picture marketing

[Capt.Chaos]

I am looking for a little feedback on picture marketing. My big question is did it pay off? Did you sell sponsorships with it? I am looking for any ideas you can provide.

Thanks
Buck

[Kamilla]

Picture Marketing is a wast of time if you are paying for the service. The only way it is effective is if you have customers take their own photos at a photo op with a visible logo. People are more likely to tag themselves in a photo that they took and uploaded. Let them upload it on the spot rather than have them leave go to your site the next day to sort thru hundreds of photos. Have a full time photographer taking photos all night as well to upload to your Facebook for additional tagging.

[gadget-evilusions]

We used picture marketing at two different attractions this year.

We paid for the service.

Although people are more likely to tag themselves in photos they took, with the picture marketing service we are able to get thousands of email addresses from the retrieval process that we can market to all year. We do have spots where they can take their own photo and get our logo as well, but I like doing both. The picture marketing service that has been at Transworld the last few years does not force the customer to sort thru hundreds of pictures to find theirs, the card we give them directs that person right to their photo(s), and the retrieval page has several "share" buttons, which posts the picture to facebook, twitter, email, etc.

We have not tried to sell marketing sponsorships to ours yet, but will be for 2013.

[Terrorknight]

Picture Marketing is a great system that works very well with bringing in new customers, giving customers extra value at your haunt and capturing there emails and other info for remarketing to them for the next season. I've said it on here before in the preseason you pair your Picture Marketing system with costumes like Kevin's ( Gore-Galore ) makes with huge oversized and eye catching creatures. And take it to everything you can Parades, festivals, car shows, anything where there are groups of people, this drive busy about your haunt all season and will keep it fresh in there heads. ( We used it this at Comic Con in Philadelphia and also passed out special coupons. This was in June and we got back about 40 of those coupons this past Oct, not bad for 4 months later but also people were talking about the time they saw our creature and or got there pic with him).

Here's the 2 cents , These camera systems and oversized costumes may look $$$$ at the show but if your willing to put the time into use them to there fullest they will pay off. They don't work on there own , you need to work them.

Robert

[gadget-evilusions]

Picture Marketing is a great system that works very well with bringing in new customers, giving customers extra value at your haunt and capturing there emails and other info for remarketing to them for the next season. I've said it on here before in the preseason you pair your Picture Marketing system with costumes like Kevin's ( Gore-Galore ) makes with huge oversized and eye catching creatures. And take it to everything you can Parades, festivals, car shows, anything where there are groups of people, this drive busy about your haunt all season and will keep it fresh in there heads. ( We used it this at Comic Con in Philadelphia and also passed out special coupons. This was in June and we got back about 40 of those coupons this past Oct, not bad for 4 months later but also people were talking about the time they saw our creature and or got there pic with him).

Here's the 2 cents , These camera systems and oversized costumes may look $$$$ at the show but if your willing to put the time into use them to there fullest they will pay off. They don't work on there own , you need to work them.

Robert

As you can see from this one photo, we utilized a Gore Galore costume and Picture Marketing together. Most of our customers wanted their picture taken with Monkey Bones. The rest got them taken with some of our que line actors.

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[Woo25]

Picture Marketing does serve as a great value addition to your customer. As long as the person you have taking the photos is enthusiastic and conveys to them clearly that it is a FREE photo, they'll perceive it as a GIFT and you'll get a huge redemption rate and a lot of sincere, customer appreciation. I've found that people will post directly to Facebook or Twitter because of the links Picture Marketing integrates too. Personally, our redemption rate is around 85-90% every year. And yes, that means you have a huge database of email addresses of customers. I'm pleased with the service. Here's what mine looked like this year...

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[drfrightner]

I'm going to go with thumbs down on this one... we tried it and it didn't produce results for us. I hired someone to take photos and yes the photos look neat, awesome whatever especially when you have someone like Brainstorm make a kick ass frame for those photos. But you can't be fooled by how cool the photos look and think you experienced some instant success. If that camera could simply do nothing but take pictures and you could upload them to your own website or your own facebook heck I'd hire someone to do that just to add content to my pages but it doesn't work that way at all.

Picture Marketing sets up a page for you your customers get a card they go to that site to retrieve their photos... the percentage of people who do is so low its unreal and Picture Marketing wants a fortune for those cards, not to mention paying someone to take the pictures. Is the concept cool... yes its really cool, but 90% of those cards get lost or simply thrown on the ground or just forgotten about. We went through rows and rows of cards and not many people redeemed the photos.

Its a gimmick and its a cool one but unless you have tons of money to spend on nearly every single marketing gimmick out there I would say the time spent and money spent isn't a value for our industry. Someone may disagree and heck maybe I don't understand myself what I was doing but based on what I saw, knowing what I put into it, what it costs, and what the return is I wouldn't do it again.

In fact I have a camera and I'll sell it to someone if you want it.

I would say and I'm right about this that marketing a haunt is getting ever so much harder... there is to much out there now and we have to start to focus on the things that work best and hammer them home. I do not believe this would be one of those tools that will really make a massive impact. A suggestion for this company in my opinion just sell the camera so you can take photos with the frame and upload to your own site without the cards. That I want and would love to have... but the company makes the money when you buy the cards, I can honestly say I'm not buying more cards at least not until there are more results or someone makes me understand how it can be more cost effective.

Larry

[Terrorknight]

I would think your photographer was not selling the photos the right way. We have it built into our line so that almost every person gets there picture taken and receives there cards and can be explained how it makes. Our retrieval rates has stayed right around 72% which I feel is a great return rate, and our views per pic are 6.82.

It adds value as line entertainment because they get the chance to act stupid with there friends in a pic and everyone laughs, plus it's a free add on to the ticket. I think you just didn't use the system the right way Larry.

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[drfrightner]

You I think are not understanding the conversation... this aren't pictures you sell these are pictures you take and give away for free. I see what you are saying... but this is a different situation. There is a system called picture marketing and you buy a really expensive camera and on top of that you pay to buy these cards then you pay someone to run around take pictures of people and hand out these cards that you scan.

From there... hold on like me take a breath... then the people who get the cards, which mostly never get used go to a site to redeem their photos. It is suppose to help your facebook page get likes, blah, blah... and I'm saying wasn't worth the hassle, the money or the effort. However I liked very much the overall concept but just would rather do away with the cards all together and just take peoples photos, store them in the camera automatically with the frame and i'll upload to facebook. Eliminate all together the cards, but they wouldn't want to do that because they charge a fortune for them, and the redemption rate can't even be a few percent. Not doing it again... waste of time.

If someone makes a camera where it puts the frame in automatically heck I'd buy that in a flash!

Larry

[Terrorknight]

Larry are you saying I don't understand the conversation? Because I understand it very well, I own a camera for Picture Marketing and have used it the past 2 years. And the % I wrote in my last post are the % from using there system. I too wish the card weren't so $$$ I feel raped when I buy them, but the system works very well for me.

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Robert