Rallying the Franken-fans
29 April 2021
Dr Frankenstein built his monster in two years, we had just eight months to build a new digital community, from scratch, for the new Mary Shelley’s House of Frankenstein in Bath.
The attraction’s tickets are now on sale, and our digital community of Franken-fans are flourishing in the thousands. With a limited budget and mainly organic growth (and certainly no grave robbing) here are our top tips on why it’s important to build your community before your tickets are live.
- It’s aliiiive! Now set some goals.
With mechanisms in place to measure success, establish clear and achievable targets for the preliminary stages of growth.
We know social media is an awareness-driving platform, but in the case of Mary Shelley’s House of Frankenstein, commercial outcomes and ticket sales are key. When tasked with selling tickets we measure beyond quality and consistency of content, to analyse engagement rate, click throughs and web traffic.
When setting goals, it is easy to get distracted by followers and reach. When the aim is conversion, we know engagement is key. By targeted ads, boosted posts, focused community management and considered content, we maintained an Instagram engagement rate of over 25% for Mary Shelley’s House of Frankenstein, over 20 times the 2020 average across all industries.
- Finding your Franken-fans
Define your target audiences and communicate with them directly. In this instance, our target audience was defined by age and their ability to purchase, location and their ability to visit locally in these times, and interest in the unique Frankenstein nature of the attraction.
As a world-first attraction dedicated to Mary Shelley and her greatest creation, the brand appeals to Franken-fans around the globe. When considering the e-commerce goals of the attraction in the midst of pandemics and travel restrictions, it was essential to also establish an audience closer to home ahead of launch. Through targeting campaigns, community management and audience specific content, to date, over 20% of the entire Instagram audience is within a 10-mile radius of the site. We are therefore able to communicate directly with hundreds of locals who are potential paying customers.
- Think like Victor and get creative
When surrounded by bills and building sites, the temptation is to leave social pages until your business has ‘more to show’. Before attractions are open to the public, there is a unique opportunity to get creative on social pages.
With content such as exclusive behind the scenes previews, informative posts that resonate with true Franken-fans and not-to-be-missed giveaways, we built an engaged audience ready to be directly communicated with when tickets went on sale.
Without the ability to invite content creators through the door, get creative with how else you can leverage influencer marketing. Discover target influencers by researching their following, engagement rate, interests and previous partnerships. Then, consider mechanisms such as affiliate codes and giveaways to ascertain a relationship and leverage their audience ahead of launch.
A recent ticket giveaway hosted across key Bath and book influences’ pages, saw a follower increase of over 10% in just two weeks. The initiative Increased the reach of Mary Shelley’s House of Frankenstein by 23,000 followers in just four posts.
- Electrify your email marketing
Often overshadowed by vanity-metrics such as like follower count, an email database is one of the most valuable tools to convert interested parties.
With intelligent copy that incentivised followers to sign up to the attraction’s newsletter, Kallaway single-handedly increased the newsletter database by 800 users in the months before tickets launched, creating to a targetable audience to communicate with when tickets went on sale.
- Don’t be spooked by a little spend
Although the peak of your commercial campaign may be weeks away, it is important to not shy away from an opportunity to spend.
Boosting content that ties into a relevant date or anniversary allows you to penetrate into a wider discourse. When sharing short video of unknown facts about Lord Byron on the anniversary of his birth this year, a small amount of spend managed to reach thousands of untapped Franken-fans leading to significant profile visits and follower growth.
In the early stages of growing a community, we focused on awareness driving content. As you get closer to opening, paid content should switch to a sales driving device, with the call to action to buy tickets. Be sure to closely monitor your website analytics to see which ads and social media platforms are driving the most engagement and conversions. Test, learn, and keep doing more of what works!
If our tips above have sparked your interest and you want a spare hand or brain, help you create your digital community, then drop us an email to hello@kallaway.com.
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