Top 12 Escape Room Marketing Ideas to Boost Business

Escape rooms are an increasingly evolving and creative industry. Given the wide spectrum of age groups that it caters to, the growing popularity of the escape room activity hardly comes as a surprise. Several new brands are springing up these days to meet the growing demand for this one-of-its-kind entertainment globally.

And amidst this cut-throat competition, the need to come up with innovative marketing strategies has become imperative for any escape business- be it a huge escape franchise in Chicago or the local mystery rooms in Bangalore. Though on the surface, marketing might look like a very formula-abiding phenomenon, the truth is, even for the same industry, one strategy might work for a particular company while it may tank for another organization.

This article will provide you with the details of the top 12 escape room marketing ideas that can help you boost up your escape business today!

1. The proximity of your escape room venture has a major role!

Probably one of the most crucial factors that either elevate or push down your ranking on Google is the proximity of your entertainment center. Whenever any user looks up relevant escapades in their city, Google automatically tends to show those venues that are located at or close to the city center.

But, even this may at times fluctuate based on how much knowledge is fed on Google’s database and how much knowledge it has of the given user. Because Google has been denied any access to the user’s location, it is most likely to show up in escape rooms located closest to the city center.

Thus, that being said, there is no denying that setting up your escape room venture at or close to the city center has an immense advantage. It can help you swiftly drive organic traffic to your entertainment center.

2. Set up your Google My Business (GMB) Profile on priority

Your Google My Business profile has a pivotal role to play when it comes to pushing up your visibility in the online markets. However, while providing all your information on Google, double-check it so that it remains accurate and up-to-date.

Messing up your business data on GMB can lead to the spread of misinformation about your business over the internet! The local 3-Pack that is shown to viewers when they search for local businesses shows up in the top 3 businesses that are selected by Google based on:

i. Business name
ii. Category
iii. Address
iv. Opening hours
v. No. of reviews and ratings

So, for businesses who wish to come up on the Local 3-Pack, you must look into the five factors mentioned above. The greater the prominence of your brand on the web, the greater your chances of hitting the Local 3-Pack.

3. Draft an attractive description for your GMB Profile

The description on your GMB profile is what is going to hoard more viewers to your website. So, while you draft it today, make it not just informative but also crisp and precise. Stuffing in your description with useless information is going to be of no help.

Keep an aim of using approximately 700 characters on your GMB description, and inject terms like ‘Escape room in [city name]’ or ‘[city name] escape room’ in it. But even as you use relevant keywords in your description, make sure that it doesn’t sound too robotic.

Google My Business also opens up the opportunity of posting blogs by escape room business owners on their profiles. Unfortunately, not many business owners know about this and thus don’t utilize the amazing benefit that these blog posts offer. Even though these blog posts won’t magically uplift your Google rankings, they can, however, bring in more new customers to your website.

4. Never ignore or neglect the worth of your reviews.

Undeniably, reviews from a vital part of scaling up your escape room business in the markets. Many businesses are often found to neglect the importance of reviews in boosting the growth of their business. The one thing that you thus need to start with is replying to all of your reviews.

For this, make sure to not just focus on GMB reviews but also those that you get on other local or business directories. Remember that having a good rating on the web can help in getting a higher Click Through Rate (CTR) on your business profile. Subsequently, a greater CTR is sure to bring in more viewers to your website in no time!

Replying to your reviews approximately within 24 hours creates a good impression about your business in the minds of your reviewers. Thus, as your customer is then happy, they are more likely to recommend your escape room venture to their friends or family.

Furthermore, in the process of growing and developing your business, know that you are bound to face some negative feedback/reviews from customers. So, when you handle such reviews, make sure to always acknowledge the problem and be polite in your reply. There might be times when you feel that the given customer is not right in what they say. But even then, don’t forget to apologize. However, if the fault is yours, make sure you push your limits and compensate for the same.

5. Keeping up with citations

Citations can play a vital role in boosting your Google rankings. It does not mean that every citation has to link back to your website. Google is smart enough to recognize the name of your business wherever it pops up on the internet and pass over its authority to you.

However, it is your task to check that all the citations possess only the correct and updated information about your business. Aim at searching for local directories on which you can thereby enlist the name of your escape room business.

Upon building citations, the next important task is to ensure that Google knows about its existence. Thus, you must look for suitable indexing services on Google. Once Google comes across those indexes and links in the respective databases, it can undeniably push up your rankings on the search results!

6. Work on getting backlinks to your website

One of the most vital factors that businesses worldwide focus on to uplift their rankings is securing good-quality backlinks. A backlink is a link on any other website that redirects users to your website. It is only by creating specific, relevant, and local backlinks that you can harness more viewers to your website. Moreover, local link building can help drive traffic to your website from relevant local sources. As a result, it increases the possibilities of converting those visitors into customers.

Furthermore, it is also by securing a greater number of high-quality backlinks on the web that you can gain more prominence and credibility on the web. Now, there can be a wide variety of ways in which you can secure good-quality backlinks for your escape room venture. Some of them are:

• News websites based on a local relevant industry
• Webpages of local businesses
• Blogs are written by local writers
• Webpages of local events
• Press releases
• Websites that have already used your brand name
• Writing guest post articles
• Hosting sponsored or local events, etc.

7. Extensively work on keyword research

Your customers are all going to rely on the use of keywords to look for relevant content or websites on the web. To make your website rank higher when a user searches for content on the web, ensure that you use well-researched keywords on your website.

There can be a wide range of keywords that you need to focus on, rather than only emphasizing ‘escape rooms in [city name].’ You can try interchanging the place of your seed terms in your basic keyword and search again to get newer and more relevant keywords!

Several tools are available in the market these days which can help you research and find out the best keywords for your content. You can use SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner or Ahrefs for this purpose. It is only the use of the right keywords which will ensure that your content reaches the target audience.

8. Utilize Google Ads and reap its benefits

To enhance the SEO strategies for escape room business, Google Ads can be an immensely helpful tool. Even though it might not be as useful as directly bringing up your search rankings, it can help you learn more about the real-time search trends in the online markets. Thus, it can, in turn, have an indirect impact on bringing up your website in the Google search results.

You can use a relevant ad to collect enough data on whether a certain thing is trending or not. Based on your results, you can then work on your escape room marketing strategies. Even though running a Google Ad is not often a budget-friendly way to work keyword research, it can, however, help you in acquiring relevant and real-time data.

9. On-Page optimization of your website

The first aspect to look into is your title tag, meta description, URL, and the initial part of your body. Ensure that in all these parts, you are skillfully able to include your brand’s name along with important keywords like ‘escape rooms in [city name]’ or others. The meta title and the meta description are the first few things that your viewers notice; it is thus essential to incorporate the name of your brand herein.

Remember to never overuse the H1 tag in your content such that there is never more than one on every page. Keep in mind that your headline must not be too monotonous but is rather catchy. Do not, however, get too enthusiastic about designing it and end up creating it in a way that remains unrelatable to the content.

Using geotags on your images can also be a unique and beneficial way to attract more viewers to your website. It gives you space to include additional metadata like latitudes, longitudes, copyright, etc., that are relevant to your brand’s webpage.

10. Make your escape room website mobile-friendly

These days, there is a greater hike in the number of mobile users in contrast to users relying on their desktops or laptops to search for something on the web. Keeping this crucial factor in mind, make sure that your escape room website is mobile-user friendly.

Do not be far too overwhelmed in creating your website and end up creating one that is not suitably viewed through mobile phones. Failing to design a mobile-user-friendly website can make you lose a lot of customers today!

You can use a simple test like Google’s Mobile Testing Tool to find out whether your brand’s website is suitable for mobile users. Based on the results you receive, you can then work accordingly and improve your site!

11. Internal linking of your website

Internal linking of the different pages of your website is also an exceptionally vital task. It is internal linking that determines how fast and proficiently link equity can flow through the different pages on your website.

Make sure that you link from your blogs to the pages containing your core category and important services. While linking a blog post to your brand’s homepage, use anchor texts like ‘escape rooms in [city name]’ or anything suitable.

Linking to your core service pages needs to be done from your brand’s homepage. It needs to be done not only from your menu but also from the content present on your homepage. Yet again, make sure to use relevant anchor texts as you work on this internal linking. Even as you use anchor texts, ensure that they are relevant and not ambiguous.

12. Proper use of CTAs in your content

CTAs or Call To Action is simply a statement that ‘calls’ up your viewers to take ‘action.’ Businesses tend to use CTAs as a vital part of their marketing strategies to trigger people in clicking a button or link. However, simply placing a button or link isn’t enough to ensure that your viewers will click on it.

What you can do instead is take them through your seamlessly woven content right to the place where your intended button or link lies. Give them that one last push or prompt to ensure that they click on the desired area. Surprisingly enough, the right use of CTAs can amazingly enhance the number of customers on your website in no time!

Conclusion

While our list of the top 12 escape room marketing strategies comes to your end here, it doesn’t mean you have to limit yourself to these. Try out different marketing strategies and plans to figure out what works best for your company. Remember, experimentation and constant result analysis are the key here.