1. Only low-budget brides go to wedding shows.
The primary audience of a wedding show is the middle 80 percent of the wedding budget spectrum. Brides with the lowest 10 percent and the highest 10 percent of wedding budgets don’t attend in any great numbers. For most wedding professionals, the brides who attend bridal shows are your core audience.
Does your business target a higher-end bride? Keep in mind that the total wedding budget is not all that meaningful. EVERY bride is a high-end bride in some aspects of her wedding, and EVERY bride is a low-end bride in some aspects of her wedding.
EVERY bride has a couple of elements of her wedding that she doesn’t care all that much about, and EVERY bride has at least one or two hot buttons, parts of her wedding where will spend a disproportionate amount of her wedding budget to get what she wants.
There is a lot of money being spent as a result of connections made at bridal shows. The savvy business is there to get a share of it.
2. Brides only attend wedding shows for the freebies.
Do you really think that a bride will invest her valuable time to attend a bridal show just to get a luggage tag or a piece of cake?
While it’s true that bridal show exhibitors who have a promotional giveaway tend to get more traffic, the idea that brides are only looking for free stuff comes typically comes from exhibitors who see those booths getting more attention. If a giveaway brings you more attention, and you can convert that attention into more business, then a giveaway might make sense for you.
3. Face to face selling is no longer important.
It’s no secret that most brides use online resources to plan their weddings, but 97% of them will not make a major purchase decision without a face-to-face meeting. Bridal shows remain an important way to market to brides because they are the most efficient way of making that face-to-face connection.
If you sell a discretionary product or service, something that the bride might not even know she needs, she’ll never search for you online. At a bridal show, things that a bride might not have even considered can quickly become things she wants.