It’s time to answer the often-asked question I hear from many wedding photographers. Is it worth the money to advertise with online marketplaces for professional wedding vendors? I track everything in my wedding business. If you can record it, track it, analyze it, and summarize it, I’m aware of it. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as opening up a spreadsheet of raw, unrefined data and pulling out the hidden truths that lie dormant in the numbers.
For the purposes of this post I’m going to focus specifically on the WeddingWire, but you could easily extrapolate this data and apply it to other sites that function similarly like The Knot.
What is WeddingWire?
At its essence, WeddingWire is an online marketplace that connects brides and grooms with wedding vendors. For example, a bride looking for vendors can search (for free) by zip code, and then refine her search using categories like starting price, average rating, or “photographic style.”
As a vendor, you can choose to pay a monthly advertising fee to have an online "storefront" on WeddingWire. This means that your business will show up in the search results when our bride above starts looking for a wedding photographer.
Why should a photographer care about WeddingWire?
Whether we like it or not (or whether we can afford it or not), sites like WeddingWire do drive business towards their vendors. Once you have chosen which level of advertising you are comfortable with (fees can be up to $400 per month) you can post some photos, set up your price page, and let those sweet sweet inquiries pile up.
Except it’s not quite that simple. From my experience it can be extremely difficult to quantify the leads you receive from the WeddingWire. It seems to me that an unusual number of the inquiries that come in through WeddingWire are light on details, light on budget, and light on follow-up.
It’s this notion that got me thinking. Based on the data I record while running my wedding business, can I prove whether or not it’s a “good idea” to invest your money and advertise on one of these sites. Let’s take a look.
First, the data.
Before I traded my cubicle for a camera, I spent about 40 hours a week in the insurance industry, working on very fancy-sounding projects for large commercial insurance risks. It’s from this line of work that my love for numbers developed. Numbers don’t lie. 2+2=4 simply because it does. I’m going to formulate a similar truth and see how it applies to advertising on the WeddingWire.
In 2016 I had 130 inquiries, which resulted in 52 bookings or 40% of my total inquiries. Which was a gross revenue of $180,856, which averages out to $3478 per wedding (Note: these are gross numbers, and don’t include any costs such as second shooters, albums, taxes, travel fees, prints, or my Amazon addiction).
It becomes very telling when I separate out the WeddingWire bookings and examine them on their own. Here are those numbers:
31 inquiries which resulted in 7 bookings or 22.5% of the total inquiries from the site, which was a gross revenue of $19,396, which averages out to $2771 per wedding.
There are two things that strike me as important. For one, my booking rate for these inquiries is much lower (at 22.5%) than my overall average of 40%. This means I have to work harder to capture the business when it arrives at my door. This adds costs since it means more meetings, more calls, etc.
Issue two is once I do capture the business it results in an average booking that is $1248 less than non-WeddingWire leads. That’s a decline in revenue of about 31% on a per-wedding basis.
Here’s a visualization of the numbers above that I think show the dramatic difference in the quality of the leads coming from WeddingWire.
The Cost of Doing Business
I pay $164 a month to be a "featured" photographer on WeddingWire. That number can vary based on your location, the type of vendor you are, and the level of advertising you want to do. Some photographers in my area pay more than 2.5 times that number to be a “Spotlight” photographer, which guarantees that your ad will be pinned to the top of the list. The $164 I pay guarantees that I’ll be on the first page of results when someone searches for photographers in my zip code.
This is actually the only form of paid advertising that I do. So, in essence, 100% of my marketing budget goes towards this service. That might not be totally fair, since I do spend money on sample albums and prints for venues, and I do some minimal boosting on Facebook throughout the year. However, those numbers are nominal, and they certainly aren’t required by contract, nor are they charged to me on a monthly, recurring basis.
What’s the bottom line?
That’s the question I am struggling with. On one hand, sites like WeddingWire are a great way for a photographer to drum up business when just starting out (or when things get slow). But is there an issue with the quality of the leads? My answer to that question is yes.
If you think about it, there are only so many weekends in a year. Here in New England where I operate, we can get some pretty cold, pretty snowy months. In my case, wedding season is cut down even more than someone living in a more temperate climate. I have to make sure that I am maximizing my earning potential in every possible way. While seven weddings is nothing to sneeze at, I have to wonder how much revenue I left on the table by turning away non-WeddingWire leads after booking up those dates.
It’s also important to mention that WeddingWire also serves as an aggregator for reviews. Of course, there are other sites that do this too (think Yelp, Google, Facebook, etc) but WeddingWire and The Knot seem to be the major players in stacking up reviews for wedding vendors. I often find myself pointing potential couples to my WeddingWire site to check out my "vast collection of stellar reviews." It can be a great way for couples to start the process of qualifying me as their potential photographer.
But outside of all that, the question still remains. Is paying to advertise on WeddingWire a waste of money?
Short answer, maybe.
Long answer, see above.
In 2015 I negotiated a deal with them where I'd pay up front for the year, but at the six month anniversary could receive 100% refund if I wanted. I figured, if I got 1 lead a month in those six months and 1 booking, I'd keep it. Now keep in mind I have 108 great reviews on WW, and you'd think, "He's a natural candidate to succeed."
Total waste of money. 1 lead. 0 bookings. 11 hits to my site. I got my refund on the first day I could.
Good on you for working out such a deal. I never really attempted to negotiate my monthly rate. I saw it more as a necessary evil, especially since I use WW for all of my reviews. Cheers!
I asked them to share their google analytics with me (or any stats) and they refused, which led me to ask for the deal. Every other media company uses data to push their ads, I have no idea why WW wouldn't.
This is one of the best articles I have seen on this site which by the way has fair amount of great content!
Thanks, Kendrick! I really appreciate that.
I feel the same way, Eric! This is one of the best posts I have read. I am an engineer so I truly appreciate you providing visualization and numbers to this. I am researching what the most successful wedding photographers are doing to get clients and I am hearing a lot about blogging. I feel that is very time consuming. Is this a trend? Is it really worth it, in your opinion? On your post, you compare Wedding wire results to "all other". Do you mind sharing what "all other" entitles? I'd love to know what IS actually giving wedding photographers the most customers, not just leads, like it seems to be the issue with WW. Thank you so much and have a wonderful holidays season!
Great article! Had WeddingWire call me today. I declined. I used The Knot for my 1st year and it did bring business to which I was very thankful for but cancelled it after that year because my word of mouth sales and Facebook were enough to get me 36 bookings the second year! I do live in Houston so our market is very vast. For me, I don't advertise much. My word of mouth clients are the best!
36 weddings is a full book, congrats. The majority of my weddings come from word-of-mouth and those are definitely the warmest leads. I'll probably write a post later this year that compares the values of the different kinds of leads (personal, venue referrals, leads from other vendors, Facebook boosting, etc). Good luck with your 2017 season!
Speaking from personal experience, yes. I advertised with them for a month. I got 1 inquiry about my wedding services. I got 5 inquiries about renting out my barn for weddings (I only do photography, no space rental), and three inquiries for other wedding photographers in different states. They said it all has to do with how brides rate you. Contacted several brides for ratings, as wedding wire has a messaging thing that will do that for you. Supposedly they send out three messages over the course of a month. One bride said she never got any inquiry for a rating.
Long story short, don't advertise through them, buy a Facebook add for $20, and spend the rest on a new flash card.
Hi Gabe. I'm not sure if this is helpful at all (you may be done with WeddingWire anyway) but there's a direct link you can send your couples that they can click to review you. If you go into your 'reviews' tab after you log in you can find it.
Anyway, you're right about the Facebook thing. At the very least FB advertising is worth trying. I've been running some adds in 2017 so I can put an article for Fstoppers together later this year about its effectiveness. I'm not sure what to expect, so it'll be an interesting experiment.
I did that, got nothing.
Superb article Eric, this has to be one the most useful write ups I've read on this site. Though imagery/eye candy and fun shoots are great to check out for ideas, this legitimately helped make my business better. Please keep these coming as we all appreciate the time and business strategy behind it! Many thanks Eric.
Thanks, Jon! I appreciate the kind words. I plan on writing most of my articles along these lines (the nitty gritty of the wedding photo business) but I'll probably attempt some gear reviews down the road.
I literally shoot everything with 2 prime lenses, so I'm not exactly the poster-child for camera gear. Cheers!
Great article, Eric! Did you record any SEO benefit to your site from having a listing on Wedding Wire? I doubt it, but maybe for brand new sites one back-link from them may help a little. Either way, it always struck me as odd that a wedding photographer would want to advertise where 10,000 other wedding photographers advertise. Unless your work is markedly different from the others (I.e. Less than 1% of those in the industry), you're just helping brides price match. It makes much more sense to me to spend your advertising budget elsewhere. Even FB ads is 10x more attractive, and has a far lower CPL. Sites like WW are laughing all the way to the bank thanks to optimistic (clueless?) wedding photogs who blindly throw money at their marketing. I'm glad you brought this to light on FStoppers!
Hi Mark. Great points in your response. I didn't even touch on the SEO benefits, so I guess my post isn't 100% fair. I was trying to come at it more from the standpoint of WeddingWire's direct ability to generate leads.
You're right though - how many of us are producing work that is so remarkable and unique (yet still desirable to clients) that we simply outshine all of the other competition? I certainly don't believe that I am doing anything like that. WeddingWire does encourage price shopping. In fact, most vendors are asked to put in a 'starting price' and a 'most popular price,' which the user can then refine his/her search by.
I plan on touching on the benefits of good SEO in an article later down the road. That subject has probably been beat to death, but I think I can put together something that speaks directly to wedding photographers. Either way, thanks for the response!
Also, you're the founder of ShotKit? How awesome, I'm a huge fan of your site, I was just browsing through your wedding photographer section last week. Keep up the great work.
This is great! Thanks for this article!
I had a similar result to some of the other listed above. I advertised on Wedding Wire for one year. In that time I had 19 inquires. I responded to all of them promptly & with a good opening email. I received 1 response email, zero meetings, and zero bookings. So 0% on the booking ratio, compared to my normal 51%.
The response through Wedding Wire was so bad that photographers local to me began to suspect at least some of the inquiries were fake. Needless to say, I dropped my advertising with with Wedding Wire.
By the way, great article!
Great article! As a fellow photographer/number cruncher, I love me some spreadsheets and statistics too!! There was a photographer a while back who showed how WW's awards and ratings are a scam. http://birdsongphotography.com/2014/01/why-i-killed-weddingwire-deep-tho...
i think having john doe as my photog would def livin up any event. just think having him at a 8th birthday party instead of a clown ? with the booze and break dancing ? oh man, that's how legends are made.
Excellent write up, I really enjoyed the read. I myself have won a Bride's Choice Award for like 6 years running. The reason why I don't advertise it is because EVERYONE wins one. I truly think they do it to just sell the plaques.
Thank you so much for taking the time to post this!
Thanks for reading and commenting!
Thanks for running the numbers! I have skipped Wedding Wire because I did not like the high pressure calls.
This is great article,, thanks for the info on Wedding Wire.
i used to advertise with all the wedding sites, knot.com, weddingwire.com and local store theweddingcafe.com i paid a lot of money $$$$$ and the amount of bookings didn't pay off. i either broke even or lost money. so most of my marketing is though Instagram and Facebook, but word of mouth is the best. takes cost less but take more time to create the content for each platform.
Do you blog? I feel like everywhere I read what successful wedding photographers are doing to get clients and they all are either referrals, of course, or blogging. I would like to focus on one or two methods that are not so time consuming as blogging and that has a higher convertion rate. I'd love to hear your thoughts on blogging and how or what you are doing on Facebook and Instagram to get your clients.
Great article, I would like to know what the Sales Representative of WW should have to say.
Love all this information it certainly helps us photographer build our business.
John Adams
www.memoriesbyadams.com
Hi Eric! Thanks so much for this write up! I have done some videos for f-stoppers in the past and am in the process of going more and more down the photography education path after 8 years with weddings full time. I know Lee and Patrick personally, and have spent a lot of time with them etc. Over the past year, my focus on weddings has taken a hit (my YouTube channel, and further planning for education stuff to market to other photographers to help them etc). So, I actually decided to also try WW for a "boost" in bookings, and there is no shame in that, as this has nothing to do with the work at all. So, like you they wanted a full year commitment (you can do monthly but its more, and you have no refund option). So, I did the year contract. For my area here in Miami it was $2500 for the year. After 6 months I am able to get back 100% of the unused months (which is what I think you meant to say in your post). So, in this case after 6 months I can get about $1250 back, and cancel. So, I started this in April, and have now gotten 23 leads so far (its been 3.5 months). Not bad I guess, a few replies.. and zero meetings, and zero bookings. I keep mt price right in line with the "average" (for wedding wire) which is about $2800 for the day. some are slightly less, and some are more. I figure if I can fill in some gaps, thats fine. LOL. The leads from WW are not good, all deal hunters and is (in my opinion) a HUGE waste of time and money. I totally agree with your write up, and I would advise all photographers avoid WW, other than the free account for reviews. The best is to go out and seek other wedding vendors, provide value to them in different ways, and build relationships (this is a given, and off topic and I know people know that). But yes, in terms of paid efforts.. Facebook and IG are much better in general for the same money spent! AND you have more control, with no silly contract! I have just flushed $1250 down the pot.. and that sucks.
I do not recommend WeddingWire. WeddingWire is not honest in its relationship with its Wedding providers.
My company, created in 1994, films Wedding in France, Europe, Usa, Asia, Etc.
- A few years ago, Wedding Wire proposed us a subscription per month or per year. We chose 3 months. We had a forced subscription of one year.
- When we pay $ 40 per month, Wedding Wire does not inform the Client he will not appear on the Site. We need to pay $ 50 per month.
- We asked to be located on Paris. In fact we were located on San Jose, then on Denver. Despite many complaints, we have never been located in Paris. Consequence: no result for our company.
- WeddingWire does not assume its mistakes. We have never been reimbursed for our subscription.
- WeddingWire does not comply with US and European laws. An account must be deleted at the request of the Customer.
- WeddingWire punishes customers who quit. Wedding Wire has erased our many positive reviews to leave only four including two negative ones.
- Two of our Clients complained to WeddingWire for deleting their reviews. No response from WeddingWire.
We invite anyone to read the positive reviews on our website. Who can think that a director who films in Germany, Belgium, Canada, China, Korea, Spain, France, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Morocco, Portugal, Switzerland, USA, is bad ?
This company is very disorganized and unscrupulous. My fiancee and I are wedding videographers and we were so excited to become a part of Wedding Wire but we've dealt with unethical business tactics and harassment from them. The customer service is disorganized, we got conflicting information from various reps about promised leads, once we signed up we never received a confirmation or a contract, their billing system could not accept our 'in good standing' CC's and blamed the issues on the bank. We'd decided to cancel our membership but were met with hostility and harassment from customer service. I think Wedding Wire could end up being a good company under different management but our experience with them has been atrocious since the first call when we signed up for the pro membership. It's been an absolute nightmare for myself and my fiancee. We're just trying to get our business started and film weddings and we've ended up wasting our time dealing with Wedding Wire and their poor business practices. I'd stay away if you're a vendor looking to increase their business. It's a great resource for brides & grooms but for vendors....it's awful. Run far far away.
Just paid my last $172 to The Knot and WeddingWire ran out, thankfully, a month earlier. I can't believe I got sucker-punched into doing this again. A complete waste of money although I did book one cheapo $700 small wedding through WW. I think maybe the mega $2k a month packages might work but a low-level ad package is not gonna cut it. And who wants to risk spending that much money? Save your money, WeddingWire and TheKnot are sinkholes for your entire advertising budget - mine at least. I told the gal to save her breath when they wanted to renew me again but out of courtesy, agreed to speak with her at an appointed time. I stayed home, I waited. Nada, Crickets. She couldn't even be bothered to call me and it was on her calendar app. Says it all.
On 06/02/2021 I was contacted by, Alli Koebbe, representing The Knot WorldWide, aka The Wedding Wire, aka The Knot in regards to advertising my wedding officiant services on their platform. During this phone call I was promised that my business would receive a minimum of 250 leads per month from brides wishing to hire an officiant. I was also promised that TKWW would use their SEO expertise to bring internet traffic to my website by means of Google. For 2 months I waited for their promises to be fulfilled. I received less than 10 leads total for 60 days and only 2 of those were real customers. The majority of my leads were robots, not real. I contacted my sales rep only to get an email reply denying she promised me the above. She said " I told you that your industry (meaning the hundreds of other wedding officiants) would receive 250 leads per year, not you solely and not monthly. She ignored my complaint about the Google lack of traffic. I was scammed and lied to by this company in order to get me to agree to a contract. This company knows they cannot live up to their claims/lies so they force you into a contract in order to become a customer. Have filed a BBB complaint as well.
Around April 5, 2023 I signed a 12 month contract with Dawn Truxillo, the rep for The Knot and Wedding Wire.
I signed this solely under the belief and enticement of receiving a 360° photographic professional tour of my yacht. The yacht is located in the Virgin Islands. I believe she checked with her management team a few times during the call. She wanted to make sure it was offered in the Virgin Islands and indeed it was offered at the time of signing of the contract.
Around April 12 or so I tried to sign up for the photographer shoot of the 360 tour and was immediately dismissed because they don’t offer it in the Virgin Islands. I contacted Dawn who then told me in an email. She was sorry.
I requested cancellation immediately.
I received a call from Jake Merick, the associate Director however, after being lied to I wanted to proceed through email.
I responded to his email, immediately requesting the cancellation.
TKWW will not cancel the contract. I was scammed and lied to. TKWW didn’t deliver what was promised to me and as a business vendor I will never recommend any of their services or vendors.
I was told by Dawn that I would receive a service and never received it. I paid for a contract based on that service. TKWW is calling it a bonus and not a contract service. Fine I don’t care what the heck you call it. It’s a service that TKWW took away and has not delivered it.
This is absolutely nonnegotiable. TKWW needs to make this right.
I’m being punished by TKWW’s rep’s mistake!!
Business vendors beware and BRIDES watch out because there are many fake reviews!
They are not checked and vetted. Trust me. I know this.
Business vendors who got screwed by them should join the FB Group.