When clothing stores sell their apparel online, they have a strategy to how their clothes are pictured. Minimal backgrounds, cool models, different angles. That’s how they get YOU to imagine wearing their stylish clothes and eventually putting it in the shopping cart.

Marketing a wedding venue is no different.

Each photo you show has to be purposeful. If couples can imagine their special day walking down the aisle on your grounds, you’ve won half the battle.

How do you showcase your venue? Not only are strategic photos beneficial, but videos and drone shots are a must to fully convey your landscape. Beyond that, detailed diagrams of your venue space are helpful too to satisfy the logistical minds of venue-seekers.

Here’s 4 actions you can take to captivate potential clients:

1. Schedule a Styled Shoot

Especially if you’re just starting to open your space for weddings and don’t have a repertoire of professional pictures, we highly recommend building your portfolio through a styled shoot.

A styled shoot is a staged wedding around your venue that involves the creative work of other wedding vendors too. It’s a collaborative setting where all parties contribute their expertise in exchange for credit in photos that everyone can share.

To set up a styled shoot, reach out to local photographers, event designers/planners, logistical suppliers like table/chair providers and florists, and jewelry and bridal shops. It’s a great way to connect with local partners and expand your network.

These professional pictures will not only highlight your venue and show off how your space can host a wedding, but they will drive engagement too. A few of our new venues were lacking leads before we connected them with a photographer for a styled shoot opportunity. After posting the pictures from the shoot on their Weven storefront, they received an increase in inquiries and bookings. Through your partnership with Weven, you’ll have access and be able to leverage our trusted network of photographers. We’ll also curate recommendations throughout the way to help you gain traction.

2. Take Video and Drone Shots

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then videos and drone shots are your next essential steps to powerfully communicate your venue’s whole story.

Video marketing is an extremely worthwhile way to promote your venue. We recommend hiring a videographer to help capture those wedding-ready shots and edit together live footage from actual weddings to create an appealing promo video for you. You can also personally produce a homemade video of you narrating and touring your space. Having a virtual tour saves time and effort in the future because it’ll be a component that lives on your online presence forever for people to easily view. Plus, with COVID-19 still limiting travel and impacting consumer behavior towards a more online focus, your potential clients will appreciate a remote, yet thorough introduction to your venue.

There’s no better way to achieve that cinematic feel of zooming across your land than some epic drone shots. Talk about helping couples visualize your venue space! Aerial shots of trees, lakes, cabins, mountains--anything that makes your venue stand out would translate well with drone footage. It helps couples get a feel of your place, and time lapses from morning to night skies evoke an extra sense of awestruck and flair.

Whether it’s a professionally made video or personally created walk-through, make sure to share it across all your social media platforms and on your Weven storefront! This way, no matter where potential clients come across you, they’ll be able to instantly see your venue’s beauty.

3. Provide Maps and Floor Plans

It’s great to have pictures of tables and tents, but you can go above and beyond and provide an outline overview of your indoor and outdoor spaces.

A well diagrammed map is the place where you can exhibit your venue’s features from a rose garden to a stone bridge. Give ideas of what couples can interact with and take some beautiful wedding pictures around.

What’s also helpful for couples is if you can include sample set-ups for where amenities can go in your illustrations so they can get a better sense of the spacing. For indoor spaces, make a feasible floor plan that incorporates things like tables, chairs, a dance floor, and DJ booth by electrical outlets. In outdoor settings, show possible placements of tents in open fields and portable bathrooms by plumbing. If you have on-site lodging, make sure to include this bonus feature! Not only will giving simple visuals of your venue help people picture your space, but you will also appear more hospitable by providing predesigned arrangements that work.

Weven has an interactive venue map that makes it very easy for you to edit and insert logistical site details like dimensions of spaces and locations of utilities. Update your map with Weven tools so booked couples especially can access the information at a glance on their own.

4. Strengthen your Online Presence

While you’re waiting for the professional photos to develop or videographers to send you their edited work, you can still support your venue’s online presence with past photos and cumulative substance.

Maintain and densify your content on your Weven storefront by adding photos, sharing accommodations and amenities, and writing figurative descriptions of your venue and its history.

Sporting aesthetic visuals across different social media platforms also helps reach more clients and show off what your venue looks like. When you partner with Weven, we’ll help spread supportive visuals by creating a Pinterest board dedicated to your venue and highlighting your space on our Instagram and blog.

Make sure to upload your favorite photos to our photo management system so our marketing team can leverage them and spotlight you!

One more word of advice--ensure what you’re conveying is truthful and you can deliver on the venue space you’re portraying. This means no to exaggerated pictures and yes to continued maintenance of your property so expectations remain reality.