To effectively market and organize your successful Murder Mystery Party, you should have a solid strategy utilizing PRODUCT, PRICE, PLACE, PROMOTION, & PEOPLE.
Your Product is the Murder Mystery Party. These types of parties are extremely popular because they offer your guests an immersive and interactive experience that combines the thrill of a whodunit with the social aspect of a party. We will ensure that your event will not only be fun, but will offer intellectual stimulation, customization and themes, optional team building, socialization, and an unforgettable experience.
Price is one of the more challenging aspects to determine when you first present a murder party. It is important to Murder and Merriment that you make a profit (unless this is a private party or corporate team building event). You certainly do not want to scare away your potential customer base with prices that are too high. There are a few important components to your party: Entertainment Cost, Food & Beverage Expense, Venue Cost, Staffing, & Advertising expenditures. After you have spent money on those five items, you will want to realize a decent profit. Establish a budget first. Know your expenses BEFORE you establish your ticket price. Often times, the type of meal you plan to offer will significantly impact your ticket prices. An expensive dinner will certainly raise your ticket price. Or maybe you are planning a nice costume themed event or hosting the party in a unique venue. That can impact ticket prices too. Compare your event ticket price with other events in your geographic region. Ask Murder and Merriment what the average ticket prices are for our other events & clients. Maybe your goal is to raise money from your event for a specific cause or organization. Backward planning can help you reach your goal.
The Place where you host your murder party can impact the success of your event. We perform in restaurants, private homes, hotels, banquet facilities, trains, riverboats, theatres, churches, community centers, state parks & lodges, casinos, resorts, law firms, corporate offices, country clubs, wineries, distilleries, universities, race tracks, train stations, small businesses, schools, and libraries. A unique venue can be an added attraction!
Promoting your event is key! We will provide you with additional information on this page on how to effectively promote your murder party. We will also provide you with key marketing assistance through our website, our social media pages, and the creation of marketing materials and artwork.
People are essential to the success of your event. Your staff can influence the experience for your guests. We will provide your guests with a high level of entertainment and ensure that they have a lot of fun. Your staff will interact with the guests as well - whether they are providing dinner and beverage service, bartending, or greeting the customers. Courtesy and kindness go a long way! And if you desire, we will encourage your guests to tip your wait staff and bartender(s) at the end of the show.
To successfully advertise an event on Social Media, you will want to focus on creating engaging content, leveraging relevant platforms, building your community, identifying your target audience, and extending the buzz of your event with your audience with recap content.
The best and most commonly used platforms for Social Media include: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter (X), TikTok, and LinkedIn. Our target market is primarily individuals age 30 - 70 for our murder mystery parties. However, there are of course exceptions and we do occasionally see the younger Gen-Z in our audiences. In our target market, women age 35 - 65 are our number one attendees..... by far! Women typically outnumber the men in our audience 90% of the time! Please be aware of that.
Facebook: This is a very important tool for promoting your event! Approximately 68% of adults use Facebook daily! Facebook marketing involves utilizing Facebook to promote your brand and your murder party. If you are a business hosting one of our parties, you should have a business page which allows you to showcase your event(s), engage with your followers, and run optional ads. On Facebook, you can create interesting content to keep your audience engaged with your upcoming murder party. You can diversify your content to include our promotional flyers / images, video, stories, and updates to keep things fresh. You can also offer contests, give-aways, or polls to encourage interaction with your followers. Your Facebook business page will also allow you to respond to comments or questions which will build relationships and trust with your audience. Facebook also offers a number of business tools (such as Facebook Shop for example) to showcase your event(s) and analytics to help you better understand your marketing effectiveness. We encourage you to define what goals you want to achieve with Facebook marketing, monitor your campaign and track your success, post regularly, and optimize your content with visually appealing and engaging material. To learn more about how to make Facebook be your ultimate marketing tool, visit: https://www.facebook.com/business/marketing/facebook .
Instagram: The largest age group to use Instagram is from 18 - 35. It is estimated that more than 90% of Gen-Z's use this platform. Instagram will offer a platform that is designed to focus on visuals, captions, and hashtags. You will need to regularly post content to keep your audience engaged. Consider using Reels, which are short engaging videos to attract a broader audience. We are seeing a growth trend in Millennials and Baby Boomers using Instagram. Approximately 71% of Millennials and 32% of Baby Boomers utilize this platform.
YouTube: 62% of internet users visit YouTube daily! To effectively market your event on YouTube, you will need to create engaging videos (teasers), behind the scenes footage, and highlights that you can post regularly before your event. You can also share your YouTube videos across your other platforms such as your website, Facebook, and other social media sites. Most people with a smart phone can create effective videos easily today. We recommend utilizing relevant keywords and hashtags in video titles and description.
Twitter (X): To effectively market on Twitter (also known as X), you will need to create a unique event hashtag and engage with your attendees before and after your murder party. After your event, continue to use your hashtag to generate buzz and share positive feedback. Hashtag is the best way to organically talk about our event and popularize it. Keep in mind that 80% of your posts should focus on providing value and engaging content to your audience, and 20% can be dedicated to promoting your brand or services. A little over 20% of adults use Twitter in the U.S.
TikTok: You should note that TikTok users thrive on short, creative, & entertaining videos. Be authentic and relatable. You can also share an eventbrite ticketlink to TikTok. Approximately 37% of mobile users in the U.S. view content on TikTok - with the vast majority of users being age 18 - 35.
LinkedIn: To market events effectively on LinkedIn, try using their event features, engage with your network, and leverage participation through optional advertising. LinkedIn will also allow you to create a dedicated event page and promote it through shares, invitations, and event ads. You will further be given the option to analyze your campaign performance following your event. Approximately 21% of U.S. adults have a LinkedIn page.
Posters and flyers are an extremely effective tool for marketing your murder party - providing high visibility and versatility. Murder and Merriment offers as part of our contract optional marketing material. We can create artwork for you to utilize in the printing of a poster or as a flyer on your website or social media page. This is a free service that we provide. However, if you choose to create your own poster / flyer, we recommend that you consider the following: 1) Utilize an eye-catching design or artwork. 2) Use your business logo or brand on the poster / flyer. 3) Utilize the official logo of Murder and Merriment. We have 15 years in the business and have a valuable following and branded reputation that you should utilize in promoting your event. 4) Use only key information on the poster- such as: Name of the Murder Mystery, the date of the event, the time of when the doors open and when the dinner & show begins, the ticket price, the method of buying tickets (ticket link or phone number for example), the address of the venue, optional phone number, and let your audience know that if they solve the murder that they can compete to win a prize! Avoid including too much additional info. You should not include the menu - UNLESS an expensive gourmet dinner is provided.
When creating a poster / flyer, you can use creative applications such as Canva. This website is a powerful template-based design tool. It provides thousands of images, templates, fonts, and other graphic elements to make it easy to create almost anything you need. Other alternatives to Canva include: Adobe Express, Snappa, Pixlr, BeFunky, VistaCreate, and even the old fashioned Microsoft Word with Paint.
Paid advertising offers a quick and targeted approach to event promotion, allowing you to reach specific demographics and interests with targeted messages. Please know that there are many available options to market your event without paying for advertising! Newspaper advertising has changed dramatically with the advent of on-line subscriptions / reading. 60% of adults over 35 years of age read a newspaper in some format. 70% of adults with incomes of over $100k read a newspaper daily. Digital advertising on newspaper websites should never be our primary method of marketing, but it can be an effective way to promote your event to certain demographics.
Radio advertising can reach a broad audience in your area and can often be affordable and customizable. You can select certain stations and time slots to improve your outreach. Please note that some radio stations offer a FREE Community Calendar both on-line and on-air to promote local events.
Facebook Ads and Google Ads can be very effective in reaching a certain demographic and geographic region. For example, if you want to reach females age 35 - 65 in a 40 mile radius of your venue for 10 days before your murder party, you could easily achieve that very affordably. The key to success lies in understanding who your audience is, creating compelling ads, and optimizing your campaigns. The average click-through-rate for Facebook ads is about 0.9%. The average conversion rate is about 9.21% across all industries. The average cost per thousand impressions is about $11. One great thing about Facebook ads is that you can generate demand for your event quickly!!! If your ticket sales are slow for some reason and you want to boost your sales in the last 2 weeks prior to your murder party, you can generate a Facebook ad and blast your target market right away! While Facebook ads are NOT critical to selling tickets or marketing your event, they can be a nice addition to your marketing plan.
Press releases are a terrific marketing tool that cost you nothing - but the time to generate them and distribute them. There are countless news media outlets, websites, Facebook pages, social media sites, and blogs that will accept your press release and post our event. When you write your release, be concise and avoid including too much information! Here are the basics: 1) Event Title, 2) Name of venue , Address, City / State where the event is being held, 3) Date of the Murder Party, 4) Ticket Info, 5) BRIEF description of event. Some media sites will permit you to include an image of your event / venue.
Local Television News Stations and Radio Stations often carve out time in their programming schedule to allow for individuals and businesses to come on the air to promote an upcoming event or service. The best time for TV News Stations to promote your event is usually after 8am, during the noon hour, or before 5:30pm. For radio stations that offer local talk radio or have live on-air promotion opportunities, you should take advantage of those! They will give you typically 2 minutes of time to market your upcoming murder party! Keep in mind that your event is a FUN MURDER MYSTERY PARTY.... everyone will want to hear about it!
If you host events at your venue or plan to host future events, then we recommend that you collect email addresses from your attendees and store them in a data base that will permit you to send out email blasts to promote your next murder parties. You can collect email addresses through your ticket sales method or by providing a Guest Book near your entrance to your venue and encourage your attendees to sign the Guest Book and provide contact information.
Do you want to know what your Guests thought of your murder party? Why not offer Guest Comment Cards on the tables? But more importantly, you can utilize on-line review sites such as Trip Advisor, Google Reviews, Yelp, and even Facebook. You might even consider allowing your Guests to leave a Review on your website or Facebook page. For the most effective reviews, customers should provide details about their experience, including what they liked or disliked, and how your venue could potentially improve. This is important. People buy from businesses they trust. And how do they know they can trust them? By seeing what other customers have to say.
To effectively utilize influencers for marketing, locate those who align with your brand and target audience and then collaborate with them to create engaging content and reach new customers. Look for influencers who are active in your niche, have a high engagement rate, and whose content resonates with your target audience. You might also be able to find a blogger / influencer who would be willing to attend your event for a free dinner and show in exchange for an honest critique of your event on their social platform. This type of marketing typically works in bigger markets with larger population bases. This also works best if you plan to host additional murder parties in the future.
Early Promotion: (3 to 6 Months) This phase focuses on building awareness and generating initial interest. It involves announcing your event on your website, creating a social media presence, and putting together your email list. Of course, there are times when you do not have this extended time to promote your murder party. Larger events with higher ticket prices may need an extended time to promote your event. As soon as you book your murder party with Murder and Merriment, we will list it on our website.
Mid-Campaign: (2 to 3 Months) Your first email blast would go out in this period. You can also create a Facebook event page at this time. Posters / Flyers should also be created during this phase. You will also generate a tease on social media of your future event. Line-up your Influencers. Murder and Merriment begins its marketing phase for your event on our public Facebook Page.
Active-Campaign: (1 to 2 Months) You should focus your time on Social Media Marketing during this phase. This is also the time to send out your press releases. Schedule any on-air TV / radio appearances at the 6 to 8 week mark prior to your event. Distribute or post any posters / flyers. Send out your 2nd email blast 30 days before your event. Schedule any paid advertising to begin 21 to 30 days out. Post videos and teasers for your party on social media.
Final Push: (1 to 2 Weeks) In this final phase, we emphasize that you build excitement and encourage immediate ticket purchases. This can involve last-minute promotions, reminders to existing ticket holders, and engaging with potential attendees through social media and other channels. You may want to utilize Facebook Ads at the 2 Week mark. Conduct your live appearances on TV and Radio.
We strongly recommend that you accept only non-refundable advance ticket sales for your murder parties. We also advise you to collect payment when a reservation is made. If you permit your attendees to pay at the door on the night of your event, you will lose 5 - 15% of your audience who will conveniently change their minds at the last minute and not come to your show. Plus, we require that you provide a fairly accurate headcount two days before your event. We have to know how many Guest Clue Books to print for your show. The old fashioned way of providing a telephone number to call for reservations is slowly being phased out - unless you have a dedicated individual or call center to take your calls for you to sell the tickets to your murder party. This is a costly method and wastes your valuable time. Society is evolving where today's event attendees are purchasing tickets on-line at all hours of the day and night. Here are several on-line Ticket Link Providers: Eventbrite, TIcketLeap, Bizzabo, TicketTailor, ThunderTix, TicketSpice, TicketBud, EventCube, Accelevents, and PurplePass. Whoever you plan to use, here are some essential features to look for when selecting the best platform for events: User-friendly, Easy to Find Your Event & Venue, Secure Payment Processing, Customizable Ticketing Options, Affordable, Automated Communication and Notifications to Attendees, Reasonable Payout Terms, and Custom Event Pages.