Without props, an Escape Room is just merely… a room. As you can imagine, the production of Escape Room props is one of the most complex aspects. When considering an Outdoor Escape Game, of course, the world is your oyster. The only problem is finding a way for players to feel lost inside it. However, with small gadgets and tools, you can make a fantasy become reality.
When it comes to making anything, there are always quality expectations to be met. On the one hand, your Escape Room props have to look engaging and contribute to the atmosphere of your games. On the other hand, they have to be resilient, because players will push, pull, and tear apart anything that they think is a part of solving a puzzle. When surveyed, the majority of Escape Room operators even said that creating enticing-yet-durable props was their biggest challenge.
When making props for an Outdoor Escape Game, the costs of production are cheaper. This is simply because there’s not an entire room that needs to be equipped. However, we at Cluetivity still believe that the more props there are, the more engaging the game.
For example, at Cluetivity, ActionPacks are available for our games Operation Mindfall and Magic Portal. These include many items to help you create immersive experiences for players. Over 95% of our partners use ActionPacks to create augmented reality puzzles, generate secret codes, and outline the setting of Operation Mindfall.
In Operation Mindfall, players become secret agents who must stop mega-corporation – Spider Technologies – from infecting the world’s population with a mind-controlling virus. The accessories can be found in a heavy-duty suitcase (the ActionPack).
Even the design of the case fits with the theme of the game and is branded to fit with the game’s storyline. To solve the following puzzles, players must use the right equipment they find in the case at the right moment.
Included in the case is a UV flashlight. Players use this to discover a cryptic code on a note from Spider Technologies. In another puzzle, they combine a microscope with their smartphone camera to find clues on slides of microfilm. In addition to this, there are plenty of augmented reality puzzles that can only be solved when players scan objects with the iPad.
Making sure that the Escape Room props fit into the escape room theme is particularly important – obviously, the goal is to make the game’s background story come alive. In Operation Mindfall, we use a digital picture frame that players, lined with secret messaging that players can only decrypt with special goggles.
We also have a box with a screen (which almost looks like a DAB Alarm Clock), powered by a USB cable. The Code Scanner gadget is used by players in conjunction with a USB-enabled device, such as a laptop or power bank, to hack into the Spider Technologies server.
After the connection has been made, a code is slowly revealed on the screen, which in turn can be used for other mini-games. You can see how this works for yourself in the following video.
Are you someone who already uses unique Escape Room props? Then be sure to show them off so they become part of your marketing scheme! Check out our summary of 7 Escape Room marketing tips, including how to make exceptional deals for your customers and use them in your marketing strategy.
Precautionary Painting
Despite all precautions, it’s inevitable that Escape Room props will break or show signs of wear. Puzzle items must eventually be replaced sooner or later. So, what is the most sensible approach?
For small and fragile items, it makes sense to always have a replacement available. Keys and locks, as well as sensitive objects, can quickly disappear or be damaged. Our top tip is to paint decorative objects with a special coating to make them last longer. For this, your best bet is to use boat paint. It makes surfaces weather-resistant and provides an extra layer of coverage against wear and tear. When creating our ClueChest, durablity was an aspect for us to consider. We trialed and tested the boat paint, and we’re very satisfied with the result.
To create special details, look into a patina. A patina is a surface created by natural or artificial aging. It is one of the final steps in the production process of Escape Room props and is created by applying salts, acids, or even oil-based shampoos and wax to the surfaces. In this way, you can create beautiful color accents and details, such as particularly shiny and high-quality surfaces, or just old-fashioned and worn-out designs.
When talking about Outdoor Escape Games, another thing to be considered is that your accessories must be weatherproof. Even in cold temperatures, windy climates, and on rainy days, your props need to function as intended. Pieces of paper, for example, should be water-repellent or laminated so that they do not become unusable when wet. Try to create your other Outdoor Escape Room props out of sturdy, yet cost-efficient materials, such as plastic.
Want to find out more about our games? Get in touch with us and we’ll be more than happy to send you more information!
Self-employment might sound great, but how do you even go about it? Setting up an Escape Room Franchise can help you cut a lot of corners. However, setting one up is not as simple as it sounds.
Team building is an important aspect in business culture, and it’s becoming more common for companies to send their employees to an escape room. Solving difficult puzzles and riddles has proven to be successful as a team-building measure. As a result, Escape Room operators can optimise their workload by hosting team events for corporate clients. Mobile Escape Rooms and companies that offer outdoor activities open up even more possibilities.
For Escape Rooms today, nothing works without clever marketing. Everyone has a website, social media presence, and flyers. But did you know that there are even more options to promoting your company? Here are seven cost-efficient Escape Roommarketing tips, that really help and also apply to other small businesses!
According to a survey, Escape Rooms mainly use Facebook Ads and SEO (search engine optimization) for their marketing. However – especially for our industry and for other small companies – there are also cheap yet efficient alternatives.
1. Word-of-mouth: important currency for Escape Rooms
Good ol’ word-of-mouth is one of the most important forms of marketing for small businesses. It’s free – and nothing is as convincing as a friend’s recommendation. According to market research institute Nielsen, 83% of consumers trust advice from friends.
Friends discussing event tips.
We’ve certainly heard phrases such as “We’ve been to this restaurant recently …” and “have you seen the new Tarantino movie?” time and time again. And most of the time, people want to tell us how great it was. They are typical examples of word-of-mouth marketing. Especially if you have a small budget, these recommendations are worth gold.
Still, word-of-mouth is often underestimated in the Escape Room marketing mix. After all, influencing what people say about you is an art. With a few easy steps, you can find your way into people’s conversations.
Create Great Experiences: Whether it’s teambuilding or recreational fun, amplify your customers experiences by making them exciting. If players are excited about your event, they’ll certainly tell everyone they know about it.
Provide incentives: Your customers will be much happier to recommend you if they get a freebie out of it. That may be a discount on their next game with you, a free drink, or even merchandise!
Keep track of what’s being said about you – people will definitely be talking about you. Engage in those discussions. You’ll start drawing attention to yourself for good reasons. You can thank them again for the visit or resolve a problem that they might have had.
As already mentioned, word-of-mouth is no longer limited to the offline world, which brings us to our next tip.
2. Creates profiles on review websites
When local companies are considering their digital marketing strategies, well-groomed online profiles are a must. Most users will check online and compare offers before they buy from you. You should therefore make sure your profiles are up to date, and your reviews are great.
Evaluation platforms play an exceptionally important role for local companies. Just like restaurants, for example, users want to share their Escape Rooms, Paintball or Lasertag experiences – and use review platforms to spread the word.
As you’re marketing a local business, you should be present on the following rating platforms at the very least:
Facebook
Google My Business
Yelp
TripAdvisor
Facebook and Google are major rating platforms for local businesses. We at Cluetivity are also active on both portals, and – thanks to our fantastic customers – have very positive ratings.
A rating of 4.0 is the minimum ranking you should aim for. Any rating under four stars clearly shows that the visitor was not completely satisfied.
TripAdvisor is even more relevant if you want to attract tourists as customers. Especially in big cities, Escape Games attract many international guests. As you can imagine, TripAdvisor is certainly not to be underestimated.
83% of consumers are more willing to buy a product if a friend has recommended it to them.
Depending on where you’re based, platforms other than Facebook, Google, Yelp, and TripAdvisor may be relevant to your business. But it’s clear that low-budget marketing can’t take care of everything. Therefore, it’s best to choose the most important pages for you and put in 110% to get those good reviews.
3. Collect contact addresses
Let’s revisit the idea of incentives. They don’t only encourage people to discuss your business, but they also get players to come back to your Escape Room! Only about 15% of visitors to an Escape Rooms play a second time with the same provider. Annoying, right? That’s why it’s important to get your players to come back!
The following tips will help increase the chances of your customers returning to your Escape Game, Paintball, or Lasertag arena:
Offer coupons for a discount on their next game, or a free drink. You could even say that the offer is only valid once they have left you positive feedback on a review platform…
Create a newsletter! Install an area on your website where people can leave their contact details, specifically for a newsletter. With a newsletter you can inform customers about news, organize competitions, give discount codes and much more.
E-mail is the ideal medium for updating your users – even better than social media. On platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, businesses only ever reach a fraction of their fans because of the restrictive algorithm.
4. Escape Room Marketing starts with selling emotions
First impressions are everything – this applies even more on the Internet than in real life. Therefore, your websites layout should be impeccably designed and programmed. Whether you run an escape room, a paintball facility, or a Lasertag hangar, you should attract your potential customers with meaningful photos. A picture of a happy group playing your games draws in more than a hair-thin description of your rooms and locations.
You can even take these photos yourself – after all, people visit you all the time, and these photos are authentic.
However, you can also use photo databases for your Escape Room marketing. In some photo databases, you even find royalty-free images. You can use these without any watermarks (but the photographers do appreciate shout-outs). However, the choice on these sites is often smaller than on other paid portals. Here is a selection of websites where you can find royalty-free photos:
unsplash.com
pixabay.com
canva.com
The most popular sites for stock photos include GettyImages, iStock and Shutterstock. The selection there is bigger. But, as mentioned, you have to pay for good imagery there.
5. Find out what your best marketing channel is
Are you quite an experienced marketer? Then you should analyse your results from time to time. This way, you can find out which marketing techniques work well and which don’t.
The following measures apply – online tactics are much easier to measure than offline tactics. For example, if you activate an ad on Facebook, you’ll be able to observe how many people, clicks, and views you’ve reached. You can set in-advance what the goal of your advertising campaign should be. E.g. to generate leads for your pages, receive clicks on your website, or increase views on a video.
Analysing your data helps you making important marketing decisions.
In addition to Facebook ads, there are of course other digital advertising opportunities, such as SEO, which are also easy to measure.
Offline tactics are much harder to measure. There isn’t an analysis section where you can directly view the results of your flyer, poster or other physical campaigns. Rather, you have to watch for yourself if more people come to you after a flyer campaign. Or you ask the players directly on the spot, as they would have been impacted by your marketing campaigns.
6. Talk to other audiences
Is there only a small budget available for marketing? Are you tired of competing with your competitors for the same players? Then think about targeting other groups.
Often, Escape Game providers and operators of Paintball and LaserTag facilities are aimed at adult players. But why not address children and teenagers? If you have age-appropriate games and missions for them, this can be a unique selling proposition. A children’s birthday party in a (child-friendly) Escape Room might make for a very memorable experience – and it’s also a great way to expand your Escape Room marketing options!
If you do not have child-friendly offers or would like to expand your offer in general, our next tip is the right one for you.
7. Make extraordinary offers – for example, outdoor escape games
You will find new players and marketing opportunities if you offer experiences that no other business in your city has. For example, this can be Cluetivity’s Augmented Reality Live Escape Game “Operation Mindfall”. In this game, players become secret agents who explore their city. From finding clues, combining objects, and to cracking tricky puzzles, the agents must do what it takes to solve their top-secret mission.
If you already have Indoor Escape Rooms, Lasertag, Paintball or similar activities, a game like Operation Mindfall is the perfect match. As it’s played outside, the amount of people who play is unlimited. You can even also offer team events for corporate clients. Operation Mindfall and our other game, Magic Portal, are quick to set-up and appeal to a wide variety different target groups.
Our games work as a Mobile Escape Room. All you need is a couple of iPads for the players, and some of our ActionPacks. These are filled with cool gadgets that make the secret agent puzzles feel even more authentic. All you have to do is give the customer the kit, explain the games, and the installation for your Mobile Escape Room adventure is done – perfect for teambuilding, employee events and other B2B events.
Did you find a good tip? Or do you have your own marketing tips for small businesses? If so, drop us a line in the comments. We look forward to hearing from you!
Escape room owners often reach their limits quickly—limited space, small catchment area, tight budget etc. But let’s not talk about restrictions. Instead, we want to show you five ways you can expand your escape room business.
In recent years, the escape room industry has undergone many changes. Large franchises continue to grow, while smaller, independent operators find it more and more challenging to survive. However, there’s no need to get involved in a discount war against your competitors to stay alive. By following our tips, you can ensure that you’re doing the most to grow your escape room, expand your reach, and discover new audiences!
1. Open up your escape room to corporate clients
Our first tip isn’t a direct expansion of your escape room, but it is a tip that can increase your sales significantly. Consider offering team events for companies! More and more companies are using escape rooms for team-building events, staff development, or as part of recruitment processes.
Michael Meinke from the Association of Live Escape and Adventure Games (FvLEAG) describes in an interview a little more about what is behind the usage of escape rooms in team events. He states:
“The use of escape rooms for an assessment center, as a marketing tool, or as a team building measure is still relatively at the beginning of the possibilities. I think a lot about it myself. For example, you often experience a job applicant very differently in an interview than in an escape room.”
Hosting team events means having a lot of players at the same time
As businesses will be more inclined to play between Monday and Friday, you can fill out appointments during quieter hours. They also usually come in much larger groups than your average booking, so ensure you are well prepared!
But how easy is it to connect with companies? The first and easiest step is to set up a landing page for businesses on your website’s homepage. Whenever someone visits your site, one of the first things they’ll see is that you’re now offering corporate events.
Make sure companies get a great experience with you.
But how easy is it to connect with companies? The first and easiest step is to set up a landing page for businesses on your website’s homepage. Whenever someone visits your site, one of the first things they’ll see is that you’re now offering corporate events.
Using Google Ads and Facebook Ads, you could also target prospects likely to be responsible for organizing corporate events – for example, HR Managers. Connecting with professionals has never been more accessible with access to networks such as LinkedIn and Xing. If you prefer to meet with people face-to-face, try exhibiting at HR conferences or other B2B events. If you want to expand into corporate events but can’t entirely host over 100 participants, you might want to consider our next tip…
2. Offer outdoor activities
Imagine this: a medium-sized local business is planning a big team event and is keen to book your escape room. However, you don’t have access to a spacious enough area for the players. That’s no problem if you also offer outdoor escape games.
Using state-of-the-art augmented reality technology, games such as Blackout, Magic Portal and Operation Mindfall combine the best of scavenger hunts and live escape games and offer an AR teambuilding experience. What’s the aim? Players explore places in their city, scavenge for clues, and crack tricky riddles to solve their mission.
In Operation Mindfall, players take over the role of secret agents.
Cluetivity’s ready-to-play games are also customizable. You can create puzzles centered around your area or even tailored to your client’s individual booking. To make the experience even more realistic, each of Cluetivity’s games comes with Agent Packs, with high-tech gadgets and tools to help your players complete their mission.
Whether you’re on the client’s premises, in your town center, or even in an open field, Cluetivity can be set up anywhere in less than 30 minutes, making it the perfect additional service for your business. Our existing partners include escape rooms, team building and events companies, tour guides, paintballing businesses and laser tag arenas.
Marketing plays a crucial role in the success of an escape room. Only those who find you on the internet can book with you, and having a website with booking capabilities is now the bare minimum.
It’s essential to be present in search engine results. For example, if someone searches for “Escape Room Buxtehude,” you ideally want to be the first search result.
If there are a lot of competitive results above your website on Google, it’s time to invest in ranking high with a 1-keyword ad. This is called Search Engine Advertising (SEA). The amount it costs varies from case to case, but this is something that we will discuss in a later post.
The online marketing for escape rooms doesn’t differ much from marketing for other small businesses. But since many people gather information online before they book a game, you should definitely optimize your efforts as much as possible.
4. Build innovative, forward-thinking new rooms
One crucial thing to remember is that people don’t want to play in the same escape room twice. So, if you want your customers to come back, you’ll need several rooms with different scenarios.
The storyline possibilities are endless. Whether you are robbing a bank, escaping from another dimension, or regaining control of a driverless train, you can simply purchase ready-to-assemble rooms and have them installed by your vendor. The advantage is obvious – the effort required from you is minimal.
Building stable props and creating well-balanced puzzles are the biggest challenges when setting up an escape room.
Alternatively, you can conceptualize your own stories and create a niche in your market. However, this can be quite a time-consuming task. Among other aspects, you must write a compelling narrative, develop challenging puzzles that are neither too difficult nor too simple, and visual design elements to make your storyline come to life.
Even though it requires a lot of effort, more than 80 percent of surveyed escape room operators say that they develop their concepts independently or with their business partners. How creative!
5. Think big and create a second location
If one escape room isn’t enough for you, or you’ve just exhausted all the space in your current location, consider opening a new branch. The expansion also, of course, comes with a great deal of effort and risks. But, as we discussed earlier, small companies are becoming increasingly difficult to assert themselves. Therefore, you will have to make some big business decisions sooner or later.
Before deciding on an additional branch for your company, you should ask yourself a few questions:
What are my competitors doing?
Should I stay in my location or expand to a new area?
What revenue can I realistically expect at the new location?
What are the requirements for a new property?
Are additional investments necessary? For example, fire protection.
How do I announce my new escape room?
The amount of risk involved in expanding is almost comparable to the amount of risk involved in finding your first business. Whether or not you want to take this step, you can only decide for yourself. However, there are already around 400 providers with more than 1,000 rooms in Germany alone.
Is the investment in another location too risky for you? Outdoor games and city rallies can be a far cheaper alternative. The setup costs are low, no additional team members are required, and the possibilities are endless. Feel free to get in touch with us, and we will be more than happy to advise you on how to integrate AR gaming into your business!
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