Now that 2020 is becoming a distant, unforgettable memory, we look ahead at all things 2021 in regards to new marketing trends and concepts. It’s absolutely important that your marketing plan embraces new platforms, smarter tactics, and upcoming technologies. Let’s dive in to a few of these opportunities under the umbrella “2021 Marketing”.
The Rise of TikTok
TikTok isn’t truly “new” in the realm of new apps on the market, but it’s still the newest large platform to be on when targeting younger audiences. It was just last year that the TikTok ads platform opened to most small businesses and agencies. FearWorm was one of the first agencies to run ads on TikTok, and certainly the first to recommend it in the haunt industry. Like all explorations into a brave new world, it came with a multitude of learning curves and growth.
It’s no secret that TikTok owns the core haunted house demographic. A question arrises between events doing “organic” TikTok videos verses “paid” TikTok. Yes, your event should have it’s own branded account and be constantly pushing organic content daily. Organic can be best if you have the time, the creativity, and the ability to build an organic audience. The issue here being is that you cannot target your organic content to your local market. So, the reality is that anyone around the world could engage with your account. On the other hand, paid ads on TikTok allows us to target your market exclusively with ads. This is where thing get special.
Organically, you can – in theory – post almost any kind of content you like. But for the paid ads the content must be planned out, overly directed, and extremely conservative in what you display. TikTok’s platform simply does NOT allow any type of horror content in ads at all. Meaning…nothing. Zip. Zero. In fact, check out this ads guidelines page for what TikTok considers to be “shocking” material (scroll towards the bottom of the page, notice the “goth girl” with dark eyeshadow…this is the extent of what TikTok considers shocking material with ads). This means you have to get really creative in building a compelling ad without using your typical content.
Aside from the creative issues with ads, right now the only available option for you to target a geographic area is with the entire state your location is in. Now, if you’re in Kentucky…this may be OK. But if you’re in Texas, not so much. We can say this…we, meaning FearWorm, have ways of targeting the exact geographic area we want without regard to the TikTok ads downfalls. There are often “tricks” to working with geographic targeting on social media platforms, and we built one for TikTok. This is just one benefit of working with an agency for your marketing.
Email Marketing
IT’S BACK! Yes, email marketing. This dinosaur of a strategy is back and stronger than ever. If 2020 did anything for the marketing world it was to keep everybody living in a digital, do-everything-from-home, lifestyle. Streaming, Zoom meetings, online classes/school, TikTok…all of these platforms and applications saw massive growth in 2020. One thing that all these platforms require: an email address. According to MailerLite, email increased by 45% in 2020 due to the rise of e-commerce shopping and a pandemic-fueled virtual lifestyle. People are simply signing up and checking emails more frequently now.
Keep it simple. If you’re holding an off-season event…send an email. Running a promo? Send an email. Open tonight? Send an email. In fact, you should be running an effective monthly email strategy starting today. Have new content you shared exclusively on TikTok? Send an email notification out to get people to follow your TikTok account! You’ll definitely want to take advantage of more purposeful email marketing in 2021.
Beyond simply sending emails, getting a prospect’s email in your targeting system can be beneficial on other platforms. People sign-up for an email address and never give it up! How about that email address you have had forever? You know, that one you are embarrassed to mention in professional situations? Regardless of whether they move or buy a new cell phone, a customer’s email is an identifying digital marker that they tend to keep forever. We use email addresses to find people on social platforms and across the internet. We can target our advertisements directly to an email list. You can guarantee your best prospects will always see your ads or posts, based on the fact that you have their email in your database.
Keyword Based Targeting
This isn’t your grandma’s search marketing. We are able to use keywords or phrases that people have searched for to target past behaviors of users you’re trying search to reach. This isn’t for text “search” ads, but using that same technology to run display advertisements or videos. For example, a user previously searched for things related to your event and this search history sticks to the user as a unique identifier. We can reference a list of keywords or phrases we choose and run ads on websites to those users, using both display ads and videos…based on that users past searches. Let’s break this down:
You search for “haunted houses near me” on Google. Your search sticks with you as a unique identification. We then use a curated list of keywords as targets to show ads to you across the internet. Keep in mind that the websites the ads run on are somewhat irrelevant since we’re targeting people based on their searches, not the content they are viewing. Because of your past searches, we already know you’re interested in “haunted houses near me”. Cool, right?! Because we don’t care what site they’re viewing, the ad prices are exceptionally low. At FearWorm, we’ve found click through rates on keyword-targeted display ads to be between 8x and 16x higher than traditional banner campaigns!
Frequency
The secret sauce of a successful marketing, especially in 2021, will be frequency. Frequency is the average number of times a targeted user sees your ad. Traditionally, a user needs 12-15 “touch points” with your ad before they’re ready to take an action…like buying a ticket.
Now let’s look ahead at what we’re facing for 2021. As the pandemic numbers continue to come down, more people get vaccinated, and as overall public confidence increases…more and more businesses will fully open. We’re already seeing events get moved to late-Summer and the Fall. As a marketer, this tells us that we should expect an insane amount of competition for entertainment-based ad frequency across every platform. More businesses and events will be open….more ads will be run…decreasing overall ad inventory on platforms.
2020 wasn’t the “hard year” for haunts to open…2021 might be the hardest year. If we learned anything from 2020 it’s just how successful a haunt can be when there’s no other competition of any kind. No high school events, concerts, sporting events, movies, bars/nightclubs…nothing. Now, all those things will be reopening and re-scheduled for later this year. Is your event ready? Is your marketing budget ready for this undertaking?
Frequency is critical.
Something we learned in 2020 for sure…You are not competing against other haunts. You are competing against any other activity or business looking for entertainment dollars and time. Those options will be open in 2021.
Planning 2021
Looking ahead, attractions should be ready for increased competition like they’ve never seen. More competition for customers, more competition for ad views and eyeballs, and a potential for harsh market conditions depending where your event is located and what’s happening in the market. Be prepared. Be smart. Take advantage of the latest digital media offerings. Keep your branding messaging solid to ensure you are differentiated in the minds of the consumers, and of course…market like hell.