Every person counts on reviews to buy something.
Wedding vendors are no different. How can you read them all without being overwhelmed?
You have a ton of choices: Wedding Wire, The Knot, Google, Facebook, etc, etc.
Let’s start with the obvious… Wedding Vendor Websites
Look at reviews on wedding vendor websites.
Are they simply “typed out” with no link to the original review?
That doesn’t mean they are suspect or fake, it just raises a question:
Why would a vendor NOT link to the original review source?
Can vendors manipulate third-party website reviews?
Here is a Wedding Wire example:
Any review can be disputed by a vendor. However, there must be an obvious reason to have it removed, such as:
-the user did not hire the vendor in question
-the user states opinions instead of facts.
Most of the time, the vendor has little recourse if the reviewer is stating specific facts.
**BONUS**
With any vendor, you want to make sure the review is about the
ACTUAL PERSON WHO WILL BE AT YOUR WEDDING.
If a DJ company has 6 DJs, which reviews go to which DJ?
A good example: “The Pros” a photo/DJ company (a nation-wide company)- has thousands of reviews.
But what good is that- if they have over 500 photographers? Can you find YOUR photographer in that mix?
A REAL-LIFE EXPERIMENT
I looked at Orlando DJ Wedding Wire Reviews. You can do this in ANY vendor category… try it yourself!
The number of Orlando DJs listed at the time of this writing: Almost 240!
There are actually about 10 companies listed that are not based in Orlando.
We can eliminate them… since they have many DJs across multiple states.
(Let’s focus on Orlando DJs who actually serve Central Florida.)
I broke it down to see how many reviews each DJ company has:
Over 500 reviews: 1
Over 400 reviews: 2
Over 300 reviews: 4
Over 200 reviews: 6
Over 100 reviews: 18
This means only 31 Central Florida DJs (out of 240) have more than 100 reviews on Wedding Wire. Kind of amazing… Right?
Here’s the rest of the breakdown:
More than 10 reviews: 92
Less than 10 reviews: 58
And Now… Wait for it…
A staggering 49 DJs have no reviews at all. ZERO.
It doesn’t mean these DJs aren’t good DJs.
But, think about it.
If you had NO reviews, wouldn’t you bust your butt to get a former client to say one nice thing about you?