How Entertainment and leisure businesses can finish 2021 with a bang

With the end of 2021 in sight (where has the year gone?!), it also brings us to some big occasions over the next few months, which can really help your business finish the year off with a bang. With that in mind, we’ve taken a look at few of the big dates for your diary and how you can use them to market your business, increase footfall and generate customer loyalty. 

Halloween

Celebrating Halloween is a must for businesses in the indoor entertainment sector, we know from when we managed multiple adventure parks just how excited children get for halloween! However, you’ll also want to consider how you can maximise the appeal of this to the person picking up the bill – the parents.

First off, make sure you put as much effort as you can into your halloween decorations and get your venues looking spooky, it’ll make you stand out and add to your appeal as a destination to visit. You can also get staff dressed up in their best outfits, maybe put on some Halloween sessions where you’ll be blasting Halloween classics (Monster Mash anyone?) out of the speaker and giving out free sweets to guests dressed up. 

Now you’ve sorted out everything you need for children to have a good time, you need to make sure you have an offering that keeps parents or guardians occupied too – and what better way to do this than a solid food and drink offering! Of course classic halloween grub will always be a hit – and you can take a look at a few here – but also think about other types of food and drink we associate with this time of the year, such as a pumpkin spiced latte! 

Nail these and you’ll blow your competition out of the water when it comes to effort put in to impress your guests at a fun time of the year! 

Thanksgiving

For our customers across the pond, Thanksgiving is a huge celebration and certainly something to consider incorporating into your autumn plan. Given that Thanksgiving is a celebration of been thankful for what you have, we would view this as the perfect opportunity to give back to your community and build loyalty.  

For example, if your team are up for the challenge you could do a charity challenge with all proceeds going back to a local charity, keeping a real community feel to your efforts. A couple of ideas are:

• State stationary bike cycle – Could your team cumulatively cycle the distance it would be to cycle around your state? 
• A community quiz – Why not put together a charity quiz and invite regular customers to attend, with the winner getting a prize and all proceeds going to a local charity. 
• 24 hour challenge – Nothing brings a team together like a 24 hour challenge, and it’s a significantly impressive feat that would likely rack up a lot of donations. You could borrow a rower, stationary bike or treadmill from a local gym and see how far you and your team can rack up in 24 hours!
• A cake sale – A tried and true way to get customers donating to your cause is a good old fashioned cake sale, and to maximise funds you could run this a few days throughout the month of November, mixing up your cake offerings! 

So whilst the focus for Thanksgiving is a little bit different to the other items on this list, giving back to your local community will feel incredibly rewarding as well as boost your perception amongst guests as a company that cares, and that will go a long way to getting loyal customers.

Black Friday & Cyber Monday

The term Black Friday can be traced back to 1960’s Philadelphia, where it was used by police to describe the heavy footfall that would follow the day after Thanksgiving, with this day unofficially regarded as the beginning with Christmas shopping season. However it wasn’t until the 21st century that brands really began focusing on this as a big marketing push!

With the history lesson out of the way, there are plenty of ways operators can look to use Black Friday in their business, for example get creative with membership offerings – why not offer the first three months of a 12 month agreement at a reduced rate? 

You could also consider on the day deals which can be both in your venue and as a part of your website – for example, I’m sure most of us have seen the spinning wheel promotion on websites which allows your guests to enter their email for a reward, and this is a bit more exciting than the usual data capture box – depending on your website platform, you could use a plugin like one of the ones listed here.

Christmas

The biggest celebration across the globe, Christmas is a must celebrate for all Family Entertainment Centres and the possibilities of how to capitalise on this are endless. You can look to set up a Santa’s grotto in your venue if you have the space, as we know children will be over the moon to meet the “real” Santa! 

Again like with Halloween, investing in a good display of Christmas decorations can really help set yourselves apart from your competitors and make your venue the place to be this winter. 

It’s also impossible to talk about Christmas without mentioning this writers particular favourite aspect of it… THE FOOD!! 

December is the perfect time to reintroduce those Christmas classics such as candy canes, gingerbread men, hot chocolates with all the marshmallows and whipped cream you can get on top and why not consider mulled wine if you have an alcohol license?

Finally, it’s worth noting that the average consumer expects to spend $213.49 on gift cards, so it’s also essential that you have a good gift card offering to entice some of your customers to give your experience as a Christmas present to their loved ones! 

The next few months offer some fantastic opportunities to market your business, increase footfall, grow loyalty within your customer base and finish the year with a bang!

If you’re looking for a venue management system to manage every aspect of your business, just fill out the form below and one of our helpful team will be in touch!