Launching a new escape game - A marketing guide - Part 1

Launching a new game at your venue is probably one of the most exciting part of owning an escape room business. The anticipation and excitement you feel to reveal to the public the work of several months, sometimes even a couple years, is unparalleled. At the same time it is also one of the most stressful and busiest periods in any escape room's life. 

You are running around like crazy to get everything done: finishing up the build, sorting out technical difficulties, organising test teams, tweaking the room based on feedback, training your staff and last but not least shouting from the rooftops to your customers that you have a new game. Sounds familiar? I bet it does.

Most commonly the one thing that suffers on your loooong to do list is running a proper marketing campaign.

Getting the room up and ready takes priority so you end up cutting corners with marketing. I get it, I’ve been there so no judgment but you are missing out big time.

A new room only comes around every now and then and it’s the perfect opportunity for a non-seasonal campaign which allows you to show your customers how much effort goes into the games they adore so much.

A proper launch campaign will strengthen customer loyalty, build respect for your business and the people working there and last but absolutely not least it will help you to recoup your investment way quicker.

Overview

The aim of this blog is to give you a framework and practical advice on how to build an awesome launch campaign for your new escape room that will create buzz in your audience and as a result loads of bookings and solid revenue.

I’ll tackle all aspects of a launch campaign in this two part blog that you should consider when planning one. The exact construct of your campaign however will always come down to your specific expertise and resources. I’m also happy to help you build and manage a campaign if all of this feels overwhelming, just drop me a line and we’ll figure it out together.

The topics I’ll go into - in this order - are:

• The timeline of a launch campaign and the different phases - Part 1

• Campaign talking points and narrative - Part 1

• Marketing channels and how to use them - Part 2

Don’t worry if you don’t have the capacity to do everything I suggest here. Less is actually more in this case, just pick the ones you’re good at and have the resources for and focus on them rather than stretching yourself too thin.

Since this is a huge topic, this will be a long read. You’ve been warned.

Timeline overview

The first thing you’ll need to do when planning your marketing campaign is to figure out a timeline.

The bare minimum I would suggest is four weeks of actively marketing the new game but ideally you would want to run the campaign for 8-10 weeks.

You might wonder why you need such a long time to run a launch campaign, and the answer is very simple:

• You need time to build up anticipation that you can harness when it comes to bookings

• You also need time to make sure that most of your customers come across the new room at least a few times

Add on top of the campaign another couple of weeks for planning, so you’ll be in campaign mode for about three months, which can be broken down into four stages.

Stage 0 - Planning - 1-2 weeks

This stage of the campaign is crucial for one big reason: You will be busy with other stuff when you are supposed to run the campaign. Simple like that and your marketing will suffer and as a result your revenue from the new room.

So the reason for planning ahead of time is to make sure you only have to execute a plan while being busy with other things. You can go as far as writing the newsletters and social posts ahead of time, but the minimum I recommend is a daily breakdown of what needs to happen when and where.

You would want to have a document with entries like below to organise your thoughts ahead of time.

Short snippet of a 10 page campaign document I created for one of my clients.

Stage 1 - Coming Soon - 2-3 weeks

During the coming soon stage the aim of the game is to tease the audience that there is something new coming. Don’t stretch this period for too long though as grabbing attention is already hard enough in the world’s marketing noise but maintaining that attention is a whole different level of difficult. 

During this time a few things needs to happen:

• Put up a subpage on your website for the new room. It’s good practice to let any visitor know about it and you can also start directing people to this subpage from newsletters and social posts.

• Start including updates about the new room in your ongoing marketing. For example if you are sending out a newsletter for Independence Day you can also mention the new game coming soon. Also dedicate a couple of newsletters to announce the new game along with some behind the scenes updates and post on your socials.

The goal is to start working into the back of your customers’ minds that this is soon launching and they should get started with organising a team for it.

Stage 2 - Test teams - 1-2 weeks

The next stage is when you start recruting test teams. I always recommend to my clients to do this publicly. Sure the very first people to test the room will be your team, friends and family but you should involve the general public as well.

Why testing should be public:

• This neatly takes you from the coming soon stage to the next. Testing the room basically says that you’re almost ready.

• You can collect written and video testimonials from your test teams which will create social proof before the game is even released.

• This shows your customers that you care about their opinion and it’s a great opportunity to meet your hardcore fans who can’t wait to play the game.

Stage 3 - Bookings open - 2-3 weeks

So far it was all about warming up the audience to get them excited and ready to book the new game and now it’s time to drive it home. During this phase you can go hardcore on “book now” messaging in your marketing. 

Ideally the coming soon stage got them excited about how cool the new game is going to be then the testing phase created the feeling of FOMO so when you open bookings for the new game your calendar should start filling up nicely for the first couple months.

Once you have the first few teams keep collecting reviews and video testimonials from your returning customers and add some to the game subpage and share these on socials and in newsletters to create more social proof for the new game.

Stage 4 - After opening - 2-3 week

Once you are up and running with the new game don’t just stop marketing it. Keep the campaign alive for another 2-3 weeks. There are plenty of people in your audience who are interested but haven’t decided just yet or still organising their team. 

During this stage you should have the first few professional reviews from ER bloggers to create even more social proof. You can still focus on the sales message but start mixing in some new behind the scenes or customer stories content to lighten up on the “book now” messaging.

At this point you should have seen a great success from your campaign so give yourself a big fat pat on the back. From here on you can slowly wrap up pushing on the new room and simply revert back to your regular marketing activities.

Campaign Planning Workshop

Need more help than this blog? Check out my 4 week long campaign planning workshop.

Campaign narrative

The next big topic to tackle pretty much along with the timeline is to pin down the different topics you can talk about during your campaign. It’s important to note that repeating the message “Book now!” over and over to your customers is not a narrative, that’s the goal of the whole campaign.

“Book Now” has its time and place in your marketing but people will unsubscribe and unfollow in hordes if that’s all they get from you for months. 

You need different topics or talking points so whenever you are sending out a newsletter, post on socials or blog about your new room, you can keep it fresh and slowly but surely build the emotional attachment to the project in your audience. This will increase the chance of them booking the game when it finally launches.

Before we go into the different topics it’s important to mention that you should also identify an overarching narrative for the campaign that ties everything together. This can be anything from a simple “spend time with your loved ones” to a more specific “this game is built specifically for teams of two so it’s the perfect date night experience”.

Topic 1: Behind the scenes

This is going to be your go to topic throughout the whole campaign. A lot and I mean a lot happens when you are building a new room - from early drawings, through the first wall being built to making a prop look like it’s 100 years old - so there is a lot to talk about. It’s also a very visual type of content which makes it even better. Most people still have no idea how an escape room comes about so it can also be very interesting for your audience.

Make sure you start taking videos and photos of everything as soon as the process of planning your new escape room starts. You made a drawing of a prop, take a photo. You’re soldering something, take a photo. You’re grinding a piece of metal, take a slow-mo video. You get the idea. The more pictures and videos you have the merrier. Start collecting these in a folder so when it comes to the launch campaign you’ll have a lot of content to work with.

A few examples of behind the scenes photos from my carreer.

You don’t need to share these right away, save them in a folder that everyone working on the campaign has access to. Your audience doesn’t need to know that these steps span over several months.

Showing how a room is made is a great way to show your customers how much effort and love goes into any of your games so this also builds respect for your games. Someone who follows your progress will build an emotional attachment to the project so at the end when you announce the first dates they’ll be much more likely to make a booking as opposed if the first thing they hear from you is that there is a new room that can be booked now.

You can also use behind the scenes content to engage your customers. Let’s say you can’t decide between two paint jobs for a prop so you go to your audience and get them to vote on the one they like. Don’t worry you can still go with whatever you decide in the end but this is a great way to strengthen your position in their social feeds.

Topic 2: Social proof

Your second big topic is social proof which basically means sharing reviews and testimonials from test teams, industry bloggers and early customers. This topic comes into play when you start testing the room. Yes, you can already use those early testimonials from test teams including your own team.

You might wonder why you even need social proof when you’re already established and have great reviews and the reason is simple: it’s a reminder that you are still on top of your game and you keep pushing the envelope with each new game in your portfolio.

There is a lot of competition especially in bigger cities and the escape room craze on most markets have died down by now so you need to underline again that the room you are about to launch is just as great if not better than any of your earlier games.

Testimonial video created with test teams for one my client’s launch campaign.

Testimonial videos from players are also a great way to create a “don’t miss this” feeling in your audience playing on FOMO which will lead to more bookings. And lastly social proof videos and quotes will fill up your content calendar nicely for the launch campaign.

Topic 3: Discounts & Competitions

I know I know, when we as ER owners see the word discount or giving away games for free with a competition we might go “nope, nope and NOPE”. And I get it no one likes to give a discount or give away free games, especially for a brand new experience you just spent a whole lot of money and time on. I don’t think either that they are necessary but they are an option in your marketing toolbox so don’t dismiss them straight off the bat. The key here is to use these techniques strategically and when they make sense in your specific market.

Let’s talk about discounts first. One thing that I absolutely don’t recommend is making a sitewide discount deal for your new room. Brand new customers shouldn’t see these words together: We’re opening a new room and you can book it for 20% off. This immediately damages the perceived value of your brand new game. 

The people who could or should get a discount for your new game are your existing customers. And you don’t even need to give this discount to all previous customers. How specific you can get with this will come down to how organised your customer data is. Let’s see some examples:

Discount Example #1

30% off early bird offer for 72 hours, only via newsletter to people who played at least three of your games to honour their loyalty.

This way you are only discounting the new room for the most hardcore fans of your business, who are the most likely as well to spread the word about the new experience. Win-win.

Discount Example #2

You are recruiting test teams for the new game on your socials and with your newsletter. They can sign up via a form on your website.

Let’s say you only need 20 teams to test the room but 50 teams sign up. They might be freeloaders but more likely they are eager to be part of testing and to meet the creators in the process. So you have 30 teams who weren’t selected, now you can thank them for their enthusiasm and offer them a small thank you discount.

Consider the following when it comes to discounts:

• Do I want or need to treat my loyal customers?

• Will it help to fill up the first few weeks to create buzz?

• Who are the specific people I should offer this to?

Now onto competitions. They are a great way to get your audience engaged with your content especially on your socials. Although it might attract a lot of people who are simply after free stuff, it will also engage the part of your audience who are genuinely interested in your new game and will book even if they don’t win.

You can either use a competition for email capturing or to strengthen your position in the social algorithm. Facebook and Instagram loves posts with loads of interaction on them so it’s much more likely these posts will show up on people’s feeds who haven’t seen anything from you for a while.

Competition Example

You have three games to give away. You create a post on facebook where people can vote between two props using the different emojis and they also have to tag someone they would like to play your game with. You then direct traffic from your newsletters to this post and also put it up on your website to capture more people’s attention.

We didn’t spend a dime to generate over a 100 likes and almost 200 comments.

Make sure you engage with everyone who comments, say something nice how you’re looking forward to seeing them or wishing them good luck. You let this run for a week or so depending how long the amount of likes and comments are growing and then you announce the winners in a facebook live. Again, whoever doesn’t win you can offer them a limited time discount to convert their interest into a booking.

As you can see, competitions and discounts aren’t a must but something that can improve your chances to fill up the room and they also give you talking points during the launch campaign so don’t dismiss them straight away just think about how you could utilise them.

Part 2

The second part of this two part blog is tackling all the marketing channels from your website through newsletters to socials and more. You’ll find useful practical advise and examples on how to utilise them to the fullest.