How to Earn & Sustain Corporate Customers at Your Escape Room Business

EscapeAssist is pleased to introduce our guest blogger Chris Hanson. He is the founder of EscapeFront, which includes the very active EscapeFront Facebook Group, as well as the EscapeFront website that recently launched on April 4. Chris is an escape room enthusiast who created EscapeFront as a professional resource for escape room owners. Chris is also a contributing author for the escape room trade magazine The Last Lock. Chris lives in Seattle Washington, and has a background in business, teaching & training, and financial analytics. Follow EscapeFront on FacebookTwitter and LinkedIn

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So, it’s 11:00 am on Wednesday and all you hear is crickets. Your next booking isn’t for another 5 hours, so you decide to get a little bookkeeping done. Sound familiar?

There’s something wrong with this picture. Do you know what it is?

It should be fairly obvious.

It’s that the space you’re paying rent for is going unused for at least 5 hours on that particular Wednesday, and likely other days, too.

Look, I get it. Escape rooms are most popular on evenings and weekends and surely there will be off-hours from time to time. But 5 straight hours? Yikes!

There must be something you can do to drum up more business during off-hours.

Well, there is! And if you read the title of this article, you know exactely where I’m going with this.

In this article, I’ll show you how to earn and sustain corporate customers at your escape room business.

Let’s do it!

Step 1 – Figure Out Who Your Target Audience Is

Target the Big Guys

In a spreadsheet, make a list of the 50 biggest companies in your area. I know 50 seems like a lot but you’ll need a relatively long list, as you’ll see in the next section.

This shouldn’t take you very long. After Googling the phrase “biggest companies in Portland Oregon”, the second result down fit exactly what I was looking for.

The spreadsheet should look something like below. We’ll be repurposing this spreadsheet later.

Corporate Customers # of Local Employees (Glassdoor is your friend here) Distance from Your Business (Google Maps all the way!)
Amazon 10,000+ 2.3 miles
Boeing 10,000+ 5.8 miles
Expedia 10,000+ 1.1 miles
Nintendo of America 500 – 1,000 6.3 miles

Ok, done? Let’s move on to the next part of step 1.

Target the Little Guys

Do you have limited space? Is your business located in a rural area? Or do you just want to keep things more simple with less competition to have to deal with?

If you answered “yes” to any of the questions above, you’ll probably want to target small-ish businesses. Obviously, you’ll need to choose wisely as I doubt very many restaurants or laundromats do team building events during the daytime hours when your business is at its slowest.

In speaking with Charles Bechtel, owner of Escape Rooms PHX, he mentioned that he tends to target clinics. Other ideas include car dealerships, law firms, and bars.

When targeting the little guys, the key is to find businesses that warrant (and budget for) team building.

The good thing is, you’ll likely have an easier time finding the right person to talk but it may require more upfront legwork from you.

If you choose to target the little guys only, the next section doesn’t really apply to you…but I’d suggest reading it anyway in case you change your mind.

Check Out Your Competition

We’re going to need to figure out exactly who we’re competing with for the same corporate customers.

If your 3 closest competitors already have 60% of your local corporate clientele market, you’ll want to avoid marketing to those corporate clients right off the bat, because why make it harder on yourself than you need to?

In the beginning, do what you can to find quick wins.

So, how do you figure out which escape rooms in your area are connected to which corporations?

Strategy 1

Luckily, people love to brag. You can benefit from this innate human trait by heading over to your competitor’s websites and taking note of who they list as corporate clients. Many escape room websites will display an array of logos of their corporate customers.

Plop your findings into the spreadsheet from before. Just add “Escape Room Business” as a column and bam, you’re off to a great start!

Once you’re satisfied with the amount of data on your spreadsheet, highlight the corporations that none of your competitors have a connection with. These will be your first points of contact. For our example, we’ll focus on Expedia, since, based on our findings, none of our competitors have established a connection.

Escape Room Business Corporate Customers # of Local Employees (Glassdoor is your friend here) Distance from Your Business (Google Maps all the way!)
Escape Room A Amazon 10,000+ 2.3 miles
Escape Room A Boeing 10,000+ 5.8 miles
Expedia 10,000+ 1.1 miles
Escape Room B Nintendo of America 500 – 1,000 6.3 miles

One last thing to keep in mind about strategy 1. I think we can all agree that Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. are massively humongous corporations. There are a couple of pros to this, but also a couple of cons.

Pros

  • They are so ridiculously big that there’s no way that all bazillion employees have been to your competitors’ escape rooms. So, there should be plenty of room for you.
  • They have large team building budgets (except finance & accounting…stay away from them if you can).

Cons

  • They are so ridiculously big that it can be really hard to know:
    • Which sub-orgs (e.g. Amazon AWS) your competitors have an established connection with.
    • Who the heck the point of contact is for any particular sub-org. It’s not like you can just call the front desk. I’ll show you how to figure this out in a bit.

Strategy 2

If, for whatever reason, escape rooms in your area don’t list their corporate clients, try this: Head over to your competitors’ Facebook pages and scroll through their team photos. Take note of any photos that are tagged with a company name and notice if the players are all wearing the same work t-shirt.

With these 2 strategies, you should be able to at the very least, narrow your target a bit.

Step 2 – Practice Your Best Shark Tank Impression

Before you do any outreach, brush up on both your verbal and written communication skills.

There are literally 1,000s of books written about this topic, so I’ll keep this brief.

Note: my personal favorite book about sales is CA$HVERTISING by Drew Eric Whitman. Truly a work of art.

Regardless of what form of communication you use (in person, email, etc.), your product has to solve a problem for the potential buyer. So determine what your target customers’ problem is and how you intend to solve it. Deliver the answer to that question in a tidy, no B.S. format, and you’ll be off to a great start.

Remember, even the best salespeople hear “No” a lot more than “Yes”. While making the sale should be the goal, consider making a great impression a huge success.

And watch Shark Tank! Seriously, you’ll learn a lot of really great sales techniques (and a lot of really questionable ones too)

Step 3 – Make Your Product Irresistible

As I mentioned before, corporate team building budgets are often pretty high. But, that doesn’t mean they’ll just blindly throw money at you. If only, right?

The good thing is, most corporate customers are not bargain-shoppers. They WILL spend a lot of money at your escape room business if they see the value in doing so.

So, your job is to make your corporate team building offerings extremely attractive.

How do you do that?

For most potential clients, your website is the first (and maybe only) impression they will have of you. But regardless of the medium, here are a few things to strive for:

Why You?

Answer the following question: What are the benefits of booking a team-building event at your location? What will customers get out of it?

And…what do you offer that your competitors do not?

Spell Things Out

Such as:

  • Room options
  • The size of the party you can accommodate.
  • How much time is available
  • Whether you can accommodate those with disabilities.
  • Whether or not your doors actually lock and address potential concerns about claustrophobia.
  • About how flexible your scheduling is.

Keep it Clean

Different kinda clean, y’all.

Make sure your website, brochure, etc. is consistent and visually appealing. People love comparison tables. People also love lists and bullets. However you decide to lay things out, just make sure people can get the information they need with minimal effort.

Make it Fast & Easy

While researching this article I viewed a ton of websites, and the ability to book online was surprisingly absent. This seemed odd. I realize that with large groups, there are a lot more moving parts than there would be otherwise. And for custom package inquiries, a phone call would make the most sense. However, a phone call to book a standard package seems like an unnecessary step to require of the customer.

Ideally, the organizer should book online AND THEN receive a phone call from you to confirm and ask if any special accommodations are needed.

Offer Package Discount Pricing

There are generally 2 ways to go about doing this.

1. Charge a flat rate per room booked

Example

Escape Package

$399

Executive Package

$659

VIP Package

$999

Custom Package (optional)
1 room 2 rooms 3 rooms
Private experience Private experience Private experience
60 minutes 60 minutes 60 minutes
30-minute meeting room rental 45-minute meeting room rental 60-minute meeting room rental
Lunch at Nextdoor Grill Lunch at Nextdoor Grill Lunch at Nextdoor Grill
Full facility rental

2. Charge a flat rate per person

Example

Escape Package

$299

Executive Package

$559

VIP Package

$899

Custom Package (optional)
Up to 10 guests Up to 20 guests Up to 35 guests Up to 60 guests
Private experience Private experience Private experience
60 minutes 60 minutes 60 minutes
30-minute meeting room rental 45-minute meeting room rental 60-minute meeting room rental
Full facility rental

Offer a Merch Discount

Do you sell t-shirts, hats, patches, etc. at your escape room business. Offer team building players a discount on all merch.

Make Partnerships

Is your escape room business next to a restaurant or a theater? Consider partnering with them to offer your guest a meal or ticket voucher to be included in the price of the booking.

Be Flexible

Be as flexible as possible. But don’t overdo it! For example, if your rate includes lunch at Nextdoor Restaurant (mentioned above) but the group prefers to eat on their own, adjust your price accordingly.

The Little Things

Ask the organizer ahead of time if there’s anything you can do to make their experience a memorable one. Also, find out if any special accommodations are needed for any of the guests.

One thing Charles from Escape Rooms PHX does is he sends out an email to the organizer ahead of time with personalized driving directions from their specific location.

This list of recommendations really just scratches the surface. The more bookings you get, the more questions you’ll receive from organizers. Think of these questions as opportunities to improve your pitch. Continuously get ahead of questions by updating your website regularly with answers.

How do YOU make your team building product irresistible?

Head over to the EscapeFront Facebook community and let us know!

Step 4 – Get In Front of the Right People

Ahh, yes. The fun part! There are a few obvious ways and a few not-so-obvious ways you can go about getting in front of your target customer. Let’s review them, shall we?

But, before we do, please note that none of them with work without at least a fairly substantial amount of legwork on your end.

In Person

If your targeting small to medium-sized businesses for team building, this can be a great option. The goal here is to walk into a business and not come across as an annoying salesperson.

You may want to start with businesses you’re already familiar with where you’re a customer already. Like your dog groomer or a dentist office for example.

It needs to feel natural and not pushy. Which is a nearly-impossible task if no rapport has been established previously.

If a business has a “No Solicitation” sign, move on to the next one.

Networking Events

NEWSFLASH!! Networking events are happening ALL. THE. TIME. and are a great way to meet people in a non-threatening way who otherwise would be closed for shop.

Most notably, they might be one of the top ways to get in front of those in charge of event planning for large organizations.

So, how do you find networking events?

Google is your friend here.

Type “networking events [location]” and see what comes up. Refine your search to include things like “networking events for small businesses [location]” and you’re golden.

Meetup.com

Another great option is meetup.com. If you haven’t heard of Meetup, you’re in for a treat. Meetup is exactly what it sounds like: a place to find events in your area where you can meet up with others with like minded interests. I’ve personally used Meetup for years and am currently a member of a karaoke, drawing/painting group, and networking group for introverts.

Once you register for Meetup, simply fill out your profile and search “Networking” and a list of groups and events will popup showing you all the upcoming networking events in your area.

Side note: You may also want to see if there are any escape game enthusiasts Meetup groups in your area.

Chamber of Commerce

Leveraging your local chamber of commerce might be one of the most underrated ways to give your business visibility.

My local chamber of commerce regularly holds mixers, where business owners can show and and network with each other and create partnerships.

LinkedIn

People in Corporate America LOVE LinkedIn. People in Corporate America whose job title is office manager or receptionist, secretly wish LinkedIn took the place of their firstborn child because it’s that awesome. Ok, too far…

But seriously, LinkedIn may be the best (and sometime only) way to find the specific point of contact at a large company. And since receptionists at large companies seemingly know just about everyone, they should be your target.

To find them, type the name of the company in the search box. I’m going to use Expedia as the example here since I’m familiar with them.

Step 1: Search for and click on the company

Step 2 – Click on “See all ###### employees on LinkedIn”

Step 3 – Click on “All Filters”

Step 4 – Filter by Job Title

Receptionist, office manager, and administrative assistant are all good titles to start with. Note that a lot of large organizations have their own job title nomenclature for so if you come up empty, try a similar search term.

The “administrative assistant” job title filter seemed to work well for me. It yielded 58 results.

Step 5 – Connect

Now, add them as a connection and send them a message. Unfortunately, without a Premium subscription (starting at $60/month as of this writing), LinkedIn only lets you send messages to people you’re “connected” with. However, once you have all your ducks in a row and are ready to send out your messages, you can activate a free 30-day for LinkedIn Premium so you can message folks without being in each other’s network.

Wrap Up

As you can see, there are lots of great ways to earn corporate team building business as your escape room. Luckily, most won’t cost you a dime! Hopefully, this guide has served you well and gives you some ideas going forward to filling up your weekday booking schedule!

Until next time, head over to our ever-growing Facebook community to see what others are doing to attract corporate clientele.

Further Reading

Comments

  • Virginia

    September 11, 2018

    Thanks! A lot of great ideas to work with in this article.

    reply

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