1. Only low-budget brides go to wedding shows.
The primary audience of a wedding show is the middle 80 percent of the wedding budget spectrum. Couples with the lowest 10 percent and the highest 10 percent of wedding budgets don’t attend in any great numbers. For most wedding professionals, the couples who attend wedding shows are their core audience.
Does your business target a higher-end wedding? Keep in mind that the total wedding budget is not all that meaningful. EVERY wedding is a high-end wedding in some areas, and EVERY wedding is a low-end wedding in others.
EVERY couple has a couple of elements of their wedding that they don’t care all that much about, and EVERY couple has at least one or two hot buttons, parts of their wedding where they will spend a disproportionate amount of their wedding budget to get what they want.
There is a lot of money being spent as a result of connections made at wedding shows. The savvy business is there to get a share of it.
2. Couples only attend wedding shows for the freebies.
Do you really think that someone would invest their valuable time to attend a wedding show just to get a luggage tag or a piece of cake?
While it’s true that wedding show exhibitors who have a promotional giveaway tend to get more traffic, the idea that attendees are only looking for free stuff comes typically from exhibitors who see those booths getting more attention. If a giveaway brings you more attention, and you can convert that attention into more business, then a giveaway might make sense for you.
3. Face to face selling is no longer important.
It’s no secret that most couples use online resources to plan their weddings, but 97% of them will not make a major purchase decision without a face-to-face meeting. Wedding shows remain an important way to market to engaged couples because they are the most efficient way of making that face-to-face connection.
If you sell a discretionary product or service, something that the couple might not even know they need, they’ll never search for you online. At a wedding show, things that a couple might not have even considered can quickly become things they want.
Marc McIntosh is the producer of the Wedding Experience, the leading wedding shows in the Washington, Baltimore, and Richmond markets. The Wedding Experience provides the opportunity to promote your business through face-to-face contact with a large audience of motivated buyers. For information, call 703-425-1127, email marc@weddingexperience.com or visit www.weddingexperience.com.
