Part 6: Wedding Fairs and Shows
Wedding fairs and shows can be a mixed bag when it comes to advertising for us as wedding videographers. On one hand, you have the opportunity to meet with engaged couples face to face and showcase your work, but on the other hand, it can be a bit of a silly and impersonal environment.
In our experience, we've found that higher end and Asian wedding fairs tend to be the most successful for us. We've participated in events like Asiana and National Asian Wedding Show, and have always ended up with a good number of bookings as a result. These fairs tend to cost around £2000-£3000 for a two-day event, but the return on investment has been worth it for us, as we've ended up with around £18,000-£25,000 worth of work from each show — a cost of £500 per booking.
Why did these events work well? 1) Always well promoted and busy. 2) Expensive venues with engaged couples with large budgets. 3) Asian weddings are huge events and couples want the very best. 4) Couples want a good price and will negotiate hard, however they focus on quality of service.
We have had some success with luxury and niche wedding fairs, especially those in London. These events tend to attract high-quality clients and are a good opportunity to build up your showreel with some impressive material. Expect to pick up 2-4 good bookings wanting bespoke videos, at good venues (we worked at Savoy, Dorchester, National History Museum etc directly from these shows). High cost and great for showreel.
By attending these higher end wedding fairs we have also been booked for corporate filming jobs on the back of the wedding films we produced for the couples.
On the other hand, we've found that general wedding fairs tend to be less successful for us. In 2012 we paid £3500 to attend a show for 3 days (stand, furniture hire, power, food and staff costs). We ended up with 100 leads collected, 20 follow-up calls, and 7 weddings booked to a value of £9000 — again a cost of £500 per booking, but over 3 days of advertising and a much lower value on each booking.
We have also tried national shows at Excel and several larger local shows and no matter the tweaks we made to our approach and offers they were all similar — hard work and it always feels for us like an unnatural thing to be doing!
While larger national and regional wedding fairs may only cost £300-£1400 per stand depending on the size and days of the show, for a medium sized stand, the return on investment is usually much lower, with only 1-3 weddings resulting from each day at a show. We've also found that the time and effort required to put together the stands and promotional material, as well as the cost of parking and travel, often outweigh the benefits.
Many wedding suppliers we know pick up a lot of work at the Detling Wedding Fairs. This led us to try the first one after Covid and it was very quiet and probably not a good representation of events pre-covid. We spent the day editing in a large hall with no bookings.
We've also found that attending wedding fairs as a preferred supplier at venues can be a good way to maintain relationships with those venues and meet other suppliers in the industry who will work at that venue. In our experience, do not attend a venue based wedding fair expecting to pick up a booking on the day.
Overall, while wedding fairs and shows can be hit or miss, they can be worth it if you choose the right ones and go in with the right expectations. Bespoke and luxury events, as well as venue-specific ones where you are a preferred supplier, tend to be the most successful for us. However, smaller and more localised fairs may not be worth the time and effort.
Next we will talk further about digital marketing as mentioned during Social Media in Part 4, this will be a quick post just expanding on what has worked for us.