Advertising Your Halloween Haunted House Event

Advertising Your Halloween Haunted House Event - Advertising your Halloween haunted house in the past was usually done by word of mouth. The more popular Halloween Haunted House events were advertised using the media and newspaper. Today, a lot has changed. It is much easier to advertise your Halloween haunted house and get decent traffic. Though big-budget Halloween haunted houses get a larger share of the views, today even a small-budget haunted house can get a great advertising campaign going. Advertising your Halloween haunted house is sometimes a huge endeavor, but the payoff can be well worth the effort.

Before getting started advertising your haunted house, you must first address what type of event the haunted house will be and the target audience. Advertising a haunted house begins with the purpose for the event. Is your haunted house a charity fund raiser? Are you advertising a haunted house that is for profit? Will the haunted house be free admission and for fun? These factors might slightly vary certain aspects of advertising your haunted house, but the overall result will be somewhat similar. The most important aspect of advertising your haunted house is deciding which audience to direct your house to. Is it going to be a small or large undertaking? What is the budget of the effects? Is the haunted house geared toward children, pre-teens, or families? Knowing the goals of the haunted house is extremely important when deciding which methods to use advertising the haunted house. First in this article are methods of advertising a mid-level to large event followed by simple ways of advertising a smaller haunted house.

The Online Campaign: Advertising your haunted house online begins with the most important aspect - the website. You should start advertising your haunted house by this website as soon as you have narrowed down the details, even as early as August. Choose themes that give a sneak peek of the event without giving away all the good parts. The website should be easy to navigate, describe the event, hours, and locations, and advertise the price. You may want to offer coupons (preferably buy one ticket, get another at a discount) as incentive to visit the site or a contest to win free tickets. For help with buzz, add a forum and use a popular forum posting service like PPT to get the forum going quickly. I recommend you request native English speaking post assistance. Add a blog if you have the time that discusses spooky things. Blogs are search engine darlings. The next step in advertising your haunted house online is to get your site listed on haunted house event sites. Link sharing with other haunted houses will get your site noticed. A page of Halloween links might also be warranted, as it tends to improve the popularity of a site. Visit related forums and local forums often and use the link to the site advertising your haunted house as your signature. Create both a facebook and myspace page linking to your site and build up a good friends list (starting with your actors.) Be sure to utilize free classified ads sites like Craigslist, Backpage, Kijiji, and Walmart Classifieds. Advertise for more actors as well to get the buzz really going. Creative? Consider a You Tube video advertising the event. Be sure to link it back to your site, add it to your Myspace page, and let forum visitors know to spread the word. Seek out online Haunted House advertising sites that mention local events as well. If you have the time, a squidoo page might be the ticket.

The Media Campaign: One of the easiest ways to get free advertising for your haunted house is to offer a radio station free tickets to your haunted house to give as prizes. A radio station advertising campaign is also desirable for the larger and charity events. Choose a local radio station for mid-level or local charity haunted house advertising and a radio station targeted toward your audience for the mid to higher range events. If you have the budget, a blurb on a local television station might be a great way of advertising your haunted house, but if you have a small budget, just going to local news websites and posting about your event in the gossip section will be immensely helpful. Newspaper ads can be tricky, but if you can fit all the important information into the advertisement without looking rushed or cheap, you won't have to purchase too much of an ad to get your point across. Be sure your ad contains information about your website if you're pressed for space. Larger budgets may prefer ads with pictures, logos, or coupons.

The Grass-Roots Campaign: With little budget, there is still hope for advertising your haunted house. All you need is your imagination, volunteers, and plenty of paper and ink. Most supermarkets and budget stores have bulletin board areas for customers to utilize. Print simple fliers with spooky graphics from free clip art links from Pumpkinpatchesandmore and awesome logos you can create yourself from Cool Text. Be sure the fliers mention target audience (use skeleton scale 1-5 skulls for how scary for a nice affect), price, schedule, location, and website information. Fliers can be put on doors at apartment complexes (be sure to check regulations of the community prior to handing out leaflets) and given out at local sporting events like football games. One of the best ways of advertising your haunted house is to pay a popular teen to hand fliers or giveaways (explained below) out at school. After a few customers visit your haunted house, just word of mouth can be the best way to advertise your haunted house yet.

The Giveaway Campaign: Who doesn't love a freebie? Print business cards for your haunted house and use a hole punch in one corner. Tie a plastic spider ring to the card and hand them out to potential customers. Candy giveaways are not suggested, but pencils with the haunted house information might also be a surprisingly affective way of advertising your haunted house. Group discounts is another method of giveaway that can effectively advertise your haunted house. Offering an incentive for groups of five or more will assure plenty of great buzz.

The Pumpkin Patch Campaign: Offer a "You scratch my back, I scratch Yours" incentive to the most popular local pumpkin patch as a great way to advertise your haunted house. Offer to advertise the local pumpkin patch at your haunted house in exchange for them offering giveaways or fliers to their customers. Many orchard-style pumpkin patches will be thrilled with the extra advertising, but to help your cause, be sure to purchase a few pumpkins from them before asking. It's a minimal expense in most cases that could be a great path to advertising your haunted house.

The Work Together Campaign: See if there is a Haunted House Business alliance in your area or online for your state. Grouping haunted house information together benefits haunted house advertisement campaigns because it offers more options to your potential audience. In the same aspect, you can advertise your haunted house by having a writer review it along with a few others in your area and post an article about it online or in the local paper. Seek out writers and bloggers who review haunted houses to help advertise your haunted house even more.

No matter what method you choose when advertising your haunted house, remember that the most important way to assure a successful event is to give the audience what they are looking for. Be sure not to advertise to the wrong audience and point out the features of your haunted house honestly to assure no disappointments. Advertising your haunted house can be a lot of work, but the outcome can be the difference between a slow season and a successful one.