Hi guys. Rich Gonci of Brighton Asylum in Passaic, NJ here. I am wondering, for you haunt owners in or around major cities, about how much is advertising costing you per person brought in? Im asking because in the NY/NJ market, I cant seem to break $10 per person, and I am always hearing about this wonderful industry standard of $2-$3 per person. I would just about roll over for that. I would kill for $5 per person. We have done radio, cable, and sponsored facebook ads. The result is always the same. $10 per person. We have a $20 ticket and of course after expenses, we are barely taking home $11 per ticket so if its costing us $10, that's only $1 of play there. We are considering dropping our cable advertising all together, and focus entirely on internet and perhaps some radio. But the only problem is, radio in the NJ/NY market is RIDICULOUS expensive. A decent campaign STARTS at $20,000 for the month, and you dont get much for it, unless you want to be on a sub par station, that isnt going to bring the customers anyway. We have done every kind of advertising you can think of. Bilboard, flyer, movie theatres, putting fliers on cars, physically handing them to people, even door to door back in the day (this is our 11th year outdoors, and our 3rd year indoors. We have two locations).
Anyway, I am wondering what kind of return you all get on your advertising dollars and what forms of advertising you like best. So far, we havent found anything that we would consider a home run. But we think its because we have the NY market so close to us. Too many things to do in our area. We compete with literally every entertainment event including movie theatres, the malls, NY night life, heck even the newest x box games we are competing against. People are just staying home playing video games. Our attendance was down for 2012 and was the first time we took an attendance hit since we opened our doors 11 years ago. Sure, the weather was a factor but we have actually had worse weather (in 2009 it rained virtually every night and we still did better).
Our fear is that the economy is STILL poor, and will result in more people staying home. I wonder if any of you have thought of a way you plan to combat this with. We dont need a repeat of 2012. Lots of things covered here but I appreciate your comments. Thanks
Rich
Anyway, I am wondering what kind of return you all get on your advertising dollars and what forms of advertising you like best. So far, we havent found anything that we would consider a home run. But we think its because we have the NY market so close to us. Too many things to do in our area. We compete with literally every entertainment event including movie theatres, the malls, NY night life, heck even the newest x box games we are competing against. People are just staying home playing video games. Our attendance was down for 2012 and was the first time we took an attendance hit since we opened our doors 11 years ago. Sure, the weather was a factor but we have actually had worse weather (in 2009 it rained virtually every night and we still did better).
Our fear is that the economy is STILL poor, and will result in more people staying home. I wonder if any of you have thought of a way you plan to combat this with. We dont need a repeat of 2012. Lots of things covered here but I appreciate your comments. Thanks
Rich
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