I have jumped in with both feet into researching the market my client is in as well as the advertising opportunities for them. My client wishes to focus on increasing bridal bookings for their party center, therefore I am looking into all the ways brides research places to hold receptions. I found that on-line wedding directories are similar to old fashioned yellow pages when it comes to pricing – there is the basic listing and then there are TONS of add ons, each of which cost more. Of course if you sign up for some of their bundle options, they’ll throw special offerings in for free. If I can figure out what my client will actually get and what they’ll actually pay for – it will be a miracle!
As far as researching the market – there are only 6 competitor facilities within a 50 mile radius. The lack of competition should allow me to distinguish what makes my client’s facility stand out from the others. This will then become one of the features in our marketing. So far the distinguishing factor is the personalized service my client provides in their scenic setting. While a lot of places say they will cater to you with personalized service, it appears that St. Denis puts their money where their mouth is when it comes to bending over backwards for their brides. With this, I will leverage customer testimonials in our marketing to help us get this message out.
I did find 2 unfavorable comments on a bridal website about my client. I am not sure how to address this – perhaps developing a facebook page where we can post testimonials and invite others to comment, but will that open up an even larger can of worms? If anyone has any suggestions on this – I would appreciate feedback.
Thanks – kim
Sounds like you’ve been doing a lot of research so far and found a lot of useful information!
As far as testimonials, I’ve never really worked with anything like that, but my first thought is that a facebook might be a good idea and encourage people to leave feedback. I first thought of that new esurance commercial where they say their customers give you the reviews & it shows the facebook that people post comments to. If you monitor it (& teach them how to monitor so you don’t have to when you’re done) then you can watch comments & even delete bad ones that people put…facebook is used so often by so many people it’d be good to get a lot of “likes” & get people to post pictures of their wedding day or process & saying thanks to St. Denise Party Center for helping. Just ideas that come to mind right away.
Thank you for the feedback – I was also thinking facebook as an avenue to look at.
This sounds like it should be an interesting project! I agree, a Facebook page would be great marketing for your client. Many couples getting married now are a part of the “Facebook generation,” so you might as well take advantage of that. And as for negative feedback, I feel like any business has to deal with that. Especially, though, in the wedding world. There are so many bridezilla’s that have unrealistic expectations, & may have negative feedback if everything didn’t go EXACTLY how they pictured. But as the first commenter stated, if you go with Facebook, comments and feedback can be monitored.