To be successful in the event venue industry means knowing how to market your venue successfully. Even if you follow the top venue marketing tips, it means nothing if you don’t tap into your local event planners.
Event planners have connections and clients that can elevate your event venue sales and profits – but tapping into their niche requires a specific marketing strategy.
Use this guide to learn how to market a venue to event planners. From getting listed and dominating social media, here is everything you need to know to master event planner venue marketing.
What Are Event Planners?
Event planners are people who plan and manage events. An event planner works with a client, who tells them what type of an event they want to host and how they want it to go. It’s then the event planner’s job to plan and coordinate the event for their client.
There are many types of event planners, from wedding planners to corporate event planners. But, no matter the event type, event planners have similar characteristics.
They like planning parties, perform well under pressure, and have a vast network of connections and insider knowledge. It’s for these reasons that many people go to event planners instead of straight to an event venue.
Why Target Venue Marketing At Event Planners?
As mentioned above, event planners have a lot of connections and know-how. It’s these skills that they market to people, who then opt for an event planner instead of managing the event themselves.
For an event space to be successful, it needs to market itself to both individuals and event planners.
Individuals, for obvious reasons – there are still many people who choose to plan their events.
And event planners, to tap into this network of people who opt for outside help. You’re not only marketing to the event planner and their current customers but also future customers who might be looking for an event space like yours.
It increases your pool of potential customers and is guaranteed to bring in more business for your event venue business.
How to Market Your Event Venue To Event Planners
Optimize your event planner venue marketing strategy with these top tips.
Choose A Niche For The Event Space
To create an effective venue marketing strategy, you need to determine a niche for your event venue space. Your niche is the type of events you host, including the themes or venue highlights.
For example, let’s say you have a large auditorium-style event space with a big projector perfect for presentations. This would be great for corporate events and exhibits. The projector would be a marketing highlight.
Or, you have a large open event space with a barn and beautiful views. This would be great for weddings, especially rustic or barn-themed weddings. Here the barn is a highlight.
Objectively examine your event space to determine what your selling points are. Create venue promotion ideas, create a portfolio of past events, and keep your niche in mind during the next step.
Determine the Target Audience
Every event venue marketing strategy requires in-depth knowledge of the target audience. The same rule applies to your event planners. If you don’t know who you’re selling to, you won’t understand how to tailor the marketing to hit the mark.
So, use the information you gathered in step one to guide you toward your target audience. If you have the perfect corporate event space, it wouldn’t make sense to market yourself as a wedding venue, would it?
Combine your niche observations with CRM software demographics and analytics on past events hosted in your event space. It’ll reveal common denominators among clients, as well as target audience details like ages, income, location, etc.
Use all this data to find and target event planners in these niches, with these types of clients.
Utilize Social Media
With 4.9 billion social media users across the globe, social media’s potential marketing reach is staggering. It’s essential in any venue marketing strategy.
While you could create an account on all social media platforms, you’ll be better off focusing your energy on two or three at first. Build an online community before moving to another platform.
It’s also important to choose the right social media for your niche. If you’re marketing a corporate event space, LindkedIn, a business social media platform, will have more potential customers than a place like TikTok.
Whichever you choose, share photos to draw attention to your location and service and target event planners with event planning hashtags like #eventplanner, #eventvenue #eventplanning, etc.
List Your Venue On Event Venue Directories
Event venue directories are directories that list venue locations in one place. Clients and event planners can scroll through hundreds of options without having to search far and wide. There are both big, national directories and smaller, local ones – both should be a priority for your event venue business.
List your event venue business on both national and local event venue directories, and list yourself on the ones that have the better website ranking. Look for ones that link back to your website (to build SERP authority) and practice SEO.
There are free Google extensions, like SimilarWeb, that let you compare website page views, bounce rate, etc., to compare competitors and choose the best.
Lastly, most directories are free but some do charge a fee. Compare the website traffic and success rate to determine if the fee is worth it.
Optimize Search Results With Local SEO
SEO (search engine optimization) are website practice that optimizes your web pages for SERPs (search engine results pages). The better your optimization and the better the engagement on your website, the higher your website ranking.
And the higher your ranking, the more people will see your website when searching for terms like “event venue near me”.
Utilize keywords, link building, quality content, and other Google SEO best practices to improve your website ranking and target event planners.
Foster A Good Event Venue Reputation
As mentioned earlier, event planners have a lot of connections. A lot of their referrals are word of mouth, meaning they share good experiences with other clients and people in the industry.
To ensure your event venue is on everyone’s lips, you need to provide a great service and experience. Work hard to create their dream event and treat event planners with respect.
If they have a good experience with your event venue business, they’ll share the experience they had with you with other event planners. This will foster a good reputation among local event planners and encourage bookings when they’re comparing your venue with other venues.
Build Relationships
Build relationships with event planners and local businesses. Networking is essential for any effective marketing plan because an event planner who knows you is more likely to choose you when looking for a venue.
Talk to local businesses and host joint events. Build connections with them and they’ll prop you up and recommend your event venue to customers and other people in the industry.
The same rule applies to event planners. Communicate with event planners, invite them to events, and network on socials like LinkedIn. Even a quick like and comment under a post can be the start of a lucrative mutually beneficial relationship.
Conclusion
Effective event venue marketing guarantees more business, but an effective marketing plan doesn’t just market toward potential clients. Instead, it also targets industry gatekeepers – event planners.
The above marketing tips will help you do just that. While similar to normal marketing, these tips focus their efforts to target event planners specifically. Implement them into your regular marketing plan to broaden your pool of potential clients.
As an event venue, you have to keep track of many events. Perfect Venue event management software will help you get organized, increase sales, and manage your event calendar effortlessly. So, sign up for our 14-day free trial today!
