Take Advantage of Downtime to Better Your Business:

Oftentimes there are periods within the year that your business may have some downtime where you don’t have as many clients to serve, or you don’t have a lot of leads coming in. It just so happens during the summer months of July and August we typically see low amounts of events and leads coming in so why not take advantage of this time to make some improvements for your business and prepare you’re your business and processes to bring in more leads or handle those leads when they start rolling in again.

This is also a great time to clean up some processes and streamline things so that when you do have a lot of events that you’re more efficient and in the end profitable.

Here are a just few things to work on during this downtime.

Marketing

Google Business Profiles:
If you don’t already have one, you should make sure that your business has a Google Business Profile also known as GBP for short. Since most of the traffic on the Internet is on Google take advantage of attempting to get on the first page of search results within the maps section. This map section is where Google business profiles exist. If you do have a GBP, this is also a great time to reach out and get reviews from past customers, add photos to your GBP, make a few posts or even add some offers to your GBP.

When you have filled out as much of your business’ information as you can and frequently update GBP the better chances you have at generating more leads and getting more business.

For some more in-depth information about Google Business Profiles, check out this video with Google expert Jason Brown as a guest on the photo booth magazine show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRE5800YEK8 . In this episode Jason goes over how to create, verify and optimize a GBP.

Websites

There are many ways online to have a presence for your business such as a listing on the Knot Wedding Wire Yelp Facebook Instagram and other directories. Those are all great places to be to get eyeballs on your business from prospective clients however you don’t own those properties and your listing on those platforms can be taken down at any time without warning, explanation or even someone at that platform to speak with to get the listing reinstated. You are also at the mercy of those platform algorithms that may not show your business to all the people all the time. In many instances, your business will show up next to other similar businesses that can take potential customers to your competitors instead of you. When you have a website, you are in full control of your destiny.

If you do have a website that’s great! There are a lot of things you can do on your website to get and convert traffic. Here are three things that you can do on your website right now that can help get more traffic and more importantly convert that traffic.

• Contact Info: At the top of your website, you should have a phone number and a button that leads to a contact form. Don’t make your site visitors have to work to try to contact you. Having your phone number, city you operate in and even the address on the website helps send a local signal to Google, helping Google rank you better in the search results for local searches.
• Photos: Having great photos on your website tells a story and helps customers know more about your services and the quality of your work. If you have to use stock photography for now that is ok, but nothing tells the story better than your own photos. If you don’t have your own photos, now put a plan in place to take photos The next time you are working so that you have a stockpile of photos for when you need them in the future. Something important about the photos you use that you should consider for your website is the naming of the photo file itself as well as what is called an alt image tag.
  
  Google takes into consideration the name of the photo itself as that helps Google tell people with accessibility problems what that image is about. The same goes for the alt tag which is a little bit of code in the back end that tells Google how to display the image if there is sight impaired person using a computer and visiting your site.
  
  
• Reviews: Testimonials and reviews are also a great way to reassure your website visitors that you have done business before and have done great work. People love to see what others have to say about the quality of your products and services. If you have Google reviews usually websites have a plugin or app that can import those reviews onto your website. This is another reason why you should be getting reviews on your GBP.
  
  

CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

Handling those leads that do come in can be quite a task. If we do not already have a CRM this can help streamline the whole process, saving you time and making your life a lot easier. There are bunch of different options out there for you to use such as Check Cherry, 17 Hats, Táve and so many more. Almost all these systems have a free trial which allows you to test it out and find out which one meets your business needs and price range.

Having a CRM can streamline communicating with customers for emailing, booking the customer, setting up meetings, and even things such as automating texts to the clients for reminders contract signatures, payments, and more. It consolidates all of your interactions in one spot so that you don’t have to navigate from email to an external calendar to spreadsheets to manage your business.

Here are links to some of the platforms that are popular in the event industry:

CheckCherry: https://www.checkcherry.com/

17 Hats: https://www.17hats.com/

DJ Event Planner: https://www.djeventplanner.com/

DJ Intelligence: https://www.djintelligence.com/

Booth Book: https://boothbook.com/

Tave: https://hello.tave.com/

We hope some of this helps and you take advantage of this downtime to better your business and prepare to grow in the future.

If you need any help with your website or with things such as Google ads or Google business profiles feel free to reach out and schedule a free 30-minute consultation. Just smash that button below and contact us!