How I Helped Escape Rooms Add 20+ Bookings Weekly | Heidraxity

(Copied from a Facebook post I made a while back) 

How I Helped Escape Rooms Add 20+ Bookings Weekly— And How You Can Too! Heidraxity

Before I start, my team and I have scaled 50+ adrenaline-inducing entertainment businesses (Escape rooms, VR venues, Go-karting…), and in this post I’m going to explain the core aspects that allowed us to do this. In the past 12 months we’ve spent $1.2M on ads and generated $14.8M in return on advertising spend. 

I added a screenshot of one of the ad accounts below.

Authority statement out of the way, let’s get on with it.

I'm planning on starting a mini-series of value posts in this group, depending on the engagement on this one. 

This post will be a high-level view of our system. If there is enough engagement, I will create an in-depth post for each point we’ll be discussing. 

Let me introduce you to the power of short form content marketing (TikTok ads, Instagram reels). 

The digital landscape is changing. Everyone now watches short form content, which gives us the opportunity to market our escape rooms on these platforms.

Here’s what I’ll be discussing

1.        Cold ads - They’ve never heard of your escape room before

2.        Retargeting ads- How to show ads to people that are interested

3.        Follow up system

Let's get started.

1.        Cold ads

The goal of the cold ads is to introduce your escape room to the audience. I’m not going to teach the technical side on how to set up TikTok ads and Instagram reels ads , YouTube will help you with that.

I’m going to explain what ads to run.

Firstly, we need content. If you don’t already have content, you should film some. You don’t need a fancy camera. Your phone will do. Record as much content as you can. Record the rooms, record the building from the outside, record people solving the rooms. If you have fails and funny moments, that’s great.

Now it’s time to edit the videos. You can either download CapCut and do it yourself, or hire an editor from Fiverr.

There is so much to discuss, but here’s what’s important:

•        Only vertical videos.

•        First 3 seconds are extremely important. You need a visual hook, or a captivating  text hook. 

Visual could be: shots of your most visually pleasing room.

A text hook could be: 'This escape room has something mind-blowing' Then build up on that statement, and at the end show what’s cool about your escape room.

•        Fast paced, we need A LOT of frame switches. In the first 3 seconds we may have 5 frame switches.

•        Make sure to mention the location within the first 3 seconds.

•        Storytelling: give people a good reason to keep watching. This is how you should think; the longer people watch, the more money I will earn. It’s very clear in our metrics.

•        Make the videos about 15 seconds long.

•        Focus on testing hooks, hooks are the most important.

•        Test a bunch of different videos, we test like 50-100 videos in a month, which may sound like a lot, but most of these are hook testing. We usually start with 20 videos and we start testing those on a low budget, $30 USD per day.

•        Don’t get emotionally attached to your ads, if it doesn’t work, get rid of it and try new ones.

•        Clear call to action at the end. We usually go for “Click Below To Learn More”, and then make sure the same call to action button is selected when uploading your ad to TikTok business.

•        Budget: At least $25 USD per day for testing.

If you want to see examples, comment “TikTok” and I’ll send over some examples of ads I’ve created for clients.

1.        Retargeting

Here is where we collect all the data of the people that have shown interest in our cold ads. Of course you should have the TikTok pixel installed on your website and booking software (most booking platforms allow pixel installation).

Now we collect the data of all the people that have:

•        Watched more than 75% of an ad

•        Liked/commented/shared an ad

•        Clicked on the ad and went to the website

•        Added to cart on the website

And to those people we now show a sequence of 12 different ads over a course of 2 weeks (or longer). Each of these ads answers a possible question, objection or concern a potential client might have.

•        Themes of the rooms

•        More details about the games

•        About hygiene

•        Birthday party possibility

•        Exact location of the venue

•        …

So now, they know everything they need to know about the escape room. All of their potential questions should be answered.

Now they have seen your escape room pop up on their feed at least 12 times, so now they are familiar with your venue. That means that now is the time to give people a limited time only offer.

The offer testing is a separate process in itself. You should figure out what works for you.

Things such as:

•        10% OFF

•        15% OFF If you book from Monday to Thursday

•        Free drinks

•        Bring 4 friends and you play for free

•        Birthday kid comes for free

•        …

Now, let me introduce you to an absolute game-changer.

1.        Golden Follow-Up Automation

To get the coupon code, people have to fill in their name, phone number and email address.

So we’ve created an automated follow up system that does all of this for us. You don’t need ours, if you do some research you’ll be able to set it up for yourself.

Here’s what the automation does:

Immediately after opting in: Send text + email

Day 3: Reminder text + email

Day 7: Reminder text + email + automated voicemail. 

Day 10: Reminder text + email

Day 13: Reminder text + email + automated voicemail. (In the voicemail remind them that the coupon is going to expire in X days, to instill urgency)

Day 16: Reminder text + email

Day 19: Reminder text + email + automated voicemail. Final coupon expiration warning.

Day 21: Reminder text + email

People always ask me, doesn’t this make them angry? Well, no. Firstly, they had to see like 12 ads to finally get a coupon. And to grab the coupon code they had to actively opt in to be followed up on. So they know it’s coming.

Also, they have the option to opt out at any time.

This is the system in a nutshell. If you guys are interested, I’ll make a separate post on each subject.

Thank you for your attention.

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