Nobody is looking for your venue. They are looking for a venue.
That is the first thing to accept, and it is an unpleasant one. Unless somebody has recommended you, a client does not type the name of your estate. They type "wedding venue" followed by their region, they open eight or ten tabs in the same evening, and they close seven of them in under a minute each, on criteria you can name one by one.
So you are not competing with the venue down the road on the warmth of your welcome. You are competing on what shows in those sixty seconds, and on being in the list at all. A magnificent venue that does not appear in that list does not exist for them.
The three places where people look for you
Google search, to find candidates. That is where the list of ten tabs is built, and it is the only place where somebody discovers a venue they had never heard of.
Your Google listing, the panel on the right with the photographs and the reviews, to check that you really exist. A listing with no recent photograph, no opening hours and not a single review has the same effect as a shop with its shutter half down.
Instagram and Facebook, for reassurance. People look there to see whether you have hosted anyone lately. A page whose last post dates from the previous summer suggests a venue that is winding down. It is untrue, obviously, but that is what the visitor concludes.
Wedding platforms do bring you real enquiries, but you are listed there beside thirty competitors, on the platform's own criteria, and you pay for every contact. They complete an online presence, they do not replace it.
The order matters more than the quantity
It is not effort that is missing, it is order.
Most of the venues that contact me are already doing something: a Facebook page kept up by the daughter of the house, a Google listing created five years ago, sometimes a website built by a cousin.
The website first, because everything else leads back to it. Sending visitors to a site that triggers no enquiry is filling a bucket with a hole in it, and it is the most expensive mistake I see. Then the Google listing and search visibility, which work while you are hosting and do not stop the day you stop paying. Social media continuously, to stay present between two seasons. And advertising last, only when a season is approaching with empty dates and you need enquiries within days.
What it looks like in practice
The Domaine Passiflorart, in the Ossau valley, was already hosting weddings. Everything came through word of mouth and its Facebook page. No enquiry arrived through the internet, for a simple reason: there was no website, so there was nowhere to arrive.
Eight days between the first call and going live. Fourteen enquiries received through the form in the month that followed, for a venue that had not changed by a single square metre in the meantime.
Four checks to run tonight
Take your phone, not your computer, because that is where it all happens.
Search for "wedding venue" followed by the name of your area, and see which page you appear on. Then open your own website and count the seconds before the first photograph appears: past three, some of your visitors have already left. Look at your Google listing as though you did not know the venue, and ask yourself whether you would call. Finally, search your own website for the number of people you can seat at table: if you cannot find it in ten seconds, a client will not find it either, and it is the first question they ask.
An awkward answer to any one of those four gives you your first job. It is often the only one there is.
The questions I am asked next
How long before the first enquiries arrive?
It depends entirely on the starting point. A venue with no website at all receives enquiries within the first weeks, because people were already looking for it and not finding it. A venue that already had a site sees its enquiry rate rise first, at equal traffic, and then search visibility builds over three to six months. That is the slow part, and it is the part that lasts.
Are wedding platforms not enough on their own?
They bring genuine enquiries and they have their place. But you sit there beside thirty competitors, on the platform's criteria, and the day you stop paying you disappear. A well kept listing and a website of your own are not in conflict: the first instinct of a couple who spotted you on a platform is to search your name on Google.
My venue does not only host weddings. Does that change anything?
It changes the words you target, not the method. Corporate events, birthdays and family gatherings are searched for in exactly the same way, at other times of the year. That is often where the dates to fill actually are, since they fall midweek and out of season.
Where do you start when everything needs redoing at once?
With the website, always, and with the page that receives enquiries. As long as it triggers nothing, everything you spend on bringing people in is lost. Order is what matters, and it is also what costs least.
If you would rather I looked on your behalf, that is what the free diagnosis is for: you give me the address of your venue, I write back in a few lines, with no appointment and no obligation.
