In the hustle and bustle of wedding planning, reviews can be the difference between a couple enquiring with your business, or continuing their search. So are you using them effectively?
To be a successful business in the wedding industry, reviews are crucial to bringing in enquiries.
During the recent Easy Weddings webinar ‘Stop Getting Ghosted and Get More Bookings in Your Diary’, seasoned wedding business coach Kelly Mortimer shared some eye-opening tips about how to make reviews work for you. Here’s what we learned.
Sprinkle, Don’t Pour: How to Use Reviews
Reviews from previous happy couples you’ve worked with act as incredible social proof, but the trick is to share them organically.
Kelly suggests ditching the long, boring testimonial pages. Prospective couples aren’t going to engage with slabs of text, however glowing they may be.
Instead, grab the best lines from your reviews and scatter them throughout your website, blog articles, brochures, socials, and wherever else you can think of.
It’s all about creating those emotional connections with potential clients, Kelly says.
“Rather than have one page with all the testimonials, pepper one-liners through everything you do.
“I accidentally read the reviews as I go through. And this absorbs into the psyche of your person without them even meaning to. There’s emotion in the reviews from couples who leave them.”
Dating and Selling: Not So Different
Think of leads like dating — where reviews are a method suppliers can use to romance your potential clients. Kelly finds similarities between couples searching for their perfect wedding vendor, and how people looking for ‘the one’ in a romantic partner.
It’s not just about ticking boxes; it’s about feeling that connection. By sharing snippets of past clients’ experiences, wedding suppliers can tap into that emotional connection to win over couples.
Think of it as romancing our couples before we marry them.
Keep the reviews casual, emotional, and most importantly, real.
By infusing your marketing with authentic sentiments from past couples, you’ll win not only bookings but also hearts. After all, in the world of weddings, it’s not just about saying ‘I do’—it’s about saying ‘I choose you’.
Understanding the Emotional Side of Sales
As weddings are a highly emotional transaction, logic alone won’t cut it. Reviews definitely have an impact on making the enquiry, Kelly says. But they’re not the be-all and end-all, especially in the beginning.
“Once they’ve made the inquiry, then the next step in the journey is emotion.”
— Kelly Mortimer, International Wedding Business Coach
Emphasising the power of emotions is key to driving a couple to book you for their wedding. It’s not just about what you offer but how you make couples feel.
To learn more about the psychology of the customer journey and warming up the leads from cold to close, dive into Kelly’s 9-Step Action Plan. Click below to watch the webinar, or read the webinar recap article here.
4 Steps to Asking For Reviews
Requesting a couple you have worked with to leave you a 5-star review on Easy Weddings is easy.
- Simply head to your Easy Weddings WedCRM.
- On the left-hand side, click REVIEWS. At the top pink menu bar, select REQUEST REVIEWS
- Click the Reviews tab at the top to find your unique URL, as shown in the image below. It should be easyweddings.com.au/reviews/supplier/[YourBusinessName
- Copy the URL and paste the link into your email request, to direct the client to your Easy Weddings storefront, to leave a review.
Every couple who leaves a review on Easy Weddings goes into the draw to win a cash prize of $2,500. We draw one lucky winner every quarter, so mention this incentive when you ask for your 5-star review.
For more tips on getting more reviews, including a customisable template to help your requests, read our article, How to ask for reviews and why they add value to your business.
How to qualify for an Easy Weddings 5-Star Supplier Award
Awards season at Easy Weddings is coming up fast, so it’s time to get those reviews in before the end of the financial year.
Easy Weddings has one of the largest review systems in the country, with more than 300,000 verified reviews from verified couples on the site. Every year our 5-star supplier awards recognise the vendors in the wedding industry whose service is so exemplary their own customers have rated them a perfect 5/5 on their Easy Weddings storefront.
Here’s how you can earn a 5-star certificate this year, and what you need to do before June 30 to be eligible.
New Suppliers (online for less than 12 months)
New suppliers to Easy Weddings are eligible to receive a certificate if they achieve one or more 5-star reviews within their first 12 months on the platform (with an overall rating of 4.5 stars or higher), before June 30.
Suppliers who have been online for 12+ months
If you’ve been online with Easy Weddings for over a year, you’ll be eligible to receive a 5-star supplier certificate if you achieve five or more 5-star reviews over the 2023-24 financial year (with an average overall rating of 4.5 stars or higher), before June 30.
To learn more about the awards and the eligibility criteria, read our article Get Reviewed to Become a 5-Star Wedding Supplier.
If you haven’t yet read our previous article How to ask for reviews and why they add value to your business, you should start there. The article offers some excellent tips for getting more couples to review you and includes a customisable template to help you request reviews.
If you aren’t yet online with Easy Weddings and would like to be in the running for a 5-Star Supplier Award, submit an online enquiry form, here, and we’ll be in touch.
