Is Advertising on WeddingWire & The Knot Worth The Money? - A Long Term Professional Review

Intro

WeddingWire and The Knot are two of the most used wedding directories in the United States. Many brides turn to these websites to find their vendors all in one place, listed by location and price. As a photographer, one of the most common questions I hear in regard to online advertising is, “Is advertising on WeddingWire or the Knot worth it?” My answer? Maybe.

In this article I want to dive deeper into this question by starting off by giving my personal experience with WeddingWire and then sharing my thoughts on who it may benefit and who it may not. I do want to note that WeddingWire and The Knot are essentially the same platforms (do not believe what the sales reps say) and are owned by the same company so, though I only advertise on WeddingWire, I would say it is completely fair to take what is discussed in this article and apply it to The Knot.

My Personal Experience Advertising on WeddingWire

I have been a full-time wedding professional going on six years now and have had the immense pleasure of photographing well over 200 weddings to date across the Pacific Northwest and the United States. When I began my journey, one of the most difficult things to do was to get my name out. I had created a website but it just was not getting the traction I wanted. Then one day a sales representative from WeddingWire contacted me. After talking with them for a short while and listening to their “pitch”, I called a friend who was a professional in my area who informed me that they were legit and that they would likely be worth the investment. At the time, their featured listing (which ensures first page placement) was about $1,500. To a part-time photographer just starting out, it was a VERY large sum of money. It was probably more expensive than all my gear combined at the time. I called the sales representative back and asked about their cancellation policy to which they said I could cancel within the first 6 months and receive the final 6 months as a refund. I very reluctantly decided to pull the trigger. My starting price for weddings that year was $1,250 and my most popular package was $1,500 so the way I figured, I would have to at least book one wedding to come even and two to make it worth it.

A year before this and I had done a lot of work for my friend who was the photographer I mentioned previously. He allowed me to keep the photos I took for him while second shooting which gave me a pretty amazing portfolio to work with. Combine that with my pricing (in my area, that was a is for a good photographer) and I was able to photograph 25 weddings my very first year of being a full-time professional. Of those weddings, a whopping 15 were from WeddingWire.

The next year, I upped my prices pretty significantly (after hearing many times from couples about how much of a “deal” I was), charging $1,950 for my starting price and $2500 for my most popular package. The number of bookings from WeddingWire dropped to around 10 and I began to notice a certain “theme” with advertising on the platform (don’t worry, I’ll get into this later). The year after, I charged $2,450 for my starting price and $2,850 for my most popular package; and I booked only 6 weddings from the platform. This current season, I am charging $3,500 and $4,000 for the packages aforementioned and am almost fully booked with only 5 being from WeddingWire.

Is It Worth It?

As you may have noticed in my story, the number of WeddingWire bookings dropped significantly over time. Why was that? Let’s break it down...

Though I booked less weddings through this platform year to year, I booked more brides overall each consecutive year. My work has only gotten better as has my whole process and customer experience so it was not due to a regression there. The only logical thing then that makes sense then is that my prices increased year to year.

Now I think would be a great time to mention the “theme” I referred to before in my story because it perfectly explains why my WeddingWire bookings dropped so much from year to year. The first year that I advertised on the platform, my conversion rate (number of brides who contacted me and ended up booking me through the service) was pretty decent. I’d say for every 3 brides who contacted me, one of them booked. Why was that? The answer is simple; because I had a good portfolio and (more importantly) was affordable. As my prices increased, my bookings from the service and conversation rate dropped. So, here is the takeaway: most brides on WeddingWire are bargain hunting. Now, I just want to say that I absolutely do not blame them because WeddingWire caters to that; but from a vendor’s perspective, it is disappointing.

WeddingWire is completely different from a customer’s perspective and tailors to this “bargain hunting” mentality. I set up a customer account myself to give it a try so that I could write this article as accurately as possible. As a customer, you find photographers based on the area you are searching in. Once you select an area, you get a list of photographers. The only things you are given to select a photographer is their main image that supposedly represents their portfolio and the photographer's “most popular price”. You also have a button that says “request pricing” which, when clicked, generates an automated message to the photographer that is auto-populated with your information (wedding date, venue (if you have one), and guest count (if you know)). The message looks something like this:

“We are currently planning for our wedding on (date) at (venue) and would like to learn more about your business. Could you send us some additional information? Thank you!”

Brides don’t even have to write their own messages or look deeper into the photographers than that. It is essentially a two click process. Most brides in my experience don’t even take the time to look at the photographer’s website or portfolio. They just click the “request pricing” for the photographers whose main image they like and await a reply with the photographer’s pricing and information. After that, they select the photographer simply based on price alone.

So, to tie this back into my personal experience, it has always bothered me that WeddingWire was set up this way. Yes, it does make the customer experience quick and easy but from a vendor’s perspective, it is honestly quite annoying and feels transactional and not at all personal. Over the last year, I have had maybe 50 brides contact me looking for information on WeddingWire. Of those brides, maybe five ever wrote back and of the ones who did not write back, about 95% ghosted me further when I sent them a follow up message (as an aside, I do not generally chase customers but this year I was simply curious if they would even reply). Though I do have a copied and pasted message I send when initially replying to their inquiry (100% recommend by the way to save time), I always hand write the first portion of my response to try and make it as personal as possible. My message is always friendly and includes a question to try and get them to engage even a little. Compare this to my conversion rate on my website (being probably a 95% inquiry to book rate) and it really makes WeddingWire seem like a waste of time. Brides who come to my website spend time looking over my portfolio, pricing and packages, and sometimes even my blog before they write me.

This all being said, there is a small silver lining. Some brides do look on WeddingWire and then conduct a further investigation of people’s websites. These brides will use WeddingWire as a directory and then go to photographers’ websites to view their portfolio. If they like what they see then they will reach out to the photographer via their website instead of WeddingWire. I have seen this to be the case with about 5 brides a year and I truly apprecate that they do this instead of just clicking a button and sending an automated inquiry.

Who Can Benefit?

So, who would benefit from listing their business on WeddingWire and is it worth it? If you are just starting off and are priced competitively with a good portfolio, you will likely get a lot of bookings. The better your portfolio quality, the more success you will find if your prices are “affordable”. That being said, the price of WeddingWire for a featured listing is $3,600 for the year I originally drafted this article (2020-2021) which is WAY more than I paid my first year; and the pricing has only gone up since then. So it is likely that it may take one or two weddings to get you back to even on what you are paying for… just something to keep in mind. Though the price is expensive, I always encourage people to ask for a discount or (if you want to be a bit cheeky); you can tell them a “friend of mine said he only pays $176 per month for his pro listing, is there any way you can give me a similar price?”. That’s my current price for a pro membership for the record. If you are wondering why I choose to list as a pro instead of a featured listing, the answer is simple. When paying for a featured listing, you are guaranteed first page placement in the directory. If you pay for a pro membership, you are guaranteed to show up between the free listings and featured ones without the guarantee of being on the first page. However, in my area, there are not enough paying members and so both pro and featured listings show up on the first page. So why then would I care to pay quite a lot more for a featured listing? The answer is, I don’t and so I list as a pro. Here are my analytics for my page as a pro member versus a featured one.

My listing is the orange line, the dark purple is the featured listings, the light purple is the pro listings, and the lighter line at the bottom are the free listings. As you can see, my overall leads are not that much different than the featured listings and I book more than enough weddings as is, so for me, the pro membership is perfect.

Who (Likely) Won’t Benefit?

So then, who is less likely to benefit? If you are more established like I am and your website is ranking strong on Google, it then becomes a question of “do I need any more business?” Generally, if you are truly established (being fully booked or happy with your number of bookings) then I don’t think that it would benefit you the same as someone who is looking for more bookings or not ranking high on Google with their website.

Lastly, you may ask if I still advertise on WeddingWire; and if I do, why? To be completely honest, if I didn’t book three or more weddings from the platform and get a large loyalty discount for advertising on WeddingWire for so long, I would be a lot less likely to pay for the service. Every new year it becomes a question of, “is the service worth it to me?” and every year I feel less and less inclined to say yes as I get more and more business from my website and referrals. My best recommendation to any of you would be to learn how SEO and ranking on Google works because it is free and when you get on the first page and know how to stay there, it requires little to no work to maintain. Let me be the first to tell you that you will be blown away with how much business it can bring.

I hope this article proved to be useful to you. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to comment below or you may contact me.

Is Advertising on WeddingWire & The Knot Worth The Money? - A Long Term Professional Review

Written by: Zach Nichols

November 18, 2020 - Updated Jul 24, 2023

Zach NicholsNovember 17, 202012 Comments