How to (actually) get leads for your event venue

0:00 Why venues fight over the same leads

Most venue owners get their leads from the same third-party platforms as their competitors, and they compete for the same exact client at the same exact time. I learned this firsthand by helping Vanilla Skies build their Modern Booking System from scratch. So in this video, I'll get you from relying on third-party platforms to having your own system that brings leads in consistently. Here's a three-step process to get that done.

0:25 Step 1: Foundations

The very first thing we do, before we get into any ad accounts or create anything at all, is understand the foundations. We have to understand: who are we targeting, what are we giving them, and how are we getting a lot of them?

0:51 Your ICP (ideal client profile)

The first thing I always think about is our ICP. ICP means your ideal client profile: who specifically are you targeting? When you start, you can be vague. For example, "I'm targeting engaged couples." But just saying engaged couples isn't specific enough. It's broad, which is fine, but are you okay with couples that can pay a max of $10,000 for their wedding? There's a budget we have to understand. Say we're looking for people who can afford over $30,000 for their wedding. That's part of our ICP. What else? This depends on your own data. You may notice, for example, that the person making the decision to come in for a walkthrough is usually the woman. That helps us get very specific: you may want to target her and do things that cater to her. Being as specific as possible with your ICP helps across the board, before we get to anything technical or any ad accounts.

2:59 Your offer

Next after the ICP is your offer. In the venue space it's usually simple: you already have the price of everything, depending on guest count, catering, what's included. Your basic offer is: if you're interested, come in and see, and this is our price. On top of your basic offer, you may want an off-day offer or a seasonal offer. With a seasonal offer, you can take the same offer and add a discount or throw in extras, and change it depending on the season. This matters because the offer is what we're getting out there through our ads, and we have to know it before anything else. Knowing when to switch offers can heavily affect the money you're making. For example, some venues offer something like 30% off on an off day if someone pays in full on the day of the walkthrough. I'm sure there are people who would love to get a beautiful venue for 30% off on an off day, and they'll find a way to make it work.

4:44 Your lead magnet

The last thing is your lead magnet. There are multiple ways to go about this, and you could also not have one. It depends on what you're comfortable with. A lead magnet can be simple. One we're running right now is a pricing guide: people opt in to download it, and all they give is their email. You could also give them a video walkthrough, and there are so many other things you can do, but I know a pricing guide works for sure. You can add the video walkthrough as an extra to nurture people after they get the pricing guide. So the key things to have in place: who is your ICP, what offer are you giving them, and what's your lead magnet, something they want. Everyone wants to know the price, so a pricing guide they can download makes complete sense. There are pros and cons: you can absolutely let everyone know the price up front, especially if it's a flat price.

6:24 Step 2: Tracking

After the foundations are in place, the second step in our three-step system is tracking. How are we tracking all of our leads and what's happening with them? How are we automating things? How do we keep our sales team calling people on time, so we know what's going on with our leads at all times?

6:46 Cost per acquisition by channel

It comes down to understanding your cost per acquisition: how much it costs you to get a customer in a specific channel, not including what you'd pay someone like me or anyone on your team. Say, for example, your cost per acquisition on Meta is $200 and on Google Ads it's $1,000. We still have to look at where the quality is coming from. Say Google is bringing in a customer who spends $30,000 with you, and Meta is bringing in someone who spends $5,000. You do the math: spend $1,000, get $30,000 back, that's a 30 to 1 ratio. But that doesn't mean you cut everything and say bye to Meta or bye to Google. With proper tracking, you also have to keep in mind which platform is the first place this person saw you, because that matters for the whole customer journey.

9:24 CRM: GoHighLevel

To get this tracking in place, we need a CRM. I'd very much recommend GoHighLevel, because it's much easier on the marketing side and getting the tracking together is really easy. I personally came from a Salesforce background, but for marketing, and even for your sales team, GoHighLevel is on top of everything. A CRM keeps all of this on track and gives us so many insights. Say you're running 25 ads: you can see which ad is actually bringing in quality leads, and double down on it. I start nerding out here. We can get all the way down to your revenue and see your whole funnel: how many leads are coming in, how many people answer the phone, how many book a walkthrough, how many show up, all the way to when they book the event, the deal value, and what the sales conversations were like. Then we take that back into marketing to get even more precise on our ICP. Your team sees everything.

11:25 Every lead in one place

With the CRM, all of your Meta leads go into it. You can also automate everything. Instead of checking WeddingWire, The Knot, Peerspace and all these places, you have all the third-party platforms organized in one place, showing where each lead came from. If you ever wonder whether you make more money from third-party platforms or from Meta, those questions can be answered.

12:31 Step 3: Meta ads

The very last thing is Meta ads. Once your ICP, your offer and your lead magnet are in place, you can target these people extremely well. Meta is extremely good at targeting, and the more specific you get, while also using something called a pixel, the more Meta gets dialed in to finding the people who show up to your walkthrough and actually book. So in step three we take our ICP, our offer and our lead magnet, and all of it goes into our messaging on Meta.

13:02 Start with a carousel

What I tell everyone to get started: don't think about big videos. Start simple with static ads, pictures or carousels. If you know Instagram carousels, you slide between images. Think of it like real estate: you slide between photos of the venue. Photos of the venue in use can be very good. On top of that content, you can change the messaging and packaging, especially in the captions. Take what you know about your ICP, say the $30K minimum. Instead of putting it in the form, which some people do and which depends on your campaign, you can put it in the caption and call out engaged couples with a minimum $30K investment. Meta learns who is most likely to be this audience and reacts to the people interacting with it. It's never 100 percent, but a budget minimum is already a block that stops most people from taking further action. The people who have that budget are the most likely to click through, so quality goes up.

14:46 Keep the lead form simple

If you care about getting a lot of leads, keep the form very simple: first name, last name, email, phone number. Get in contact with them and do the filtering further along in the funnel. Another option: take the same ICP thinking and add it to the form itself to make the leads higher quality. Think budget, authority, need and timing, the things that make someone qualified for what you're selling. Long story short, add one simple question, like "Do you have a minimum investment of $30K?" If yes, they continue the form. If not, we send them to a page that says sorry, you're not a fit.

15:49 The Meta pixel

Then we put something called the pixel, which trains Meta to find more quality people, on the page that the qualified people go to. So you have your carousels and your static images showing your place. It can even be a simple static image from Canva that says "Download the pricing guide." All the leads from there go into GoHighLevel, and that's where it gets even better, though it's too long to explain in this video: you can immediately send them an SMS, immediately send an email, and notify yourself or anyone else to call this person within a certain amount of time.

16:57 Recap: the 3-step system

Everything can get much more complicated than this, and it depends on your needs. But this three-step system, having your foundations in place, having your CRM and tracking in place, and then having your Meta ads or Google ads in place, affects the business. Once you lock in the targeting on the marketing side, you can raise your spend and get more of these people, as long as you also have a sales process behind it that can close them, because that can be a key issue. If you liked this video, check the description. If you want all of this done for you, click the link to my done-for-you offer. If you just want someone to help you implement these systems, my one-on-ones are down below. Enjoy your day, and I'll see you later.