0 to Low-Budget Marketing Strategies for FECs
The FUNtrepreneurs webinars are a series for FEC owner/operator, an industry executive, or vendor. This episode of The FUNtrepreneurs, “0 to Low-Budget Marketing Strategies for FECs” will dive into the multiple ways you can cost-effectively market your facility.
Your host Bob Krause shows you the best practices for implementing the following marketing strategies for your family entertainment center, whether you are currently closed, open with restrictions, or fully open. He will walk you through the following topics; COVID Update, What’s Your Message. How to Make a Video, Crowd Sourcing, Public Relations, Third-Party Tools, and
Hot Tips.
Chrissy Spear: All right, everyone. Welcome to our Deep Dive, $0 to Low Cost Budget Marketing for FECs. We’d like to welcome everybody. I am your host, Chrissy Sphere. I’m your moderator and your cohost. I will be introducing and chiming in and [00:00:30] answering questions and keeping track of our Q&A. The next slide. United Play is actually the producer of FUNtrepreneurs. This is a little clip about what we do. We are a manufacturer, designer and installation of indoor attraction.
Bob Krause: [00:01:00] This is one of our latest projects in Chandler, Arizona. We just completed about two months ago.
Chrissy Spear: All right, and today’s agenda, we are going to do a short COVID update for everybody because I know people are joining us from actually all over the world. We actually got somebody from Australia last week.
Bob Krause: Hello, mate.
Chrissy Spear: I know, so awesome. What is your message? How to make videos? How [00:01:30] to make them work for you? We’re going to talk about crowdsourcing, public relations, third-party tools and we have some hot tips and some Q&A. We are going to do some Q&A in between each of these two, so you don’t necessarily have to hold your questions all the way to the end, but we will, after each subject, allow for some Q&A, so feel free, if you do have questions, to put them in the comments. Our host is Bob Krause. Bob has spent [00:02:00] 25 years in corporate events. He’s launched multiple brands. He has been a writer and a speaker for many businesses and colleges. Bob is the founder of Uptown Jungle Fun Parks. I believe there’s nine of them, eight or nine?
Bob Krause: Eight actually.
Chrissy Spear: Eight of them. He is the partner and creative director of United Play. Bob’s also a father of three and a husband [00:02:30] of 32 years. Quite an awesome guy. I’m going to go ahead and turn it over to Bob and, Bob, take it away.
Bob Krause: Thanks, Chrissy. Welcome, everybody. So glad you’re here to be part of this today. Just so we’re clear, the intent of our webcast here is to help educate people in our industry, but it’s really these applications today we’re going to talk about will help any business to find ways to navigate through COVID. [00:03:00] I hope you find some of these things informative and useful. Along the way, make some mental notes, write some things down. Really, what I’m hoping we do is we create a couple of triggers in your heart and in your mind of like you can do a little better to help market your business when there’s very little or no money to do that with in such tough time.
Here’s a question I have for you first and I’d love it if you could put in the chat, if you could put in the little chat text area, [00:03:30] if you’re currently open or if your business is closed. The reason we want to know is it gives me a gauge of where our discussion will go as we move along.
Chrissy Spear: Actually, you guys should be able to see a Q&A button. Go ahead and put it in the Q&A if you can.
Bob Krause: There you go. Put it in the Q&A, just let us know if you’re open or closed. It just gives us a little data, but I think you’re going to find that this information is good for you whether you are open or closed and that’s our intent. Again, to inform and educate, to help you think of ways [00:04:00] that you can stay in touch with the people who love you guys so much and then how do you stay in a place where you can continue to bring people into your park and keep them aware of what you’re doing during this very, very, very difficult time.
Chrissy Spear: Some of the answers we have just to update you guys are we have some people are open and some people are open with limited hours. It looks like a lot of you guys are full open, is that correct?
Bob Krause: Good. That’s great. [00:04:30] We’re glad you’re here because you’ll find that a lot of this is probably going to be more applicable when you’re open than when you’re close, so that’s really good. This is a common theme I want to leave with you which is sharing. People have asked, “Bob, why are you giving away trade secrets or things you’ve learned?” I don’t consider any of this to be a trade secret per se. These are just generic general ideas of things that I’ve learned in marketing and they’re not really specific [00:05:00] to any one business that I’ve done which comes from the 30 years of marketing and I hope you’ll find that this applies. Keep in mind too, Chrissy owned and operated a very large PR firm before I grabbed her to come and I stole her away from her company to come with us full time. This would be a fun trip for us together.
I want to start with just a quick COVID update. I know it’s the last thing we want to talk about. We’re all sick of COVID. In fact, COVID sucks. That’s my underlying theme, but I think it’s really, really important [00:05:30] that we understand where we’re at right now and what drives this information. With that being said, take a look at this. Now, I got rid of the data from Europe and Asia and other places, just focused here in North America and I apologize if we have some foreign countries there, we can send you other data, but if you go on yougov.com, you will find they have all kinds of great data.
Now, this was pulled as of yesterday. You can see the number of people in each market who say they’re avoiding crowded [00:06:00] places. You can see what happened starting back in March or April, there was a big scare that it went up and it leveled down a little bit. Then, it went back up a bit. Well, you’ll see that even the last two weeks, there’s been a little bit of an uptick. I guess it depends where you’re living. I’m in California, and quite frankly, things are going to mellowing here a bit because we’re getting more control, but I think in other areas, it’s growing. You can understand this and you’ll see the other one, the chart on the right. A number of people say [00:06:30] that they’re very or somewhat scared that they will contract COVID. You can see this is still a very live issue.
Another one that I thought would be very interesting, especially with the elections coming up is you can take a just quick look at this. Everything in blue is you got the Democrats, Independents, Republicans at the bottom. If it’s blue, it means we definitely want things to reopen. Red is probably a reopen, and then, green is we would prefer to be closed. [00:07:00] Of course, yellow, remaining closed. You can see between the parties how they feel and what their thoughts are about the safety of our country and being affected by COVID. Very interesting data lets you just pull from that.
Now, here’s something we do know for a fact. Everybody is hurting right now, right? Everybody’s hurting. I guess unless you’re a manufacturing equipment for the COVID industry or you’re in healthcare or [00:07:30] a few select industries, most businesses are really affected. If you’re in the family entertainment center industry and probably the food industry as well, hospitality and so forth, which I have a deep passion for and love for all of our restaurateurs out there, you’re going to be working on very little to zero to low budget, right? I think we can all agree. Money’s really tight because even if you are open, most of us are going to be at a very limited capacity, as Chrissy said earlier. That’s [00:08:00] something to keep in mind that open is good, but open with full capacity is really good.
Limited capacity has a lot of struggles, right? You’re still paying rent. Hopefully you’ve negotiated something with your landlord, but you keep having to pay the rent. You’ve got employees in. I know with having eight locations and six of them are open, two are closed here in California, having limited participation is still a very difficult thing. We’re making an assumption that most of us would be working on low [00:08:30] to no budgets. Before we get started, I want you to think about something and that is, when you begin your marketing efforts or what you’re doing right now, what is your message? This is super important, right?
Because it’s not just about, “Hey, we’re open. We’re this. We’re that,” you really got to decide what is the exact message we’re trying to say. Here are some things to consider. Again, I just put some bullets down. “Hey, we’re close, but we’re getting ready for your next visit,” meaning, ” [00:09:00] Hey, we’re making some improvements internally,” or, “Hey, we’re closed for now, but making some big changes that you’re going to love.” These are great things to get people excited to come to your location when you open up again or, “We’re close, but we want to hear from you. Could you tell us some things that would be helpful to help us as we get ready to open again? What would you like?”
Personally, I’m a big fan of that. The more you can put it into the hands of the customer to tell you, the better off you are. In fact, I will tell you [00:09:30] that there’s a rock climbing place in San Diego, my buddy is a member of. He was telling me about this complaint board that they have. It’s a cork board and they have a little holder with a 3 x 5 cards and a black Sharpie pen. Any complaint you have, you write it in red and you post it on the board and everybody can see the complaints. The goal of the company is that those complaints are dealt with every single day and removed from the board. Until they’ve been resolved, they remain [00:10:00] on the board.
What it does is a transparent way to the customer saying, “Hey, listen, we’re not perfect, but we’re working on things,” or, “Guess what? We’re listening and we get you and we know exactly what you want. Thanks for telling us.” I just love that idea. Imagine if, while you’re closed, you said, “You know what? We’d like to do better. What could we do? Got some ideas? Share those with us.” Maybe even incentivize those people to share an idea with you and you give them something free to return with, right? “Hey, come see what your suggestions [00:10:30] did for us. These are great things to think about,” or how about, “We’re open and we’re still having fun, but your health and safety still in mind.” Well, a lot of people are doing that. They’re doing a good job.
“We know things are hard, but we’ll get through this together,” have the empathy or, “We understand your concerns and we’re working really hard to ensure your safety.” I think those are going to be critical. As much as we’ve seen the masks, the cleaning and all that kind of stuff, I don’t think you could ever stop giving that message right now. I think it’s how [00:11:00] you can do it creatively and fun. Maybe there’s some unique twists you could take, telling a mundane and boring story. Maybe you could show the youth, the kids or the young adults that work in your place doing something fun to make the cleaning fun for everybody or something like that. All right, enough for that. Now, here’s something else.
Chrissy Spear: [crosstalk 00:11:19]. Let me ask this question really quickly.
Bob Krause: Sure.
Chrissy Spear: This is from Christy Dillard, because it pertains to that specifically. She said, “Is it better to not mention anything about the whole COVID situation? I know people are [00:11:30] more than tired of hearing about all the negative daily.”
Bob Krause: Well, I think that’s a really good question. Trust me, we have gone through that ourselves saying, “What if we just avoid the subject? What if we don’t talk about it too much and just let people come in?” There’s this idea that there is a, I heard this from Michael Browning from Urban Air. He said there’s like an adoption theory that 20% of all people who come to your park regularly [00:12:00] are probably going to come back and they’re probably in your park now. Those are the early adopters like, “Hey, you know what? We’re good. We’ll be safe. They do a good job in there.” Then, another 40% of those are going to be the secondary adopters that’d come in after that. I really like that theory. I believe that he’s accurate.
Now, 60% of your audience are going to be back within a reasonable amount of time, but then there could be another 30% to 40% of those that are going to be more reluctant. We have to be convinced on how to come back. [00:12:30] If you want to get some of those people back, you’re going to need to tell a message that creates a sense of confidence for them, let them know that you’re serious about the things that they’re worried about. I think an answer to your question, I would personally advise to not avoid it, but maybe make it something that you let them know that you’re addressing it, but maybe put more of an emphasis on the fact that our park is clean, it’s friendly, it’s fun, and it’s ready for you to return. Maybe take that in mind.
Chrissy Spear: [00:13:00] I think it also depends on the areas that you’re in. Some places are not hit nearly as hard, say, someplace like California. I think you have to take that into consideration too, like where are you and if you’ve never been shut down and it’s a very low chance in your area, you might consider that.
Bob Krause: My son was just in Wyoming this weekend. He’s like, “Dad, you would never even know COVID was happening around here.” It just [00:13:30] depends where you’re at. That’s a really good point, Chrissy. I think those are good things to keep in mind. I wouldn’t avoid it, but maybe just find a way to address it, make it simple. All right, so I’m going to go back to the slide I mentioned earlier. Here’s something else, I’ve been doing a lot of homework for this particular webinar. I love to study see what the experts are saying. Majority were saying, “Listen, right now, it’s not about you.”
People do have empathy for business owners, so don’t get me wrong. Everybody hopes that the entrepreneur [00:14:00] can stay in business, but your message should be, “It’s not about us, it’s really all about you. Tell us what we can do to make this better for you,” or, “You know what? We feel your pain. We know what it’s like to be cooped up at home and how excited you are to get out and play or come to a restaurant or enjoy ice cream or whatever it’s going to be, right?” These things are very, very personal and everybody can relate, but remember to make your message feel warm and genuine and show empathy in what you’re doing because people [00:14:30] will feel that. If it’s genuine, it’s a very warm touch that you can create as you’re communicating through your various levels of communication. We’ll talk more about that here in the next few minutes.
The other thing is, keep in mind, how can you sue their pain points, right? That’s another big part of this to be candid is, what can you do to make them comfortable, feel good that you’re okay with everything? You’re going to need to learn those things [00:15:00] by asking questions. The more you can learn, the better off you are. We’ve done that over the years in our business, having groups of moms and dads together and we ask questions to learn what they want. Those things are really important.
Chrissy Spear: It’s not necessarily just what the pain points around COVID. Pain points around homeschooling if that’s a situation. Their pain points don’t necessarily have to be COVID involved.
Bob Krause: Good point, Chrissy. In fact, could you turn [00:15:30] your location … We’ll talk about that a little later. Could you turn your location into a homeschooling place where at least you can get some rent during the week or could you do something for kids with special needs, that instead of it being closed in the early mornings could be used for something useful? Could you donate that space to a good cause that you could then get some, I guess, good loving back for all the goodness you put into your local area, right? People will [00:16:00] be more committed to you by the goodness of the things you did when you could. Those are good things to consider. Let’s see. What’s going on here? The next thing I’d like to do is just … Chrissy, are there any more questions that are popping up along the way?
Chrissy Spear: No, that was, I think, the question. Do you guys have any additional questions just of what we went over right now?
Bob Krause: I’d like to just see if we can answer them, or if you have a comment, it’s not even a question, if you’re like, “Hey, here’s [00:16:30] something we’ve experienced,” again, I love to bring that sharing mentality and feel free to share some thoughts along the way.
Chrissy Spear: We really, really want to collect information from you guys as well based on everything that we are offering you today. Any comments that you do have, feel free to put them in the Q&A.
Bob Krause: That’d be great. We’ll just continue on. The biggest message here is that what’s going to be important is to continue to communicate with your customers. That’s going to come through all kinds of different ways. Again, the theme is [00:17:00] this is zero to low budget. What can you do to take things that you already have or can create for low cost and get those out to your customers, photos, videos, testimonials? Can you have some sort of events that happen in your place? The blogs, the video blogging, you might do and we’ll talk more about PR as well. One of the things we want to talk about is how videos work for you today, okay?
Here’s some things to keep in mind. I come from a world. I spent a [00:17:30] large portion of my career doing very high-end video production, anywhere from $10,000 productions to $200,000 productions with big crews and lighting. That world still exists, although it’s more of the commercial side, but to be candid, as we kept seeing the advent of technology, Android, iPhones, these types of things, it’s amazing what can happen by putting the power of these devices in our hands. Now, young people, there’s an elementary school right [00:18:00] near my home where they have a full editing system and kids are learning from the age of fourth grade on how to video edit. It’s a changing world.
Here’s some things to think about. How can you make videos that work for you and your audience, right? Even if you were closed, it’s important for you to stay on top of mind of your customers. Keep in mind that the videos can be prerecorded. These are things you make in advance. They can be live videos that you do on Facebook, Stories on Instagram, and [00:18:30] then of course, any of the Live on Facebook, Instagram, all these types of things that I mentioned a second ago. Those are great ways to put content up. Let’s just say worst-case scenario, you’re closed right now. Well, what’s wrong with having the owner or the manager go, “Hi, everybody. It’s Tom here,” or, “Susan, and I just want to give you an update what’s going on around the park.”
Maybe you’re just doing a live video showing people at work, cleaning, doing whatever. Maybe you’re rehabbing a spot, putting in new attractions. Maybe you’re redoing your restaurant, whatever [00:19:00] it might be, but people would rather be communicated to, because again, they know that you’re working in their behalf and what’s interesting in this case, there could be some empathy for them that they feel for you when you get ready to open. They can’t wait to be there for you, but along the way, you can say, “Oh, man, it must be so hard being cooped up with kids and being you, poor kids, stuck at a desk all day at home. We can’t wait for you to come run down our thing and jump on,” or whatever. You get the idea where I’m going. That’s going to be an [00:19:30] important part of this.
Keep in mind this that good video content is more likely to generate your social signals that you’re going to need than any other form. It’s going to be better than anything in print, the photos because people love to watch videos. They love to see real people, real things happening and we become a very video-centric world. Video really is king over everything else. Plus, it’s easy to consume. It’s more memorable and these things stick in [00:20:00] ahead. We’re going to encourage you to really think through the power of video more than just photos and the written word.
Some things to keep in mind is that there are all kinds of different videos. We’re going to talk about some of those different types. Facebook videos. Chrissy, do you want to take a minute just chat a little bit more about the variations in the difference between and I’ll also bring up your screenshots next?
Chrissy Spear: Yes, I have to apologize. We have an opportune time for people outside to [00:20:30] be doing yardwork, so I apologize in advance. For Facebook, I just want to introduce that and say, Facebook is a really great place for prerecorded, pre-thought out videos. You guys know there are several different platforms that you can put videos on. I just wanted to give you best practices where you can put videos, how you can create those videos. [00:21:00] For Facebook, when you have your phone and I just want to explain this to you, these are your phone right here. There are different ways you can shoot. You can shoot vertical and you can shoot horizontal.
For Facebook best practices, especially if you’re going to do any advertising or boosting of posts, you want to do it sideways. You want to have it horizontal. That’s the best practice for that. Traditionally, [00:21:30] these videos are going to be more planned out, so you want to think ahead. Are you making a promotional video out of promoting different places in your park or is it COVID preparedness? Are you promoting some sort of events that’s going to happen in the future and you have an outline? There’s different things that you can plan ahead and more produce than what would be like a Story or a Live.
Bob Krause: Chrissy, you know what’s interesting? I’m sorry to interrupt. You know what’s funny? I see people shoot video like this [00:22:00] all the time because that’s how we hold our phone, right? It’s a natural way.
Chrissy Spear: Right.
Bob Krause: It’s funny I always remind my friends, “Hey, turn it this way. You get a lot more video in your camera.” Thing to consider.
Chrissy Spear: That is best practices if you’re going to also do a video and put it on YouTube or one of the other video housing places and there are definitely other uses for this. [00:22:30] Bob, go for it one more slide. Then now, I want to tell you guys about the vertical use. Vertical really is going to be what you’re going to use for impromptu Stories, Lives, IGTV. Now, you can do Stories on Facebook. You can do Stories on Instagram. You can do Lives on either one and IGTV is on Instagram. Stories and [00:23:00] Lives right now and IGTV as well as I think some of you guys might know TikTok or Reels for Instagram. Instagram Reels is the competitor for TikTok in case it goes away. These are shorter or more impromptu situations.
The Lives and the IGTV, they can be longer, but typically, your Stories only give you 15 seconds. Now, you can [00:23:30] roll those 15 seconds over and over again, but so just you know. For these, these are really good for highlighting things that are happening in the moment, like highlighting if your staff is cleaning, highlighting if you have a special event that is currently going on and you want to show people what’s happening right now in your site. Like Bob mentioned earlier, maybe you have brought in, say, special needs or kindergarteners who have been cooped up or [00:24:00] even people that are essential. You bring these people in and you give them specific times, whether it’s donated time, whether you’ve given them a discount.
Those are really great ways to actually show how you’re helping the community. It’s free publicity. We don’t like to say like doing something good is going to give you publicity, but that’s the truth of the matter. That is what it is. If you are doing something really well and doing something really good for your community, [00:24:30] people want to know about that. Those are really great, special events, featuring attractions. Those are really good. Now, Bob, go back to the last one.
Bob Krause: You got it.
Chrissy Spear: Sorry about that.
Bob Krause: There you go.
Chrissy Spear: We got out of order. I just want to walk you guys through this really quickly. This is our Instagram account. I just want to show you so that you guys can understand a little bit if you don’t have knowledge of how to do these. On the first one, [00:25:00] you guys will see where it’s circled, the UP logo is circled, that’s how you initiate doing a Live, doing a Story, doing a Reel. The next page that you’re going to get to, it’s going to give you the option and you can do a Live, a Story, or Reel. We have a picture of one of our toddler areas that we’ve created and say we want to do you know, hypothetically, is a video of somebody playing on one of these or [00:25:30] maybe there’s a cleaning agent that we’ve used on it. We decide, “Do we want to do a Live? Do we want to do a Story? Do we want to do a Reel?” and we record that.
If we do a Story, we just hit that middle button right there, the little white button in the middle and that will start to record. Then when you’re done, you just hit send or you can do images, pictures, but you just hit send right there. That will send it. You have the options of doing typing [00:26:00] in there little descriptions. If you do a Live, then you go to the very last slide, so you’ve recorded it and then you want to share it. You want to share it on your IGTV. That will make it a post. That will also share it on the IGTV app and you can then share it into your actual Story. There’s multiple ways that you guys can utilize Instagram for several different types of posting.
Bob Krause: [00:26:30] IGTV is Instagram Television, just so we’re clear.
Chrissy Spear: IGTV is Instagram Television and that is for longer like say you record for over 15 seconds. Then, it’s going to automatically want to boost you, put you into that IGTV.
Bob Krause: Chrissy, I will tell you, my daughter and my sons all use IG, so they do a lot of Instagram. I’m still a Facebook guy because I guess I’m a little bit more, whatever what you want to call, old school.
Chrissy Spear: Statistically, [00:27:00] your Stories and your Lives are what are getting watched by the most people, even your parents. Now, I’m a mother of two older teenagers and they use the Lives. They don’t even use the actual post part of it. They use the Lives and the IGTV and they also use TikTok which is a whole another thing, but you don’t [00:27:30] have to have a huge staff. You don’t have to hire somebody for this just to do this. Enlist your staff. If you guys have an extra phone, enlist your staff, give them the login to your Instagram, give them the login to your Facebook or give them access to your Facebook or give them access to your Tiktok. Either one, give them that access and then let them help you.
Bob Krause: Not only that, but you can give them some [00:28:00] tools. We’re going to talk about some things to help make their production quality a little higher. We’ll move into that. I did want to show you something. Chrissy, thank you for this great information. We’re going to come back to her in just a second. I want to show you a funny video. People think that high-end production matters. Well, let me tell you something. I’m learning over time that authenticity is what matters most. Even on national television now like big commercials and everything, low-quality video is now considered cool and chic because that’s what we see [00:28:30] in our phone and other things. It’s been an incredible ride to watch, but watch this next video. This is a gentleman, one of our clients in Hiram Georgia.
Speaker 3: Just take a look around. You see it. All that metal has been put together.
Bob Krause: This was about a week after we came in and started building a park for him in Georgia.
Speaker 3: Foam Pit over there. The Ninja Course is coming in.
Bob Krause: Listen how he talks.
Speaker 3: Right there is the Wipe Out. [00:29:00] Here’s the big trampolines. Check that out.
Chrissy Spear: Very authentic. Very organic.
Bob Krause: Now, he’s saying, “Honey, where you at?” This is why.
Speaker 3: Trampolines in. Wow, what is she doing over there? What is she doing? You’re supposed to be coming over here.
Bob Krause: These videos we’re getting thousands and thousands of views and I love Ben because-
Speaker 3: We got the blacklights working.
Bob Krause: [00:29:30] I love the way Ben does his videos because it’s very authentic. He starts every video with bigger update, bigger update, bigger update. I love how he just starts it the same way every time. There’s his wife jumping around. Now, he’s talking about the job fair. “We hired a hundred people.”
Chrissy Spear: [crosstalk 00:29:51] worked for him.
Bob Krause: The point being here is that, and I’ll stop now, was it’s not hard to make videos, right? [00:30:00] I’ll be honest with you. If you just simply go on YouTube, now this is no lie. My son graduated from college a year and a half ago as an industrial designer. He said, “Dad, the greatest tricks and things that I learned to become a really good designer, I learned from the best designers on YouTube, not in school.” Here, he got this degree and paid all this money and learn from these brilliant professors, but the real application to the most modern designs, he was learning on [00:30:30] YouTube. I would encourage you to spend time. You can learn anything on YouTube. If you’re not sure what to do, get on YouTube and look.
Chrissy Spear: Like editing your videos. If you want to use higher quality editing products, there’s free editing products out there that you can use. There’s low budget editing products out there that you can use.
Bob Krause: If you own an Apple computer, you can do a little bit of editing right on your iPhone even. You can download all kinds of really cool apps. I show you this also that you can start [00:31:00] just on Amazon for under $100, you can buy a gimbal which is basically a device that holds your camera perfectly still and you could run through the park and it holds it really still. There’s another one I was going to show you a vloggers kit, which has the light and the microphone and all that for like $69. You can imagine just for under $200, you can equip your team at your office with a light microphone, a neat little mobile device that keeps it steady if you wanted it.
When you have those kind of toys, it makes [00:31:30] those love working with cameras and video, it gives them a little more something fun to do and be creative with. Highly suggest that you look at these opportunities. Keep in mind that our theme is zero to low cost. Again, we’re trying to show you things you can do for very little money. Now, I know before we get-
Chrissy Spear: Before we go on to trivia, let’s answer a couple of the questions. Can we do that really quick, just so we don’t get out of the context? One of the things, Christy Dillard, she [00:32:00] asked a couple of questions, but one of them I wanted to address was TikTok because we have not. A lot of people are uncertain about TikTok right now and we don’t know if it’s staying or going, but we have TikTok and Reels. Reels is basically the new thing that’s come around from Instagram to compete with TikTok, but you guys, TikTok is very, very real. Christy’s comment was, she’s turned over her TikTok [00:32:30] to her stuff and she couldn’t be happier. It is so fantastic.
There are mothers there. It hashtags just the same as you would Instagram. You guys cannot afford to miss that free app and that free avenue. It’s very, very, very relevant. I know a lot of people, especially adults don’t want to get out of that comfort zone. They’re still just getting ready, getting into like Instagram, but [00:33:00] It’s a real thing. Then the other one Christy said was, with all the bars closing, they’re partnering up with trivia hosts and doing family trivia nights. That is bringing new customers in and helping them fill the void. They’re utilizing their facilities which I think is really, really great. Then, there’s one question that says, “What type of events can I market for inhouse bounce house-only space? I’m running out [00:33:30] of ideas.” I think we can answer that when we get to the PR side of it. Let’s hold off on that one when we get to PR, but we’ll answer them.
Bob Krause: Good question by the way and thanks for the contributions. As we move forward, I thought it would be important, and by the way, when we talk about TikTok, just for those who’ve never been on, you shoot a funny little video, it repeats itself and it’s meant to be humorous and it’s as simple as that. The name, it’s irrelevant to the fun of what it is, but just so you know, it is [00:34:00] very relevant. Now with that being said, who are the owners? When did YouTube begin? Keep in mind, Google now owns YouTube, but here’s my question. What year did YouTube launch? Was it 2003, 2004 or 2005?
Chrissy Spear: Put your answers in the chat or the Q&A.
Bob Krause: What are you getting there?
Chrissy Spear: [00:34:30] We’ve got one, 2005.
Bob Krause: Who was that person?
Chrissy Spear: Christy.
Bob Krause: Hey, Christy. Here we go. Let’s see what the answer is. This was the same year that YouTube came out and these are the top 10 songs of that year.
Chrissy Spear: To just give you a hint.
Bob Krause: The answer is [00:35:00] 2004, ladies and gentlemen. Now here’s what’s fun. It’s been a long time, right? 16 years. Look at this. This is the first video ever made on YouTube.
Speaker 4: [inaudible 00:35:20] really, really, really long [inaudible 00:35:26].
Bob Krause: That’s actually Jawed Karim, who was one of the founders [00:35:30] of YouTube. They came from, I think it was from eBay or one of those companies. No. It was the company that did all the funding for it, for eBay, but that’s him, doing the very first video at the zoo. It’s now got like … I think it’s actually like 35 million views. Anyhow, just a little trivia for you, something fun. With that in mind, let’s continue on. I want to talk a little bit about crowdsourcing. You probably heard this term before, [00:36:00] but let’s explain it and let me tell you as a creative individual who’s been around marketing a long time, how incredibly powerful these kind of networks are and the value that you receive for very low cost.
Here’s the name of four different ones, Fiverr, Upwork, Freelancer and 99designs. What these are, these are resources that you can go to and look for talent at a very low cost. Now, one of the first ones I [00:36:30] used years ago was the Fiverr. I’m going to show you something really interesting. I’m actually going to leave my screen here. I’m going to go to the Fiverr websites, which I’m on now. Let’s see if we can move all this stuff out of here. Where’s my Fiverr? Here it is. Here’s Fiverr. It is a site where you can look for different services, graphic design, digital marketing, writing and translation, [00:37:00] video animation and music.
Just to give you an idea. Let’s say you want to do some video animation. You want to make a little logo animation of your company. Now, let me show you what you can get for such a low, low cost. Let’s just say here, some of these. Here is one. I’ll click this just for fun. This will show you some examples of what you can get for $15. If you send a high-res logo [00:37:30] over to them, they’ll animate it to look something like this, right? Even with the sound effect on it. Here’s another one. I don’t know if these ones are moving. Here’s one. Let’s see what this does. I didn’t pick any. I’m just trying to show you what’s available. Again without wanting to pop all over the place, I wanted to show you.
This is logo animation. Some of them are higher. You’ll find people that will even do [00:38:00] basic logo animation for $5. That’s where it’s got to name Fiverr, right? What’s been happening with Fiverr is the quality of the product is getting better. The prices are going up, but I’ll tell you right now, even some of these for like $75, that is a steal compared to what I would have paid three or five years ago, something like this animation, I’m guessing. I would have probably spent a couple thousand dollars. What’s happening now, you’ve got people all over the world, people that live in Third World countries, people [00:38:30] that live throughout Europe and all sudden, $75 to them could be a couple days of wages. They’re willing to put in the time to create something wonderful for you.
Just keep in mind, there’s people that do digital marketing. There’s people who will help you with public relations, podcast marketing. The list goes on and on and on. Sometimes, you can hire people that are experts and they’ll do consultation. You’ll have other people that write a business plan for what you need to do. If you’re working on search engine optimization, they can help you with that. [00:39:00] Just be a little bit careful, though because some of them can use bad practices when they’re doing search engine stuff that can get you in trouble with Google if you’re sending out 10,000 emails to a bunch of strangers that don’t know who you are.
Chrissy Spear: I would suggest that on all of the crowdsourcing sites, always look at the reviews.
Bob Krause: Exactly.
Chrissy Spear: You can tell on many of them.
Bob Krause: Here’s a review down here. Good point, Chrissy, five stars [00:39:30] and you can read all about what this guy does and read constant reviews or how good the work is and that you can’t-
Chrissy Spear: [crosstalk 00:39:39].
Bob Krause: You can’t fake that because you can only comment on somebody after you’ve purchased the product from them. Just so you’re aware, that’s what’s available. Fiverr is one of them. Again, going back, I’m just going to come back to the presentation. I don’t want to spend a ton of time there, but there are some wonderful, wonderful talents out there for very little cost that can help you with everything you might [00:40:00] need. Any more questions before we continue on?
Chrissy Spear: Let me see. I did want to say in regards to business and doing marketing things, there are different … Bob mentioned a couple different platforms. He mentioned Upwork and he mentioned Fiverr. From my experience, I’ve been in marketing for over, I think, 18 years now. Fiverr, you can get some really great stuff. It’s [00:40:30] usually much less expensive. It usually is overseas. You’re hiring people overseas. I have found some amazing people. Upwork is both overseas and in the United States. They both are, but on Upwork, I find that writing, you can find better VA which is a virtual assistant.
Think people that can help you, people that can be more hands on, and in the US, it’s a little bit [00:41:00] more expensive because obviously hiring people in the US can be more expensive. Just so you guys know, those two platforms, they are different levels and there’s a different. What you expect is going to be a little bit different. Like I said, if you need something like press releases written or marketing copy or website copy, things like that, I would definitely go to Upwork. If you need designs and anything graphic design, video editing, you said Fiverr is a great place to go for that websites, [00:41:30] things like that, go there.
Bob Krause: Yeah, just search around. They’re fun. Actually, you can spend a lot of time looking at different artist’s work and get inspired by them. There are even sites where you can bid. You’ll say, “I’m willing to spend $400 on a new logo,” and then, you post it on the site and then people will bid on the opportunity. They’ll say, “I can do it for that,” and then, they’ll submit their actual designs and you get to pick the winner of that group.
Chrissy Spear: 99designs [inaudible 00:42:00].
Bob Krause: [00:42:00] They do a great job. Think about that. You can hire talent and put it out there for bid. Typically, what I would tell you, if you want a good logo, you want to be in that $400 to $1,000 range. That’s going to get you a more hired talent and the people that are worth their time and gold, meaning that they’re really good at coming up with great stuff. The lower end people have a tendency to copy paste other people’s ideas. Just keep that in mind. Next, let’s talk a little bit about public [00:42:30] relations. Now you’re going to be saying, “Public relations? That sounds super boring.” Well, it can be or you can decide to embrace it and let it become your best friend. Public relations is a very, very, very powerful way to, for very little or no cost, get a lot of people talking about you. Chrissy, I know we’re going to show a press release in a second, but do you want to talk a little bit about these points here?
Chrissy Spear: Yeah, [00:43:00] for public relations, I know we’ve said this for social media too. We really want to highlight things that are happening in your park. When you’re writing a press release or when you’re putting stuff out there, we’re going to cover this a little more in the press release part of it. Right now, if you’re closed, you want to be thinking of things that you can do for the future. Say maybe you’re remodeling. Maybe you’re taking out old features of your park and you’re adding new stuff in. You might want to highlight [00:43:30] those things. Maybe you’re doing special events with essential workers. Well, that is a really big thing or like we’ve said special needs. Maybe you’re working with teachers because they’re trying to get their kids out of the house and have some actual physical activity that they’re not getting.
Those things are newsworthy, especially if you can add some twist to it. Reopening plans. How are you dealing with reopening your park? What [00:44:00] is your COVID preparedness? What are you doing to make sure people are protected? There are a lot of really good areas where you can touch and you can use your PR. What I would say is, if it’s important enough to you and your staff, it’s important enough to do a press release on. You might do three or four or five different press releases throughout a year. It’s not necessarily just for opening.
Bob Krause: [00:44:30] Let’s show it.
Chrissy Spear: If you launch a new program, you will want to get that out to the public and you’ll want to communicate. There’s many different avenues of PR, but let’s go into what we’ve created. We’ve created a sample press release. Now, this press release-
Bob Krause: Chrissy, how do people get ahold of this if they want it afterwards?
Chrissy Spear: I think we do mention this afterwards, but if you guys email me [00:45:00] at [email protected], C-O, I will send this template to you and you can fill it in and make edits to it the way you want to make edits, but I’ve pretty much filled it out the way that you’re supposed to or told you what to put in each area. I’m just going to go through it really quickly. At the top, you want your logo, take ours out. You always want your press release to be one to maybe [00:45:30] one and a half. Two pages is really long. If you can keep your press release to one page, that’s really what your editors want to see, your people want to see. Also, you want to keep the facts short, statements to the point.
Your press release, basically, it’s an official statement that gives information to the people that you can send it, our social influencers. Mommy bloggers, Insta bloggers, TikTokers, [00:46:00] all your influencers online. You have your Facebook influencers, magazines, either print or online, television stations, news programs. A lot of your social stuff, the things that you’re doing for the community are really big for the news programs, and Bob will talk more about that, and the radio stations. I’m just going to go through this press release really, really quickly.
At the beginning, you want to put [00:46:30] your name and you want to do like a little bit of a catchy title and a subtitle. This one is particular for reopenings. You want to adjust it if you’re open and you’re doing something else, but it’s the same format. After you have your headers, you want to let them know what state you’re in and what the date is that you’re doing this so they can be up to date and then explain. The first power paragraph is just going to explain what you’re talking about. Your second [00:47:00] paragraph, you want to … We’re talking about opening, right? We’re talking about our reopening. We’re explaining there what the schedule is, what you guys have trained for your check in. Anything that you have done to change to become ready for people to come back into your park.
You also always want to have a quote, one or two, right? This press release has one area for a quote, but you can add two, especially if it’s a longer one. [00:47:30] You can get a quote from a guest and maybe a quote from the owner. Usually the owners are the ones who will give the quotes, the owners, the GM, maybe somebody who has an overall knowledge of and can speak for your company. Then for the next one, you want to get into the fluffy stuff and talk about what are some of the new team building? What are some of the activities you’ve launched? What are some of your highlight … Highlight some of your attractions. [00:48:00] Acknowledge ones that might be closed right now due to COVID, maybe you’re opening but limited capacity and you can’t do certain things. Acknowledge that.
Then, you want to let them know when you’re reopening, give them some of the dates when you’re reopening. You also want to give them your company information, so your website. Is ticket prices the same? You can put that information in there. Then, ask them to join your [00:48:30] community on social media. It never hurts. Ask them. A lot of people are getting this digitally and they’re going to just take it straight from your press release. Then, the last thing is something you’ll just keep it the same, your boilerplate. That’s about your company. It’s about the owner, the vision, the owner’s vision of what he had, maybe how many facilities you had, how long the company’s been open and you put that at the bottom of everyone. You only have to write it one [00:49:00] time.
This is the press release. If you guys want a copy of this, I will go ahead and send it to you. You just have to email me or put your email in the chat and I will send it over to you.
Bob Krause: Keep in mind, something really cool about press releases. Imagine that if somebody’s running a press desk at a news channel or a blogger or whatever, literally, the people that work at a news channel will have 30 to 50 of these things coming to them every day in a news desk and they go, “What’s worthy of the news?” If you can write that opening comment, [00:49:30] something really catchy for the local community, something that feels warm, good, those types of things, that’s going to get you that attraction. This sounds interesting. If you can keep it to the one page, it really makes it easy to read and they can go, “Let’s look more into this,” and they hand it to somebody else in the news desk.
Chrissy Spear: Right. Like I mentioned before, each paragraph, you want it only to be like three to four sentences. You want all the information to be easily digestible from glancing at it. If you have eight, [00:50:00] 10 sentences in a paragraph, that’s too much. Break that paragraph up into two, three.
Bob Krause: With that being said, let me show you an example. I didn’t show the news headline, but I was actually searching all over the nation for local family entertainment center open and I put the word COVID and these different ones popped up. They came up as a news channel page, and then, they had these videos attached to them. We’ll play those for you now, so you got to get a good feel. All right, here we go.
Craig McKee: With [00:50:30] limited options [inaudible 00:50:31] across the Tri-State …
Chrissy Spear: Let me turn that up.
Craig McKee: … against customers once again. WCPO9 news reporter Whitney Miller spoke to the team it at Scene 75 about the big changes it’s made to be able to reopen.
Speaker 6: It’s a wait and see.
Whitney Miller: The team at Scene 75 in Milford is patiently waiting for guests to return. The indoor entertainment space will reopen in July with a new focus, your safety.
Jonah Sandler: During the last three months, [00:51:00] we actually spent a lot of time thinking through every single attraction that we offer.
Whitney Miller: From bowling.
Jonah Sandler: Every other lane will be used. All of the balls will be disinfected and sanitized.
Whitney Miller: To go-kart racing.
Speaker 9: After every trip on the go-karts, when they pull back in, we’ll have a sanitation crew that is wiping down the steering wheel, spraying out the seat.
Whitney Miller: Those changes are part of the Stay Safe Together playbook that CEO Jonah Sandler and his team created. They want to customers [00:51:30] to see the changes …
Bob Krause: I love the branding.
Whitney Miller: … and feel now safe while they play.
Jonah Sandler: What we’ve seen in Columbus to start us off is that a lot of families are wanting to do smaller gatherings, but they want to have fun at the same time. They’re beyond the garage barbecue. They’re ready to come on out and have a good time.
Whitney Miller: That’s why-
Bob Krause: For second time, I’m going to show you one more, same exact concept. This was a different one, for a different part of the nation.
Speaker 10: Everything for kids has been off limits until today. The jump trampoline park in Lynchburg just reopens. [00:52:00] ABC13’s Taylor Coleman breaks down what you need to know before you bounce out the door for some fun.
Taylor Coleman: With high contact areas like a trampoline park, staff are taking every cleaning precaution, but as you can see by the yellow tape behind me, not every area is open. When you first step into the building, expect an immediate medical screening. Staff will ask a few questions about your health as well as take your temperature. As you step up to the front counter, there are social distancing markers and a divider between you and [00:52:30] an employee. Heading on to the jump-
Bob Krause: I think for the second one, I’ll keep this particular one short, although I find it all very, very fascinating. I hope that you’ll see here that what’s important is good communication with a concise message. That’s what these companies have done a good job with. For the sake of time, I hope you don’t mind, we’re going to talk a little bit about influencers. These are individuals that have some local power in your local community, right? These are going to be everything like Chrissy mentioned [00:53:00] from mommy bloggers, to people who might be involved with best deals, finding good deals for families. It could be a church group. It could be whatever, right?
Keep in mind that we talk a lot about traditional forms of contact, but if you can find a social influencer, somebody to help you promote, you’re going to find a lot more exposure a lot quicker. Now, how do you find these individuals? Well, you can hop on YouTube in your local area. You can be up [00:53:30] on, talk to your kids, if there’s somebody in your local city that’s known for doing something that could get your audience there. For instance, I wouldn’t necessarily in my parks that’s a made for kids like 11 and under, I don’t really need a social influencer of somebody who’s like early 20s, but I would love to get a mother who’s got kids, or if there were some social influence kids like some younger children that might have a YouTube channel, I can get them out. [00:54:00] That would be a great way to get exposure to our park by inviting them out.
We recently did this and a couple different scenarios with Uptown Jungle, the company that I have. You can see the number here, over 3.3 million views of this one video alone of a local family that came out, the Tic Tac Toy Family, who pretty much makes a living making videos. By the way, I think it’s every 6,000 [00:54:30] views, it’s like $1,000 they make on YouTube or something to that. These people are constantly in need of creating more content. They need a new place to go. In fact, some of them, we spoke to, we’ve had in our park, either families or professional ones like a girls group. They were shooting three videos a day. Imagine they literally ran from one venue to another to another and they did it like six days a week because they had to keep the content up to make the money that they wanted to make, [00:55:00] supporting a whole crew. It’s quite fascinating. Giving away some of your time can be really helpful.
Here’s my question. If you had influencers, you had these ways of affecting your customers and telling them what you’re up to, what would the public like to know about you as a question? What do they want to know? As you work with influencers, what is it you’re trying to say? We’re open, we’re fun, we’re clean, we’re all these things. Who’s going to be the best [00:55:30] deliver of that message? I’m all about finding brand ambassadors, people who you can kind of bring under your wing by giving away free play, free this or that and then tapping into their influential elements.
Remember that when you can go social, everything goes viral when they’re connected through all these different resources through TikTok and everything we talked about earlier, but it’s really going to be how you control and how you get people to [00:56:00] interact with you through their experiences at the park. Let’s talk just a little bit about that. I’m a big believer that if you run a birthday party properly in your venue, you should get lots of free social media. For instance, if I’ve got a great party host, who says, “Hey, moms, everybody get their phones out because we’re going to do something really cool right now. I’m going to do a rap song and I already asked you a bunch of questions about Johnny. We’re going to do a fun song where all the kids are going to participate.”
He starts a little. [00:56:30] The kid, “Boom, boom, bah.” They touch their hand and they get a clap going, and then, they do a fun song about the birthday kid and it’s really lit up. Then now, they’ve got four or five mothers videotaping this fun bit, and then, it gets posted on. Moms are like, “Wait, I want my kid to have that experience,” right? It’s all about asking.
Chrissy Spear: One thing with that is every single person has a bigger following. Each person will have a following on a different platform. Suggest to them, [00:57:00] wherever you have your biggest following like say, “Hey, if you’re comfortable in Instagram, posts there. If you’re comfortable on Facebook and that’s where you normally post, post there. If you’re a TikTok person, post on TikTok.” Don’t tell them do it in one certain area because they might have a really big following in another area that you don’t so. That helps you broaden your exposure.
Bob Krause: If you have one mom who’s doing one and another mom in the other platform and they’re both posting, and then, other moms who didn’t attend who are connected to them going, “Oh, [00:57:30] wow, they were both there. That looks really fun.” It’s all about that kind of connection. Same thing could happen with a bar or a restaurant, whatever the scene is, right?
Chrissy Spear: Always suggest that they tag you because it’s great to have them post about you but make sure that they tag you and also create a fun hashtag that’s unique to you and then every single person that you suggest that they do something to, have them use that hashtag.
Bob Krause: Yup. It’d be a good way to get followers. Let’s talk quickly about some other things, Hownd. I’m trying [00:58:00] to help, you guys, understand ways that you can grow your business without having to spend a lot of money. This is another wonderful platform. Currently, we use these guys in our parks. Hownd is [inaudible 00:58:14] the trade shows that we’ve attended. They have a wonderful plan. We’re going to probably have them on in the future to do a more deep dive into this, but basically for $0, they’ll help you by creating an API that connects to your internet, your website, that when you log on to the [00:58:30] website, it offers a deal and especially right when you get on and they help you close that deal.
They also work with you with emailing lists. If you’ve got 10,000, 20,000 emails, they’ll help you set that up, you get all your proper opting in and everything, and then, you’ll build this legitimate list. They’ll manage that for you, and what they do, they just take a small fee of every ticket that they help you sell that you would have probably never not gathered otherwise. The nice thing is only the pay [00:59:00] if it works. You only write a check if you’re getting success with it. I highly suggest you look into it. We can talk more about that later, as I mentioned, but these are some great things to consider.
I’d like to talk also about something that some people love and some people just hate, but I’m going to enlighten you now. I know we’re a little over the one hour mark, but let me tell you, we got to continue because this you’re going to find super fascinating. Groupon, I used them, knew about them [00:59:30] before I opened my first park, but I used them a couple of times. I like the fact that I got a great discount. I’ll be honest with you. I think it’s hard if you’re a restaurateur to give away these huge discounts, but if you own a venue and your discount is on your admission to your park, it’s a little more affordable and easier to do it, but I’m going to show you some really cool math.
Let’s just say … I did some local research the other day. Here’s what I came up with. In San Diego, someone in our industry who I admire, [01:00:00] Sky Zone, they do a wonderful job. We actually have done some work for them as well. One thing that they’re doing, they’re offering as you can see over to the right a little bit, it was a $26 playtime for $18. It’s 30% off. You’re thinking, “Okay, that’s the offer.” Let me just explain how this works and I’m going to show you something that most of you have probably never even thought of and how you’re going to make a lot of your money back on what you spend on your discounts.
[01:00:30] Here’s the math over here. Let’s say in a month, you sold a thousand of these admissions. Normal, it would be $26,000, right? You sold a thousand at $26. You make $26,000. If you did a 30% discount on that, now they’re at $18. You make $18,000. With that discount, and keep in mind, here’s something else that you need to know, they’re going to discount … [01:01:00] They always like you to do at least 30%. They actually like 50% if you can do it, but let’s say you gave 30% discount. Here’s something interesting. Now, you’re at $18,000. You’ll get a check from them for $18,000 almost because here’s what happens.
You sell $18,000 in discounted tickets, but then Groupon takes their cut. Now, I will tell you, this varies depending on your relationship with them. Sometimes that cut is as much as 30$, 40%. Sometimes, [01:01:30] it’s a little as 25%, but they then get a piece of the total amount that you take home. Now in this case, you have $18,000 minus your $4,500, they take as their commission to do it. Now, you’re netting at $13,500 which is a 48% discount off of a normal retail price. You’re thinking I don’t know if I want to give away those kind of deals. Understandable, but here’s [01:02:00] what’s fascinating, these $18 then, what happens is that people don’t realize this and this is a low number. We have data that shows it even in the 50s, but 40%, just take a number, you can almost guarantee that 40% of your deals that you sell are never redeemed.
What that means is, they will have sold, say, a thousand of these things and you would have had to give away at a discounted price. [01:02:30] Well, 40% of them never show up. They’re never used in year one. Out of that now, you have 400 of your tickets back at $18. Now you’re going to get another $7,200 back. Your total is now at $20,000 is what you’re making out of that total deal you ran for a thousand. It’s only a 26% discount, okay? Keep in mind what I’m saying is that after it’s all done, 40% or more of those tickets sold, deal [01:03:00] sold are never redeemed
Now, here’s what’s even more fascinating. This is what I love. If you know any about Google AdWords, you actually pay to do a Google AdWord. Every time anybody clicks your website or your ad. When I was searching at the time we opened up, the average click at the time that I wanted was $1.25 per click, meaning for a unique visit to your website, you’d be at $1.25. Now, believe it or not, that’s actually low. There was some higher than that. [01:03:30] Let’s look at what happened. What ended up happening is, when I opened up my park, we had a tremendous amount of unique views within a day or two of our first Groupon deal. In fact, it was over 20,000.
Think about this. I had over 20,000 unique visits to my website. If I would have paid them even 40¢ per click, if [01:04:00] I would have spent $400 to get a thousand clicks at 40¢ per click, I’m sorry, I’m trying to read it at the same time here. If I wanted again, a thousand clicks, $400, but what end up happening is we got 25,000 clicks in the first two and a half days with Groupon. If I have spent that money at 40¢ a click, we would have spent $10, [01:04:30] 000 to get that traffic to our website. I hope it wasn’t too confusing. I know I didn’t quite hit that on the nub, but what I want you to know is people don’t understand that Groupon outside of like Travelocity and Yelp is one of the highest search engines. It comes up really, really high.
People look for family entertainment, they’re going to come up really high and people click to buy the deal or click to see and all sudden you’re getting all this exposure that you [01:05:00] didn’t expect. Keep that in mind as you’re considering this stuff in the future. You can see the bottom line here, when it was all said and done is you put it all together between the money’s on both sides and you’re a very happy camper. In fact, you didn’t lose any money at all. I’ll leave it at that. Last few thing, a couple little hot tips to think about before we finish up. What about this idea? What if you could create a pay now, play later deal?
You can offer some sort of amazing deal [01:05:30] people would want to take advantage of. As soon as you open, they can come in. Be in the front of the line, get extra play time, do whatever, just to bring some revenues in. We want to make sure you’re going to be liquid enough to be able to support that, but make sure that if you’ve got something you can offer, pay now, pay later, why not? Some other things are, can you turn your venue into something charitable, a charitable occasion and place again, as Chrissy mentioned earlier, that can do good for people, good for our first responders, for the military, [01:06:00] for the police, just doing something to give back? Search in your heart to figure out what you can do.
The other one is how can you create inhouse challenges? Let’s say you’re open right now. Let’s say that you have a place that has bowling or it’s a darts place or a food and beverage place. Could you run some fun challenges that you can then post online like how many chicken wings can you eat in an hour? Let’s say in my place, you have the kids, we create a whole [01:06:30] like an obstacle course. They have to run through the various contraptions and things over like a five-minute run and we time it and see who can do it the fastest. We create ways to keep people coming back and get a challenge going. Think about what you can do to create something fun if you’re open.
Another thing that can be fun is creating how about something like a 60-second guest profile. What if someone walks in your parking like, “Oh, that’s the person we want to highlight”? You ask, “Hey, would you mind while you’re here, we ask you a few questions, we’ll give you a little [01:07:00] free drink and a little desk?” and you do a little bit of a video saying, “What do you do for a living? What brought you here?” Something funny. Maybe it’s a couple there and they’re on their first date, something of that nature. You do these little one-minute profiles, give them a little something for their time and then edit those quickly and put them up online.
Something fun just to show the people that come in your park. Hopefully, you find something that’s attractive and meaning this sense of that the story is good and that people like. Then, what about enlisting your guests to help create your videos? [01:07:30] Why not ask them? “Hey, why don’t we have a contest to put something together here? For instance, what if you did a one-minute video challenge? Post it Instagram. Hey, you win $50 of free play and there’ll be two winners selected weekly.” This doesn’t cost you anything unless you’re giving away hard goods. Have our doors open, it’s very little. Just something to think about.
Then one last thought, my son has been working for some of the food delivery companies. You would not believe the kind of money he makes delivering food and [01:08:00] now he’s moved on to the bigger and better one. His buddies go, “Oh, yeah, DoorDash, those are great.” He was averaging $18 to $22 an hour, but now he’s with this other group and all they do is take orders from Costco and deliver … They pick up the person’s Costco order and delivery. He gets these massive tips. Everything’s going mobile. Here’s a question. Could you take any aspect of your business, whatever that might be, could it go mobile? Could it go on the road? Could you deliver it for a birthday party? Could you do [01:08:30] something?
Again, I’m not going to get into specifics. I’ve already thought through a whole bunch of ideas with portable ninja courses that we have, inflatables we could drop off, that kind of thing to go into birthday parties, but let your mind kind of go with that. I just really want to get you thinking. The last part is if you’ve got anything that you’ve thought of today, any tips would you be willing to share those with us right now? Could you do me a favor and tell us what’s working for you so that we can all learn from your successes as well? If [01:09:00] there’s anything coming, Chrissy, let me know, but we’d love to hear from you.
Chrissy Spear: Yeah.
Bob Krause: Maybe just take a second. Meanwhile, just want to tell you we appreciate you joining us today. Again, our intent at United Play is to be a company who’s a contributor for the good of everybody. It’s a communal concept we believe in. I’ve got wonderful partners who care about this business, have been in a long time. Dave Wilson has been [01:09:30] in the industry over 30 years, built hundreds of entertainment centers, but we’re both very passionate about wanting to help everyone stay in business because we’ve been on both sides of this thing. Chrissy, anything there?
Chrissy Spear: Oh, we’ve got great ideas. Great idea, Bob. “Take the fun to them.” That was from Shirley.
Bob Krause: While that’s still loading, I’m going to ask you one last thing is what’s your personal takeaway from today, right? What are some of the things [01:10:00] you learn? If there’s only two or three things you got out of today, even one good one, to me that’s been successful. What is that? Write it down and be committed to it, so that you’re going to be able to go and make a difference in your business. If things are slow, you’re going to figure out how you’re going to do your very best to take a positive approach to all this, but we know that when we are together, working together, we can get a lot more accomplished.
By the way, there is a Facebook page called FEC Operators, which [01:10:30] I highly suggest you go to. You can learn a lot and see what other people are doing there. You can ask questions, a lot of people to answer questions. As we get more and more of these portals of ways that we can all learn from each other, please share those with us. We will gladly promote it on this webcast because again we’re wanting to make a difference. Chrissy, how are we doing? Are we-
Chrissy Spear: We’re doing good. I just want to let everybody know because I am getting this question, I will be sending out [01:11:00] the press releases to you. I’ve got a few people that have given me their email address. I’ll also be sending a recording out for you if you missed any part of this. I think that that’s it.
Bob Krause: Then one last favor I have is, if you like what you’re hearing, do me a favor, share this with your friends and let them know and there’ll be, like Chrissy said, the pre-recordings, but I think the best way for us to continue and moving on is to, like I said, be a community. Let others know what you’re learning [01:11:30] and help them learn. If you’ve got something you want to contribute, please write us, tell us. Say, “Hey, I think I’ve got a story I’d like to share.” We’d love to get you on the show as well. Otherwise, I think we’re good for now, right, Chrissy?
Chrissy Spear: Yeah, also, can you guys go to our Facebook page. It’s at The FUNtrepreneurs FEC. Go ahead and go follow us there if you can. I will be sending out an email with all of this and you guys can have it. Share our stuff [01:12:00] and spread the word. We’d love to have more people on there. If you have topics you want to talk about, email me. You guys have my email now. You guys can go ahead and share those with us when we get offline if you have something that you would want to cohost with us and be a presenter with us. We’d love to have the community on here, like Bob said.
Bob Krause: In two weeks, my partner, Dave Wilson, be running a phenomenal webinar. You’re going to love his personality, The Man from New Jersey. I love the man. [01:12:30] He’ll be fun and I’m sure we’ll have some other guests to join him. Thanks, everybody. Talk to you soon. Thanks for being part of The FUNtrepreneurs. Bye-bye.
Chrissy Spear: Bye
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END WEBINAR
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