Wedding portals in SG. Are they effective?

[Kirei]

Would like to find out from the folks here who uses or have used wedding portals (Singapore brides, perfect weddings etc) as their advertising platform.

1. Is it effective in driving traffic and gaining exposure from potential clients?

2. Is there a significant increase in your number of bookings from using such portals against none previously?

3. If u have use it b4. What are the reasons you have stopped using it.

Your replies will be greatly appreciated

 

[sjackal]

Would like to find out from the folks here who uses or have used wedding portals (Singapore brides, perfect weddings etc) as their advertising platform.

1. Is it effective in driving traffic and gaining exposure from potential clients?

2. Is there a significant increase in your number of bookings from using such portals against none previously?

3. If u have use it b4. What are the reasons you have stopped using it.

Your replies will be greatly appreciated

I am not sure about wedding portals in SG, but I guess if you can check their page rank and site traffic it will give you an rough idea of their hit rates. Regardless of local or international listings, IMHO, it is just like yellow pages, you pay to be listed on a specialized high volume topic focused site, great, but you are also listed alongside the numerous other competitors up down left right north east south west, all screaming for attention.

IMHO, if you are independent freelancer working one man show most of the time, the best advertising are still very traditional, from ex-clients and word of mouth. She saw her friend hire you. Her friend told her you are great. She already decided subconsciously. Many wedding photogs are booking well year after year serving the same group of brides and bridesmaids who kept referring and referring. It is the big wedding photography companies that needs more of these adverstising because of multi shooters and varying levels of feedback and customer experience. They need more outreach.

This year I did not renew subscription for several pro wedding photog association/listings for there has been zero or little hits from them, and after leaving those advertising platform, it makes no different, still booking new clients, the difference is I saved money from those expensive membership fees, now only left with one, which I will see how...

 

[Kirei]

I am not sure about wedding portals in SG, but I guess if you can check their page rank and site traffic it will give you an rough idea of their hit rates. Regardless of local or international listings, IMHO, it is just like yellow pages, you pay to be listed on a specialized high volume topic focused site, great, but you are also listed alongside the numerous other competitors up down left right north east south west, all screaming for attention.

IMHO, if you are independent freelancer working one man show most of the time, the best advertising are still very traditional, from ex-clients and word of mouth. She saw her friend hire you. Her friend told her you are great. She already decided subconsciously. Many wedding photogs are booking well year after year serving the same group of brides and bridesmaids who kept referring and referring. It is the big wedding photography companies that needs more of these adverstising because of multi shooters and varying levels of feedback and customer experience. They need more outreach.

This year I did not renew subscription for several pro wedding photog association/listings for there has been zero or little hits from them, and after leaving those advertising platform, it makes no different, still booking new clients, the difference is I saved money from those expensive membership fees, now only left with one, which I will see how...

Thanks for your input. I had my doubts when approached by wedding portals to advertise my service. Though they claim the traffic is very good but the cost of one year advertising is a lot too (around SGD 3k).

 

[Agetan]

Would like to find out from the folks here who uses or have used wedding portals (Singapore brides, perfect weddings etc) as their advertising platform.

1. Is it effective in driving traffic and gaining exposure from potential clients?

2. Is there a significant increase in your number of bookings from using such portals against none previously?

3. If u have use it b4. What are the reasons you have stopped using it.

Your replies will be greatly appreciated

One thing for advertising is this... if you are new, it is probably not as effective.

You can't measure X amount of money spend on advertising = Y amount of booking. This is not what this is for.

Sometimes you wonder why big brand name which already sell so much still advertise?
If you are pursuing photography full time and want to do well, Marketing and advertising is something you need to seriously consider and
it should be a total strategy rather than a single point of advertising. Think long term.

Regards,

Hart

 

[Kirei]

One thing for advertising is this... if you are new, it is probably not as effective.

You can't measure X amount of money spend on advertising = Y amount of booking. This is not what this is for.

Sometimes you wonder why big brand name which already sell so much still advertise?
If you are pursuing photography full time and want to do well, Marketing and advertising is something you need to seriously consider and
it should be a total strategy rather than a single point of advertising. Think long term.

Regards,

Hart

Thanks for the valuable input.

 

[Agetan]

Thanks for the valuable input.

No problem.

Good luck with everything.

Hart

 

[catchlights]

Thanks for your input. I had my doubts when approached by wedding portals to advertise my service. Though they claim the traffic is very good but the cost of one year advertising is a lot too (around SGD 3k).

How many weddings can you shoot per year?

100 weddings? so let say the advertising cost is $3000 per year, and if you get 50 weddings from this portal, $30 from each assignments will go to advertising at the wedding portal, regardless whether where the lead is from.
if you can only take 50 weddings a year, the cost will go up to $60 for each assignment.

there are so many photographers advertise in the same portal, so my estimating, you will receive at least 20 enquiries just to get one face to face presentation, and to get confirm bookings from face to face presentation, depends on your personality, how good is your salesmanship and of course, your price.
Lets face it, those who usually shop online, pricing is always the key factor. For a $50 different, they may just go and sign up with another photographer.

but if you rely on word of month, the rate of confirm booking is almost 80%, you meet up with 5 couples, 4 couples will sign up with you, because some of them saw you working at weddings of someone they know, or they take recommendation from their friends and also saw their friend's wedding photos. even your price has raised, they are more likely to accept that.

you need to understand this, we are not selling a product, we are selling our service, and can only have serve certain amount of customers per year, so need to make every enquiry and meeting counts. there is no point getting 50000 view counts and 10 enquiry emails per day if the sign up rate for bookings is so low. But if you take it as a branding, don't expect much business from there, than that is another story.