Advertising: radio, tv, or roadside signs?

[Jim Warfield]

Maybe I am victim to having a basic farmer-mentality? Plant a little "seed" watch it grow all by itself.
What "seed"? A really unusual, interesting performance for the money performed in a very strange haunted, haunted house.
Radio celebrities come to you, newspaper reporters seek you out for a story, TV productions call you looking for grist for their cable tv.
Yes, planting a seed takes time, years, but putting on a stellar performance leaves no doubt in that seeded little mind as to what and who they will be talking about and no amount of whiz-bang advertising will necesarrily leave such a powerfull residue .
Caller ID and having advanced reservations tells me where the customers are coming from and how ignored most ad money is.
When Rocky Horror(the movie) first got to New York they only had $3.98 left in advertising money! The experience, the oddness of the movie carried it, people kept returning , bringing friends.....
A website is the cheapest, best ad you can do right now, cheaper than those dam messy carrier pidgeons!

[badass]

We spent 359,000 dollars on carrier pigeons..

[graystone]

Badass..

Did that work for you? Man I never thought of that. Where can I get them I wanna try that you can never spend to much money on ads. I have been thinking of buying a pink elephant and having a ad painted on him. Shane

[haunterx]

cross promoting

How about cross promoting with competition. Anyone doing it, is it worth the trouble?

[JamBam]

cross promoting

Several years ago, another haunt and us got together and formed the North East Indiana Haunt Associaton (NEIHA). We did a trifold full color flyer with 13 of 14 haunts and events (at ten locations)within an hour of Ft Wayne, Indiana. Half were scare and half were family friendly events. If the customer went to five events, the sixth was free. Go to ten events, and the 11th was free. We were really worried how the free ones would land. But, after it was over, we had very few actaully claim a free ticket. We also had a free drawing at the end of the season. Only had a couple of them send them in. Each haunt had to validate the flyer with their individual stamp. The busiest haunt didn't like the validating as it took valuable time at their ticket window. We had 25,000 flyers printed and each haunt was given enough flyers to pass out. We did get a lot of great comments that the flyer was a great resource for event info. Had a website with all events having a page and a survey.

We then met and changed the marketing for the next year to a website, survey, and we decided to do a full page newspaper insert that used both sides full color. Each of the 12 of 13 events (at nine locations) again participated. The only event that opted out of it did put our flyer on the side of his ticket booth. I thought that was cool.

We had 250,000 printed. On the first Sunday of October, both Ft Wayne newspapers had them slipped 175,000 over the edge of the Sunday Comics. Another 65,000 were distributed in three other area newpapers. The last 10,000 were passed around at the haunts. Each haunt was was on a map that listed every event. Then each event had a coupon down one edge. Then there was other real estate left the haunts bought by the column inch. The biggest events bought a lot of the remaining and the smaller events bought what they could afford.

The promotion also had each haunt giving away mardi gras beads. Collect five sets and get the sixth event FREE again and trade in the five different colors for a SUPER set of beads. Many the got five beads didn't take the free ticket as they wanted to keep the beads they had. That meant that the $ 0.04 beads times 5 = $ 0.20. The super set was $0.65 each. They paid for a $ 7 - 9 ticket rather than give up the $ 0.20 in beads. DUH!

The customers loved the full page sheet as again, it was almost all inclusive of the haunt events, scary and family friendly in the area.

[Terrorknight]

I'm in the wrong market

[Matt Marich]

There's always the old National Lampoon technique, buy this or we will shoot this dog..,

[Brckee1]

Shane,
is that just for your haunt? or does that include your retail marketing also? Are you willing to disclose aprox. how may customers you get per dollar invested?

[Haunting Copy]

How are y'all tracking your efforts?

Are people answering the surveys/polls in sufficient numbers?

Sarah