Advertising / Marketing Employee

[jordan30107]

I am working on this years marketing program for my haunt and I'm lookoing for some help or advise. Last year me and my business partner worked the last month prior to opening to ensure the haunt was ready to go and ensure the best possible show was provided. The area I feel we neglected was advertising / marketing as we were so busy doing the things we enjoy we did the bare necessities on advertisement and it showed. Previous years in the past we had better attendance but also had more help with marketing. My question to everyone is have you ever hired a marketing / advertisment person just for the halloween season and if so what would I expect to pay. I have also thought of hiring someone and pay a commission based upon attendance or a pay-per-person. Anyone done any of this?

Ricky
NIGHT TERROR LLC.

[NateTheGreat]

Maybe try similar marketing strategies that your competitors do for a start. If you start this early in the year, you should be able to do all the marketing yourself, and that way you can find out what worked and didnt work at the end of the year, and continue refining your marketing strategies.

[hsmag]

With the haunt I work at we did our advertising in-house, so to speak. We had a few key people who helped with this. One person focused on securing radio advertising and getting live remotes, I designed their website, artwork and helped maintain our facebook page and a few other people helped distributing flyers. Some key things I've found are:

*Radio advertising. Commercials and live remotes are a very important part of your advertising budget.

*Website. Having a website is crucial if you don't have one already. if you have someone in your crew who can create a decent looking site for you then take advantage of it. otherwise I would look at hiring someone to create a site for you. This is going to be a big form of advertisement for you so it's going to be used to create an impression in the minds of potential customers and it's up to you whether you want to make a good impression with a nice, easy to use site or a bad one with a plain-looking site that's hard to navigate.

*Printed materials. If you can secure at least one decent sponsor for your event they can literally pay for all your printed materials. Even better if you can get more than one. I would suggest going with full color if possible. You can get decent rates at sites like clubflyers.com. And try calling local businesses to see about placing them in their stores. A sponsor can also help with distribution, such as fast food places or pizzerias

*Social media. have someone, whether it be yourself or someone else, who can access the haunt's social networking accounts and answer questions and promote through various free social sites like facebook, twitter and topix.

*Word of mouth. Having a street team that will go spread thhe word is always helpful. We didn't have one of these but I know of other haunts who have.

*Events. Having your haunt's presence at local events, be it a parade, festival, carnival, or whatever can be a big help. You may also be able to distribute flyers for your haunt at these events. Even if you can't having something that displays your website url can be beneficial. Then it plants in people's minds something they'll want to look at later on when they have internet access. So many smart phones now have internet that people can even look your site up with their phone. Just make sure to get permission from the organizers to be at these events beforehand.

These are some of the main areas that I've seen other haunts market in, and definitely look at what your competitors are doing that you're not. You don't necessarily have to copy them but it helps when determining where your marketing lacks.

Hope this will help you some, should you decide to try and do your marketing in-house and save some money this year.

[HauntedPaws]

*Radio advertising. The commercial needs to be memoriable as well. comedy plays well now a days.

*Website. Having a website which is easy to use and creates it's own buzz is free advertising. It also is the first thing people see about your product. If it's crappy the haunt will start as crappy and you have to use more effort to overcome that. If the website is badass people wanna find out more.

*Printed materials. Your target demographic doesn't use print much.

*Social media. Someone needs to work that page EVERYDAY.

*Word of mouth. The above will do this for you.

*Events.

Having your haunt's presence at local events, be it a parade, festival, carnival, or whatever can be a big help.

YES!!!

[hsmag]

*Radio advertising. The commercial needs to be memoriable as well. comedy plays well now a days.

*Website. Having a website which is easy to use and creates it's own buzz is free advertising. It also is the first thing people see about your product. If it's crappy the haunt will start as crappy and you have to use more effort to overcome that. If the website is badass people wanna find out more.

*Printed materials. Your target demographic doesn't use print much.

*Social media. Someone needs to work that page EVERYDAY.

*Word of mouth. The above will do this for you.

*Events. YES!!!

To add to this,

*Website. Your website is, like HauntedPaws said, your first impression with people. On average you're only going to have between 10-15 seconds before people either decide they want to know more or they want to leave. Image is important for your website and marketing materials.

*Printed materials. I respectfully disagree with them not being used very much. We used full-color, two-sided postcards for our flyers. The front had artwork based on our website, some basic info and had our website url on them. The back was used for coupons. The left side had a coupon for the haunt and the right side had a coupon from our sponsor. On our website we listed all the places that you could pick up one of the cards. Before we ever even opened thousands of cards had been placed in about 15 different locations and within the first week or so they were all gone.

*Social media. For us, the facebook page isn't very active until about 2 months before we're open. During those 2 months I try to check it either everyday or at the most every other day. It's also good practice to use it to hype your event up, which can end up making people want to come to your event (posting right before the weekend, posting about special events, discounts, etc). I've found topix.com to be a good tool to get word of mouth going. Make posts about your haunt in the forums for various cities around you. People will see the posts about your haunt and either ask questions or post about their experience and it's a great way to get people talking. Plus it's free.

You should use your printed materials, website and social networking all together. Your website would have links to your facebook, your facebook have links to your website, your print materials pushing both of those links and use all 3 of them together to drive people to your event.

*Special events. If you're able to have a cool-looking character with you at these events it can help generate buzz. People love to get their pictures taken with people in costume and even having the character interact with the crowds in a fun way will help draw attention and interest.

[storm]

Ricky,

Depends on what you have running for a haunt. I tried looking your haunt up, Night Terror LLC search went to an attraction in NJ. So not sure about the size and what you have going on at your haunt. Having a marketing manager or using a firm will always have it's advantages, and like the rest of your advertising budget it's more of how effective the use is then how big.
Probally the most cost effective thing might be to develope talent from within. If you have an advertising budget and strategy in place, you might just need someone to help with the social media aspects, managing the info form advertisisers, and being a point person to work out contracts before you sign off on them. This can help you develope a management team and work with someone who understands the industry. just like the local radio station you can have an outside agency or manager who's idea of scary is very different from what your attraction offers your audience.
There are tons of avenues and ways to go to fir any budget, but in the long run you might be able to do the best by promoting from within and investing in education (ie seminars, books, ect) to promote a manager from within who can bear some of the load and bring in new ideas.

[jordan30107]

All,

Thanks for the help and advice. We have a haunt in large theatre that we rework for the October Haunt season and last year ran for 17 nights. We have partnered with the theatre so we have trained actors as our scare team which works well. This was our first year back after a 3 year break so we are having to build our attendance back up and a new location did not help this year. Our product was great however attendance was alot less than expected. We have a website and took advantage of Facebook and a few other social media sites/ The biggest issue we have had is there is only two of us operating the haunt and between making repairs, building, and managing we have fell short in the marketing department. I do have to agree that printed materials do work as we put out 10,000 flyers in the area and posters everywhere and seen good response, more response than we got from social media it seems. Thanks for all the help and ideas.


Ricky Jordan
Night Terror LLC
Talmadge Brothers Funeral Home and Casket Company
www.talmadgebroshaunt.com

[Allen H]

Yes, hire someone.
It just makes sense. If you hire someone for 30,000 a year and your admission is $15.00 then as long as they bring in more than 2,000 people then it was worth it. you might find someone to work for 6 months for less, but hiring a separate knowledgeable person makes sense.
Allen H