Help!! Coronovirus Has Put My Business on Hold - What Can I Do?
Like everyone in the events industry, we fell to our knees when COVID-19 swept through and cancelled basically all of our future bookings in the blink of an eye! We have worked so hard to be self sufficient, and have a steady flow of future income for our families and then BAM! Corona destroys it. I must admit it has taken us a good almost fortnight to even start to get back on the productivity train. It's hard to see the hard work you have put in over the years disappear before your eyes.
We have watched many wonderful business owners pivot, and find new ways to service their customers, but as a photo booth company, we are very much an "in person" type business. We couldn't find a way to pivot. So we have taken this time as a pause, to ensure we come back better than ever before, post #rona.
Here is a list of things we are focusing right now:
Updating our print strip designs
We have over 70 on show but we are always looking to add to our collection. Might as well do it now!
Conducting a prop audit
Yuck! This is our most hated job, especially counting all the props across 12 booths, but it is a necessary chore. We need to toss the broken ones and reorder the ones that people like to take home!
Website upkeep
Looking over our website to make sure all of our content is up to date, updating where necessary. Updating images etc.
Preparing marketing material and a stellar marketing plan to go out when things return to a more normal state
Taking some time to plan, and create marketing material, setting a marketing calendar, writing a plan of attack.
Running our website through the content checker.
We try and regularly run our website through: https://www.copyscape.com/
to pick up any duplicate content that other vendors have stolen and used on their own websites.
Contacting clients and asking for reviews & feedback about our service.
We have found a number of emails where customers have told us about our amazing attendants and we have responded of course, but we haven't asked for a review on social media, so we will be following up with this.
Using our photobooth to take updated headshots of ourselves.
Might as well use it whilst its there, and it gives us some motivation to do shower and groom ourselves!
Writing content - blog posts etc.
You know you should be blogging, but never have the time? Well know you do!
Streamlining our processes
-In all areas, staffing, payments, invoicing, uploading images etc. Tightening up right across the board.
Eliminating unnecessary costs
- For us this has meant closing down 2 of 3 of our storage units. We will now operate out of one, and we are looking at ways to continue to operate out of one when things return back to normal. Also cancelling any subscriptions, or software that is not required at this point in time.
Hope this helps even a little, and remember this will pass!
