picture marketing

[Terrorknight]

To each there own, but I know it works for us and other big haunts in the industry. I you set it up the right way it's an effective tool, if you do it as an after thought because you see other people doing it not so much. I have seen other haunts use it that are not giving it a strong presence at there haunt and I would guess they to are not getting strong results. And to any haunts out there thinking about trying it just look at the list of major companies outside of the haunt industry that also use this product, and if it didn't work, do you think they would be using it. I think not.

Robert Dudzieck
All Seasons Entertainment LLC
Fright Factory Haunted Attraction PA

[drfrightner]

Patsy,

You CLEARLY don't have a clue about what we did or what we didn't do... because you DO NOT have the facts at all! Without going into every single thing you said that wasn't true just let me say this...

We took photos and used every single card we got from you so please don't spill out lies or make up crap... we do NOT HAVE ONE CARD LEFT NOT ONE! Secondly we paid NO ONE $8.00 an hour and the girl we hired does social media promotions for a living. So again don't get on here and make up crap! Lastly I think we had about 15,000 cards and we used every single one!

Now onto another point... your system is neat, its cool and whatever but its also expensive! Everything anyone does has to have a value placed on it. For what your system does, and what it costs and what it returns for me its not worth the money or the time spent using the thing. There are HUNDREDS and THOUSANDS of haunted houses out there and HUNDREDS of amusement parks as well and I think you said you have 50 or so haunts using this. Again great for you guys but that is only a fraction of what is out there.

For the money you charge for a system, cards, license fee and everything between a haunted house can buy a radio commercials, billboards, or better yet hire a professional PR agency. If a haunt has a massive budget and money is no object then great, but for the smaller to medium sized haunt your program doesn't deliver the bang for the buck. This is just my opinion. Now that isn't to say what you are offering is useless no not at all... I think its great. Heck I think newspapers are cool to look at as well but I'm not buying any newspaper ads either.

I'd love to advertise on the Super Bowl or let me set my standards lower... just one spot on American Idol but I can't afford it because one spot on American Idol just local here only, I could buy 1000 or more radio commercials. So again I'm NOT saying what you do is worthless or it sucks, or its a scam or anything... I'm saying its not worth it to me because it doesn't sell tickets.

I'm taking photos of people who've already come and left... sure they could share the photos with someone but if I use the same money and hired a professional PR company I could get hundreds and thousands of eyeballs, or better yet several billboards which would be driven past daily. Again its all about cost vs return and what you want money wise and what we get back are two different things.

Last but not least... you are DEAD WRONG! Social media is NOT the best form of marketing not even close. I can prove it with facts, stats, and can back that up to the tenth degree. Social media is a form of marketing, and one I might add i did a lot of and was very successful growing my facebook likes from 7000 to 48,000 for scarefest. But the flat out best way to promote through facebook is promoting your posts and writing clever posts on top of that... not uploading photos of people. Does it help sure... but with everything there is a cost and what you want is out of line with the actual value.

As I've told you SEVERAL TIMES no maybe a MILLION TIMES... Pepsi can throw millions of dollars at something and not blink an eye, they have decades to sell soda. We as haunters have days to sell our products and considering MOST haunts don't spend a lot on marketing they must make those dollars go as far as they can...

Like I said if you sold a camera that just put the frames around the picture and I can do what I want with them I'd love the thing... but paying you a fee to use something we buy, then buying cards to boot is in my book not worth the money spent. Sorry... again nothing against your program that I feel is best suited for a company that has money to burn not an attraction that has days and hours to get the word out quickly and must watch every dollar they spend.

Where would I rank your form of marketing, it would be so low on the pole and that for me puts it in the area for haunts with money to burn... essential marketing tool NO! Because you must admit that all photos are taken of people who already bought tickets and will not be back until the following year... so how does that help me? The ONLY way it COULD possibly help me if if those people redeem their photo and that is less than 40%, and then share that photo with people through their facebook or something. And do you have stats that show just because you Patsy post on your facebook tonight that you ate ice scream and watch Batman do you think your 1500 frields read that ... I bet only a couple people saw that. This is how facebook works... so the reality is your photos if you even share them, if you even redeem them, and if someone even sees them after you post them if you post them is low and even at that any benefit only comes after someone has already been to my haunt not before.

The guy who is on this site right now talking it up... I could sit down with him and in less than 10 minutes i could make him understand the value of all marketing, cost vs return, place values on everything, line up priorities and more than likely the light will fly through the window... because if you start to focus on the marketing that works best which really includes even stuff like hiring a crew to make videos for you all season which costs money, or creating a better website or graphics, or any number of things your budget will go way up... with that you will better organize your priorities on what you can or can't afford. Lets also see this for another point of view... word of mouth as Ben brought up! Okay so these photos are like word of mouth and you post them to your facebook page great. If that person liked your haunt they will tell the same 10 friends either way if they liked it ... another thing look at even your own facebook. When you post something you have like the same 2 or 3 people say something back, typically 1 maybe 2 or 3 like what you said this is typical of facebook. People on facebook that are NOT celebs live in a bubble they talk hardly no one sees anything you say... people follow sports teams, celebs, and they post on their facebook basically talking to mostly themselves. If you have 500 or 1000 friends can you really follow what they are saying... no you don't. You only see the top couple latest posts when you finally log into facebook UNLESS YOU as a business PAY to keep them at the top... again if I'm going to spend money on social media I'll spend it with facebook to make sure all my friends will see my posts. Again I just understand how these things work because I spend the time and money to figure them out... I just don't go back what someone tells me like most people.

As I pointed out earlier the guy who sells facebook management and runs a haunt has 1/5 of the business of the biggest haunt in his own market yet he has 48,000 to 4,500 facebook friends. See the point... social MEDIA IS NOT the main way you promote a haunt! My biggest year in the past 10 years was 2009 and 2010 and in both years I didn't have a facebook page. In 2011 during the season towards the middle of the season I started one and in 2012 I went on it big time and as it turns out worst year in 10 years. Social media plays a VERY SMALL role in your success!

I hire a national and a local PR FIRM ... I mean I try everything and every year I'm more than willing to try anything new to test it out. Your system is expensive and something that doesn't in my mind sell tickets and we are not doing it again. Its nothing personal it just doesn't create the benefit I'm looking for in all honestly I'm cutting back on radio especially and will focus on more web based marketing because in my mind that produces the best results ... aside for PR which is always PRICELESS.

I wish you well and I hope the people who use your system have success I really do ... just me personally I found it to be overpriced and not a traffic driver nor a ticket selling device and for the money it has to do both otherwise I'm going to try something new. If anyone wants to buy that camera I have it and its for sale! Just give a ring and I'll ship it to you!

Larry

[PatsyHeadHaunter]

Here is a quick study done by EXPERTS:

http://allfacebook.com/report-photos...acebook_b58958

In regards to stating facts- you actually handed out close to 1/5 of the cards you stated. And in case you haven't heard: the entire economy went to crap after 2009 -it's not because you dabbled in social media marketing.

And while you are comparing marketing budgets in the millions- which we definitely work with on a regular basis- I think its laughable that you think a package that is $3,350 for the first year and around $1,500 for each year there after is going to break the bank for the top haunts and not give them that much in return.

The fact is after speaking with these haunt owners- they get it. I understand you probably never will.

Good Luck Lar-

Patsy

[drfrightner]

Patsy,

Couple things.

One thing is your are totally clueless that is for sure on how many cards I did or didn't hand out... we handed every single one out we have NONE LEFT! I'm sorry that you don't want to admit that people get these things and lose them, throw them on the ground, or whatever. We have ZERO CARDS LEFT... and fyi for the record you are more than welcome to come here and search our office HIGH and LOW and see if you can find our so called left over cards we supposedly never used. WE HAVE NO CARDS LEFT!

Two, I never said that our business went down because we used social media. Clearly you didn't understand what I was saying. What I was saying is and I'll re-state it. Look the best season Darkness EVER HAD was back in the 90's and we did like 50,000 people a few different times. We don't get close to that number now but here is a point... back when I reached over 50,000 customers there was NO SUCH THING AS SOCIAL MEDIA! Let me go one further... in 2009 we had a great year! Again we had NO SOCIAL MEDIA marketing! In 2010 there was NO social media page and we did great. The point here is that social media isn't impacting if we do awesome or not it has little impact.

As I pointed out Nick the guy who sells a service to do social media for you has 48,000 likes on his Cleveland based haunts facebook page, and his competition basically doesn't have a facebook page and the guy who doesn't mess with facebook does 5x plus the business, and probably 10x plus the revenue and this would have been last year and the year before.

In the end and what I'm saying and this has NOTHING to do with YOU! Social Media is something haunts are getting obsessed over just like myspace before it... but it doesn't produced RESULTS to the degree that people are placing their time, money and bets on. In fact TONS of GIANT companies are no longer advertising with Facebook because some studies have shown that people don't pay attention to advertisements on facebook. Facebooks stock has dropped due to revenues it dropped almost the day after it went public after their financials where released. I haven't been following facebook stock or anything else lately and I know they are working on creating more revenue blah blah blah... and who knows facebook could end up being the best way to market your business since the invention of the first newspaper. I don't know... but right now it is what it is and nothing that people should EVER consider as a primary marketing tool, a marketing tool yes but not a primary.

But what I do know RIGHT NOW is this... Patsy I checked out your person facebook and other than your recent birthday (Happy Birthday BTW) there isn't hardly one post you've made about what you are doing, where you are going, nothing where people reply, and the average likes is like 2 or 3, and you have one thread where you have like 10 replies and that is you and another person going back and forth.

This isn't is a smack at you, because my facebook is the same way, and so is almost every normal none celeb, sports team, or something that people are very very passionate about and during Halloween haunts can get lots of chatter going because there are a handful of people who are really passionate about them. But the normal person posting about where they are what they are doing on a daily basis those people including myself if I do are talking to thin air basically... now if the #1 high school football player in the nation makes a facebook he'll get 100's of posts on his page telling him to come to their favorite school, or you appear on the VOICE you'll get people on there daily telling you how great you are what song to sing, and more.

Facebook has a false perception of being great because of the connection it makes between fans of something or someone ... but the daily connection between ordinary people its just not the same. So when someone takes your photo they take at my place and they share it, I can assure they they don't spend any money to promote that photo so in the end how many people will see it ... a handful at best. This is a fact! When you take hundreds of photos does it add to a fair amount of people sure I'm sure of that but where does it rank with other marketing efforts and how effective is it really?

So now moving past that... as Ben said WORD OF MOUTH is the best form of marketing and actually Facebook is a means in which word of mouth can be done and a good one, same as talking to your friends, texting a friend, talking to co-workers at work, or friends at school ... I put facebook somewhere in that mix.

So buying your camera and buying all those cards from you because you have packages that are over the 10,000 mark and using that to help build my facebook page which does produce some results but its NOT EVEN CLOSE to results that some people have become obsessed with its just not worth it... SORRY!

Radio - TV - Billboards - Creating a kick ass website plus SEO WORK - Youtube Videos - Web Marketing - sponsors places to put your coupons out - awesome new forms of marketing like Pandora - anything digital that ends up on a phone - marketing your flyers in hotels - and honestly PUBLIC RELATIONS all of those things in my book are bigger more important than Facebook so if facebook is lower than ALL OF THAT and I spend money on facebook I'm going to spend money to promote promotions of my haunt directly with facebook not on a camera system because your thing is an add on to that something that is already low levels.

You threw a number of $5000.00 or a starter kit lets say... well on top of that you also have to pay someone to take photos so and upload them and everything else so we'll say a starter kit is $6000.00... on google I could buy google ads for .18 cents this year that means I could buy HOLD ON...

T H I R T Y - T H R E E thousands direct HITS INTO MY WEBSITE! You can't compete with that in TEN MILLION YEARS!

So again let me re-state what I'm overall saying here...

Giant companies which you guys normally deal with can create budgets and burn a million dollars on anything to see if it works and not even thing twice... I have no doubts about that.

Haunts are NOT giant companies and we have to FOCUS on marketing dollars on what works the BEST and as I've already proved and hopefully I have gotten through to NICK that his competition basically has NO facebook site and doesn't advertise there he's doing five times the attendance and probably 10 times the revenue. Facebook is NOT NOT NOT NOT a primary way to promote your business.

Neither was MYSPACE back when everyone got obsessed with that either. Facebook is important and something you should build because you never know with technology how things will change which is actually my main point here... we don't know if facebook will even be here five years from now or be the next myspace, replaced by something new and different. We don't know!

What we do know works even if its not as effective as it once was... Radio, TV, Billboards, Local PR, and the list goes on and like Ben said the most important HAVING A GREAT HAUNTED HOUSE!

Having your camera system is COOL very COOL I love it trust me... but its not worth the cost and the time spent. Next year are going to reduce overall spending and focus really hard on the things we know worked best for us... spending another 5 or 10k on cards to me isn't worth it not to a haunted house who has to get the most bang for the buck on what they do!

So I'm saying your system is cool but sorry for my type of business its to expensive for what it produces and now that I've learned the hard way that facebook is what it is a great tool but not the next savior that replaces traditional St Louis based marketing I have to refocus marketing to weather a bad economy.

Adding frills likes your camera system just won't make the cut due only to costs vs return nothing more. And lastly like I said give me a camera that I can buy flat out that puts frames on the pics and I tell people to go directly to my website to see their photos that is something I would buy. I don't want to pay a $500 license fee, I don't want to pay you 10,000 or whatever to buy a zillion cards every year either, for the money I'd invest with you on this I could simply go out and buy a camera system that takes pics of people in the haunted house and print them in my retail store at the end just like SIX FLAGS... I know because one of these companies is talking to me right now. That would create revenue! It all boils down to how much money is someone willing to spend on anything and nothing against your marketing device because its very cool its just doesn't create the bang for the buck at least not for me and in the end drives up hits for you so you guys can turn around and sell national sponsors advertisement so you make even more money.

For me I want to drive people to my site ONLY!!! That is lesson #1 ... 101! Again good luck to you and your system and the people who use it but its just not for me anyway!

Larry

[PatsyHeadHaunter]

Larry:

Well here's the magic of social media. You are my "friend" on my "haunt/work facebook page" -I check it about once a week and answer questions about Picture Marketing and what trade show I am going to next. On my "personal page" I posted a pic on Thanksgiving that got 65 "likes" in one day- but hey, I only have 700 "friends" on there. So everyone that "Liked" my photo had that show up in their friends' newsfeeds. So 65 "Likes" x's each of their 'let's say' 400 friends. That means potentially 26,000 people saw the pic of "Patsy and her sisters". Hmmm.... How could this viral activity ever benefit a business.....????!

And I only SENT YOU 4,000 CARDS- so YA- I do know what I'm talking about.

I'm not interested in a tit-for-tat here Larry- but I will gladly snap back at any false statements. The point is you barely dabbled in our system and you want to shout from the mountain tops how our system sucked. While I don't think that is "cool" or deserving- go ahead. I've had more calls/quotes from this thread than I can count- Lol.

So you can go "watch Batman and have a bowl of ice cream" I'll be watching Army of Darkness with a Jack and coke and I look forward to sneaking up on you in March

Patsy

[drfrightner]

Patsy,

As to tit for tat... I think that is exactly what we are doing. And furthermore I hope the people who are reading the thread learn something from the discussion. Now as I pointed out on your facebook the TYPICAL thread you have is shared maybe 3 times, with NO REPLIES I'm looking right on the front page honey! You have NO action and this is TYPICAL of almost all facebook pages, with the exceptions of sure holiday stuff, birthdays and what not. Otherwise you are mostly talking to NO ONE for the most part and your facebook page reflects that... so you can find one here and one there exception I already know there are a handful of exceptions I already pointed that out.

Secondly you simply ignore all my points about marketing in general, all the facts, so in the end you are avoiding them and simply defending what you do which is expected. My point to you is simple... you want an arm and a leg for something that is used on customers who have already come through my place already bought a ticket. I can if I want do the same exact thing and take photos and tell people actually to go to MY WEBSITE DIRECTLY to retrieve them!

No offense but I don't want to send you traffic so you can sell advertisement to Snickers, I want to send people ONLY to MY website end of story. Nor do I want to pay you for the privilege of doing so... and lastly the point is that facebook actually is NOT one of the most effective ways you can sell tickets so and if I'm going to spend money facebook direction I'm going to spend it with FACEBOOK! That only makes the most sense.

I can give you 10k or I can promote ads with facebook and probably grow my likes by 50%, or I could by tens of thousands of direct hits with Google directly... or again I could give you 10K plus. Doesn't make sense!

I tried it ... its not that effective. Its cool and I never said it sucked because it doesn't suck its just not worth the money to my business.

If I want to grow facebook likes I'll do it through facebook or through my website, my lines outside my place, I'll put my money into making more youtube videos, and the list goes on before I dump 10k or more into taking photos and driving them to YOUR WEBSITE! That is the point... I have to focus on what makes the most impact to help me sell tickets!

Lastly you are sadly mistaken I had WAY MORE THAN 4k cards I think it was 12 or 15 thousand you need to go back and check your records. I think the first time you send me 4k for the show but you send me another box of them and each box had 500 cards in it and we used every single box!!!! THEY ARE ALL GONE every single one and the impact just wasn't there vs the money spent.

Lastly and let me say good luck to anyone who tries something new to promote your business, I give any haunter totally PROPS for trying something new, doing something out of their comfort box, but understand I share my experiences hoping to help others. If I'm wrong then I'm wrong but I know how to market a haunt and I've proved it attracting over a million customers. And I've been the first one out there touting something new trying something different and we tried this and it doesn't work ...

not compared what you can do directly with that money like buying google ads, or promoting posts on facebook directly.

The one guy who defending your camera system has only 2500 friends on facebook... it really made an impact I see! LOL

Next time spend that money directly with facebook and watch your facebook friends TRIPLE the same week!

That is the point and if someone wants to spend the sun the moon and the stars and leave no stone not even a pebble unturned buy Picture Marketing system... its under a pebble somewhere! LOL

Pasty I love you to death you are the funnest girl in the WORLD but I'm only doing what I always do which is nothing more than sharing my experiences no matter what the product... no one listens to me so don't worry about it! You are fine!

And if you sneak up on me expect I might run! LOL

Larry

[UnDeRTaKer313]

WOAH WOAH WOAH!!

no comment on anything besides your math on how many people saw your thanksgiving picture.
You run a social media marketing tool and honestly think that is how the math works out and how facebook works?? Your think roughly 26,000 people saw your picture? Give me whatever you are smoking because I will dig up reports and articles left and right on this.

The only facebook posts seeing 26,000+ IMPRESSIONS have over 75,000-100,000 fans and that is with pumping some money into promoting it.
The math you did is NOT how facebook works.
LOOK UP THE TERM: EDGE RANK!!!!

This only frustrates me because you are selling false statistics if that is the math you are using. That is not cool

[Greg Chrise]

All I know is that all the haunts back in the day that were striving for 25,000 and 50,000 Myspace freinds are no longer in business.

All the people that hit my facebook page with 20 posts a day for a whole year about their event closed up at the end of this year.

I have to agree with Ben and your haunt has to be good and facebooks is just a way for organic communication of how good it is. Early on that might happen with your set up guys and actors, eventually a few customers but still a small percentage will feel compelled to follow someone else's advice on any of these services.

[drfrightner]

I have to agree with the past couple of posts because they are accurate. Let me also say that I have NOTHING against Picture Marketing... NOTHING! Is the camera system cool sure it is... and btw I think Patsy is a hard rock beer drinking party girl who really likes this haunt industry and fits right in actually more so than I do! LOL

I like Patsy and I would love for everyone to support what she's doing... shes a hard working very devoted person!

However as I explained to Pasty by phone and I would explain to ANYONE is haunted houses have limited budgets meaning they might only spend $50,000 on marketing lets say. So if your budget is limited to say 50k what are you going to spend it on? Well what works best!

Radio would be in the mix, maybe a billboard maybe not, some TV maybe, internet marketing (YES FOR SURE), is there some sort of local magazine you might get an ad in, we know you are doing coupons for your sponsors yes? What else... you need new graphics, or update your website, do you get google ads I don't know, are you doing pandora (I did), are you spending money to promote posts on facebook because that ads up quick? Did you hire a PR person to help you get local PR?

All of these things add up and in fact how 50k can handle all of those things I don't know... actually depending on the market you are in I'd say impossible. So you go up to $75,000 okay same deal... and btw whatever. Picture Marketing is or would be part of a marketing budget, and does it help in some way sure it does, everything you do will do something but at what cost and what return?

The biggest money loser out there is GROUPON type of deals... you give a discount #1, you share revenue with GROUPON, and when you add it all up what is the average ticket price you are getting when that is all said and done? To sell one ticket on Groupon you might be spending $10 maybe $15 dollars to do so... its NOT worth it. You are LOSING money!

Marketing is about spending money to make money, sell tickets end of story! So whatever you buy and whatever you do you must consider that formula how much did you spend, what did you get back, so in other words what did you spend to sell each ticket?

I still think the best thing any marketing can do is drive people to YOUR WEBSITE DIRECTLY... flat out directly to YOUR WEBSITE!

We need to put the marketing focus on programs that drive customers to your website your check out isle not facebook, or any spin off of facebook, or groupon or whatever.

This is just my opinion... that isn't to say that any of these things aren't great in their own way or have some benefit because they do!

I think the Picture Marketing thing is cool, its neat is different... but for me the cost and the direct benefit is what makes the decision to do something or not do something. End of story.

Larry

[austind]

Just check my sons Facebook to see what kind of hits he has on some photos. He has 900+ friends on one of the photos he took at his college has over 30,000 hits, So i do believe that the numbers work, if you would like more info on how much exposure you can get my wife works for a company that is a Internet fact checking service that verifies that thier customers are getting what they pay for when buying social media.

Phatman