[0:20] Hello everyone, I'm jonathan I'm crystal and this is haunt weekly weekly podcast, we haunted attraction hundreds, of community, whether you're an actor owner or just plain aficionado, we ain't to be a podcast for you and we return to you once again, whether you're catching us live on facebook, on sunday, getting the recorded version monday or whenever you're choosing to listen to this episode, we thank you for letting us spend an hour with you, you can definitely check out more haunt weekly take your time, we're at haunt weekly dot com on facebook at facebook dot com slash haunt weekly twitter dot com slash haunt weekly youtube dot com slash haunt weekly you can also find us on google play itunes stitcher wherever fine podcasts are sold, and as always feel free to join us live, ask questions, get involved, become a part of the podcast every friday at eight p.m. Central nine p.m. Eastern facebook dot com slash haunt weekly as we do these episodes live. [1:14] Well on that note we have a special guest well, first things first, I gotta take care of one thing and that is if you can hear a dull roar in the background, if you're I'm gonna do my best to edit it out, but I'm pretty sure I'm gonna fail. Uh it's just new Orleans drowning, don't worry about it is, there's nothing strange to us. We literally like the window we have, the podcast is like the heaviest rain we have seen in quite some time and we have a tin roof, so do the math, so please don't adjust your speakers, don't blame your audio equipment or ours. But on that note we do get to welcome a very, very amazing person with a lot of great information to talk about. I'm very happy to be introducing Alex Berlin from Conjured Media Alex. Are you there? How's it going? [2:01] I'm here, thanks for having me. Yes, yes, indeed, very excited to have you um you have been a busy, busy little beaver. You have very busy, Yes. Um, so for those that don't know, Conjured Media is a haunted attraction marketing company will say that for now, let you do the full pitch in a minute and you guys have been working, I would say, to change a lot of things about haunt marketing for the better. So why don't you give us a quick overview about what country media is and then we'll jump into the topic? [2:36] Yeah, so just to kind of give you the overview. So first I'm Alex Berland, I am the ceo slash CMO. So I basically handle um kind of running the business and also the marketing side of things. My business partner Nick is the creative director and he handles more of a creative aspect of things. But we're Conjured Media, we're a full service marketing and creative agency that specializes in haunted attraction So we handle everything from your videos to your digital ads, uh your website and more uh full package everything. So I think one of things that makes us stand out from others in the industry is just kind of our process that we really perfected over the past four years of working with haunts, which is basically to use engaging stories to, catch the attention of your audience and kind of stop the scroll and get them engaged and then using powerful data insights to then convert them into sales and buying tickets at your haunt. And I think really kind of through this process our bread and butter is really we just, increase your profits and increase the value of your existing guests, getting them to spend more getting to come back, each year and then not just bringing new people to haunt, but getting the right people to your haunt weekly who are going to be excited about that experience where they're going to tell their friends and just keep building your business year after year. Um That's that's what we do. [3:45] Yeah. So what we're talking about today is basically we got a we got a series of actually marketing related topics that are pretty interesting here, but the first one and this was your proposal by the way Alex. So I'm very excited to hear your thoughts on this was the idea of storytelling through a business lens, viewing these the financial benefits if you will of having a good haunts story. Um what would you like to um go into that. [4:15] Yes, sure, so, um I think just kind of like a good place to start, to kind of keep like a context and grounding, like, and one of things you guys talk a lot about um on this show, you know, I've heard you guys talk about it, it's just a concept of like when you think of haunted attraction um and you think the people who own haunted attraction and the kind of the spectrum, right, we have people who are very business oriented, this is like, this is where they make their money, this is, you know, everything is the line item and make as much as possible and then you have the people that are, it's just a complete passion for them, you know, if if they can make the spookiest, craziest, scariest, haunted attraction that is as amazing as it possibly can and everything else falls by the wayside, right, and then obviously everyone falls in between um and I guess kind of like my pitch today, is just kind of like, no matter where you fall on that spectrum, even if you're more on the passion side, still keeping that business element in your mind, and kind of thinking like the power of of what. [5:09] Running your haunt weekly business and through that business lens can ultimately do for you and and help make your creative side even better. Right? Um, and yeah, we we've been big proponents of treating a haunted attraction like a business because and you're absolutely right, this is such a passion driven industry. Nobody really goes into haunting to get rich that I'm aware of, but you you have to keep the lights on or off this haunt maybe. Uh, but the point is you you have to keep the doors open in order to be allowed to play in or have that creative fun. Exactly, and so yeah, that's that's a point that we have harped on a million times, and yeah, I I could not agree with you more about that. That's just the truth. [5:53] Um and unfortunately one of the things we've complained about is that a lot of people in the industry don't think of this as a business. Mhm. So yeah, so. [6:05] And and one of the things I know we have said before is the power of storytelling to improve your haunt weekly one of the reasons we have focused on it is because it's not something you have to build, it's not something you have to, you know, do that type of working. I mean if you want to do it yourself, it's free, but if you want to hire someone else to do it for you, like contract media perhaps, um you can absolutely do that and have a way separate from all the investment you're making into the haunt, to really deepen the impact. So I guess to start with we really need to nail down what the hell were talking about was stores. So what is the definition of stories we're working with? [6:50] Yeah, for sure. So, um kind of what we do here at constant media is and how we think of story is essentially we're doing is we're kind of creating a narrative, um, creating something that will embed everything from your, online presence all the way through your experience at the haunt weekly So, you know, we think of everything from, like, you know, you always see that everyone has a story on their website, right? And the question is like how cohesive and how integrated as that story throughout the entire experience. [7:18] And when you um when you integrate it throughout the entire experience, there's a lot of great business benefits that you're going to get out of this, right? So if you're making a narrative, one of the biggest things about this is that they're going to stand out from the other people, in your market, if you think of like the, you know, the typical haunted house said, right, you're gonna be walking, it's a walkthrough of a haunt, you're going to see all these characters jumping out at you, it's fast paced, right? And people jump scares and stuff like that, right? That is going to be the exactly the same thing that everyone else is doing. But if you're making a story, if you're making a narrative something people can go, wow, I can really sink my teeth into this, right? And if you think of think of the pandemic, right, everyone, everyone has been at home in the past year, what are the biggest things that everyone's doing? What everyone is on netflix and everyone is engaged in story, right? Story has one of those abilities to really capture the mind capture us and keep us engaged. So by having that story that you're pushing out through your marketing materials and then of course, and uh integrating that into your experience at the haunted attraction by having that collusive element. [8:26] You're basically you as a customer, as a guest, you're going to notice that and see that and you're gonna be like, wow, I I understand what's happening, it's going to capture you, right? And then when you think of people coming back, if you if you add to your story and change your story, it allows you to obtain people year after year. So a lot of people think, you know, you have to kind of change your haunted attraction for, say year after year, you know, some people like you change some room for, some people change the whole thing, depending on what you do. Um but by changing your story, like you said, it's it's almost a free thing. You don't really have to do your automatically signaling to everyone. This is a new experience and it's a reason to come back to your home for the trap and and it adds into the immersion of the experience whenever you go to the haunted house. [9:10] And exactly, and one of the things we talk about haunting as a storytelling medium, but there's a reality with people spend an average of like 10-25 seconds in a room, right? You don't spend very long in each individual room, so you don't have a lot of time to relay the story necessarily, and you can do things to story tell within a heart and we've seen some great examples of that, and you can and should do those things, but the time to really lay the groundwork of that story is beforehand when you've got their attention for minutes at a time, or, you know, at least of a commercial length, on some a story element that you can use that to lay a foundation that the haunt then builds on top of. And so that's one of the reasons why storytelling through your marketing is so potentially powerful. [9:59] Exactly, spot on, 100%. And kind of one of things that speaks to the power of this. And, you know, just for context on my background, um we started, doing hallmark eating in 2017 for haunting Long Island called Schmitz Farm haunted house Um and during that time I was actually the front of house manager for two years. So I got to really be really be immersed in the world of haunts and really got to see how the how the business operates, see how haunts are built and really get that extra um, understanding that I feel a lot of other people and who just do marketing don't necessarily get having an on site experience and seeing, seeing that ticket line, you know, seeing when a line is two hours long to wait for the hunters and just seeing all the, all the problems that ensue, it kind of gives you actually perspective. But one of the things that we noticed when we started doing these narratives was we had one example that stands out in my mind, there is like a five year old kid who was who was the first in line waiting for the doors open and I remember walking up to him, and he was like is Sophia gonna be there. And Sophia was one of the characters that we had running in our ads on our website, she was kind of the creation of her dad who was this crazy plastic surgeon who like made her face this like mangled thing and she kills a girl the weed wacker, but like you would, you would never think that someone would stop watching facebook and watch a video on your website and then come down specifically to experience that. But here I am sitting there like a five year old kid who who was asking for this character right? Um you know one of our other clients in Alabama warehouse 31. [11:24] Remember you're doing some customer service for them and someone was complaining that they, missed the character in the haunted attraction like text the owner like is is the butcher in the house and he's like yeah the butchers there, I don't know, I don't know this person is talking about this person actually went out of the way to complain for not seeing the they were so excited to see the character, right? And so it was that extra level of immersion. Yeah, and you know, we had haunt weekly a couple years ago, they did a video, did a commercial, was a really cool commercial. Yes, you and I got to the same place, really, really kick ass commercial and you know the same thought exact same time and it got us and to go and like it featured this old man, and he was like crawling creepily and moving and I was like, oh man, I can't wait to see that dude in the hot, that's going to mess with my brain, it's gonna be great. And he wasn't there. [12:10] But, but we didn't complain what we did. We went on the internet and we actually found the stock video they used. Yeah. And this is a fairly large haunting the area. I mean it's, it's not like they couldn't have shot something using their characters and they have to and I want the better ones about. Yeah. And I think that that's important is that if you're going to put a story out there, you have to to deliver on what's in the story 100%. And that's kind of like, you know, through the process of doing this for the past four years now and you've got to really, you got to learn from your mistakes and, and, and as your business grows and as you do things right, like, you know, we got to, we got to really experience that hand on um, when we first started working with Schmitz for example, they had a manager that uh didn't really see eye to eye with what we were doing. Um and he actually refused to integrate the characters into the haunted house the first year that we're working together, um which we couldn't explain why it seemed pretty obvious, right. Um but he had he had his arguments and then the second year basically, uh the story was like this with this box that kind of travels through time and vignettes through time and how it kind of takes people over and corrupts them, right? Um and we kind of got him to agree, hey, just take that box and just put it in one of the rooms towards the end like that, that's all we want to just put the body. [13:30] So this is what are the opening night and I'm still the front of house manager this point. So he puts the box in and we're waiting by the exit and all these people keep coming out saying, oh my God, we saw the box, that's the box from the video, it's the box from the video. [13:44] And it's just crazy because like this it seems very intuitive and seems like something you would just get and then that celebrity, but it's a box, Right? And I mean, and we talk about immersion and we talked you said having the characters there, this is not something that's that's difficult to do, like, so for example, when when we create our narratives, obviously it's it's very it's very difficult to go on location as someone bring a whole film crew out from new york where we're located. You know, that the expenses just would not make sense for this industry to do. Um we found everything here in new york, leveraging our connections to kind of bring the price down. But of course, you know, we're supplying you with the costumes to actually bring these characters to life with, you know, we work with you to kind of say, hey, like what room is can this character work with? And that's a huge important thing about when you're talking about narrative, right? And why I said a narrative is really just this over overarching thing that can then engage with your theme, can engage with your haunt weekly A lot of haunts, they don't have a singular thing, they have different rooms and stuff, we're just having the characters outside, Right? Anything that you can do, just have that touch point to see the character. But yeah, but if you if you don't, if you specifically for whatever reason, don't put that character in your haunt, you are doing a disservice and you won't be the negative experiences. Yeah, so did I understand that, right, that your packages include the costume for the character for one of the main ones from the story? [15:01] Yeah, exactly, so whenever we uh we're kind of changing things up this year, kind of what we've been doing, the past three years was kind of doing like a more like spoke, you know, customer stories for people and kind of the whole process is what we would work with them, you know, come up with the characters that they like that, that worked with kind of what was working there, haunt weekly working the stories we pitch all that. Um And then yeah, we would definitely have to see the rain is acting up. Um But yeah, then we would basically all the stuff we were filming with filling the characters with, we would ship that out to them and they were integrated into their home. That's that's awesome. Yeah, Yeah, that's that's much better than going to a stock video library and just calling stuff and not using that. That's easy. Yeah. [15:43] Yes, I mean we are, so we are vehemently against stock anything just for the, again, if we're talking from the business perspective, it just doesn't, it doesn't make any sense, there's just no reason to have a stock asset, right? Because what a stock asset is, it's just, it's just a spooky creepy thing. There there's no cohesion, there's no story, there is no anything that makes any sense with that when you're actually filming something with the narrative, that something you can, you can latch onto. So um like moving forward, one of the things that we realize because, like I said, we have to clients one in new york and one in Alabama and we've kind of over the past four years really perfected our process of of what's effective and what works and we really, we have the data to prove all this stuff is really getting people results right. Um what we realize is that we can take the same story really at any location and apply it, you know, as long as, you know, there's of course cultural things like for example, in Alabama, you know, one of the things we're told is like. [16:38] Nothing satanic or anything like that because it's a heavily christian population. And so there are definitely things you have to understand what making a story and we can get into uh kind of what makes a good story um in a little bit. Um but because we realize that we can take these stories and place them anywhere where, and it's still not be a stock asset, a stock asset again doesn't have that that thing to grab you doesn't have anything to bite into that. You can integrate into your haunt weekly then take those stories. That's how we're doing this year is we're kind of launching a program to do that, to take the existing stories we have and basically rebrand them to different places, region walked across the country. Um, and then interviewed them into your Haunts. So you're kind of gonna save money by having these things already made. You don't have to, you know, shell out for a whole custom thing, but you still get all the benefits of that. What was previously busting, right? And just real quick in case someone didn't understand or didn't catch it explain region locked. [17:29] Sure. So one of things that we do, um so obviously as a marketing company, we only work with partners in a specific location. So for example, you know, if you're if you're in California, we're not going to work with another client that's within, you know, X number of miles of you. And that's regardless of kind of what we're offering you. So we do that because, you know, we want to have, our goal was to build relationships with our clients. We don't want to work with a guy down the street. You know, unless of course, you guys are friends and you have one of those conglomerates like Long Island, they had a thing called Screen Long Island. Like, you know, something like that would make more sense. But yeah. [18:01] Yeah, that makes sense. So the story you get is the one that you get for your area around, and we've talked about it before, haunts our hyper local business. Typically you're not gonna get, you're gonna get nutters like you and me, they will travel over the goddamn country for haunted house is crazy, but we're the exception, not the rule, most people won't travel more than about an hour. Uh so you got to think that a 60 to 70 mile radius around your haunt the most important, that's your core circle. Um so yeah, a region lock that is like 100 and 20 miles, that makes it so that there would not be much overlap between potential audiences and you go further out than that and you know, you're almost completely eliminates the possibility. [18:42] Yeah, and that's one of the big things that we've learned over the past four years of doing this and just collecting the data is, when you think of like the people are going to haunted house is I think us as haunted house people who are really invested this, you know on the facebook groups who are you know waiting counting down the days to halloween waiting for the rest of you know right, Exactly, there you go. Um most people who are attending haunted attraction are are not those people, if if you're that you're that into it, you're probably working in a haunted attraction or you're traveling around going to all them, right? So like the average person is not nearly as invested in this experience. It is it is a fun thing to deal with their friends. It is it is a great night or you can you can get scared right. So I I think it's important that you know when we're talking about from a business perspective, it's like what can you do to make your stuff from a marketing perspective and from an experience perspective appealing to their people. [19:37] So we talk about creating these custom narratives, right? Um obviously you want stories are going to have killed to a wide range of people that are that are relatively loose, that can be, can be multiple and adaptable. You don't want to have, you know, the next biggest boldest thing that came from your gun is an ad that is going to isolate your audiences. Even like I mentioned in Alabama, you wouldn't want to run, it's satanic narrative in a place where people are not going to respond to them, but it just being hyper aware of who is coming to your haunted attraction and that's not one of things that we help one to understand as well. Yeah, I mean, I know even though we're just home hunters, but still, I mean I think there's a lot of overlap between the people to come to our haunt and go to other ones and it's mostly young people, family units slash friend units. [20:22] And that's pretty much I would say 95% of our brown butter. It's not just weirdos like us that rock up to a haunt, they started showing up recently, but it didn't happen. Didn't happen for a long time. Yes, indeed. Um So yeah, and I like said and I know you touched on this earlier, but it's really great. The thing about storytelling is how it does help you stand out as a hot um and it can help you stand out before your doors ever open. Once you've got a narrative once you got a universe going um like you know, the more I think of like the marvel universe even before the next marvel movies come out, there's all this established lure there, that they can tap into and build from that's contact what this is and it gives you so much more depth before because. [21:11] All haunted house haunts haven't opened, they're all the same, they're all exactly the same quality. You know what I mean, that the play exact level, you're only as good as your last customer type thing. And when you haven't had any for the season, everyone's tied the score 00 This is a chance to take a lead, so to speak before the game starts. And and I think you made an excellent point about customer retention being really important because people get invested in stories. [21:37] People invest in stories more than they invest in brands. [21:41] Yeah, it's it's really so true. And again, like none of this is really like revolutionary per se. This is all just like you mentioned the marvel universe, right? Like think of how passionate people are about marvelous, right? Well these are stories that have existed, you know, for decades now, but even besides that, just like, you know, having these characters that you can really invest in and attached to and that's what draws people in. And again, it's important to understand the average person. So when we go through the comments on our ads that were running with these videos with different characters and stuff like that, right? You you see people like, oh my God, I'm so excited to meet this character, I can't wait to be engaged. Then you have half the people are like, is this a movie? Like what is this? Like, I don't, I don't understand, right? And of course, you know, face value that goes well, that's that's not effective, they should know they're going to haunt right? But think of just the fact that they asked that question, that's that's how invest they are, I want to come experience this and that's and that's what really separates, through our process of making narratives versus just spooky stuff because that's because people, people That are average people right? Like so according to our data, like in Alabama we've collected a lot of stuff, there's like roughly 60 of people that came through last season had been there before at some point in time, right? So obviously that's very good customer retention um but it's a constant like we talked about like also people are coming from the local area so most people are not going to a bunch of haunted house is per say they don't have that, understanding of what is like a good or bad haunt, that someone who is a haunting er really fundamentally understands right? You know you sound like hunters hangout people debating what is a good hunt, what is a bad haunt weekly. [23:11] If you have that narrative, that is what's going to drive people to your haunted and then when they go as long as like what I think the goal of your haunted attraction being again we're talking about from like just a business perspective, like of course it's not just dollars and cents, right? You want to make sure that you're really putting your heart and soul into your, into your home and that it is an amazing experience, right? [23:31] I think the metric for the average person of what a good haunted house is, Did I have a great time when I come there and do I want to come back? Right, So so like the quality of your show can kind of be relatively low in that, in that metric, right? As long as you achieve those two things and that's kind of, you know, for example, transforming Long Island, one of things we noticed like they've been around, I think 26 years now, we started working with them for years ago and now they've really stepped up their game, you know, because because of how good their their show has been doing and because we got to the door, they just invested, a crazy amount of new props and rooms and stuff, but before it was like, you know, just kind of an average, haunted attraction that you know, these are farmers who put it on and the people who worked there were very passionate, but the goal wasn't really to make you know, the best possible thing. It was just to have a cool attraction and that they were still outperforming most of the haunted attraction in the country. Right? So, so I think that's like a really interesting thing just to like focus on what your customer understands and knows, and if you can focus on those narratives to bring them in, it allows you also to pick up a lot of the slack in other areas as well. Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, that's something that I know we don't talk enough about the quote unquote quality of a haunt isn't really measured by how good your props are, how amazing your lighting is, how great the actors are, even as measured. And did people have fun? [24:52] It's measured exiles on faces and but but at the ticket booth, you know, those are the two things. Um you measure it in feet in line, in line, whatever, trying to find, I mean butts and seats, but we don't have seats. And like this is like a debate I had with that that former manager and luckily luckily they have new managers now who are like just really great guys who are taking shits like a whole new level. I'm super excited their show this this upcoming year. Um but remember we have like this whole like two hour meeting right? Where it's just kind of like you're talking about room design and stuff and this is just stuff I've picked up just, you know, being in in the haunt for two years, right? It's just like if you can have an immersive set in your haunt weekly that like we had a debate where he I said, well on the walls instead of being black pilot walls, Why don't we put some stuff up? You know, like we looked at a headless horseman for example was a great, you know, well known hunting, probably a number 100 attract at this point, right? When you go in there, there's like newspaper clippings on the wall and then one of the rooms where it's like, you know, the serial killer compiled all of his like it list and everything like that. [25:53] And when we had this conversation was like, well no one's gonna stop and and read the newspaper. And I'm like, well yeah, of course I'm going to read it, but you might glance that you might see a word here and there and it just creates the immersive experience, right? So it's like you don't need to go 100% all out where you have to have 100 of version, but you want to have enough immersion. So like when you're thinking of like where you're going to resource your time, it's like, it's like anything like, like you know when, when I'm working on a creative project right? It's like I can work on that project for weeks and every little thing, but there's diminishing returns at some point. So I think you know the haunt owners and people who built haunted attraction right? Like you're working until that final day right before you open, everyone is working to make it perfect. Right? So so yeah, I think it's just kind of like to understand something um Yeah, yeah, no, I completely agree with that because I do a lot of the detailed work in the haunt and there is. [26:45] Definitely a point where I say, okay, it's not where I originally envisioned it, it's not to that level, but it's good enough when you get the stage lighting and all that, it's going to be fine. And you know, you have to ask yourself the ultimate question, which is something we've got to get better about ourselves. Is this effort going to make the haunt more fun? Yeah. And and we do have a few customers every year who look at the details and when we load a haunts, we look at the details. Like if I go, yeah, if I go to uh, haunt and see a lot of black walls, I'm not going to be that impressed. So I'm glad that you changed their mind on that. Yeah. But yeah, I'm actually looking at the bar that we built for the room that we're sitting in and it's covered in law book pages from a law book. And it makes me laugh. [27:38] So yeah, so real fast. So we're about halfway in. I want to know more about your process for creating these stories. I want to talk about, you know, how you do it, so to speak. Yeah, for sure. Um. [27:53] Yes, I just jump into it. So, so basically kind of what we do is we kind of take essentially like um pretty much a month, month and a half of of pre production time. This is essentially where it's, you know, we're working with a client, my business partner is the one who is creating all the stories, doing all of that. Um and you know, we kind of pitch it back and forth and there's kind of like from when we're looking at my job is really to evaluate kind of like the business worthiness of this story, right? Um so the first thing that we really look at is kind of like, is this just a good story? And that's obviously that's the creative side, that's, you know, the there's no quantifiable measure of what is a good story is. It's but doesn't have elements that are engaging that are clear, concise, you can understand what is happening in this story. [28:38] So, like, for example, I mentioned the story with the box that we had right? Like that was a really cool story that we liked. But one of things we learned kind of through running this story was it wasn't necessarily the clearest easiest thing to understand. So because of that we lost kind of some engagement value in that regard, so it still performed very well, but it could have been better. So like moving forward, that's kinda what we valued our stories on is like, you know, is it a good story, is engaging, is it clear and concise? Right? So once we kind of have the story, you know, the client agrees everyone, we're good to go right, then it's kind of like what is add safe about this story? That's that's a huge component that I think a lot of people don't realize. Um and I have definitely seen ads on on facebook or people posting on facebook, um, with, you know, you get the kind of like a, the covering, which is like, this is like not safe. You have to click to view it if it's, if it's organic posts an ad, you won't even see it at all. Right. But making sure that whatever characters are doing our ad safe. So like no crazy gore, um, no blood. Um, no violence. And even though these are not real violence, you know, the, the algorithms don't care about that. So I don't have the makers consider a badge of honor. That facebook covered their latest prop. I'm like, yeah, that's great. And all until like you just pointed out you're trying to run a facebook. [29:54] Right? Yeah, that's, it's not very effective if people cannot see what it is. Um So, you know, that's uh when my business partner and I, you know, our first couple years when we were first starting out, you know, well, he'd be like these amazing, awesome stories and I'd be like, all right, you have to cut. [30:11] 3/5 of that right off the bat. You have to cut half of this one and that one. And then remember we once had like a three hour fight where he was just like, we can't even do this. Then what you're talking about, I'm like, no, we can do, we gotta just sick of the process and you know, so it's always a struggle and you know, we always test everything prior to the campaign to make sure everything's working. And like, like I mentioned the pre the pre assembled stories that we're offering people like those have already been tested and run and work, right? So we kind of have that, that um extra extra level. But then like the next step is just like when you're creating a story from scratch so now you have the story, you know it's good you know it's adds safety and the final tweak it just really kind of being like just thinking of like like I mentioned is knowing the audience and the people around you, right? So it's again like those little things like in Alabama, you know not having satanic stuff, just knowing things that you know um when you think of like you know the culture is changing nowadays there are certain things that might not be P. C. Nowadays that you know a couple years ago might have been might have been acceptable right? It's just kind of knowing those things and then and then you have a story and then you have something that really they can uh they can watch on two. So from our process, once we have that, then we film everything here in new york, we kind of do the photo shoots, we do the video shoots on the same day, so we can have the cohesion, We want, you know, our characters to be in the sets from the videos, we have that across all of our graphic design, on your website, everything. So basically, again, like you're you're completing that immersive experience. [31:32] From all points, all points lead back to your haunts, so your website, you're advertising your organic social pages, your email, even everything's all leading back to that, they're going to get on site and then have an immersive experience, they're going to leave and be like. [31:45] I'm in the world, I can't we just make this stuff here. [31:49] If you have any other like process questions, you know, happy to dive in. I don't, I don't know if that was specific enough to your question. Yeah. Now that that's a really good answer and it's it's fascinating because you know, I think you're absolutely right about one of the challenges. Everyone complains that you know, especially when you factor in like facebook rules and and so forth and guidelines, everyone complains that uh oh we can't do or say anything, we can't have any fun. Like yeah, you can, you just have to be creative and use your imagination, you just have to exactly about it. You can't take the easy route, you know, you gotta and that's one of the things a lot of people and I always kind of because like for us our lead characters and Bernie Baxter, He is a carney from around 1870s who is back and is bringing villains from new Orleans history and new Orleans History is such a great thing to pull from, for storytelling because if you spend five minutes reading it, you know, you will not be want for haunted ideas for the rest of your life. Just go on, go on a ghost tour, go on, you know any new Orleans history tour, you'll have a million haunted house ideas For you 15 minutes in. [32:57] Um so, but and we do that and basically though we have this creepy Carney character, and we focus on him and him telling the stories and him, you know, sort of conveying it because yeah, that's something we can do very safely, very cheaply and very easily. But it engages like so you get that face out there, you get that character. [33:20] And it makes it so that you really have, um this very marketable thing to put out there that is completely safe, for facebook twitter, instagram, youtube mashable, I don't know, we're gonna help kids play Tic, tac tac tic, whatever else there is out there. Right. So here's the thing we talked about, you know, for a good while now. [33:44] Um one of the reasons why we're doing this shed is because you are starting a pair of new offerings coming up and I want to spend a few minutes on that and then I want to get in some more general marking stuff and we'll wrap up from there. So real quick talk about because you've laid the groundwork now, what are you doing? How are you fixing these problems? [34:06] Yeah, for sure. Um, so this year we're launching a fresh, fresh off the plate for Transworld, we kind of have to new offerings. So the first one we're doing um, is called the media share. [34:16] So this is where we're basically taking a brand new story that, you know, we always make a news story every year. The things that we were doing custom before we're doing this media shareware basically, because everything is region locked, we're basically gonna assemble partners, we are going to buy into the share and obviously more people to join the share. We could even potentially due to if we get enough people, um, we're gonna basically increase the production value. We're going to create a whole new story from scratch. You're getting a brand brand new. Never before you story, we're going to create all the, all the characters, get all the costumes together, all the masks, everything like that, film, everything do all the graphic design and everyone then, you know, everything's rebranded for your haunting your different market. And like I said, it's all, it's all region locked so you don't have to worry about any competition. So you get the benefits of a whole brand new story. Um and the retail price for that is $10,000. But as a show special, her Transworld, we're gonna be offering it at um $8000. So you're saving $2000 for standing up for the show special. Um And the next thing that we're doing is, like I mentioned, kind of our our pre made already proven stories, stories that we've we've ran and we're actually putting out a, we put out an annual case study every year and we're about to put that out right before Transworld, we kind of break down the numbers of how everything performed. You know, you can see the, how the Haunts have grown over the years, you can see how all the ads perform and stuff like that. So all these stories that have been pre tested, pre proven, you can either as a fraction of the price of even the media share or obviously uh custom work that we're going to be doing. So those are kind of our two things and that's gonna be called the graveyard. And we kind of well have you repeat this, but what booth are you added transport? [35:46] Yeah, so we're gonna be 1809 translate definitely stop transworld, stop by. [35:52] And again, like one of the, one of the benefits of working with us for for your creative and obviously your market needs in general is we've we've done all the hard work of figuring out what works and what doesn't work. We know what is as safe, we know what is going to be engaged in. Of course, you know, you can work with any other partner and you can do it all yourself. We've we've done all the things that have failed to know what now works, right? So we we know we've been in a situation where we had to we had to edit videos and change videos at the last minute, but now we don't have that problem where we've done it already. So another, it's just kind of, we take that risk out for you. Whereas if you're commissioning stuff with other people or yourself, you have a huge risk of what happens if my ad doesn't run and then you're screwed, you just paid all this money for media, that doesn't work. What is the biggest mistake that people who are starting out with marketing bake generally? [36:41] Wow, that is, that is a huge question. Um there's there's like the biggest mistake with marketing. [36:50] I think it's just not having a cohesive strategy that really incorporates. Because what we do is we have the creative side and the data side. Right? So we're running ads with creative that's very attractive to people. But then we're also collecting all the data so that we understand everything is working and in real time tweaking everything to get results right. So I think the biggest mistake people make, especially when they're doing with their own marketing is they don't have those two processes sorted and figured out and then you're set up for failure because you don't know what's working, why it's working on all of that. That's me I think is probably the biggest mistake people make off the bat. [37:28] All right, Well, we got some great questions here and actually I want to start with the last one because it speaks to our current situation and I'm being greedy because it's from James say. So that's good. But also it speaks to our current situation so that helps. So I'm gonna be greedy and bump them up to the front of the queue. Um And his here's shapes his question for many haunted house process of going pro starts and the yard or the garage. What suggestions you have for people to have zero budget for the marketing. Um And this is like before they break out and go pro and can hire someone like you. But what's something that they can do with no budget right now? What tips you got? [38:06] Yeah. So no budget is is is obviously very very tough, right? Like one of the things with marketing in general. [38:13] Sorry what do almost all you gotta do? Pretty much all organic? [38:17] Right. Yeah. So you are limited in what you can do organically. Um Like you really can't do like the people that go viral is is very very limited compared to what you can do with ads. Um But I actually I wrote a whole article about this that I have to put out at some point, but if you don't have any budget, like literally zero, right, like you're in this going pro for the first time, what I would say is obviously. [38:43] Get some cool photos, take them yourself or anything like that, you know, make a story that you can come up with it yourself, push the story in your organic social media's. But the next thing that I would really recommend you do is go online and find whatever area you're in, there are soccer teams, their baseball teams, they're girl scouts, find a list of literally every imaginable organization that you could possibly think of. You will find at least 1000 at some point, right? And if you literally have no money for marketing at all, what you can do is just call those people, This is a lot of work and not not the best use of your time at all. But if you want to spend 20, you can just call people And say bring 10 people down. We'll give you a group discount. And if you make enough phone calls, you will bring some number of people down. Right? I'm talking like 1000 phone calls. That's something you can literally do for no money. And to my knowledge, very few people do that at all. Well like regardless of what their size, their haunted house um Something people should should do anyway. Um But think about it right, if if you sell tickets for 20 bucks, you bring you know $25 ticket discount of $5 off per person, 20 bucks per 10, you know that will add up significantly after making those phone calls. That's that's something I think is is a really good organic thing you can do that people don't everything to do. [40:03] Yeah, I have not thought of that either. But yeah, I mean reaching out to groups, especially in the age range that go to haunt would be direct marketing to them. That's not a bad idea. Um And that's that's being zero money if you have somebody that the answer changes, but that's that's literally zero. That was a few $100 to spend. Like that's more in line with our actual marketing budget. [40:27] Sure if you and again like and this is the thing is like marketing doesn't scale linearly like people think right? It's like and one of the main reasons for this, if we think of um Like facebook's a good example of this, what facebook's algorithm has is called the warning phase where basically facebook as we all know their algorithms collected, data like you know, they've invested billions of dollars and algorithm they have data on every single person, which is but Iowa's 14.5 is trying to stop right? [40:51] Um But their algorithm is going to learn who is buying from your ads, right? And and that takes time and money to invest in. So like a big a big reason like why facebook campaigns or you know any digital campaign is not working. It is usually under capitalization because it doesn't have that process to connect all those dots and or you didn't connect pixel tracking correctly. Um So that's like that's like a huge thing off the bat. Um So you obviously can't really take advantage of that if you only have a couple 100 bucks. Um But from that perspective I would say yeah like just just run some facebook ads, run some google search if you have a very very limited budget um try to figure it out in your own. Um But it's not ideal but I think if you're if you're in the situation we're not sure like a home haunted house, but you are a pro haunt and you think you have like a limited marketing budget, this goes back to kind of the business perspective I was talking to and when I was saying like talking about the details of every single thing and you know invest, where do you invest your time as a haunt owner or your your team? Right, I look at it as like you're gonna go to Transworld, you're gonna buy your cool, we're gonna either refresh our haunted house Gonna build these 23 rooms and it's gonna be amazing. It's gonna bring people down, right? The reality is that the our life your marketing is so much better than the ry probably on a per room basis of of the haunted house return on investment. Right? And this is kind of what we learned through our data. So if you're looking for where you can find the budget right? If you scale back those plans a little bit cool. Hey instead of doing those three rooms, let's do one room really really well. [42:21] Well that now clears up all the budget from those rooms you can invest in the marketing. [42:25] So you know, one of the things that we've we've seen through our ads right, is if you're getting like a four extra turn on facebook, well if you're putting in more budget into facebook, that budget times for you just made all those new ticket sales. Right? So and we think of it for example, like Schmidt's farm right After years years of growth. So the first year they grew 50%, then a 16 increase in revenue and then they grew six above that. This is pre pandemic. Now they're at Transworld, they're they're buying tons of stuff refreshing because now they have the capital to do it. [42:55] So that's kind of how I I think you you find some budget and that, you know, does that any to your question about it? [43:01] Okay. Next question. Moving on. Since you were talking about facebook, there was a question last week about um what's the best social media platform to reach the target audience? [43:15] Oh yeah, I think I think I commented on that, right? Um Yeah, so the main ones that we see our Facebook Facebook Facebook is still very, very effective. It's it's one of the most effective ones. Um I think we're around 40-60 of the return we're getting for people is coming from facebook, it's a very powerful platform. Um google search is also a huge one instagram as well. I feel like those three are really like the biggest ones as far as, have you had any experience with Tiktok? I mean I have none. So yeah, yeah, so my knowledge as of right now um is that tick tocks at least from the advertising side, you can't really do local. It's pretty much I believe National, that might have changed my last look at it. [43:57] I mean I have, I have talked to someone who uh they said they wanted to become a national haunted attraction like, you know, like a headless horseman, something they wanted to do a national campaign. Um So like if that is your goal right then yeah, there's nothing like Tiktok might, might make sense, but that's, you know, obviously much more expensive proposition, then unfortunately, wasting a lot of that money, because reaching people that are across country from you that, can't go, it's impractical. So, I mean, Ticktock is a really good organic platform, because what you're seeing is people who understand the algorithm and who are are making good content that's relevant. Those people are you able to build a much bigger following on Tiktok than you are kind of more um mature platforms, like saying instagram or facebook. Um so, so definitely be on Tiktok organically. Um if you wanted to do some on the ground marketing in your area, what are the places to target? [44:51] Yeah, so like kind of our whole philosophy and this is I think another thing that really helps us stand out from other agencies in this industry, right, is is we pretty much really focused exclusively on digital. And the reason for that is if we think of like, you know, anything else with your budget, if we're thinking of like billboards, radio, you know, you're going to go to a pizzeria and then drop off flyers or anything like that, right? [45:13] You were able to generate from, like an organic and organic, like a source like that. First of all, you cannot track really the results of of what that is doing for you. So right now you're already a huge advantage. You have no idea that thing is working for you and that's kind of like the core things to understand where your money is going, how it's working and why it's working. Um and secondly it's also the reach, right? So if you think of like a billboard, right, you're limited by the people who can drive by that billboard, that might be a lot of people, but on a digital platform. [45:41] I can target just more people overall and plus everyone has a phone in their pocket, it's not guaranteed you're driving past this billboard, you're in that pizzeria to pick up flyers, right? So our whole philosophy is we think it's just a better return on your investment today. Just you, purely digital and also all the data you're getting from that. Like I can, I can retarget you, I can do all these things and I can put you in my database and get your email, your phone number and all these things that bring you back for free next time. All these powerful things you cannot do through other other means. Um that being said, you know, if you think of like a local thing, like sponsorships, that kind of like more in line with like the question. [46:19] I was just thinking in general, okay thing this time. The next question actually, Okay, carol he was asking about and I may be the one to take this one. This is more of my background since you do so much digital. But he said for physical ads, billboards, flyers, newspaper, etcetera is a bear to put much important info, daytime price setter or present a great logo on a web site where they can get the information. And so he's basically asking, you know, with a piece of physical media or physical add, uh, do you put all the information there or do you just direct them to a website? And like I said, I'll take a shot at this one because with a billboard you have five words. Goddammit. Use them wiser. You have no, you you can't put all that information and don't put a phone number on the billboard. Nobody writes down phone numbers from your number isn't like a word like 1, 800 whatever. 100 hunter or something like that. [47:12] Don't bother. Don't bother. Well this is so for like a billboard, right? Um And I'm thinking more like signage in general. Um uh because so being a marketing person and like, you know, just, I'm always trying to test things out and see when just drive past any any signage, like anywhere, right? And just just ask yourself like what am I noticing and not noticing, Right? And this is like a huge thing, like with haunt weekly goes right? And you like metal logos and stuff like people, companies, like incredibly complex logos that you just cannot read or understand what it is. It's like you're not making your cool logo is not making brand recognition, it's just unrecognizable, right? So for thinking of like something like, like a, like a billboard for example, like yeah, I would I would. [47:53] Either have a simple logo on it or a little just like haunted house and the name of your haunted house like in clear block letters, even just just so people can see it clearly and understand what it is. Um I would keep it minimal on a flyer like and again it depends, newspaper is a little different like if someone is going to be like interacting and holding this thing so you can have, more information on it to people know where to find you because you're going to spend time with a flyer, you're not going to spend time with the billboard, you're being by it, you know 70 miles an hour, you don't have time, but with a flyer Yeah, put all that information on their absolutely put can put QR codes to do both, you know direct into a website, but also put the information there that way it can be two points of contact and two points of communication with one flyer um exactly get a chance to get them both physically with the flyer and digitally with the same information. There's two points of contact increases the chance it'll be remembered. Yeah, and I know that at the costume shops, people look for the flyers so they know that costume shots are going to have flyers. [48:50] If they're looking to go to haunted house they'll look to sound the one physical place. You definitely want to be the spirit costume shops and other big costume stores in your area. You definitely want to have a presence there. Yeah, I know it's like you said, it's not track, there's all kinds of problems with it, but that is where people get their halloween information and it's just it's the truth. Okay. Yeah, so uh just ahead on that real quick, right, um we put our we put the address and and all that, you know, all of our digital ads anyway, just you know, if you're stopping the scroll, you'll see you understand like where this place is and it might be a different haunt than you've been to war thing because, most people see haunted house and they have something in mind, they don't necessarily know. [49:28] Your haunt for a, like just the average cold person. Um, yeah, I'm definitely opposed to, you know, if you want to put flyers in the costume shop, that might be effective. Um, and that's totally fine. It's again, it's just, it's just a question of what is, what is the better use of your, of your dollars at the end of the day is really nice judging myself, so I understand your concerns with that. But yeah, if you're gonna do anything physical flyers, that costume shops is wanted to be when you're next question, crystal All right. Um, how do you get a media sponsor? And what can it mean? [50:00] Yeah, yeah. And also how do you find an influencer? Yeah. [50:05] Um, What, like, what is, what is the media sponsor? What, Jessica Woodward? I'm not 100 sure what it means in this context, but I know one haunt weekly when all we worked at actually did a partnership with the local NBC affiliate. Uh, what they did is they installed a scare cam in the heart and NBC affiliate got the footage for that and was airing, you know, during breaks and stuff. And that was just, it was a partnership where they got to do this fun little thing during the news, at breaks, during the news and they got their logo and, and keep pertinent info on screen, tearing it and it was just a critical thing. They split and end up not costing them. [50:45] I don't remember. They paid for it or not, actually, I can't remember. I had hoped that uh I'd have to ask, but I mean that is, it's more beer. I know that the pr right, That's for sure. So, and yeah, I mean, if you're looking for a local media sponsor, start calling the tv stations, what I would say, tv radio, um, are gonna be your best people listen to radio. Like people radio is dead. It's no, it's very much alive and very much, I mean, even even with a farm, uh, there's a local anchor, her name was Aaron, I think she moved like a different thing in the local station. Um, but when she would come and do her segment, you know, gave her a promo code and tracked all of, you know, and she, she bought a lot of people down, Right? So yeah, it's greatly impactful stuff. I mean, the other question was like, how do you find an influencer? Um, They tend to find you, I guess it's probably the easiest thing I've seen um but it just depends what you mean by an influence, so like when, Yeah, well I'll say what, let's set up, one of the Hong kong talks that I really like, but if you want to get an influencer like that really get them on board, the way to do it is to have like a media day, or the influencers and local media to go down, they can meet this actor, they can hang out, maybe do a little behind the scenes stuff. See some of the scarce photo ops just have a media day and not only, like I said, the local media, but also local influencers. [52:07] Yeah, so like when it comes to influencers in general, um that you hit it right there, it's local influencers, right? So there's like, there's all these levels of influencer marketing and like for a haunted house I think influencers are. [52:21] Not only are lie is their relative to like in other industries, like obviously you're like national personalities, multimillions, that that cost is probably gonna be, out of your budget anyway and just ultimately not worth it to have someone national, like that, unless again, you're doing some meet and greet thing where it's more of a, an appearance than like trying to get, you know, the brand recognition, but you can also find um like here in Long Island for example, there's a lot of micro food influencers who, you know, they all kind of have like the same audience of people who and you know, again we think of regular people, right? Like regular people, for example, might like a food blog and they're gonna need something fun to do in october, so you can just find local people in your area and just like you said, a media day is a really good idea, invite them down Or just as their local celebrities. Yeah, for sure. That's what you need to find who your local celebrities are and reach out to them. I think that's a easy thing. And last question before we wrap things up, um this is from Randall terry and what's the most impactful, you at least costly method of marketing for us on tight budgets. I my guess would be facebook ads. Um um. [53:26] That's my guess. So I would like to like just reframe the question, right? Like what is the most impactful thing on on a tight budget break bang for buck? [53:38] So like, but it's like just the concept of like when you think of marketing, like marketing shouldn't be an afterthought, it shouldn't be great. We've, we've invested in the haunt weekly vest in the actors, we have the management team, we have all these things and uh oh shit, now we have to market at the last hour, right? Like, like marketing is, is what brings people to your attraction with, allows your attraction to grow each and every year like that, that's how you're getting new people, is how you're retaining your current people, this is how you make the money to fund everything, right? So just a philosophy perspective, like you're marketing is super important to your, to your business at the end of the day, right? So, you know, a lot of people was approaches like what, you know, how can I spend the last thing and get more right? And it's actually really counterintuitive with marketing. It's like if you're working with the right marketing partner, it's the more you spend, the more you make. [54:25] Um that's that's kind of like the frame so but when it comes like what is the most really like bang for your buck right? Like google search for example is very, very effective but like I said, you can't undercapitalized google search if you like. For example, last year with our client in Alabama, we we upped the budget for google search significantly and we went from like you know, not performing very well our first year with not a lot of data to like a six X. Um return on google search, right? And and the only difference, we ran basically pretty much the same. The same ads for the most part it was it was just the budget, right? So it's like you want to make sure that you can capitalize your campaigns as much as possible cause that's where you're gonna get to return. And that's of course if you have all the infrastructure to understand what's working, what's not working, what's a baseline budget for google search. [55:11] Yeah, I mean it really just depends market to market. Um I would say like um I can't, I can't give like a number. It really just there's so many factors that depend on like besides your, what you're looking to do is going to be tighter than, you know, rural Mississippi for example, more competitive. And and that's really the issue is google search. The pricing is determined by competitiveness are in a competitive location. In a competitive search term. It's gonna get real pricey real fast. Where if you're not in a competitive region, especially if you're doing a geographic targeting, that price will sink like a stone and you're doing pennies per click and right. And I mean with advertising in general digitally um my my client Alabama Jason, we, you know, we were talking to him, he was doing a testimonial for us. We've had this kind of this long conversation that we kind of put up. And one of things he mentioned was kind of like before work was actually worked with a lot of people in his local Birmingham market um that the great agencies, they got great results but they just couldn't get results for him. And the reason what kind of attributed to that was like they just don't understand not just the haunts facebook event marketing and when you think of a haunt weekly really have. [56:20] 4-8 Week period to mark your haunt and that's it. And when you think of digital platforms, like they're not designed Christie's new businesses that are designed for people who are advertising all year, right? And doing that. So you really have to understand how you're working in these short short time frames, uh to make it to make it work in the first place. Um to answer your question with budget, like you can talk on like a per channel basis, but kind of we we have two packages that we work with. So the first marketing package we have, it's called the foundation package and what that is, is that's for people with smaller budgets, you kind of want to build up, build up their tracking infrastructure, you know, build up their leads, list of their emails, you know, build that database for everything is connected, right? So we can start getting that data because data in year two and three and that's what we're seeing all the growth from that information. You know, we we kind of have those packages kind of starting around like the 15 grand mark is really we're getting that and of course we're running ads and you're you're still growing but the focus is on how can we collect that data. Right. And then we have our growth packages which are these are the people, you know, like like Schmitz and and warehouse that really want to grow and that we kind of We kind of put roughly around like 35, 40 grand starting price for like, you know, these are of course full service, all included packages. Um just so people can think of like where your numbers are and of course everything can change depending on, you know, you know who you are and all that stuff. But we we put that roughly in the starting price range and you know, we've we've worked on projects, you know, as much as 100 grand over, all right. And it just depends your goals and what you're looking to do. But that I think that will ask you to get a good range of they're looking at. [57:43] Well, we are pretty much out of time, so it's real fast. Just tell the nice folks where they can find you both online, at you and the Transworld. [57:53] Yeah, for sure. So we're Conjured Media. Our website is Connor dot media dot dot com. Dot media. Um We're gonna have our brand new site out um Hopefully by tomorrow, maybe the next day. Um We're gonna have a case study out from all of our four years uh jam packed of data. This is like hundreds of hours of work that I've put in to kind of put this together so you guys can see exactly what it's like to to work with us on a campaign to kind of see um all the growth that we've gotten over the years and so you can get some tips and tricks as well to build your marketing up. Um and to kind of work with your own partners on that, that's gonna be out right before Transworld. You can find us uh facebook and instagram at at Conrad Media And Booth 1809 at Transworld. And you know anyone at any time feel free. You can email me Alexa contra dot media. I'm happy to answer any marketing questions you have, I I'm honored for this stuff, I love to talk about it, so anyway I can help and add value, I'm happy to do so or comes to me on the show and everyone Alex will be doing the show largely by himself, so if you are willing to watch his booth for a few minutes and let the poor guy p Please swing by both 1809 and let him and let me know. [58:57] Yeah, I'll trade you free free marketing advice for bathroom breaks. That sound that sounds fair, right, that's fair. So yes please lend a hand to pour Alex, he's really gonna be overworked and dead tired and it could use our help on that note everyone, thank you very much for joining us and spend in the past hour with us, we greatly appreciate your time. This is haunt weekly to find more of us at haunt weekly dot com. Haunt weekly on twitter. haunt weekly on facebook youtube dot com slash home because our Youtube channel every episode in history is available there. It's an easy way, really, really easy way to listen to whatever episode Stokes your boat or floats your boat or Stokes the fire or whatever the expression is, I totally screwed that up. [59:35] And also definitely uh you can find it on google play Itunes Institute, every podcast are sold and catch us Sundays at eight p.m. I screwed that up in the intro. Great job. jonathan were Sundays at eight PM central nine p.m. Eastern for the live at facebook dot com slash. Until next time I'm jonathan I'm crystal and we will see you all next week.