FOUR things you need to do before launching your entertainment business

FOUR things you need to do before launching your entertainment business

When launching your business the digital world can be very intimidating, there’s a billion different things out there and everyones telling you to need to be on all of them or your business won’t be found. I’m here to ease your mind and let you know, it’s a lot easier than you’d expect, and you don’t need it all.

In my time as a college professor, one of the classes I taught was “Digital Presence for New Business”, so I can tell you through years of research what's actually stuck and is going to get you set up for launch.

‍

GOOGLE BUSINESS PROFILE

This is something that far too many people overlook, you’re a location based entertainment business, people need to know your location. Setting up a Google Business Profile is super easy, free, and it will make it so people can actually find you. Here’s a link to google’s tutorial: link. Put your location, some pictures, link to your website, phone number, and your hours, just think of the key things you look for when you’re looking for a business. 

‍

SOCIAL MEDIA

Now I’m a firm believer in when you launch a brand, get your social media handle on all the platforms from the start and make sure they’re all the same. You don’t want to have to sign up for a platform in 4 years and find out someone's taken your username, just get them all from the start even if you don’t use the platform. Facebook, Instagram, X, & TikTok should be the main focus, but if there’s any platforms beyond that that you want feel free. 

Now the KEY to when you set these up that so many companies miss, even if you don’t plan on using the platform take the 3 minutes it takes to put in the basic information about your business. Upload a profile picture, link your website, give a brief description about what your business is, PUT YOUR LOCATION. Doing this will do two main things; it will help with your SEO having all these different websites pointing to your website, and it will help customers know what and where you are if they stumble across your profile. Don’t just leave your platforms as blank pages, let people find you. 40% of young users use Tiktok or Instagram search over Google Search nowadays. (Source)

‍

WEBSITE

You need to have a website for your business, but it’s easier than you think. So many clients I’ve worked with have this big dream of a super complex website that’s going to take tons of time and tens of thousands of dollars. Which would be great, if you had the time and money to sink into that. Now if you don’t have all that extra time and money, for a launch think about what the minimum viable product (MVP) for your website is. For an entertainment business it doesn’t need to be complex, just show what you are, and how people are going to have fun there. The things that are the MVP would be description, pictures, location, hours, and a link to your booking system. Use a templating system and you can do it quickly and easily yourself, or this is something fairly inexpensive that you could get a firm to do for you.

‍

BOOKING SYSTEM

If you’re a business that takes any sort of reservations or bookings, you need an online booking system. Not only will you save yourself a ton of time when you don’t have to sit there answering emails and answering the phone, customers nowadays HATE emailing and calling for reservations. There’s a reason that every decent restaurant or experience in existence uses a booking system, you’re not going to be the exception. 

There are tons of great platforms out there for bookings for the location based entertainment industry, and there’s a really simple way to find out what’s best for you. Say you’re opening an escape room, go look at 10 other escape rooms websites and I can guarantee that there will be one software that majority of them are using, so that must be the best one for your activity, don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Same goes for golf simulators, I know almost every golf sim business within 100 miles of me uses the same software, so I’m going to guess that’s the best booking software for golf sims.

‍

That’s it, those are the bare minimum requirements you need for digital presence to launch your business. Now don’t get me wrong there are definitely things you will eventually need to add on top of these, but without these no one will find your business. At least now people will be able to find your business and give you money.

‍