Wowing its customers is also a critical component in Escape Room NF’s marketing strategy. So much so, in fact, that it’s baked right into the activity.
“With every group that comes in, we take time before and after their experience chatting and taking pictures,” Thomas explains. “We don’t hurry them through. They want to know about us and what we’re doing.”
This personal touch not only earns Escape Room NF customer brownie points, but it also sets Thomas and her staff up for Step 2 of their marketing plan.
Step 2: Ask and you shall receive
Sincerity is the keystone of review cultivation. If reviews are one of the few marketing assets your tour has, don’t be shy about soliciting them. So long as you do it honestly and humbly, you could be generating more reviews with each tour by requesting a helping hand from your guests.
As ecstatic groups exit the activity, pose for pictures, and recount moments from the challenge with Escape Room NF’s staff, asking for a review comes naturally. “We aren’t too proud to say [our customers] hold our reputation in their hands,” Thomas notes. “It’s just dropped in as part of our pitch and people do end up reviewing.”
Escape Room NF’s booking software provides a crucial assist as well. One day after the outing, it automatically sends out a customized request for a TripAdvisor review. That, coupled with the staff’s earnest review cultivation during the tour, increases Escape Room NF’s success on TripAdvisor.
To succeed, you have to measure. You can’t evaluate the fruits of all this labor without this final stage in your marketing strategy.
Step 3: Does it move the needle?
Even free marketing with TripAdvisor reviews involves an investment of your time. Therefore, it’s paramount that you calculate the return on that investment (ROI). Whether you collect data anecdotally or quantitatively, your marketing won’t matter if you can’t measure its impacts.
Measuring impact, of course, involves knowing your baseline. Even though this is Step 3 in this process, you could also think of it as Step 0. You need to know before you embark on a marketing initiative what you’re working with. In this case, that means having an idea of the role that TripAdvisor plays in your tour’s sales.
So for both your baseline measurements and your follow-up measurements, here are ways to evaluate your TripAdvisor marketing efforts.
How’d you hear about us?
The most common way Thomas gathers intel on the effect of TripAdvisor is by asking customers how they discovered Escape Room NF. She and her team pose this question informally during conversations before and after the activity, and also more formally at the time of booking.
With her booking software, Thomas set up an automatic questionnaire that guests fill out after completing their online reservation. With that, she can gather intel on whether TripAdvisor generates a meaningful flow of Escape Room NF customers.
Google Analytics
If you have your booking software synced with Google Analytics, you can also see exactly when your customers visited TripAdvisor prior to purchasing a tour. This helps you make informed decisions about how to leverage other assets like your website or your social media pages to drive more sales.
In the Conversions report, click on Multi-Channel Funnels and start by going to Top Conversion Paths. Change the default view from MCF Channel Grouping Path to Source Path. With this report, you can see where TripAdvisor factors in the buying cycle. Is it the first step of the customer’s research, the last step, or somewhere in between?
