You’re listening to the Marketing Attractions podcast. Conversations on how nonprofit attractions
are increasing attendance and sharing their missions through marketing. Your hosts are
Ryan Dick and Jenny Williams of attend Media. Jenny today’s topic, should your attraction
invest in an online map? Okay, I’m talking about this.
Well, I think we’ve worked with some clients, one particular that’s got a large holiday
event that’s coming up and they’ve looked at user feedback, survey data to kind of see
what they could do to improve guest experience in the attraction during some of these large events.
Surprisingly, a lot of people came back and said, “I want to know where I am.”
It’s on the marketing team in most cases to ensure that that user experience is improved
any way possible and one of the ways that they can do that is through a guided map that can
include information about where you are, where you’re going and what you have to see while you’re
there. Yeah, sounds good. We brought in a guest. Why don’t you give her a quick intro?
Yep, so we’re going to be talking with Anna Buzzpeesh. She is the project and marketing manager
at Engage By Cell and they are an SMS and mobile web development company that
specializes in creating guided maps for attractions. Cool. All right, let’s get into it.
All right, Jenny, today we’ve got Anna Buzzpeesh. She is the project and marketing manager at Engage By Cell.
Anna, welcome to the podcast. Yeah, happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
All right. I think first of all, let’s just dive right in and who is engaged by cell? What do you
guys do and offer for nonprofit attractions? Yeah, so we started in about 2006, our very first
product was actually an audio guide. So you call in a number and you can basically listen to
an attraction, tell you about everything they have going on. I think our second client was actually
central park. That was pretty cool. They had Wuppie Goldberg and other celebrities recording their
voice telling you all about the garden. And since then, we’ve expanded. We offer touring apps,
we offer text messaging, text chat. And I think what we’re here to talk about today for the most
part is GPS mapping. So you can think about that product as an organization is creating their own
little personal Google map. So they’re including all the past they have, all the sidewalks, the
attractions, the pop-ups, all the things that wouldn’t show on Apple or Google Maps. They wouldn’t
be helpful at all for a visitor to help navigate the attraction to really see everything they have to
offer. So we’re actually using Google Maps, Blue Dot technology, their location services. And then
we’re stripping back all the default maps and we are adding in that organization’s map and their
points of interest. So that can be a map they’re already using on a brochure. We can design that map.
The organization can design that map based on the parameters we give them. And then they’re just
kind of dropping their points of interest and including whatever engaging content they would want to. So
that can be video, audio, scavenger hunts, quizzes, surveys, polls, educational content, all that
good stuff. It doesn’t require a download. That was a big thing for us. We actually started building
maps that you would have to go to the app storing download. That barrier is very unappealing to a
visitor, especially if they’re only coming there once or twice a year. They do not want to go
download an app so they’re in wait for the app to download. Give it all the permissions. And then
forget they even have it the second time they visit. So it being accessible through a QR code and
link is a big win for us and our clients. I think. Yeah. Okay. So this is, you know, you mentioned QR
code. So this is all my phone. Once again, no app, which I’m totally with you, like, how cluttered is
my home screen already? You know, going at another one to that. And I’m walking around the attraction
and I can kind of pull out the phone and say, “Hey, this is where I’m at. This is where I’m going.
I want to go see this.” And it’s all just on the internet. So to speak. Exactly. Yeah. It’s just in a
web browser, you, your web browser will probably already get permissions to follow your location. There’s
a little blue dot. And it’s going to follow you around wherever you’re going. It kind of just helps
the visitor when they get there, one of the most confusing things about walking into an attraction.
Where do I go now? What do they have to offer? So it’s giving you a snapshot and a way to get to
the places you want to see without having to ask 20 people or just kind of meander around.
All right. Cool. And I think one of the big reasons we wanted to have you on, Anna, is one of our
clients that we work with is investing in this mapping tool. But give us kind of the pitch,
like why? Why would an attraction want to spend the time, effort, money to do this?
We’re gaining off a printed maps or take it away? Yeah. So obviously it’s way fighting. That’s more
of a visitor experience thing. But it’s also a tool for engagement before, during and after the event.
So beforehand they can plan their visit. Maybe they’re seeing an exhibit or a spotlight. They didn’t
even know existed. And it’s driving traffic to that spotlight. It’s really kind of upgrading the
perceived value of a visit or maybe even a membership. It’s a good tool for traffic control.
So because it’s showing you everything you have to offer something someone maybe doesn’t even know
is there. They’d see that pop up and they’d be lying straight forward. And it helps with the
confusion and kind of the stress of trying to figure out what you’re going to do, especially
folks with kids. I mean, they need to figure out what to do with their kids ASAP. So it’s showing them
where that children’s garden is, showing them where that children’s theme park is and helping them
navigate to it without having to take 20 minutes to figure it out.
I like that. Jenny, you did that presentation at APGA talking about you’re using influencers
to kind of highlight some of the hidden gems within an attraction. And is here talking
about children’s gardens. I mean, I’m thinking about one large botanical garden that we work with
that that children garden is like kind of hit it in the back if you will. And if you don’t know where
you’re going, you got some anxious kids like, man, I’d really just like for them to run out some
energy at the moment. So yeah. And that’s a good point when you’re having special attractions because
for a lot of organizations, this isn’t going to completely take away a printed map. Some people
really love holding that printed map or some they’re saying we’re going completely paperless.
But it will definitely cut down on the amount of maps you have to print, not to mention things change
all the time. Exhibits change. Maybe you have a special vest there. Instead of reprinting 2000 maps for
that, you go on our dashboard. You change it. It’s live immediately. So it’s really cutting down cost
there and it’s cutting down the need to have staff everywhere to answer those questions that are
immediately answered by the nature of the map itself. Well, and then how about languages? This isn’t
an app that you’re developing where maybe you have three or four languages that you’re able to
kind of build it for. It’s web-based, right? So is it any any possible language you want based off
of someone’s browser? Yeah, exactly. So we actually integrate with Google Translate as well.
So you could use that. It’s a little drop down. It’ll automatically translate the content or you can
duplicate the maps and translate the content. However, you wish. I know some folks want to have a
little bit more control over the translation. Google Translate is pretty accurate, but you know,
there’s 10% there that maybe you don’t want to mess up. So we have people kind of just replicating
their maps and translating them themselves as well. Yeah, I like that. Some of the folks we work with
are heavy tours, like heavy international tours markets. So that’s a kind of a plus there.
My mind also goes to holiday events. From the marketing side,
we see some organizations that spend a good chunk, if not more than half of their marketing budget,
just promoting that kind of blockbuster event. Are you guys doing like custom maps for special events?
Or how does that work? Yeah, absolutely. We’ve done several of those and actually one that ties into
a conversation we’ve had recently. Obviously, we have the holiday lights exhibits coming up from most
all of these botanic gardens. And one of them, yeah, one of them has a sponsor who loves technology
and we love that. So we’re actually working on creating a sponsored mapping experience specific
to that event, even outside of events, you could use it as ad space and sponsorship space.
And even if you don’t have a sponsor, we have clients replicate their maps for a specific event.
It doesn’t have to be holiday lights. It could be, oh, we have this artist doing some installations
around the garden. And we want to map the only highlights where where those installations are,
because 80% of our visitors are here for that. It’s super easy to do and it’s a great way to kind of
promote the event on your website beforehand for the visitors that come here that maybe don’t
even know about the event. Yeah, it’s super easy to do. All right. So this kind of like sounds like
a no brainer. Go ahead, Danny. Well, I’m just thinking too, like back to like the hidden gems or
I think so often people might be in a botanic garden or a zoo or wherever they are and they don’t
even know what they’re standing in front of, right? They don’t know that it’s the oldest tree in the US
that’s right in front of them or a particular, you know, native species that you can’t find anywhere
else, right? So I think like, I guess how in the map, like what type of information are you able
to put in there to kind of explain what those things are to this visitors?
Yeah. So it’s pretty limitless. You can place as many clickable map markers as you want. I mean,
we don’t recommend placing a million because that’s just very confusing. But whatever you place,
the end user could tap on it. There could be a very simple description of what they’re looking at.
You could have recorded a 40 minute long video description of what they’re looking at and uploaded
onto the platform. I actually helped build a map or snow-poornly falls park that’s up in Washington.
It’s very beautiful. And I went up there and I had an audio reporter and I just followed around
this park guide and let him talk to me and we just took his clips and cut him up and put him in the
map markers. So it’s, I mean, it’s like a docent led tour, essentially, the way they built that one out.
You could also gamify it. You could add quizzing questions. You could kind of make it a scavenger hunt.
Like you hit stop one. Now you need to go find the man in the big red suit and then that stop too
when then they click it and get another stop. You could also use it to further education initiatives.
I know that’s a big initiative for some of our clients to use it to put some of those materials
that no one ever sees that they spent a lot of time creating. It’s a good location to really put all
the content in one accessible place. And the fact that it’s on your browser, that’s another thing to
mention. We always hear about accessibility. You want to make these things as accessible to all
of your visitors as possible. Because it’s in your web browser, it’s going to automatically fit
whatever accessibility settings that user has put on their phone. So it’s multimedia content.
You’ve got sound. You’ve got visuals. It’s a pretty accessible experience for everyone at the attraction.
Okay, I like this. I’m coming up from like a marketing side kind of attack here. It’s like,
all right, I could see, you know, you mentioned the gamification. So I could see, hey, I’ve got a
first time or I come once a year type of visitor coming in. I can throw a new experience at them. And I
just, I’m seeing the leap to say, okay, this is worth upgrading to that membership. You know, adding
or, you know, I’m kind of going back to this children’s garden. It’s like, I finally found the
children’s garden. I want my kids to come here in the summer and play in the splash pad. So I can see
that leap to say, hey, a product like this has a likely a good shot at getting increasing my
conversion from first time or not very recent visitor to a membership. I like that. But we got to
get people to use it, right? And so like, how do we? Absolutely. Yeah, what are some tips and tricks
that you guys do to increase adoption? Yeah, and this is kind of the fun part because I’m obviously
in marketing as well. And this is where I like to get creative. And it’s always awesome to see the
the creative ways our clients have used it. So it’s accessible, like we said before through a QR code
or a link. So you could put that linking QR code in obvious places. You could put it on your website.
You could put it at the ticket encounter. You could do stickers on existing signage, maybe
throughout the park. If you have TV monitors anywhere, you can pop it up on there. We had an amusement park
put it on all of the trash cans. That’s not a glamorous location, but they’re used by every single
person that walks around the park. So they were going to see it and they’re going to scan it. We had
a city tour use these QR code sidewalk decals, which I didn’t even know was possible. So when you’re
walking, you look down, there’s a huge QR code telling you to scan it and it will take you to this famous
attraction. That’s that gets pretty high usage. We also had another downtown attraction. Their
neighborhood businesses started promoting it because it was driving traffic to the businesses
in the area. And it was a helpful tool for their visitors or their clients. Should I say folks in
their stores to use it was helpful rather than saying take a left, take a right. And that’s how you get
to the Salem Woods trials. They would just say scan this and it’ll show you exactly where all these
attractions are. I’ve seen it on candy wrappers. I’ve seen QR codes on t-shirts. Another really clever
way an amusement park did this. They also use our text messaging platform and they wanted to ramp up
their SMS marketing campaigns. So they require visitors to text in in order to get a link to the map.
So when they’re walking in the park or when they purchase a ticket online, it says text A, B,
C, D, 5, 6, 5, 1, 2 for a map of the grounds. When they do that, they automatically receive the link
back saying welcome here’s the link to the map. But they’re also enrolling in their SMS marketing
list. And then they use it to anyone who texted in that day to say, hey, we have a giveaway here or
the last three cabins are available. Come on down to the office and claim them now. And that was
extremely effective to them. They said they were shocked at the amount of people that came
running to claim these open spots or claim the giveaway of a Tumblr. I thought that was really clever
that they’ve beefed up their marketing list that way.
You’re listening to the Marketing Attractions Podcast. Conversations on how non-profit
attractions are increasing attendance and sharing their mission through marketing. Your hosts are
Ryan Dick and Jenny Williams of Attend Media. Attend Media is a media planning and buying agency,
specializing in zoos, aquariums, gardens and museums. For more information, please visit attend.media.
Now back to Ryan and Jenny. Okay, so this kind of sounds like a no-brainer. It’s like too good to
be true, right? It’s checking a lot of boxes. Tell me behind the scenes what’s going on. I need
to update the map. We’re creating a special event for the holiday lights. Who’s doing the work?
Is this going to be a big burden on my internal team? How does that work?
Yeah, so a big part of this is having our clients have ownership over the math they’re building
and the content that’s there. So if you paid someone to go develop an app and develop this map for you,
it would not only be expensive, but every time you needed to make a change, you would have to email them
and wait maybe a week for them to go make it. With our platform, you sign up. We help you get started.
We train you on the platform and anyone who has a login can go and update that map. So for some
organizations, that’s an assistant. For some organizations, that’s the director. For some, it’s
an intern. We even have a school in Hawaii that uses it to build scavenger hunts for their lower
grade levels, but the people that are building the scavenger hunts are high school students.
So it’s pretty interesting. You don’t need to be an IT expert to use it,
and pretty much anyone with a login can go in and update that map.
Okay. Yeah, it’s given the control back. I think these marketing departments, oftentimes with the
nonprofit attractions are small, and they’re used to having to, or they have a lot of responsibility,
but they’re also used to being able to be in control and so it puts that back in their control
a bit and make those changes when they want. I think they’re web design and development, right?
They just want to be able to go and make that change right now and I have to wait a week for somebody
else to do it for them. So if that’s the type of team that you have and you’re operating with,
then this seems like a great option compared to maybe having a full app developed for you.
Yeah, and another piece of this that I didn’t even think about, I actually heard from Cincinnati
Nature Center. They have a very cool map. They said they were really frustrated that people would
look up their venue on Google Maps and then based off of whatever that said plan there,
well, that’s not correct. That information on Google Maps is about 10 years old. They wanted to take
their own ownership over what information they’re giving out to folks and this really allowed them to
do that. Okay, yeah, I like that. Okay, once again, marketing, that’s what it says marketing in the
title of our podcast, what kind of data can I get from this map? I mean, is there any type of
user data or anything like that? I mentioned the SMS thing, which was a super clever idea that
kind of feels like it’s outside of this platform. Is there anything else? Yeah, so it is in the same
platform, but you don’t have to have texting to do the map, right? So you have a full reporting
dashboard. It’s pretty interesting to go see how many people are on your site at what time of day,
which stops are getting the most clicks and at what time of day that is. We had a park that’s
open 24/7 and they were surprised to see the amount of activity at like 2am of somebody just like
walking around and tapping all these map markers. So it’s really, it’s giving you the data to make
decisions about where maybe you need to put some more work in marketing a part of the park or maybe
this is getting a ton of attention and you didn’t even expect that. So maybe you should mention it
a little bit more. It’s super interesting to pull those reports and you have a full dashboard on that.
I like that, I like that. I’m also thinking like this, this linger time kind of concept, like people
kind of hanging out doing something, maybe more of a special event, there’s or an artwork installation,
and that’s a good spot to put some beer cart next to you. The food bill team can like, hey.
Absolutely, yeah, this for some reason, this spot is getting a lot of traction at this time and
there’s nothing there. Let’s put something there. Yeah, interesting. All right, so this costs a million
dollars. Yes, so we can start at about five thousand bucks a year and that is probably 40 to 60%
cheaper than having someone go and develop a downloadable app. Yeah. And that’s just kind of based
on how much involvement we have in it and how much of an area you’re covering. But yeah, it can be
up and running pretty quickly as well. Once you’re signed, we train you on the platform, we can help
you get it off the ground, we can help you with that initial overlay and brainstorm with you on how
to market it and maybe some sponsorship opportunities with it. And then you’re just off to the races.
Yeah, Jenny, I like this. It seems this is turning to more, more and more of these non-profit
cultural attractions are moving into this space. But I’m curious, like, why isn’t everybody doing it? I
guess it’s just an adoption thing. Sure, there’s some time and there’s actually a cost, but
I’m curious, are there any other kind of barriers that you’re running into? Are people saying,
“It sounds good. We’ll get to it next year” or something like that? I think there’s some of that. I think
maybe a leadership, if there has a 10 about technology, can be a problem. But the reality is
this is going to be a reality in the next few years. So you really should be an early adopter of
this type of technology because it’s going to be all over the place and why wouldn’t you take
advantage of meeting people where they are, which is on their phones. We don’t want people to be
on their phones the entire time they’re at your attraction, but to say that they’re not going to be
at all is wishful thinking. So you can’t beat them, join them. Well, and yeah, we’ll set.
And having that balance, like you said, there’s, I think especially if we think of like maybe
gardens whose audience can still be a little bit older, right? Maybe you’re not completely abandoning
a print-in map tomorrow, but you’re not putting– Yeah.
–you’re not creating all your special event maps and everything throughout the year printed. Maybe
you just have your standard map that’s printed and then your special events are all done through
through a tool like this. –Yeah, it’s part of a toolkit, right? It’s not going to replace everything,
but I do think it’s massively helpful and could really cut down on efforts in several other places.
–All right, Anna. Our audience wants to know how can they get started?
You got an email address or what’s the best way to perfect to get some more information?
–Yeah, that’s my favorite question. So you can visit us at engagebycel.com. You can reach out to
me directly my email addresses, Anna A-N-N-A, at guidebycel.com. That’s g-u-i-d-e-b-y-c-e-l-l.com.
That’s probably the best way. –Awesome. Anna, thanks for joining us. We really appreciate it.
–Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It was fun.
–Thank you for listening to the Marketing Attractions podcast. If you have a suggestion for a topic
or would like to be a guest on the show, please visit our website at MarketingAttractionsPodcast.com.
