring your vision to life. You want it to look as professional as possible. The better the quality of designed collateral, the longer you can keep it in circulation. Bookers will engage with your venue and be more likely to make a booking if it looks attractive and eye-catching.
4. Social Media
In a digital-centric world, social media venue marketing is crucial for all businesses. It’s a free way of broadcasting your brand to customers you wouldn’t be able to reach in any other way and build online communities.
If you are creating online content and looking to build a community, having an active social media presence is a good place to start. Share your own content and the content of others. Ask and answer pivotal questions to start interesting conversations. Here, you can start connecting with a relevant audience.
Using Twitter and Instagram are the best ways to ensure that your venue stays relevant. Keep up to date with trending hashtags and themes to integrate your venue into popular conversation. If it’s Christmas, why not take some photos of your venue decorated in festive style? Or write a blog about the previous holiday events that have been hosted at your venue?
You want to engage people and build their interest in the events you’ve held and are holding in the future. Part of this engagement can be achieved by creating your own employee testimonials. Encourage your staff to share their experiences via video testimonials, this can give potential clients an inside look at your venue’s operations and the successful events you’ve hosted. Gather testimonials and great reviews to publish on your platform.
Circulate them on social media so other event managers know that your venue is getting attention. This will ultimately create a band of online ambassadors to help spread the word to others.
If you’d like more information about the different marketing tools you can use on Social Media then check our earlier blog post here.
5. How can you turn your audience into a community?
Building an online community of loyal followers is key to marketing your venue. Using online collateral and word of mouth will help circulate your venue to the bookers that really matter.
There’s a few ways to help you build this online community:
Consistent Content
It all starts with great content. Whether it’s fun video content of events you’ve previously worked on or blog articles about the venue itself or the people that have been there. Be as creative as possible and make sure the content is unique and engaging.
Reviews
Online reviews are key to increasing the popularity of your venue. Keep in mind that you’re trying to encourage customers to leave a review of the venue after every single booking. You’ll then build up your online presence and ensure that clients think of your venue first. Your key customers can become ambassadors of your venue by leaving a glowing review of each of their events.
You can’t grow the fame of your venue alone. If all you do is talk about yourself and how good your venue is, it will be impossible to gain long term traction. The best way is to enable others is to give credit. People like a little love especially if it is genuine and useful.
Marketing your venue will become easier and better each time with these top tips. If you take all of these tips on board, you’re guaranteed to see positive changes in your venue bookings, ratings and revenue. What are you waiting for?
