In just a few weeks, the COVID-19 outbreak has changed the way thousands of companies operate in an unprecedented manner. As business owners and employees navigate the “new normal”, the biggest question we are hearing is “where do I start?”, “what do we do?”, and “how can we survive this?”

We want to take this chance to discuss a few things you can be doing to better “weather the storm” of this global pandemic.

Become Essential

When times get tough, it’s way better to sell medicine than vitamins. Your business must be able to “solve a problem” that is essential and critical for your customers. Haunted Attractions are more than just an attraction…they’re entertainment brands. Right now people are sitting at home, quarantined, just looking for fun things around the web. Your social media can be a go-to source of playful entertainment. Keep entertaining people right now. Scare them…educate them…make them laugh…whatever it takes. Become an essential component of their daily/weekly entertainment routine.

Cut and Change Now!

To help extend your ability to weather this storm financially, you have to make hard decisions right away. However, one thing has always been true…unless your haunt’s spending is totally out of control, it’s almost impossible to save your way to profitability. When fixed costs are high, when cash flow is poor, and when labor makes up a major portion of your costs, the only way to become profitable is to increase sales.

What is the best way to increase sales? Marketing.

Most businesses fall into the “cut the marketing budget” trap…and it is indeed a trap. Marketing is the ultimate Catch-22 for any business, meaning, you can grow profits through marketing but you need profits to build marketing. It’s almost impossible to raise awareness, generate leads, land customers and build a brand without spending money on marketing. Sure, word of mouth helps, as do referrals. But early adopters — muchless raving fans — must come from somewhere.

And that “somewhere” is marketing. In fact, times like these are when businesses can actually grow their local market share. If there’s ever been a time to INCREASE your marketing spend…this haunt season is the time. While other business owners will fall into the trap, decrease their marketing spends, and therefore decrease their overall sales…you can increase and capture more of that market share away from them. Be smart. Don’t fall into this “trap”.

Crush It with Content

Thankfully, at no point in history has creating and publishing content been so easy. In fact, content publishing is more powerful and less expensive than ever, and everyone has the ability to do it right from their phone. Your attraction needs to be crushing the content game on social media right now. Post funny videos, behind-the-scenes videos, makeup how-to’s, virtual tours and walkthroughs, or even educational videos. Start publishing great content on your media platforms ASAP!

Stay In The Fight

If your business was deemed “non-essential” then the reality is, we all have a lot of extra time on our hands while we’re working from home. Now is the perfect time to work on projects for your haunt that you’d normally not have time to work on. Fine tune that logo, work on web banners/flyers/posters/coupons/etc., build your social media, learn something new…anything that can occupy your time and better serve your business.

Above all else, the one thing you can control is your effort. No external situation is more powerful than the committed actions you take every day. Keep moving your business forward. Create content, work on your event, work on things you normally don’t have time to do, come up with new ideas, cut and save your build and payroll costs…but stay in the fight. Don’t give in and don’t lose hope.

The only way to lose is to quit.

*Article inspiration from Aaron Fletcher