4 Key Steps to Launching a Successful Party Booking Campaign

Launching a party booking campaign is a great way to bring more people into your facility this summer. 

After all, during a slower season, it's even more critical to promote your party packages, announce fun events, and use this time as an opportunity to experiment with and grow your marketing efforts. 

4 Key Steps to Launching a Successful Party Booking Campaign

There are four key steps to launching a successful party booking campaign. 

Let's jump in.

1. Set a clear goal

"Our goal is to book more parties" isn't a clear goal.

Why?

Well, how will you and your staff know whether you're winning or losing if you don't have a clear number to go by? 

Look into your facility management software and find the number of parties you booked, both online and in-house, during the past two summers.

Now, let's say you booked 20 parties in June and 30 parties in July over the past two years. You can then set a new goal based on those numbers: Let's increase parties booked by 20% over the next two years. 

2. Set clear metrics

It's important to set a deadline for your party booking campaign and keep a score of your progress.

Here are a few examples of some key metrics you can track daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly:

• The number of website visitors to your party booking page.
• The number of parties booked online.
• The number of interested guests whose contact information you captured at your facility.
• The number of interested prospects whose contact information you captured from inbound calls.

If you have weekly meetings with your staff, you'll be able to share the overall progress towards your goal easily if you track these key metrics!

3. Establish a game plan 

Now that you have a clear goal in mind and key metrics that you'll track, it's time to determine the specific actions you'll take to achieve your goal. 

Your game plan should establish:

• Your target. Who is your campaign audience? Segment your contact database into past birthday party customers, leads interested in parties (if you've captured their information), and other guests. Then, determine how you'll craft the right message for each segment. Capturing data whenever you can or in exchange for exclusive offers should be an ongoing effort in your business. This allows you to gain a deeper understanding of the demographics, interests, and preferences of your audience.
  
  
• The right message. Now that you have identified whom you're targeting, it's time to figure out what you're going to say. To hit the mark, you have to know where your prospective customers are in the buying process. For example, someone who has called to check availability and prices is different from someone who is visiting your website for the first time to see if you offer parties. Therefore, the information you provide to each segment should be different as well.
  
  
• The right channel. Social media, email marketing, and your website are all incredibly important channels to use when communicating with your audience. But, keep in mind that your audience might respond better to certain channels than others. For example, a mom who has never heard about your facility may respond to a targeted Facebook ad that offers a special gift for first-time party customers. Your emails to past party customers may incentivize them to book again. The critical takeaway is to think about where your prospects are in the buying process and what channel would be the best for you to meet them where they are. 
  
  
• The right timing. You can get the right message to the right people, but if the timing is off, you may miss the mark. Timing your words can not only give you a stronger ROI for your ads; it can influence buying decisions. In our 2020 Online Party Booking Study, we've identified the days of the week and times of the day when customers book parties online. Check it out here.

4. Determine scalability

Does your current party booking system allow you to scale and grow the number of parties you book?

After all, you don't want to put your coordinated efforts into booking more parties if you are getting party inquiries from forms on your website or via phone. These activities are not able to handle increased volume since they are manual processes.

But by automating your party bookings, you can let your prospective customers check packages, availability, and pay deposits online!

Make sure that you make the switch now so that you can handle the volume of bookings.

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NEW RESOURCE

Online booking is an opportunity to enhance your guest experience. That’s why in our newest resource, you’ll find three key tools that’ll help you drive traffic to your online booking page.