The Marketing Metrics Every Wedding Pro Needs to Know
Marketing is more than just spontaneous social media posts and vibes. It’s an essential but complex orchestration of messages across all kinds of channels that you need to measure. The good news: The right marketing metrics make performance tracking easier.
Marketing metrics help measure if you’re effectively generating brand awareness and consideration, driving customer conversions and building loyalty. Essentially, you need this information to understand the return on investment of your marketing efforts.
Awareness metrics for wedding vendors
Adrienna McDermott, founder of wedding agency Ava and the Bee, likes to think of marketing as a garden. “First, you plant the seeds of awareness, then nurture those leads, help them blossom into bookings and, finally, cultivate long-term loyalty.”
The goal of awareness is to get people’s attention. How many people are discovering your brand? “Think of this as your digital footprint. If no one knows you exist, they can’t hire you,” Adrienna says.
And while these efforts can be less concrete to track than the leads you generate, you still must measure them to know if your brand is resonating in the market. Let’s break down the primary awareness channels and the key metrics to track for each.
Social media
Social media post impressions are great indicators of initial visibility. Impressions are the number of times users see your content, regardless of whether they click, like or comment on the post.
Your website
Website traffic, the number of visitors to your site, tells you if your efforts to get couples to view your site are effective.
Separate traffic by source and see what the most productive sources of website traffic are. Use this info to adjust your budget so you can prioritize the most lucrative platforms.
You can also track organic visits from search engines like Google, which tells you if your search engine optimization (SEO) is working.
Blog
Blogging is back, baby (thanks in part to AI chatbots sourcing answers to user questions from comprehensive posts).
Keep a regular blog and measure metrics like number of page views, average time spent on page and traffic sources (to show where viewers came from, like Facebook or your Storefront).
You can also measure click-through rate (to show whether people follow your calls to action to inquire about your services).
Adrienna says the key to blogging is writing posts that are findable (with SEO), valuable (that solve a real question or problem) and shareable (so they support other platforms like Pinterest or newsletters).
Pinterest outbound clicks, the number of times users click a Pin to visit an external link, tell you how effective your Pins are at generating traffic.
WeddingPro Storefront
Your WeddingPro Storefront gives you access to WeddingPro Insights, which provides metrics such as Storefront visitors (how many couples visit your Storefront to learn more about your business). Analyze this metric over time and compare it to other sources of awareness traffic to see how powerful each marketing channel is.
Google search
Google Analytics traffic sources is a tool that provides deeper insight into where your traffic is coming from. You can use it to differentiate between direct, organic, paid, referral, social, email and display ads. Use this insight to better prioritize your marketing budget.
Pro tip: Use traffic sources to allocate your marketing budget. Adrienna says if you’re spending big on TikTok and Instagram, but traffic metrics show they’re not winners, shift your budget elsewhere.
On the other hand, “If you’re a wedding planner in Charleston and your ‘Best Charleston Wedding Venues’ blog post brings in hundreds of clicks a month, that’s a strong awareness win!”
Consideration metrics for wedding vendors
Pretty social media posts look good on the surface, but how do you know what really gets couples interested in your services?
Measuring consideration lets you focus on signals that show couples are keen and weighing their options. By fostering relationships and showing your expertise, you drive more inquiries over time.
Plus, by focusing your time and budget on strategies that deliver real results, you can make smarter marketing decisions over time, ultimately streamlining marketing efforts down the line.
Social media
Follower growth rate shows how quickly your engaged audience grows over a given period (for example, quarterly).
You can also measure engagement, or the total number of interactions (likes, comments, shares, saves, clicks or reactions) your posts get. When you have posts with high engagement, you know you’re doing something right.
Measure how effective your calls to action are using the click-through rate (CTR) of your posts with external links (for example, links to your booking form). CTR = link clicks ÷ impressions.
WeddingPro Storefront
Storefront saves (when couples save your Storefront so they can revisit it later) and Storefront link clicks (which external links get the most clicks) give you insight into how many couples are seriously considering your services and where they go next.
Website
Measure the number of inquiry form submissions you get in a given time period (for example, monthly).
You can also track website activity on your hosting platform. Track the average time spent on your site per user and the most visited web pages.
“If your contact page views are high but submissions are low, it could mean you’re not answering key questions or not earning enough trust,” says Adrienna. Use this insight to adjust your website accordingly.
The number of new email sign-ups over time (e.g., monthly) shows that people are interested.
Newsletter opens and click-through rates show you how many people are interacting with each piece of email content. This helps you decide which types of subject lines and email body content perform best.
Conversion metrics for wedding vendors
Conversion is what happens after a potential couple engages with your marketing. The goal of conversion marketing is to help couples confidently choose a vendor and convert prospects into paying customers.
By tracking conversion metrics, you can reduce excess spend and build a more predictable booking pipeline for future business stability.
The main conversion channels and their marketing metrics include:
Social media
Use return on investment (ROI) as a metric to measure direct revenue specifically from social media efforts. You can gather this information by adding a “how did you hear about us?” section to your booking form. Compare it to your ROI for other channels.
Use this calculation to get your ROI:
Booking Revenue per Lead Source ÷ Spend by Lead Source x 100 = ROI %
WeddingPro Storefront
In addition to ROI for WeddingPro Storefront bookings, you should know your inquiry-to-booking rate (how many people who contact you actually book), total bookings per month (which you can compare over time) and your average booking value.
Use this information to reach your annual revenue goals. For example, Adrienna says, “If you’re a photographer booking 10 weddings at $4,000 each but want to hit $60,000 in annual revenue, you’ll need to either increase your rates or boost your total bookings.”
Website
If you also accept bookings through your website, you can measure your ROI, inquiry-to-booking rate, total monthly bookings and average booking value here as well.
Loyalty metrics for wedding vendors
Loyalty is an often-overlooked but important marketing stage. For wedding pros, maintaining relationships and securing repeat or referral-based business are huge factors in long-term success.
By staying in touch with former clients, you’ll attract them back for future events or have them recommend you to others.
Social media
Loyalty often looks like referrals. You can see referrals in action on social media shares. Identify how many post shares you get from existing or past clients who want to spread the word about your work.
Google search
Did you know that 90% of couples read reviews to help them select their vendors?
Track how many Google business reviews you receive over time and the quality of those reviews.
Adrienna wants to remind pros that “a single glowing review on Google or a referral from a venue can drive more inquiries than a month of Instagram posts!”
WeddingPro Storefront
Couples can review your services on your Storefront, too.
WeddingPro Insights shows the number of reviews and their quality on your Storefront, which helps boost credibility with other prospective clients.
Don’t forget: You can easily request reviews with The Knot and WeddingWire’s Review Collector tools straight from your account.
Website
Track how often you’re referred by planners, vendors or former clients.
In your inquiry or booking form, ask how couples heard about you. Include the option for “referred by” and leave a text box for the couple to fill in the name of the person or business who referred them.
When you send an email, do readers share it with people they know? The forward or share rate for your emails shows they trust you enough to spread the word.
A high unsubscribe rate (the percentage of subscribers who opt out) lets you know readers aren’t sticking around and something needs to change.
Consistency is the cornerstone
Growth looks different for every business, but data helps you define what success means for you.
However you define success, regular check-ins are key. Adrienna recommends vendors review awareness and engagement metrics monthly, and conversion and loyalty metrics quarterly.
A rule of thumb: If leads or bookings have stalled for more than 6 weeks, it’s time to reevaluate your strategy.
Pro tip: Set a booking goal, then reverse-engineer it.
For example, say you want to book 20 weddings this year. If your current inquiry-to-booking rate is 25%, you’ll need at least 80 qualified inquiries per year, or ~7 per month, to hit your goal. Adjust your marketing efforts as needed to reach your goal.
Metrics give you control
“What I love the most is that metrics give you control. If bookings are slow, you can identify the leak in your funnel,” says Adrienna, who adds that the marketing you do now is what books clients in six months.
Whether it’s social media impressions or booking rates, these marketing metrics act as a north star to show you where to continue investing to reach the right couples—and where to pull back.
By bringing all of these basic marketing benchmarks together, you get a holistic view of how you’re performing to guide those crucial budget decisions across the marketing mix.
Want in on an easy way to track metrics?
WeddingPro Insights gives you a full view of your Storefront analytics in one fell swoop, so you can do more with the power of The Knot and WeddingWire’s more than 2.4 million new couple sign-ups each year.
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