How to Get More Reviews for Your Event Planning Company
Every event planner has the same experience. The night goes perfectly, the client hugs you at the end and says it was better than they imagined, and then you never hear from them again.
They meant it. They were also exhausted, three drinks in, and about to spend a fortnight recovering. A wedding client is not planning another wedding. A corporate client has moved on to Q4.
That is why event reviews are harder to get than almost anywhere else. It is fixable, but only if you ask at the right moment and ask the right people.
Why Event Reviews Are Harder to Get
- Nobody comes back next month. Most clients hire you once. There is no second appointment where you can ask again, so you get one window and it closes fast.
- The person paying is not the only one who saw it. A room full of guests watched you work, and almost none of them are ever asked anything.
- You are judged on one night. Nobody can sample an event. Your reviews are the only evidence you can do it again.
- The best moment is also the worst one. They love you most as the lights come up, which is the one time nobody is going to sit down and write anything.
How to Get More Reviews for Your Event Planning Company
Twelve that work for events specifically, roughly in the order they make a difference.
1. Ask two days after, not on the night
On the night they are running on adrenaline and cannot string a sentence together. A week later the detail has gone.
The gap in between is your window. By then the client has slept, seen the first photos, and had half their friends tell them how good it was. That is when you get something specific instead of “thanks, it was lovely”.
Timing shifts a little by what you ran:
- Weddings. Wait for the gallery. Nothing prompts a five star review like seeing the photos.
- Corporate. Two days, before the next week swallows them.
- Parties and milestones. The morning after works, while the messages are still coming in.
- Conferences. Same week, because delegates forget which event was which.
2. Ask the guests, not just the client who paid
This is the one almost every planner misses. One wedding gives you one client review and a hundred and fifty people who watched you run the day and never got asked.
Guests will not review your company on Google unprompted, because they did not hire you. But they will if you make it easy and give them a reason to. Print a code on the table card that opens the photo gallery, and put your review link under it. Corporate events are even better, because half the room is a potential client.
One event, handled this way, can produce five or six reviews instead of one.
All your reviews in one place
Collect reviews, manage every response, and display them where they matter most.
3. Ask when they are thanking you
Clients send a thank-you message a day or two after. That message is the single best opening you will ever get, and most planners just reply “so glad you enjoyed it”.
Reply properly, then add one line: would you mind putting that on Google? Paste your Google review link straight into the message so they never have to search for you.
4. Pick the platform your clients use
Send one link per client, not four. Which link depends on what you plan, and this is where events differ from everyone else.
- Google for all of them. It is where people search your name and it feeds the map pack.
- The Knot and WeddingWire if you do weddings in the US. A profile there with forty reviews often does more than the same forty on Google.
- Hitched for UK weddings, and Bark if enquiries come through it.
- Facebook if your work comes through local groups and recommendations, which for a lot of planners it does.
- Your venue partners’ pages. Venues list preferred suppliers, and a review on that listing reaches people already booking the room.
Pick the one your enquiries already come from. Check the analytics rather than going on a hunch, and if you end up on three or four, a review management tool saves you logging into each one.
5. Put a QR code on your printed materials
Events are one of the few businesses where printed material still gets picked up. The table card, the order of service, the welcome sign, the thank-you card in the post afterwards.
A small code and five words is enough. The places worth using:
- The table card, where people sit with nothing to do for a good part of the evening.
- The order of service or the programme, which gets read cover to cover.
- The welcome sign, photographed by half the room anyway.
- The thank-you card you post afterwards, which arrives about when you want the review.
Our guide to the Google review QR code covers making one.
6. Turn your post-event survey into reviews
Most planners already send a feedback form after an event and treat it as a separate job. It is the warmest list you have.
A survey is private. It tells you the bar staff were slow and the timeline slipped. A review is public and does a different job, which is winning you the next booking. You need both, and one leads to the other.
Put a question at the end of the form: would you be happy for us to share this? Score you highly and the thank-you screen sends them straight to Google before the moment passes. Score you lower and it comes back to you instead.
7. Ask for photos before the room is packed away
Events are visual and the evidence is gone by midnight. A review saying the styling was beautiful does far less than a photo of the room.
When you send the request, ask for two or three phone shots, and get your photographer’s permission to use the gallery. For video, catch someone on the night if you can, or wait until the photos land and ask for thirty seconds then. There is more on filming these in our guide to product review videos.
8. Go back through last season
If you have four reviews, waiting for the next booking to fix that takes months, and event seasons have long gaps.
Go through last year’s events, pick the ones that went well, and message those clients individually. Name the event: “your wedding at the Barn last September” gets a reply. Expect around a third to do it, which is usually enough to stop the profile looking neglected.
9. Automate the request, keep it personal
Doing this by hand lasts about a fortnight, especially in peak season when you have three events a week.
Set the trigger on the event date with a short delay, and pull the venue, the date and the type of do into the message. Someone who spent nine months planning with you will notice a generic “thanks for your business”. If you need wording to start from, we collected some review text messages that work.
Three settings do most of the work:
- Trigger on the event date, not the booking date, or it fires nine months early.
- Leave out anyone who complained and handle that yourself.
- One reminder, a week later. Two is where people stop replying.
This is the part WiserReview is built for. It fires the request off your event date by email, SMS or WhatsApp, sends the reminder only to people who did not respond, and routes the low scores to you privately instead of to Google. It also generates the QR code from tactic five and holds the results together for tactic twelve.
All your reviews in one place
Collect reviews, manage every response, and display them where they matter most.
10. Reply to every review, good or bad
Events go wrong in ways you did not cause. The band turned up late, it rained, the caterer ran short. The review still lands on you.
Reply with what you did on the night rather than whose fault it was. Every future client reading it is working out whether you stay calm when something breaks, which is most of what they are paying for. We have worked through the wording for the harder ones in bad reviews for products.
11. Reward the review, never the rating
The line is easy to cross without meaning to:
- Fine: a prize draw for anyone who leaves a review, credit against a future booking, a donation to a charity they picked.
- Not fine: anything that only pays out on five stars, or a discount promised in exchange for a good one.
Google bans incentivised reviews outright and the FTC now fines businesses for fake reviews and for hiding real ones. Reward the act of reviewing, never the score.
12. Put reviews next to the work they describe
A reviews page on your website that nobody visits does nothing. Put each review beside the gallery from that event, so somebody looking at a barn wedding reads what the barn wedding client said.
Name the venue and the month with each one. “Amazing, thank you” is worth little. “Our March wedding at Hedsor, 120 guests, and the timeline ran to the minute” tells the next enquiry something they can use.
Whatever you use, watch the rate. If fewer than one in three clients reviews you, the problem is when you are asking.
How WiserNotify Works for Event Planners
Somebody choosing a planner has five sites open and is comparing galleries. The ones that look busy get the enquiry.
WiserNotify shows what is happening on your site as small messages while they are still looking.
- Recent enquiries and bookings. “Someone booked a September date two hours ago”, which tells a visitor your calendar is filling.
- Review notifications. Your Google and Facebook ratings in the corner rather than buried on a testimonials page.
- Live viewers. How many people are looking at the same date or package.
- Countdown timers. For genuine deadlines like early-bird pricing or a venue hold expiring.
- Announcement bars. Dates left for next summer, a new venue partnership, when your diary opens.
Run them as popups or built into the page beside your enquiry form. Every number comes from your own data, so a quiet week looks like a quiet week.
The inline messaging guide has the placement patterns on a real page.
Build trust & FOMO
Highlight real-time activities like reviews, sales & sign-ups.
Wrap Up
Ask a couple of days after, ask the guests as well as the client, and answer the thank-you message with a review link. Those three fix most of it.
Then put each review next to the event it describes, and let the calendar handle the asking.
Also check: How to ask for reviews, with examples
Related Guides
Frequently Asked Questions
When should I ask an event client for a review?
Two or three days after the event. On the night they are exhausted, and a week later the details have faded. For weddings, wait until the photo gallery arrives.
Can I ask event guests for reviews, not just the client?
Yes, and most planners never do. Put a QR code on the table card linking to the gallery with a review link underneath. One event can produce several reviews instead of one.
What if the event went wrong for reasons outside my control?
Reply with what you did on the night rather than whose fault it was. Future clients are judging how you handle problems, which is what they are buying.
How do I get photos with event reviews?
Ask for two or three phone shots when you send the request, and ask your photographer for permission to use gallery images alongside the review.
How many reviews should an event planner expect per booking?
Aim for at least one in three clients. If you are well below that, the timing of the ask is usually the problem rather than the client list.
Krunal Vaghasiya is a marketing tech expert who boosts e-commerce conversion rates with automated social proof and FOMO strategies. He loves to keep posting insightful posts on online marketing software, marketing automations, and improving conversion rates.
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