How to Prep for the Event Rental Busy Season during the Slow Season

Prepare for the event rental busy season ahead while things are slow. Take stock of your party rental business’ operations such as workflow, inventory management, networking, marketing, contracts and other documents, or other processes.

Let’s break down these key steps below:

Improve your Workflow

One of the easiest ways to maintain success is organization. However, in busy seasons it is beyond challenging, if not impossible, especially given the more inventory and staff you manage. If you master this during the slow season, it should be a breeze to stay on top of your workflow by creating systems. This is when you can focus on them and adequately learn new software.

As an event rental business, you need to constantly manage your inventory. Enter Goodshuffle Pro to the rescue! Beyond building professional quotes, Goodshuffle Pro helps you ensure your inventory is in rentable condition (or better). When something breaks, or needs cleaning and repair, create Set Asides and resolve them once the item is ready for renting. You can also rotate the product out of your collection if its unsalvageable, out of style, or not bringing in income to justify its space. When it is in Set Aside mode a red stop sign will show on invoices so you don’t make the faux pas of failing to fix it before renting it out.

There are other resources for your company such as project management software programs like Asana and Trello. These programs are designed to manage tasks in an organized fashion so are productive and stay on top of things.

Expand your Networking with Event Pros

Your party rental business may be at its busiest from April to October with peak wedding season; although, in other months there are holiday parties, events, photo shoots, staging, and more. When it is slower that doesn’t mean rest on your laurels. Use this time wisely to get a jump start making moves for the future. The other benefit of this is most other vendors are also slow during this time.

Personally reach out to venues, repeat customers, leads, and wedding and event planners and take them to coffee, lunch, or drinks. Get to know them better.
They may also give you tips on what inventory they are looking for to wow their clients, add your business to their preferred vendor list, or create a professional relationship with endless possibilities.

Spruce Up Your Marketing Material

For instance, SEO, or search engine optimization, is something you should always be working on.

Check that all your professional, business listings in directories are consistent. These include:

• Google
• The Knot Pro
• Goodshuffle Pro
• Socials such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest

You want information such as hours, address, phone, address, and more to be consistent. When things like this don’t match it hurts your SEO. Improve your listings within these directories such as adding new photos, requesting reviews, and linking to your other sites.

Make sure your website is up-to-date. This is your most important piece of marketing material you could have. Your website should be indexed, well-designed, easy to navigate, and communicate your branding message. You should also display your contact information on the landing page.

Work on your Pinterest and start a mailing list if you haven’t. Pinterest is a great way to get traffic to your site. It takes time to get the hang of it, and there are some amazing courses out there. This will also direct people to your website and you want them to get interactive with you and your products. Have you started a mailing list? If not, it might be a good time. Be sure to follow privacy laws though before jumping right in and contact legal counsel for questions. There are great resources like MailChimp which is free if you have under a certain amount of subscribers.