picture marketing

[PatsyHeadHaunter]

Picture Marketing has an overall photo retrieval rate of 57% in all activations (that's how many people go online to retrieve the photo). We have an average of 72% retrieval rate in our haunted houses and some of our longest running clients have seen up to 85% retrieval rate!!! The key is simple: the haunts that listen to our instruction and suggestions have the highest success rate.

You're killing three birds with one stone here: (1) GIVING AWAY FREE PHOTOS (2) BUILDING YOUR EMAIL DATABASE (3) MARKETING THROUGH THE SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORKS and the ending result: INCREASING TICKET SALES! I can honestly say that after dealing with the top marketing agencies/brands in the "off-season" who clearly understand the value here (Pepsi, Budweiser, Disney, Cooper Tire, LinkedIn, etc..), it is clear that our top clients in the haunt network are the most current on the latest social media marketing strategies.

We have about 45 haunts currently and growing every week. They come back year after year because they see the value and more importantly THE RESULTS!

Feel free to call me if you have any questions Patsy 949 429 3052

Thanks Guys!!!

[drfrightner]

Robert,

I guess what I assumed you where saying was that you are selling photos up front ... I think the overall concept of PI is to use the system to grow facebook likes. So I guess you are saying is that at the front end of your haunt you are taking pictures of people and selling them or something?

So I guess I assumed you had an instant photo system to do just that... how are you using this system to sell photos to people. I wouldn't do that personally, I myself was only interested in growing facebook likes which I did ... I went from 7,000 likes in September to 48,000 but it wasn't through this camera system. I learned what it really takes to grow facebook likes which is a combination of promoting posts and being a very creative writer.

Bottom line is I'm saying the cost of this system, and the cards and everything else and the people you have to pay to do it and everything between .... no I don't think its the way you grow your facebook pages or promote your haunted house.

I do think its cool to have those photos and when and if they share the photo on their facebook that is GREAT that promotes your haunt, but MOST and I mean MOST of the people DO NOT retrieve their photos therefore they don't share them. Now a cheaper way to go would be the following...

Create a great photo op like you have at the entrance or exit of your haunt with your name it and take photos post them to your facebook and tell the people to visit your facebook or website to retrieve the photo. This way it costs you NOTHING!!!! I would do that before I would pay thousands upon thousands of dollars for cards that end up all over the ground ... this is just my opinion.

Larry

[gadget-evilusions]

I know are retrieval rate is very high, if I am looking at the report right, 91% of our photos taken have been retrieved. We have also gotten more email addresses than pictures taken due to invites, and out of the number of pictures taken, have had 15x that in unique page views of the picture pages. Although I agree I would love to have the cards cheaper, I think the system works great. We are going to try and find a sponsor next year to offset the cost of the system.

[JamBam]

Let me know if you want to sell it or not
Brett

[Terrorknight]

Larry we are misunderstanding each other some where. I don't sell any photos. I use the PI out at big events like Comic Con , to promote thru out the year and during the season we take there pic give them there card and the get there free pic, and we have a 72% return rate. I don't know why yours was so low , but ours was strong.

I have seen Haunts upload photo's right to there FB pages and I guess thats nice for some people, but i'd rather people like our page because they like our haunt not because i force them to like us to go thru tons of pics to find there needle in the haystack. If I had to do that the place would just piss me off.

Robert

[drfrightner]

I'll sell it... I'm not doing it again. Larry

[BigT]

Larry, you can add the frame in post-photo without the camera. There are a number of ways to do this. My wife and I visited one of the race museums, and they had a photo kiosk where you stand in front of some props and get your picture taken. Then they show you the picture on a computer screen where they add in the logo's, etc. That is one way, but it requires a computer and some simple software for photo editing at the haunt.

If you just want to upload the pictures later, use your computer software to do that the next day. You can print something like Fav Cards with the FB link printed and give those away to everyone that got their picture taken, and let them visit your FB page to see their picture. I'll bet you will get a lot of response to that.

I have sold pictures in the past, and that also worked well for me but I noticed this year it didn't work out so well so I will be changing the format and using the Fav Cards myself to drive the traffic to FB. I think that will work better and achieve the same results as the Picture Marketing Company.

I agree with you by the way that they are too expensive. They use this method at Universal Studios and Disney Parks, and I found that I wasn't using the cards when I got home to download pictures. I only downloaded pictures I paid for.

[drfrightner]

That is what I think as well... we made a kick ass frame for our pictures see attachments. For what they charge for this I can't see repeating it. I like the idea of pictures and uploading them to facebook but i DO NOT want to buy cards send someone to someone elses websites to redeem them. It just wasn't a strong facebook like builder atleast not for us. I only want to take pics and upload them to my facebook.

I will tell you and I'm saying this honestly... all the hype around building up massive facebook pages doesn't really pay off the way you think. You can spend a lot of time and money and resources to build up facebook likes which don't result in ticket sales or hits to your website... facebook this year wasn't a huge resource for us for hits. Google still is #1 and or I should say all the search engines. Facebook was about what it was the previous year...

The only way you get be sure that people see your posts on facebook no matter how many friends you get is to PAY FOR IT... that is how facebook is making money now. You either PAY of your likes don't see the posts or I should say most of them don't. Facebook is cool and I don't see it going away but if you are going to spend money to build facebook likes you might as well do it on facebook itself, not through people who've already been to your event.

I won't do the Picture Marketing thing again because it costs to much, and it is NOT the massive facebook builder.

I don't care what anyone says... I know for a fact how I would rank how you get facebook likes.

You can't do EVERYTHING so you have to focus on what gets the biggest impacts... and one of the best was to do promotions with your media sources like your radio stations. You do facebook promotions where they do contests for your tickets on their page and to enter they have to like your page for example... with one TV station I gained 1500 friends in the same day. And guess how much I paid ... NOTHING MORE it was part of the overall deal for marketing.

I will focus more on this next year making deals to build facebook likes via people I advertise with... not running around taking pictures and paying for cards. Not because its totally useless because its not, its just low very low on how you get the most likes. And considering only about 10% of your friends actually see your posts on facebook unless you are willing to PAY FOR IT then whats the point?

The reality is and I'm not more convinced of this than ever... we need to put less energy on facebook and put more energy and getting people to our websites where there are no distractions, side bar advertisement reading what 200 other people said, getting messaged or whatever... you need them on your website where its only your videos, photos, tickets for sale and more.

I think if we lose sight of the most important aspect of your business is your website then you somewhat fall to the mercy of facebook which you do not want.

Larry

[drfrightner]

I met with my social media person tonight to get my Picture Marketing Camera back... she took pics all season long. I wanted to double check on what she thought... her response to me and she does social media promotions for a living was that she probably wouldn't do it again, and didn't feel the cost was worth the return. I was like wow that is exactly what I said... but anyway I asked her what the redemption rate was and she said between 30 and 40% which I guess isn't bad. But like I said you have to ask yourself how much money are you willing to pour into something which ultimately is about building facebook fans, when facebook itself doesn't offer much return in terms of traffic back to your website.

I'm going to create a budget for promoting on facebook next year, I will watch it close, but my money will go into directly promoting on facebook not buying business cards for photos. Next year I'm going to get really tight with my marketing dollars across the board...

I'm going to focus on WHAT WORKS THE BEST and CUT OUT everything else.

Larry

[PatsyHeadHaunter]

Larry-

While I hate to call you out, I cannot listen to someone drone on about how a system did not work when they DID NOT EVEN USE THE SYSTEM CORRECTLY.

Out of all of my haunts, you had the least amount of photos taken period. While I don't know your season occupancy, I do know that you took less photos than any other haunt this season.

And I don't know how many times I have to explain this to you, but the purpose of PM is not just to gain more facebook page "Likes", while we definitely do help increase the page "Likes" that is not the ultimate goal. Increasing ticket sales and your social media footprint is the goal! Every time someone "Likes" a photo, it is posted to the newsfeed, and their entire network of friends can see their photo of them having a great time at your haunt.

Let me give everyone an example of ACTUAL NUMBERS from a haunt THIS SEASON that acquired best practices:

NUMBER OF PHOTOS TAKEN: 10,843

NUMBER OF UNIQUE PAGE VIEWS: 84,576

NUMBER OF EMAIL ADDRESSES ACQUIRED: 9,233

THEY HAD AN OVERALL RETRIEVAL RATE OF 75%

This wasn't even our top haunt.

Larry- I spoke to your social media girl and she said if you had hired someone to take the photos (what? $8/hour..?) and had a specific location to take the photos you would have had a significantly higher success rate. The bottom line is: You Didn't.

In regards to the cost: after the initial year purchase, the costs are minimal: $500 for the month of October licensing fee and around 17cents/card. Or some haunts just buy the barcodes and incorporate them into the ticket. That is pretty minimal cost considering the benefits.

So you can hire a company to come take photos and put them in a gallery that a quarter of your attendees will take the time to sift through, you can hire a company to try to accumulate as many email addresses as we accumulate, and you can buy some facebook ad space, but we provide all of that for a fraction of the total cost.

After speaking with you I understand you are intimidated by the social media marketing giant, but as one of the nation's top 100 Promotional Agencies (yup- us!) and after working with the top Marketing Agencies and Fortune 500 companies for over a decade, I can promise you social media is the most effective marketing tool out there. There are many vehicles to drive the social media marketing, we provide a solution that also helps you build your email database and enhance your attendees experience (everyone loves free photos).

There is a reason why EVERY ONE of our haunts have come back for a second, third and forth year- it works.

As always I am happy to answer questions on the system.

Patsy Russell
Picture Marketing
www.picturemarketing.com
949-429-3052

Grow Your Social Media with Picture Marketing