With which marketing strategy for the reopening of your Escape Room or leisure facility do you reach your potential customers? How do you turn website visitors into buyers? Find out what tricks you can use to improve your business load and why you shouldn’t rely solely on social media in your communication.
In many countries, governments are easing the contact restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Escape Rooms, trampoline halls and lasertag providers may open their doors again. However, strict hygiene rules still apply – such as wearing a mouth and nose protector – which discourages many potential customers.
What can you do to even inform your fans that your store is open again? And how can you dispel their concerns? With the following five marketing tips for reopening your Escape Room or leisure facility after Corona, we want to help you succeed.
To boost your sales again, you can also make your customers great additional offers. If you want to expand your business with outdoor, mobile and online escape games, please ask us for a non-binding offer.
Communicate where your fans are
Of course: Facebook and Instagram are among the first platforms on which you should get in touch with your fans.
You can use several posts to point out the upcoming reopening. On the day of the reopening after Corona, you should do another post.
Standard posts in your timeline are not everything: You should also use the “Story” features. Stories are especially promising because they appear at the top of both the Facebook and Instagram apps, before the regular posts. This way they get a lot of attention.
For your timeline posts, photos of your locations are suitable. In the Stories, many users prefer videos. You can put yourself in front of the smartphone camera and invite your fans to come to your shop or shoot short videos in your Escape Rooms.
The design of your photos and videos is secondary. The most important thing is that you get the attention of your fans and followers.
But since many people are still unsure, it doesn’t hurt to point out your hygiene measures, says Harald Geiger, founder of Secret Room in Austria. He reopened his business on May 29th.
Communicate the Corona measures transparently with your customers. Pay attention to cleanliness and disinfection and show your customers that you care about their safety. This way you can get their trust and give them a sense of security.
Use paid measures to get more attention
Facebook and Instagram also offer advertising possibilities. As an escape room operator or leisure provider, you have probably already experimented with this feature.
For reopening your escape room after the Corona crisis ads are almost inevitable, because with organic posts on social media you usually reach a maximum of 10 percent of your followers. With advertisements, on the other hand, you not only reach your existing fanbase, but also users who have never heard of you before.
In the Facebook Ad Center, for example, you can highlight your company locally and define your target group by including or excluding demographic data, interests and behaviour. With just a few dollars a day, you can reach thousands of people.
“Spend more time in groundbreaking advertising that attracts customers’ attention and shows that you are creative and motivated,” says Geiger.
In addition to Facebook and Instagram, Secret Room also placed ads in a local newspaper for their reopening after the Corona lockdown.
Retarget your website visitors
Another option to get users’ attention is retargeting. With retargeting, you address people who have visited your website before. Your target group will then see your ads on other online portals. With geo-targeting you can show the ads only to people from your area.
To create retargeting ads, you usually need a fee-based online tool.
Give your customers something special (not necessarily a discount)
With a discount – of course – you can increase the demand for your Escape Games. But since most customers only come to you once to play an escape room, you should think twice about the discount.
“My motto is: added value instead of discount,” says Harald Geiger. “We prefer to offer the customers added value in the form of a free drink or some other goodies.”
Send your former customers an e-mail
What may sound stale can be very effective: Newsletters are back in style.
Over the years, you probably have collected contact data from countless customers, including e-mail addresses. With the consent of your former visitors, now is the ideal time to use this data.
Write an e-mail to your customers and let them know that your Escape Room is open again. Offer them a special incentive to come back and visit you, if necessary.
We have collected many more Escape Room Marketing tips for you here.
And what’s next?
Yet nobody knows when a vaccine against Corona will be available. Therefore the escape room and leisure industry still has to live with restrictions.
But thanks to the easing of restrictions, business is slowly picking up again. Harald Geiger from Secret Room still has some general tips to help escape room and leisure providers make the most of the crisis.
“To keep our fans happy during closing time, we posted little puzzles on our Facebook page. When you’re open again, be careful with the disinfectant. It attacked the coat on all our furniture, so we had to sand and reseal it.”
See more tips on making and maintaining Escape Room props here.
Geiger also advises all escape room and leisure providers to diversify their business. “I think this crisis has shown that a broad product line is an advantage.”
Find out more about scavenger hunts for team building.
Outdoor Escape Games can be a useful addition. They will increase the occupancy rate of your Escape Room after reopening to Corona and beyond.
Expand Your Business
With Cluetivity’s ready to play games, you create augmented reality scavenger hunts for team building as well as for city tours, birthdays and stag parties within no time at all.
You are not an escape room owner but you are looking for a fun training for remote teams? Check out our new platform for remote team games.
