Chisom Halliday
Introduction
My task has been to prepare a high quality rationale, for a marketing campaign. This
will be for Cryptic Adventures Escape Rooms, to help them promote their escape
room business. This rationale will include the business’s marketing aims and
objectives, research data on the market. This will help the business majorly, in
promotion aspects as well as ticket sales.
Market Size, Share, Structure and Trends
Market Size
The UK market size of escape rooms is estimated to worth in between £50 million to
£80 million. This is a huge market, that has highly grown since 2006, gaining millions
each year. The escape rooms market is a market that has been predicted to hit the
worth of £100 million, as said by specialists.
As of 2019, which is the most recent research available, there is an estimate of over
1,500 escape rooms now in the UK. This was a jaw dropping 40% increase since
2018. This shows how much potential this market has.
This escape room industry is estimated to have a great turnover of £53 million
exactly. This goal is expected to be reached by the end of this current year (2020)
but due to the worldwide struggles with the Corona virus ( both economically and
physically) I personally doubt that the escape room industry would be able to bounce
back and hit its goal of a £53 million.
Competition
There is approximately over 350 competitors in the escape room industry. There is
also approximately over 525 venues in this specific market. The top 10 largest
operators in this industry have up to around a 25% cut of the market share all
together.
In regards to all the respected competitors of this market, the most well known
escape room owners and most successful are Escape, Escape Reality, Clue HQ,
and Escape Hut.
Below I am going to show each of these big competitor’s share of the escape rooms
industry, in no particular order:
Escape – 104%
Escape Reality – 57%
Clue HQ – 69%
Chisom Halliday
Escape Hut – 44%
This however is measured by the number of rooms, not revenue rates. This shows
that investing in a lot of rooms can help gain market share, so is a very good
investment. In basic number forms, the UK has:
Approximately 1139 different individual escape rooms.
Spread across 288 different countries worldwide.
415 distinct venues available to customers.
850 different scenarios and games being available to be played.
In regard to the trends in this escape room market, there should soon be a release of
a licensed Doctor Who game. There should soon after also be a licensed release of
a Sherlock game.
This will be a very smart and useful move by the escape room industry, as it will
heavily increase the industry’s ‘hype’ and exposure in the media. This will lead too
new potential customers becoming interested in the service. So in conclusion these
trends can drive industry wide growth, and help increase awareness of the market.
Target Market and Products
Target Market
Based on my research, I would suggest that in this marketing campaign, we should
focus on a specific group of people to promote/ advertise our escape room too. One
potential target market that I believe Cryptic Adventures escape rooms could
promote to would be families, in particular families with kids. This is a big margin, but
I believe it will be the most effective way to gain market share and attract more
customers. My research also tells me that tickets for escape rooms are normally
bought by multiple people at once, so it is more of a group activity.
This helped us realise that we can also attract families, while promote these escape
rooms as a sort of a family bonding activity. Escape rooms are normally booked in
holiday times, mostly times when children do not have school, and they are normally
booked in the evenings, rather than in the morning or in the night.
In result of this research, we can spot a pattern. We can see that escape rooms are
in high demand by family groups, who want to bond together in times when the
children do not have school. This would then suggest the fact that escape rooms
should be advertised in the holiday seasons, and would be highly affective with
regards of selling tickets.
Chisom Halliday
Another potential suggestion for a target market would be people from the age range
of 16-19. This is very specific age range, but it will be understandable when I present
the results of my primary research, and my quantative research.
Research Data
Results of Primary and Quantative Research
While I was conducting some primary research on the escape rooms industry, and
the public’s knowledge and experience of it, I realised many things that we can
analyse and build on. This research can majorly help us in our marketing campaign, I
found out the following :
80% of the public that had answered my survey online have not ever been to an
escape room, leaving 20% who have. This shows either that people are not aware of
escape rooms enough, or escape rooms have not been appealing enough to the
public.
60% of the public would also spend just up to £20 at an escape room, with 40% of
the public willing too spend up too £50. This shows that the majority of people would
rather attend a cheaper escape room, which can help us promote new prices that will
attract the people. We also have to consider that different age groups may not be
able to afford as much as others, with the family group being able to pay more than
possible the 16-19 year olds that answered this survey.
0% of the public that answered this quiz would attend a escape room with their
families. 50% of people would go to an escape room with their partner, and another
505 would go to an escape room with their friends. This is a very important bit of
research, as it helps us realise we can target these different demographics for a
better outcome.
60% of the public are likely to attend an escape room in the future, with 20% of
people being unlikely and 20% being very unlikely. 40% of people believe that an
escape room should last for an hour, while another 40% of people believe that it
should last for up to 30 mins. 20% of people said two hours, and nobody said up too
4 hours.
These are some of the reasons that people would attend an escape room:
Too meet new people
To have fun
Thrill factor
This can also help us advertise, and help us determine the appropriate theme of the
escape room.
Chisom Halliday
In terms of SMART objevtives,