The new year is a time for new beginnings, new goals and a period of reflection.
As we enter this new year, use this time to reflect on your business opertions and update your processes to better serve your customers. This is the time to improve your business and set yourself up for success. Here are 5 things you should update in your event planning business before the new year:
1. New Year, New Website
Highly recommended any time of the year, however before you enter any new year a Peek User Review is a must. Peek User Testing is a free usability tool where you see and hear a 5-minute video of a real person using your site through the Peek program. This program provides you with amazing insights from a customer perspective.
After completing a Peek User Review I’ve been made aware of items I never thought of as an event planner!
Click here to complete a review today.
2. Social Media Audit
It is important to complete a social media audit of all your social media accounts before the new year. This is your opportunity to look at your reports and insights to see what works and what doesn’t. When completing a social media audit explore what posts were most popular and at what times. This will provide you with a better idea of the type of content your ideal clients enjoy and the best days and times to post.
Complete this and you will enter the new year ready to implement a social media strategy that increases your client engagement.
Check out Hootsuite’s Social Media Audit Template
3. Clean up your Client List
We all collect potential clients information over the years. This could be business cards from networking events, bridal shows, referrals etc. The end of the year is the ideal time to review all these contacts to determine which are still current, relevant and still has value to your business. If you keep your client’s contact information in an online mailing list, this is also the perfect time to clean up your list and ensure all the information is still up to date.
Complete the following steps to clean up your client clist:
- Check to see which contacts are still accurate and remove and/or update any information that has changed.
- Reach out to your current contacts to check-in and see how they are doing.
- Add any new contacts you’ve encountered but never got around to updating (such as that stack of business cards from your last vendor show!)
It is ideal to start the new year with a fresh, clean, updated list of clients who are ready to hire an event planner.
4. Update your Price List
By the end of the year, you would have had a few months of planning events and working with clients, to better gauge where your prices should be. Are your prices too low and you’ve not made any profit this year? Well it is time to increase them. This is the time to also evaluate what has worked and what hasn’t in terms of your costs. Maybe you’ve not booked any clients because your prices were too high. Use this time to review your packages and determine what additional value you can add to be on par with your industry pricing.
BONUS: Updating your prices for the New Year also provides you with a reason for the change when clients ask. You can therefore explain to them that your costs have increased etc., so a new pricing list will be in effect as of January 1st.
Click here to download our free Event Planner Pricing Guide.
5. Update your Marketing Websites
Once you’ve updated all your internal processes it is time to turn your attention outwards. If you market your business on third-party marketing platforms such as WeddingWire, Thumbtack or The Knot, now is the time to review and update ALL your profiles. This will ensure that any changes to your photo, contact and/or company information is captured. For example, if you’ve updated your biography on your website, you should also be updating this information across all these platforms for consistency.
Having a consistent image, biography and contact information will also help to improve your brand and marketability.
Update these 5 things in your business this year and the impact will be far reaching throughout the year to come.
