In a recent webinar, Head of Social Media at Easy Weddings, Emma Woythaler, shed light on the immense value social media holds for businesses in the wedding industry.
With Emma’s key takeaways from this captivating session, understand your target demographic, leverage social media metrics, and convert engagement into bookings.
Know Your Target Audience: The Sales Funnel
The primary demographic for wedding businesses predominantly consists of women aged 25 to 35. Emma revealed that over 81% of female social media users aged 19 to 40 are active on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. With TikTok steadily gaining traction, it’s essential to keep an eye on its growth, as 31% of TikTok’s users fall within our target demographic.
A staggering 83% of Australian couples are influenced by social media when selecting their wedding suppliers.
After discovering a supplier on Easy Weddings, a whopping 86.7% of couples turn to Instagram for further research. That’s why wedding businesses need to invest time and effort in building a strong Instagram presence to cater to their target demographic effectively.
As marketers, we think of the user journey as a Sales Funnel.
The top of the Sales Funnel focuses on brand awareness. This “cold” audience has never seen your business before. Perhaps they’re interested in a competitor, or the type of content you’re sharing and all of a sudden your content is popping up in the Explore page. Or maybe they have come to your page after finding you on Easy Weddings.
Next is the consideration phase. This “warm” audience has come across you a few times, and is now considering you for their wedding, but not quite ready to enquire about your services make the booking.
Finally, at the bottom of the funnel is the conversion phase. Your “hot” audience is ready to send a DM, learn more about your product, and hopefully convert to a booking.
Understand Social Media Metrics and Insights
How do you read your social media insights and learn from them?
On Instagram, click on the three bars on the right of the screen, then select the Insights option. From there, you will find your Overview of metrics, including reach, engagement and growth over time, to learn what content had the highest reach and how many people clicked to your website. You can change the date range too.
On the Facebook Business Suite, there is a lot of information there, so have a play around with the metrics and see what the data is telling you. You’ll quickly be able to figure out how your content is performing, what’s getting the link clicks and what’s taking you from that brand awareness phase (cold audience) into that consideration phase (warm audience).
If you’re using Later, there is a really great analytics portal integrated that platform too.
Reach
Reach, the top-of-the-funnel metric, focuses on brand awareness and how far your content travels. Emma emphasised that frequent posting and consistency are key to expanding your reach.
Posting at strategic times, like 7-9AM (while your audience is scrolling at breakfast or during their morning commute), and 7-9PM (during their evening downtime or preparing for bed), can boost your content’s visibility. However, it’s essential to experiment and analyse your platform’s insights data to identify what works best for your audience.
Engagement
Engagement is the level of interaction your audience has with your content. It includes likes, shares, saves, comments, and tags. Understanding the types of engagement your posts receive can help tailor your content strategy to your audience’s preferences.
Follower Growth
Focusing on reach and engagement naturally leads to follower growth. Consistently delivering engaging content can convert viewers into followers, and the algorithm favours content that resonates with your audience.
If they’ve watched your entire video, your entire Reel, they’re more likely to see your next Reel on their Explore page. Or perhaps their friends have commented on that Reel, and so then they’re going to start seeing more of your stuff pop up.
Link Clicks
To move potential clients from consideration to conversion, encourage them to click on links in your posts.
“This is where people who have been following you for a while and they’ve been engaging with your content for a while, are going to show whether they have a true interest in purchasing your product or your service, by clicking the links that are of interest to them,” Emma said.
“So now they go from cold audience to warm audience because they’re considering your brand for their wedding or event.”
Ensure an integrated link-in-bio strategy to direct users to relevant pages, articles, or event registrations.
Leads
Sometimes, leads can originate from direct social media outreach, such as inquiries via DMs or comments. Maintaining consistency in your social media presence is crucial as the decision-making process in the wedding industry often spans a considerable timeframe.
Conversion
Conversion is the ultimate goal where a lead transitions into a paying client. Building a strong rapport and facilitating seamless transactions are pivotal in this phase.
“I’m Instagram Insights every day,” Emma says. “I love seeing how every post is performing. ”
When reviewing the Insights metrics, ask yourself a few questions:
Has this post achieved not many likes, but a ton of saves? Why is that?
“I really analyse how each post has performed, so that next month, when I sit down at my desk for those two hours of content planning, I know exactly what my goal will be with each post,” Emma added.
4 Strategies to Maximise Your Social Time Investment
To make the most of your social media efforts, consider the following strategies:
- Set clear objectives for each post to align with your overall social media goals.
- Create content pillars to streamline content creation and maintain consistency.
- Leverage user-generated content to showcase your work and style.
- Schedule your posts in advance using scheduling tools like Meta Business Suite, Later, or Hootsuite, to save time and maintain consistency.
Scheduling ahead is the easiest thing you can do to save time with content creation, Emma advised.
“Sit down for an hour or two and start scheduling three posts a week for the next five weeks.”
The Meta Business suite is free, but other paid scheduling tools are really user-friendly, like Later and Hootsuite. Just make sure that you’re scheduling your content in a platform that you are comfortable with.
There is a bank of content waiting for you to use it. You don’t have to create new content all the time. Use content from previous weddings – it’s literally your portfolio. Coiuples want to see if your style matches what they want for their wedding, and the easiest way to do that is by using user-generated content.
Emma shares more tips on content creation from her previous webinarInstagrtam Reels: How Wedding Suppliers Can Level Up on Insta.
Final Thoughts on Emma’s Social Media Insights
Emma’s insights from The Real ROI of Social Media webinar demonstrate the power of social media in converting wedding inspiration into actual bookings.
By understanding your target audience, mastering social media metrics, and optimising your content strategy, you can maximise your social media presence and drive more bookings for your wedding business.
📽️ For a deeper dive into these insights, watch the full webinar below.
Catch up on our business webinars you missed
Whether you’re a newer business, more established in the industry, or a sole trader or a larger business, there’s always something to learn from our wedding industry webinars.
You can watch the replay of this webinar and others in our Professional Development webinar resource centre, here.
Be sure to register for our next webinar and mark November 2 in your calendar as we present “The Wedding Trends to Watch in 2024”, with key insights from our annual business and couples wedding surveys. Register here.
If you aren’t yet online with Easy Weddings and would like to see how we can help increase your brand presence and help book more weddings, submit an online enquiry form, here, and we’ll be in touch.
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