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Wedding venues are often stunning spaces designed to host celebrations and create lasting memories.
But as a venue owner, why limit yourself to just one type of event?
With a little creativity and strategic planning, you can transform your wedding venue into a multi-faceted event space that thrives year-round — and not just on weekends.
Here’s how to attract non-wedding events and boost your revenue:
Identify Your Venue’s Strengths
- Unique Features: What sets your venue apart? Is it a breathtaking view, the history of the building, or a spacious outdoor area? Highlight these features on your website, in marketing materials and during tours to attract a variety of events.
- Capacity and Layout: How can your space accommodate different event sizes and configurations? Consider how you can adapt the layout for conferences, workshops, or smaller gatherings. It’s helpful to have example layouts ready to share with potential clients as they tour your venue so that they can envision their event there.
- Amenities: Do you offer catering, audio-visual equipment, or other amenities? Make sure these are clearly advertised and adaptable for different event types. Simple additions to your offerings like a microphone and amplifier can be helpful to attract smaller corporate and non-profit events that might not need full AV setups.
Target Diverse Event Types
- Corporate Events: Host conferences, meetings, team-building activities, and holiday parties.
- Social Gatherings: Think birthday parties, anniversary celebrations, and other family or life milestones.
- Cultural Celebrations: Open your doors to mitzvahs, quinceañeras, sangeets, tea ceremonies, and more.
- Community Events: Offer your space for fundraisers, art exhibitions, marketplaces, and local festivals.
- Wellness Retreats: Capitalize on the serene atmosphere of your venue by hosting yoga sessions, meditation workshops, or wellness seminars.
Market Your Venue Effectively
- Update Your Website: When potential clients come to your website, they should not feel that you are a wedding venue that may host other events, but rather an event venue that hosts a wide range of events. Create dedicated sections on your website for wedding, corporate, social, and other event types, showcasing the versatility of your space and the specific details relevant to each type of event.
- Affiliate Site Listings: Consider listing your venue on affiliate sites that are not solely focused on weddings, such as Peerspace and Eventective.
- SEO: Use keywords related to non-wedding event types in the content on your website to improve your search engine ranking, which will help potential clients find you more easily. It can also be helpful to engage an SEO consultant if you don’t have experience with this to help optimize your website technically to improve your rankings. Creating blog posts for unique content that you want to be ranked for is a great way to attract new leads. If you are interested in filling out your December calendar with holiday parties, create content related to holiday parties in your market like this.
- Paid Search: Explore leveraging paid search to target keywords associated with non-wedding events.
- Networking: Connect with event planners, local businesses, and community organizations to build your network and the awareness that you host events beyond weddings.
- Offer Special Packages: Create attractive packages and promotions for different event types. A corporate client interested in a simple happy hour after an all-day meeting will have different needs from a beverage service standpoint than a wedding reception. A non-profit may need some help from a vendor planning and event-day coordination perspective, but this may look very different than what a couple getting married will need.
Adapt and Customize
- Flexible Space: Ensure your venue can be easily transformed to suit different event needs. Portable arches are a great decor item for wedding couples to use on their big day, but permanently installing an arch or ceremony back-drop will limit the flexibility of the space to be used for other types of events.
- Catering Options: If you offer catering in-house, create a range of packages and offerings that will better serve the non-wedding events. If you do not offer catering in-house, it is helpful to partner with caterers who have an established business with corporate and social events to help attract new business to your space.
Go the Extra Mile
- Exceptional Service: It goes without saying that providing outstanding customer service will help you build a strong reputation and encourage repeat bookings. Make sure you ask your non-wedding clients to leave reviews so that potential clients can see your service for non-wedding events as well.
- Partnerships: Create a list of trusted local vendors such as caterers, florists, and entertainers to help streamline the planning process for your clients. Corporate clients may not have the time to research and talk to a lot of potential vendors, and will likely look to you for recommendations.
- Community Engagement: Host free events or offer discounts to local organizations to build good will and help drive awareness of your space in the market.
Diversify Your Events & Boost Revenue
By diversifying your event offerings and marketing your venue strategically, you can maximize your space’s potential and generate revenue beyond the traditional wedding season. Open your doors to a world of possibilities and watch your venue become a hub for all kinds of celebrations and gatherings!
Need some additional help or support to expand your venue into events beyond weddings? 828 Venue Management Company operates event venues across the nation and are experts in the venue management space. We bring expertise, unparalleled customer service, and a team of professionals dedicated to your venue and its success.
Contact us to learn about how we could partner together.
