Hopefully you have started your 2023 haunted attraction marketing plans. If not, then you are sadly behind. While in the midst of our spring planning, Team FearWorm has compiled a list of what you need to be considering or doing now – in the month of May – to be planning for your haunted house marketing this fall!

Set Up Your Systems

Come August you will be too busy to get anything organized, so set up your plans and systems now. This includes:

• Build your marketing calendars and put in placeholder budgets. It doesn’t have to be fancy – we still use an Excel system of flowcharts and insertion orders we’ve been using and updating for over 2 decades. Whatever works for you is great – just get organized.
• Get your email marketing system set up. If you don’t have one, sign up for Mailchimp or SendinBlue or other email marketing systems, load in your email lists and start creating your segmented lists. You can even pick out a template you’d like to use for the season that checks all your boxes.
• If you’re planning on using SMS marketing, pick your program now. You don’t have to do the work, but just get your plan together.
• It’s not time to buy digital media yet, but it is time to vet and pick your digital media partner. If you are handling this internally, quiz your marketer on what their plans might be. If looking externally, find a digital agency to help you (not the digital team at the radio station!)
• Build your social media calendar now. You don’t have to write the posts, but do start getting your calendars together or pick a platform you will use to manage your organic social media.

Conduct Research

This is a time to ask yourself questions about your business. We’ve compiled a list of things we consider and discuss with our clients when planning their advertising efforts pre-season:

• What has happened since last year economically and locationally? Are there any shifts or differences that should be considered?
• Do you have any new competitors? Or less competition perhaps since last season?
• What areas are you going to target?
• Are there areas you can expand to, or should you tighten your radius to increase ad frequency? Have you added anything to your event that might change the geographic target or the demographic target?
• How will all of the above impact your pricing, your budget, and your media choices?
• Review your insights and data from last year’s social media content and ads. What performance data can you learn from? Make note of anything that under or over performed so you can learn from this and adjust your campaign as needed.

Create Your Marketing Budget

The spring is the perfect time to build out your budget for the approaching fall season. Start creating a budget sheet or a flow chart and begin splitting out all of your marketing costs. We’ve compiled a list of areas that you should be looking at for dollars spent below:

• Software / Subscriptions
• Research / Data Tracking
• Creative Work
• Video/Photo Shoots
• Social Media Management
• Boosting Budgets
• Email Expenses
• Traditional Media Budgets (this could be TV, radio, print, billboards, etc)
• Digital Media Budgets (this includes Google, social media, websites, apps, internet radio, etc)

After compiling a list of what you have been spending, if you’re wondering how much you *should be* spending — the answer to that question can be complex as we normally like to consider several factors such as business or revenue goals before arriving at a figure. For the short or quick answer, for new events you will want to budget about 18% of your expected gross ticket revenue. And, if you’ve been around a few years, you can drop that figure down to about 15%.

Creative Work in May

Believe it or not May is the time to start on your creative work! This doesn’t have to be your individual social posts or ads, but you should be getting all the following together:

• Logo or Branding Assets
• Signage Design & Production
• Anything involving icon characters
• Planning Photo & Video Shoots (Preferred Schedule in May or June)
• Build Your Story / Storyboard

Even if you aren’t ready to edit your commercials for the year, May is a good time to work on storyboards and planning your messaging. It’s great to do this before you’ve made your media buys so you can make sure all of the lengths of commercials and types (i.e. Vertical and Horizontal) can be accounted for in your shoots. Making your creative shoots streamlined with a plan and a shot list can make things much more efficient and less cumbersome.

Start Media Planning

May is a great time to start gathering ‘avails’ from radio stations and billboards (if you are using traditional media.) The right time to place the buy tends to vary from year to year. When media is sold out, we like to buy early. When they are desperate for business, buy late. For us, our radio stations are required to be more of “partners,” including DJ endorsements, walk-thru’s, events, social promotions and more. So, it takes us about 6 weeks to effectively get plans together. Team FearWorm is working on our radio and outdoor plans right now, regardless of the market size. It is time for you to do this as well!

Does all of this sufficiently stress you out? Just take things one step at a time, and we hope this list will give you a resource to make your planning that much easier! Get started now to avoid burnout or panic / unpreparedness when the season is in full swing.

Would you like help with your haunt marketing? FearWorm does all the above and then some! We are the leading marketing and advertising firm for the haunted attraction industry. If you’d like to know more about working with FearWorm, contact ernest@fearworm.com today for a free consultation! Team FearWorm truly enjoys hearing about your attraction and your business goals. Perhaps its time your business partnered with an agency!

Either way, we are wishing every attraction a successful Halloween season this year. Remember, a rising tide raises all ships: we are in this together!