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Should You Use Thumbtack To Find Your Charleston Wedding DJ?

27 December 2017

Hello future brides and grooms. Happy holidays to you and your family and friends. We're just a few days past Christmas and things have really begun to chill down here in Charleston and it does not look like we'll be close to 60 degrees for well over a week. Maybe you just got engaged in recent weeks and have begun to formulate in your mind how your Charleston wedding is going to be? Perhaps you are using the down time of the holiday season to begin searching for wedding vendors online. Well, if you are, I suggest you make some hot cocoa and throw another log onto the fire and get your Ipad or laptop and begin to do your searches. This cloudy and potentially icy weather is perfect for you too to be inside looking for wedding stuff. It can be a really fun experience for the both of you. While you conduct a Google search and conduct your preliminary research for items for your Charleston wedding, I wanted you to take in consideration some of the websites you might see online for wedding vendors that might be tempting for money savings and time savings.

First and foremost, this blog post is not meant to discourage wedding budgets or tell you to rethink your budget. It's meant to raise awareness about some of the pitfalls that brides and grooms can experience when they choose to use some of these sites to hire their wedding vendors. The number one thing you should consider is hiring wedding vendors that you feel comfortable with. It's very difficult to get that comfort when you are just being sent quotes from an auto generator.


Check Out The Wedding Vendor's Website
Head over to the website of the vendor you are interested in. Does it look like it's been professionally designed? What do their reviews look like? I know this blog post has "Thumbtack" in the title, but I'd like to start out by talking about Craigslist. Craigslist has probably been online for over a decade now and it's probably the first place that people think about when they want to sell an item. However, there is a section that allow folks to sell their "services". Once again, while I can appreciate anyone trying to stay within budget, you need to be very cautious if you go this route in choosing any one of your wedding vendors. As for Craigslist, it's a "free" marketing mechanism to make an attempt for you to click over to the business website. Unfortunately, for that business owner, Craigslist does not allow you to hyperlink over to a website from within an ad, so this makes it more cumbersome for the end user because they must now copy and paste the URL into their web browser.

An Explosion Of The Charleston Wedding Industry
The wedding industry here in Charleston continues to expand and really explode over the past 4 - 5 years. I've always thought the explosion has had a lot to do with all the accolades the city has continued to receive from Conde Nast and other travel publications. Let's face it. You are getting ready to have the biggest day of your life. The last thing you need to be worried about are the people that you have hired to provide wedding services on your big day. You need to be cautious of people who actually call themselves "professionals".  Have they earned accreditation from the Better Business Bureau? Craigslist has long been known to have a lot of weekend warriors burst onto the scene that end up undercutting the real, true professionals who have invested thousands of dollars in equipment,  their website and SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Beware Of The Weekend Warriors In Charleston
These weekend warriors might actually use Craigslist or Thumbtack to get established or build some type of minimal online reputation, but why are they continuing to pump money into something that is not really a sure thing? Why aren't they hiring a professional web design company and an SEO consultant so that they can get properly ranked so that they can find the clients that they really want? You should be thinking more about using referrals or Google searches before jumping over to Craigslist or Thumbtack. Experienced and established Charleston wedding vendors won't be found on websites like Craigslist or Thumbtack. When it comes to hiring your wedding DJ or entertainment (which I've discussed is one of the most important parts to your big day), you need to be very careful and skeptical about vendors calling themselves "professional".

Your Wedding Day Is Worth More Than The Lowest Bidder
When you log into a website like Thumbtack or Craigslist and type in what it is exactly you need, you are just going to be shot a bunch of quotes in an attempt to level the playing field. All of sudden, you are typing in very limited information (zip code and price or budget) and you are being sent numerous quotes to your email inbox.  If you are just receiving quotes to your email box, your decision as to which vendors to hire is based solely on price and it shouldn't be. When you shop solely on price alone, you are missing an important part of the vendor research process; their online store.

The Wedding Vendor's Website Should Be A Huge Selling Tool
If you are basing your hiring decision on these quotes alone, you are missing out on a huge part of an online business: their website. Does the vendors you are interested in have a professionally designed website that is easy to navigate and able to be pulled up on mobile devices? Were you able to go that vendor's website and read their blog? How about their Frequently Asked Questions? These are all the small things that add up to the overall image of a vendor that brides and grooms might be interested in for their Charleston wedding.

You Hire Your Charleston Wedding DJ For The "Experience"
The impression that brides and grooms get when they go to a vendor's website or see a video will inspire them to make further contact with the vendor and want to set up an appointment to learn more. This type of inspiration and "experience" is removed when the end user just gets quotes in their email inbox. You hire a DJ like Mike Bills Entertainment for the overall experience from the time you book and meet me, and we spend as much time as needed to create the perfect playlist and make sure your wedding is the best ever. Anybody can play music at your wedding, but a true professional wedding DJ will provide the overall experience from start to finish and put in lots of hours outside your wedding day. And I might also add, when you meet a vendor in person, you are being introduced to another dimension; their personality.  You need to make sure that you mesh well with your wedding vendors. You don't see this if you are basing your decision on a quote without meeting the vendor in person. 

Care To Mike Bills About Having Him Be Your Wedding DJ?
The single most important of your day (up to this point) should not be reduced to quotes received online from a website that prides itself on finding you the lowest bidder. The lowest price might reap generous rewards about 1% of the time, but if Craigslist and Thumbtack were the preeminent place for all professional wedding vendors in Charleston to advertise, then everyone would be on there. The old adage does apply. You do get what you pay for. Thanks again for finding me online. I have invested a lot of time and resources so that you can find me easily. I am glad that it's working. :) Are you getting married in Charleston and are you interested in speaking with one of the top wedding DJs in the area? Click the link up above to be trnasported over to my contact form so that you can provide some brief details about your wedding day. I look forward to speaking with you about your wedding.

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