Top 7 Escape Room Marketing Ideas During Holiday Seasons To Maximize Bookings
Without a doubt, escape rooms are the new craze in the US. These teamwork-based, strategic activities are perfect for family vacations and are ideal for boosting morale, creativity, critical thinking, and having fun with friends and families. The interactive puzzles create an immersive experience for players that leaves them wanting more, marketers realize this and use every sort of marketing tactic known to them to capture customers’ attention. In the US, holiday seasons are a big thing. Millions of people take time off their work to spend that leisure time with their friends and families, they book hotels, movie theaters, amusement parks, and so on. It is the ideal time for Escape Room business owners to take advantage of the scenario and make a profit. Here are some Escape Room Marketing Ideas During Holiday Seasons:
1. Increase web traffic through Google Ads
As an owner, you would want more people to visit your website and browse through its content in order to influence their decisions. What better way there is than using the tools of Google Ads? By creating and optimizing ads, online users are likely to find your website link at the top when they search and enter specific keywords. Google is one of the top search engines and platforms to develop and promote your ads. Utilizing pay per click marketing model, you are able to direct more traffic to your website and make the best use of your capital investment. For Escape Room Marketing, Adwords is essential for generating more booking & revenue.
2. Make use of last-minute priced deals with display advertising
Customers often take too much time deciding whether they want to buy something or not, this can sometimes lead to not buying it at all. Countdown timers such as “ONLY 2 HOURS LEFT TO SAVE 60% OFF!” create a sense of urgency in the viewer’s mind where they feel compelled to buy your product/service immediately. In Escape Room Marketing, This is also called scarcity marketing where viewers are made to believe your products and services are about to run out and that is the best time to make a purchasing decision.
3. Collaborate with Social Media Influencers
America has always embraced a celebrity culture, and it’s now stronger than ever. People will jump to buy anything their favorite celebrity/influencer says or promotes. Having influencers stream their experience through your Escape Room on popular sites like Twitch, Facebook and YouTube is a great way of boosting your brand awareness. It gets more people to talk about your business, draws in potential customers from various demographics, and improves reach and impressions. It can be a bit costly depending on the popularity of the influencer you choose to collaborate with, however, it is worth it as it is their personality that sells your service, something which is difficult for even the most hardworking employees to possess, no matter how much money and time you invest on them. Researching the ideal social influencer is also crucial, you would not want someone who has a long history of controversies and harassment to be associated with your business as it will have the opposite effect, turning away people from your competitors.
Like & Follow Page Facebook for Escape Room Marketing Tips
Join Facebook Group For Regular Marketing Tips
4. Always plan ahead
What happens a week before the holiday season starts? Pure chaos. Customers rush in to make last-minute purchases, only to find your website crashing due to the immense server traffic from thousands of people trying to click “purchase” at the same time. This leads to many users not getting their desired service and becoming frustrated with your Escape Room business brand. Start offering booking tickets from early on, make your customers aware of your operations months prior to your peak days, that way you are playing safe and not become liable for any kind of mishappenings. Also, tell them that booking fees are likely to increase during the last hours, this will motivate your customers to make early purchases in order to save money. You can use Facebook ads to deliver your offer to your customers.
5. Value customer feedback and use them to your advantage
In order to ensure your business stays financially profitable in the long run, you need to build better relationships with your customers. Don’t just sell tickets to them, get to know what their experience was like and what more you could have done to improve their experience. Never take a passive-aggressive approach and use dehumanizing speech against your customers, learn to take criticisms and be apologetic where necessary. Brand image is extremely important and any unintentional incident can stay forever on the internet which will tarnish your reputation and hurt sales in the long run. A ruined brand image means your competitors get an edge over you and allow them to exploit your weaknesses. If you can create a good experience in your customer’s minds you can bring them back always with remarketing ads.
6. Partner yourself with allies
You’re not the only one who’s advertising your Escape Room business in the market, there are countless other advertising agencies, tourism companies, service providers online who are doing what you’re doing, promoting and selling. Chances are, these organizations are likely to have better reach and impressions as they stayed and operated their business for a long time, they know how it works and is pros in the industry. Not to mention, their local reputation will undoubtedly rank better than yours and customers are likely to trust them more. So, partnering with these entrepreneurs is a good way to build up your user base, the agencies will offer deals and discounts to their members as you compensate them and in return, you get more customers to enjoy your Escape Room experience. This is a win-win situation for both parties. It is also important to keep healthy relationships with your allies, hampering them will cause them to cut ties with you while also driving away potential business partners from you in the future. Make sure to negotiate your terms and conditions with your business parties, do not expect too much from them while also do not give them too much that may not be cost-effective for your business.
If you are an escape room owner in USA, Join this group.
7. Develop a smooth & efficiently running website
Simplicity is the norm these days. Users do not always have the time to read every paragraph of text when making a booking, they prefer to log in, read the important details, click bookings and log out. As an escape room owner, you need to make sure the website is not clunky with content lying around everywhere and there. It has to be user-friendly so that not just people with better computer knowledge can use it, everyone should be able to use it. The website should be visually appealing and aesthetically pleasing to the viewers’ eyes, researching and looking at other business websites is a good way to develop an idea on how to present your own website to the public. And lastly, the website must be running smoothly, with no lag and stuttering issues, this creates a good experience for your users and lets them develop a positive perception regarding your brand.
Conclusion
There are still many ways to develop your Escape Room business and use marketing strategies to promote and sell your business. Research is the key to success, don’t just blindly follow what everyone else is doing, their ideas of obtaining success may not just work with your strategy and end up costing you precious time and money. As a business owner, you must think outside the box and develop new ideas to help promote your business. Experimenting with new concepts is always risky but has proven to always yield great results.
For more marketing ideas & tips follow us on Twitter, Linkedin & Pinterest.