Creating a Promotion (Part 2)

Last week, we tested out our Haunted Film Extravaganza idea by running a shorter three-day version. We picked three famous horror movies: "The Shining," "A Nightmare on Elm Street," and "The Exorcist" to see how people would respond. The good news is that 127 people joined in, and around 84 people answered our daily trivia questions. Our social media following grew nicely too. We got 245 new Instagram followers, 168 on Twitter, and 93 on Facebook. For our final live-stream movie marathon, 92 people tuned in.

Several things worked really well. People loved answering the trivia questions, especially since we made them multiple-choice. The daily prizes kept everyone excited and coming back for more. Everyone who participated got a cool digital wallpaper, which they seemed to really like. The best part was seeing horror fans chat with each other in the comments, sharing their favorite movie moments and making new friends.

We did hit some bumps along the way. Our live stream had some sound problems at the start, and some people had trouble answering questions on their phones. We also realized our trivia questions weren't consistent. Some were super easy while others were too hard. Another issue was that people in different time zones couldn't always participate when the questions went live. We didn't think about how expensive it would be to ship prizes internationally either.

Based on what we learned, we're making some changes for the full week-long event. We're going to fix the technical issues with our live stream and make sure everything works better on phones. We'll make the trivia questions more balanced and post them at different times so everyone can participate, no matter where they live. We're also going to add more ways for people to join in besides just trivia, and we'll have better options for international prizes.

Money-wise, we spent a bit more than planned. We spent $2,875 instead of our $2,500 budget. Most of the extra cost came from shipping prizes ($225 over) and getting help with the live stream ($150 over). But considering we got lots of new followers and engagement, it was worth it.

For the full launch, we're taking two weeks to get everything ready. We'll test all our technology thoroughly, plan out all our content ahead of time, and make sure we have a solid plan for sending out prizes. We're aiming for 500 people to participate each day, gain at least 1,000 new social media followers, and have 300 people watch our livestream. Most importantly, we want 80% of participants to have a great time and half of them to come back for future events.

Overall, while we have some things to fix, the trial showed us that horror fans are excited about this kind of event. With these improvements, we're confident the full week-long Haunted Film Extravaganza will be even better. It's a fun way to bring horror fans together and grow our brand at the same time.