huntersdad wrote in post #18534551
Looking for some advice here.
What do you do when you getting inquiries and not getting bookings? I'm using The Knot and Wedding Wire, both getting me a fair amount of inquiries. I'm extremely responsive on both and normally have good conversations with brides, but they are constantly booking someone else. When I ask why, I never hear back.
I'm keeping up my vendor relations and getting a lot of great feedback from everyone about how easy I am to work with, how they love my work, how my clients have spoken very highly of me, but I get nothing from them.
Reviews online are very positive.
I'm at a loss.
...first impressions: wonderful, simple to navigate website, fantastic images, prices are both reasonable and affordable. Based on your posts here at the forum you seem like a great guy, I can imagine that clients would have spoken well of you.
Any idea where I am going wrong?
There is no way for us to tell based on what you've told us.
If you haven't already you need to develop a system that will give you an "objective measure" of how well you are doing, and what targets you need to achieve. You say "you are not getting any bookings" but you obviously have had bookings, because you have photos of weddings, you've worked for vendors and have had positive feedback from clients.
So what you really meant to say is "your bookings are below expectations": and "inquiries are not converting to sales at the rate that you want."
So start by creating some objective measures, then determine the targets that you want to hit each month. Then you can track what you are doing and course-correct as you see fit.
For example: using The Knot and The Wire. How long have you been using them? Have you ever had many bookings from them, or have you "always had a fair amount of inquiries without conversion?" If you have had many bookings from them, then go back and see what the difference was. Was your pricing cheaper? If it was, and if you don't want to lower your prices then look to advertise in other places. If you've never had that many conversions from the Knot and the Wire, how do your conversions compare to other photographers? Have you spoken to them? (And you need to know your numbers before you do). Maybe there is a low inquiry-to-sales ratio at the Knot and the Wire, and what you are experiencing is just normal. Just randomly googling:
"If you find that your brides and grooms frequently lead with a budget-first approach, and you frequently land wedding contracts because you put on one heck of a wedding for a great value, then you might want to consider using The Knot first."
http://nuphoriq.com/the-knot-vs-weddingwire/
I have no idea if that's true. But maybe you are marketing in the wrong place. Maybe you raised your prices recently, and you need to reevaluate where and how you market. These are just guesses. You haven't given us a lot to work with here. You need to crunch your numbers. Then use those numbers to set targets, and if you aren't hitting those targets, reassess, course-correct if needed, and then test again. If you start hitting your targets and then the numbers start to slip: reassess again. It's an ongoing process.
