Valentine's Day haunts

[bhays]

A group of us from Fear Fair headed to Nashville to see three shows: Nashville Nightmare, Haunted Hell and The Slaughterhouse. Haunted Hell and Slaughterhouse were a lot of fun, but I didn't get the idea they had huge crowds. Nashville Nightmare, however, his close to 1,000 both Friday and Saturday. Valentines weekend in particular seems to be really growing.

I was blown away by Brad Webb's show at Nashville Nightmare, definitely in my top ten favorite haunts!

[UnDeRTaKer313]

Our building is 100,000 square feet and we kept it at 60 degrees plus for valentines weekend but once the lines formed inside it was actually very warm inside. and it is completely heated in the off season too but just enough to keep the pipes from freezing.


Valentines weekend was a huge success for us, and we had nothing short of a blizzard Saturday. We did nothing but Facebook marketing and had thousands of customers each night.
Shoot me an email nick@ThFearExperience.com if you want to learn more about what we did

[hauntfarm]

When you say 'thousands' do you think maybe you are exaggerating? I would love to see photos of that event do you have any? I'd like to know what brings in thousands of guests when everyone else says a few hundred. Please share.

[UnDeRTaKer313]

No not exaggerating. It was a very successful weekend for us. Not bragging I'm sure haunts did more than us, just sharing that it's definetly possible to do more than a few hundred people if marketed correctly.

[drfrightner]

Nick you are saying you did thousands and I have to agree I don't believe it. C'mon now!

You did only facebook marketing and thousands of people came I'm sorry I can't even begin to believe it... facebook is next to WORTHLESS as a marketing tool.

What facebook is at this point is a bragging rights tool to say hey I got more likes than you and over and above that its a tool where you use as a cheesy message board. As a message board its horrible because you can't search it, and things get lost quickly, and as a marketing tool its horrible as well. Its a perceived marketing tool that ONLY works IF and I say IF you spend thousands of dollars with Facebook.

Kids who are your primary targets hate facebook, they despise it.

So again I'm seriously doubting this can be a fact. Let me see a video or photos of these thousands of people. LOL

Larry

[sean]

Facebook marketing has work extremely well for me, actually

[screamforadream]

Yeah, I'm gonna need to back Nick up a bit. We opened for Valentine's Day, and put THOUSANDS through. How? Ran an opening early bird Groupon special, (never again, those customers are the worst), but it generated a buzz, and the groupon sold out fast, which then SPIKED our ticket leap sales.

[haunter1313]

Groupon did not work well for us people trying to use tickets after they expired to all sorts of demands. I think Groupon is just another way to advertise your haunt but we did not sell many tickets. I will not use Groupon again because they take a lot of your money and need you to offer steep discounts.

[drfrightner]

Couple things...

Facebook is NOT a great marketing tool not even close... I'll tell you what Facebook has become, its become a way that SOME people think is the best way to communicate with you. In other words when you started your haunted house way back when you thought RETURNING or ANSWERING phone calls was most important! Then it became answering emails was the #1 form of communication and now people think you read every message they send you via facebook or some other form of social media. The only true way to make social media work for you is to ENGAGE people which takes a lot and I mean A LOT of time.

If you actually think you can do this you are NUTS you can't... its impossible not if you actually plan to operate your haunted house, manage everything that is going on. People use facebook for example they send you comments like what time are you open, but most people don't see this because they don't check it like myself. Posting on facebook the traditional way you think you communicate with people is hardly seen by anyone unless you are willing to dole out thousands of dollars. Lastly year I hired a social media manager to basically do everything for me... this was a smart move for me because now I know someone is looking at comments people leave or responding to their requests. Its not cheap but if you truly want social media to have even a dent you need to be a social TROLL meaning you are looking at this 24 hours a day. I don't have time for that.

Even with hiring a social media manager I'd say facebook as a marketing tool wasn't in the top 10 maybe not even the top 20... to me anyway facebook, groupon, twitter, blah, blah are all the same they are all one way or another a tourist trap. It looks good on the outside but once you really dig deeper you know you got tricked.

At the same time traditional media isn't so hot either because of TIVO. Radio has lost steam thanks to digital music. Newspapers who reads it?

Yes all of it is watered down to a new low I get it... so today you just tip your toe into everything and hope it works.

TODAY SPORTS teams have RECORD TV DEALS... WHY? I'll tell you in one word "TIVO". Tivo has made sports programming KING ... people watching sports LIVE meaning they also watch commercials. We as haunters can't afford live NFL games or MLB games so we have to fish with a net to get results.

With all that being said I don't believe for a second that anyone did 2 or 3000 people on Valentines Day marketing solely with facebook I just don't believe it... if someone says they did it and it did happen, then I would still say I don't believe it because sometimes things happen that you just can't believe LOL. In other words things can happen and you still don't believe it ... especially that is what I'm saying. I don't believe in facebook or social media as a whole there just isn't much to back they are seriously effective marketing tools with the exception from those who want to sell you ads on it. LOL

I have marketing data that shows the value of facebook so I just don't believe it.

Larry

[gorezone]

For haunters with limited budgets I think media that many see as free are very valuable even if they are not. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, your website, putting flyers at a football game, to simply thinking you have strong word of mouth are to many the best forms of marketing. Why? Because the perception is they are valuable but in reality they are free. Free isn't bad and it isn't good either. Its just free so it has to be good or is it bad or maybe its just going cheap but wanting to feel like its making the best effort. I'm confusing myself. gz

[drfrightner]

I actually agree with you I talk to many haunters about their marketing and many haunts just don't understand how to grow their business. I think many people are fooled into thinking something works and they want it to work because of a limited budget. The only true way to grow your business is to have a great product number 1, and number 2 you need strong marketing.

In my view facebook has become a perception of being very valuable when its really not at all... I could ditch my facebook for my haunted house and I'm attendance won't go up or down by one person because of it. Am I going to ditch it ... NO! I'm not going to ditch it because the reality of 2015 is nothing is great anymore but advertisement on LIVE SPORTS short of that you need all the little pieces to make it work. In other words if facebook brings a few thousand people great, if the radio brings 10,000 people awesome, if tv ads brings in another 10,000 incredible, if pr or word of mouth brings in the next whatever bring it.

Everything today plays a smaller role but all those roles no matter how big or small make up the whole pie now.

Larry

[drfrightner]

Nick is going to write an article about his use of Facebook to promote his Valentines Day event... I can't wait to read it!

Larry

[Blood barn]

Valentine's day haunts!!!

I live in Gallipolis Ohio and drove to 4 different haunts over Valentine's Day weekend.
2 in Ohio 2 in Illinois we are only in our 3rd year and want to see as many haunts as possible. On Friday we went to the factory of terror it was not busy at all yes some people were there but only like 20 people is all we seen.we talked to the owner he was pretty cool and said it will be slow but wanted to try it out opening in the off-season. The haunted house was very large not a lot of actors but definitely an okay haunted house. Then we drove about an hour north and went to the fear experience,it was even more slow than the factory of terror was.we waited in line and there was only two groups ahead of us for close to a half an hour.it only took us 12 minutes to walk through all four houses. We really felt misled hearing this haunted house is 100,000 ft.² when the actual haunted houses inside are probably only around 10,000 ft.²! ,and it did not feel heated inside to us,then to top it off they made us take our hats off and face warmers off.they said we have to see everyone's face you cannot cover your face up! our hats went into our pockets,we were very disappointed in this attraction.The two attractions in Illinois we're not that busy either,but the owners went above and beyond and even let us go through a second time with the lights on! The weather was extremely cold that weekend lots of snow on the ground and negative temperatures I would never think of opening my haunted house with weather like that not really sure what all these owners are thinking! But we did learn a lot on our drive one of the things was to never open a haunted house in the off-season with weather like that and so far off from Halloween!

[UnDeRTaKer313]

What haunt do you own blood barn?
Sorry you didn't like our attraction, but it takes 25 minutes minimum to travel through our haunts, and a hat and face warmer is the same as wearing a mask through the haunted house. Security and cameras can't identify people if they cause problems with their faces covered. Also trust me the temperature never dropped below 60 in there, my heating bill is to prove it.
But again? Who are you?

[Blood barn]

Building

We read that your building is 100,000 ft.²
And also we are just curious how long it takes to go through a haunted house so one of the things are group did is start a stopwatch the second we entered the haunted house to the second we exited if it's your haunted house it only took us 12 minutes to walk through!and we took our time looking at everything.
There was two groups ahead of us why did we have to wait 25+ minutes in the queue line?we also took some photos while we were there, there was no customers they're hardly what so ever.but our building is only 15,000 ft.² and we use every square inch of it.and it takes approximately 16 minutes to walk through our attraction.if your Haunted house is 100,000 ft.² as you claim your building is, it would take hours and hours. Wouldn't it make more sense for you to advertise 4 haunted houses 10,000 ft.² . How many square-foot actually is your haunted house? I just honestly feel that is misleading we thought with the size of the building when we pulled in we would be there for hours,not just minutes.
We're not trying to talk negative about your haunted house if it is your haunted house.but it's the only house we've ever seen where there was no animations whatsoever, and not many props.also we seen some very young kids working inside how is that possible?
Our city would never let us have someone that young inside scaring customers one for the risk and second for the liability all of our workers are 18 years old or older.
And the price alone was very high compared to the other haunted houses and the time it took to walk through them.
We're not a big haunt whatsoever, we have a 15,000 square-foot barn and a 1/2 mile long walking trail. And in a very small city. We're new to this industry and willing to learn and want to learn we've seen lots of haunted houses and will keep traveling and seeing as many as we can to learn more.
And we're so excited to be going to Transworld this year and taking the haunted house tour to see Talon Falls, it seems we do a lot like what they do their! So we're hoping to see a lot and learn a lot!