Roadkill
08-28-2008, 11:51 AM
Haunt Owners,
I've always been curious as to how much you budget for advertising and how do you determine where to advertise? I know that radio spots and billboards are expensive as hell in the DFW local markets. Has the internet changed the way that you spend your advertising budgets?
I ask this because I was trying to update my listing on hauntedhousesonline.com and noticed that they no longer allow sites such as DFWHauntedHouses.com to be listed. I strongly beleive that this is because we are almost a direct competitor to them and this is why they no longer allow it. I also noticed that sites such as hauntedhousesonline.com and hauntworld.com charge anywhere from $200 to $500 per season to have your banner listed on their site. While these sites are excellent resources with large budgets and large amounts of hits each year, how many of those hits come to your paid banners? Is it really worth it just for the exposure on their site?
Before these sites stopped allowing sites such as ours to be listed, DFWHauntedHouses.com had over 15,000 more hits on hauntedhouseonline.com than the closest paid haunt advertising ad. This was a couple years ago when they listed the number of hits on each link/banner. Surely we have come further than that over the past couple years as more and more people search for local haunts. In the past we have also had a couple haunts track coupons that were printed from DFWHauntedHouses.com. Through the tracking we found that over 1/3 of total coupons used at those haunts were printed from our site! Sometimes walking through the line and seeing people holding coupons from our site made us realize that we definitely offer a good service to members and haunts.
I just find it crazy that local haunts would pay these crazy amounts to advertise when sites like DFWHauntedHouses.com offers free advertising and sends more traffic/visitors to area haunts. We have always stated that we do this for the love of the season, and it is our way of giving back to the local haunt industry that has passion has not changed in 12 years. We will continue to do so for the forseeable future...
I am just interested to see how advertising budgets are determined... How can haunts justify spending so much on advertising when free advertising is abundant here in the Google, MySpace, Facebook and internet age? Anyone care to share any insight?
I've always been curious as to how much you budget for advertising and how do you determine where to advertise? I know that radio spots and billboards are expensive as hell in the DFW local markets. Has the internet changed the way that you spend your advertising budgets?
I ask this because I was trying to update my listing on hauntedhousesonline.com and noticed that they no longer allow sites such as DFWHauntedHouses.com to be listed. I strongly beleive that this is because we are almost a direct competitor to them and this is why they no longer allow it. I also noticed that sites such as hauntedhousesonline.com and hauntworld.com charge anywhere from $200 to $500 per season to have your banner listed on their site. While these sites are excellent resources with large budgets and large amounts of hits each year, how many of those hits come to your paid banners? Is it really worth it just for the exposure on their site?
Before these sites stopped allowing sites such as ours to be listed, DFWHauntedHouses.com had over 15,000 more hits on hauntedhouseonline.com than the closest paid haunt advertising ad. This was a couple years ago when they listed the number of hits on each link/banner. Surely we have come further than that over the past couple years as more and more people search for local haunts. In the past we have also had a couple haunts track coupons that were printed from DFWHauntedHouses.com. Through the tracking we found that over 1/3 of total coupons used at those haunts were printed from our site! Sometimes walking through the line and seeing people holding coupons from our site made us realize that we definitely offer a good service to members and haunts.
I just find it crazy that local haunts would pay these crazy amounts to advertise when sites like DFWHauntedHouses.com offers free advertising and sends more traffic/visitors to area haunts. We have always stated that we do this for the love of the season, and it is our way of giving back to the local haunt industry that has passion has not changed in 12 years. We will continue to do so for the forseeable future...
I am just interested to see how advertising budgets are determined... How can haunts justify spending so much on advertising when free advertising is abundant here in the Google, MySpace, Facebook and internet age? Anyone care to share any insight?