Wedding Wire and your photo booth business.

If you’ve visited any wedding vendor websites you have probably seen a handful that have Wedding Wire badges that read, “Wedding Wire Couple’s Choice”, “Wedding Wire Bride’s Choice”, “Wedding Wire 100 Reviews”, etc.  Do these accolades translate into sales for your photo booth business or are they just vanity?

Wedding Wire is a website that boasts 40 million visitors a month and showcases a clean and inviting interface but vendor reviews show that Wedding Wire may lack in customer service and in providing quality leads that lead to profitable event bookings. So the question is: will a membership on Wedding Wire boost your business?

Any vendor can sign up for a free account and “Storefront” on the site which guarantees unlimited User Accounts, storage for up to 100 photos, access to Contact Forms and Inquiries and a Booking Management Tool along with Email Support during regular business hours. An upgrade to a Professional Membership at $66/month adds storage for up to 500 photos, guaranteed placement on the site’s Vendor Directory, removal of competitor’s ads when clients are searching for photography vendors, ePayments and eInvoices, and 24/7 email customer support.

The Featured membership at $104/month adds storage for 1000 photos and a First Page ad on the Vendor Directory. A Spotlight membership (pricing available upon request) increases your ad visibility to “Best Possible, Top Category Ad” as users search for photography vendors. One of the biggest problems with the site, however, is that the categories are not comprehensive enough for photo booth vendors. You will need to choose if you wish to list your business under the Photography, Event Rentals and Photo booths, or Unique Services tabs.

There have been complaints that the bid requests available for clients to fill out are not comprehensive enough and do not provide enough information for an accurate quote or even contact information. On the other hand, the site does provide some name recognition advertising and market infiltration so that clients who may just be browsing through the Wedding Wire site may see your name and then recognize it again on a different site, giving you some credibility.

You will need to do some market research in your area to determine if vendors in your area are booking events through Wedding Wire or if other event planning websites are more popular. If Wedding Wire is not highly used in your area, you may want to stick with the free membership as a trial while focusing your advertising dollars on the sites with more members. If you find you are booking events through Wedding Wire, you can always upgrade to a more comprehensive membership to further increase your sales.

Personally, I do not advertise my photo booth business on Wedding Wire.  I’ve never had a customer ask me where my review badges are, or why I’m not listed as a “Couple’s Choice.”  However, I do believe that in reviews are powerful and if you have a lot on Wedding Wire, there probably is significance to attaining future business.  I post customer reviews and testimonials on my website, which I believe holds the same value.

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