6th July, 2021
If planning for Halloween, can make you want to scream (and not with excitement) as the season draws ever closer, here are some handy tips on how to make your Halloween experience only terrifying for your customers.
With many attractions hoping for a successful and profitable Halloween, especially with restrictions lifting around the UK, the industry is pushing for a lucrative Halloween season to begin moving towards the ‘new normal’.
Getting ready for Halloween after such a period of change is going to be a challenge for many attractions and can feel quite daunting. However, there is a definite demand for days out and Visit Britain’s current marketing campaign ‘Escape the Everyday’ encapsulates this with the push for Staycations. Escape the Everyday, a five-million-pound campaign highlights the best attractions and destinations in the UK. You can find out more about the Escape the Everyday campaign and how to get involved plus share all over your channels here. With limited options for abroad travel, the UK attractions industry can capitalise on this by planning early and marketing to consumers this summer.
A fundamental shift in the tourism and attraction industry over the last few years has been the move towards the value of experiences. Impacting all sectors, consumers are placing increasing value on the experience and have a higher sense of what they want and need in a visit. An incredible attraction, that has showcased this well are Tulleys Shocktober Fest. Tulley’s takes Halloween and makes it into an immersive experience for visitors, with multiple attractions and storylines, it makes this a night out to remember.
If you’re wondering how, you can turn your attraction into an experience and meet customer demand, then consider these next few points. Firstly, focus on your brand, if your attraction is all about pumpkin pickin’ then you’ll want to be renowned for it. When customers think of pumpkin picking, they need to think of you and not your competitors. With this in mind, can you turn your visit from an hour and extend it into a half-day or even a full day out, creating the complete experience? Can you add in additional extras for children, enhance family activities or even food and drink extras. Make sure that any packaged activities follow your brand, so if you're based on a rustic farm, you’ll want to make sure your food and drink offering matches the look and feel of your site.
Right off the bat, if you’re planning on changing or enhancing your experience, then you need to think about who your target audience is and what they might be looking for. For many, Halloween often has a family feel, so you’ll want to make sure you include adults and children alike. As a general rule, activities for children should have a target age of around 10-12. If you aim for this age group, you’ll find that younger children will enjoy this, but also you’re much more likely to get the adults and teenagers involved too!
We know that a key part of running any attraction is also managing the digital aspect. This could be from your social media to website and online ticketing. Particularly within the last year, the importance of an online presence has skyrocketed. Imagine you’re a consumer looking for Halloween attractions; what’s the first thing you’re going to do? Most likely, you’ll pull up Google and do a quick search. If your competitors have a highly rated website, full of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) content, then you’ll likely be appearing further down the list. Websites don’t have to be scary, start by updating and populating your site until you get more comfortable.
Next up, let’s talk social media. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok has taken over our modern world, and pretty much every business out there uses one or more of these platforms in some way, shape or form. You’ll want to start marketing your attraction nice and early to get ahead, social media is a great way to do this, plus it’s free! Make sure you’re posting lots of engaging content, which is picture heavy to give your customers something to get excited about.
Now, here’s the exciting bit (for us anyway), you’ll need a top-notch ticketing site to go hand in hand with everything else. The days of ‘walk-ups’ will soon be gone. Invest in a ticketing system, and you’ll find that your entire operation will change for the better.
Creating an online ticketing platform does create endless possibilities for connecting with your customers and managing your operations. Plan ahead, by knowing exactly the amount of visitors your expecting so you can plan accordingly. Create those experiences, by bundling items, utilising upsells and crafting gift vouchers and membership plans. What’s more, get creative with your pricing by offering variable rules to increase or decrease your pricing for more or less popular sessions. Entice your visitors by creating discount codes to use on social media to drive sales. With the right ticketing partner, your customers will get a better experience right at the start.
If you think you might be in need of an online ticketing system, then get in touch with our team.
There’s still time to get the ball rolling, so make sure to plan ahead and get the most out of this Halloween.
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