Nearly half of all haunt owners listed marketing & advertising among their biggest challenges in the latest Haunt Industry Report. It’s easy to understand why: we’re all constantly inundated with digital noise and ad clutter every single day.
How is a small business supposed to stand out?
Actually, there is one weird trick that still manages to cut through the noise these days. The secret is a little something called “User-Generated Content.” You may have heard about this before, but let’s talk about what it is and how it works, plus a few tips for success.
User-generated content is any content that is generated by the people visiting your haunt. It can come in the form of videos, photos, testimonials, and reviews. But the real key is how you leverage your user-generated content. In this guide, we’ll cover all that and more.
How User-Generated Content Can Help Your Haunt
Why should your haunt care about user-generated content? There are several key benefits.
Authenticity
Consumers are always a little wary of paid promotions. User-generated content is perceived as more authentic and trustworthy compared to branded content. That means reviews, testimonials, and real-life photos & video can significantly influence potential customers’ purchasing decisions.
Social Proof
Consumers trust recommendations and feedback from other consumers more than from businesses. User-generated content validates your haunt’s quality and reliability among potential ticket purchasers. This can attract more visitors and contributors, creating a positive feedback loop.
Customer Retention
Comments, reviews, and social media posts can foster a sense of community and loyalty. Sharing the content that your guests create makes them feel valued and heard. This, in turn, encourages higher levels of interaction and engagement from other users.
That creates a powerful marketing loop, where more guests are returning each year to create and share content highlighting your haunt in hopes of being featured.
Cost Effective
User-generated content can work for haunts of any size, whether you have a monster marketing budget or a tiny one. And it works whether you have tens of thousands of visitors each year or just a few hundred. The more visitors you have, the more potential content, of course. But it only takes a few guests to start generating great content for your haunted attraction.
Potential Challenges with User-Generated Content
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows (or should that be dark hallways and blood splatter?). User-generated content comes with several potential pitfalls, too.
Quality Control
Content that is created by your guests may not be the same style or quality as professionally-produced media. When your guests are making their own videos, you can’t control the quality or the content itself. You’ll need to decide whether content is usable, and you may have to pass up on some content if it doesn’t meet your standards.
Unpredictable Content
Along those same lines, you can’t control what your guests say or do in their photos and video, either. Guests aren’t following a script. Some user-generated content might feature less-than-perfect reviews. Some might feature guests breaking rules. And you may not decide you’re not able to use that content.
Copyright Issues
Many times, guests will be thrilled that you shared their photos and videos on your official channel, and they will help spread the word among their friends. But it’s not always easy to get permission to share. Tracking down original creators, securing permissions, and properly crediting them is important but can be a trickier process than when everyone is under contract and paid right up front.
Strategies for User-Generate Promotion
Getting started is the hardest part. Entice guests to create content with these creative ideas.
Scare of the Day or Victim of the Day
Establish a daily or weekly promotion where you highlight one guest who visited your haunt. Make it highly visible so guests who are on site can’t miss it. If they’re aware of the promotion, they’ll be more likely to ask how they can be featured, too. Publish photos in high traffic areas of your haunt as well as on the homepage of your website and on social media.
Share-for-a-Discount
You don’t have to wait for guests to arrive at your haunt for them to start creating content for you. If you’re using HauntPay, it can start as soon as they buy their tickets.
Offer guests a discount for sharing information about your haunt right in the checkout process with our Social Media Discount tool. Before guests enter their credit card details, they’ll have the option to share your haunted attraction on the social media platform of their choice (Facebook or Twitter) in exchange for an immediate discount on their purchase. Everyone loves receiving discounts, and it’s always better when those discounts happen in real-time rather than a discount on a future purchase.
You can even pre-write a message for ticket purchasers to post. They can either use your message as-is or edit it to fit their style.
Fear Cams
A lot of haunts prohibit photos and video inside their attractions, and with good reason. The external lights not only kill the vibe, they can be a big safety hazard for both guests and actors.
But GoPros work a little differently than phone cameras. They can be worn on your body, so there’s no loose items to worry about. And they can film in dark spaces without external lighting.
Consider investing in a GoPro or similar camera for your haunt, or allow guests to bring their own and walk through your haunt wearing the camera. You’ll capture exciting video, and your guests will gain a unique experience that will make all their friends jealous.
Monster Meet and Greets
The live characters are one of the best parts of any haunted attraction. And they can help create amazing content with your guests.
Capitalize on those interactions by creating a dedicated meet-and-greet area with good lighting and an eye-catching backdrop. You can have an official photographer stationed at the meet-and-greet area, or allow guests to use their own cameras for photos and video clips. Give every guest a business card with your social media details so they can tag you when they share content.
If you have actors working your queue, train them to encourage photos and videos when interacting with guests, too.
How to Make It Work for Your Haunt
Follow these tips for success with your haunt’s user-generated content.
Ask Permission
We see so many people re-sharing memes and videos on social media, it can be tempting to just clip and re-use another person’s content for yourself. But don’t do it! Failing to ask permission from content creators up front will create endless headaches later on. It could even lead to fines or a lawsuit.
If you see a post you’d like to reshare, start by commenting on the post with a positive message and a request to re-share it on your channels. If the user responds, it can also be good to send a private message to follow up with any requirements or requests they might have. Ask how they want to be credited and if they want to be added as a collaborator, for example.
Credit the Creator
Now that you’ve secured permission, be sure to follow through on crediting them! You may have another team member managing your social media channels; if that’s the case, be sure to pass along any of the original creators requirements or requests so your team can properly credit them.
Don’t just credit them once: every time you use this content, you need to credit the original creator. It’s also nice to send a follow up message thanking them when the post goes live. If you provide them with a link to your post, they might share it with their friends.
Set Clear Goals
Just like you would with professionally-produced advertising, make a plan and set goals for your user-generated content. Be realistic in your expectations. One TikTok video from an influencer is not going to lead to hundreds of sales. But over time, multiple content pieces from a multitude of individual guests can have an overall positive impact on your haunt’s ticket sales and reputation.
Measure and Evaluate
Some types of user-generated marketing are easier to measure than others. Calculating how many times a given promo code was used, for example, is relatively straightforward. But trying to gauge how many additional sales you gained from word-of-mouth or because one person shared a video on social media can get trickier.
Final Thoughts
User-generated content can be part of a successful marketing strategy for any haunted attraction. The key is how you use it. By setting realistic goals, establishing a plan for collecting and evaluating guest content, and properly incorporating it into your overall marketing strategy, you can increase your haunt’s social profile, brand recognition, reputation, and ultimately your ticket sales.
Want more tips on increasing ticket sales for your haunted attraction? Check out more blog posts from HauntPay or schedule a call with our team. We’d love to help!
