Do you work at or own an escape room?  Good.  Keeping reading.

To expand on my Escape Room Marketing Guide, this post provides a list of the best escape room directory websites.  Having accurate and complete citations (aka directory listings) across the web is a key factor in ranking your business with in the local search results.

Question & Answers

 We’ve interviewed the owners of multiple directory websites to give you some background on the best ones out there.  Our 4 questions are as follows:

1)  How many website visitors do you receive monthly?

2)  What benefits are there for an escape room to be listed in an online directory such as yours? Do you offer anything which other directories do not?

3)  What are your thoughts with regards to online marketing for escape rooms vs. traditional print advertising?

4)  Any final words you would like escape room owners to hear?

Sofia – World of Escapes

1)  World of Escapes currently receives roughly 30.000 website visitors per month, and the numbers keep growing.

2)  Online directories are gaining popularity among escape room players. You can choose a room that matches your needs, preferences, and interests without having to visit a bunch of websites.

What makes World of Escapes unique are reviews for each room instead of the company as a whole. We also try to include as many actual photos of the rooms as possible and verify information with the owners. Our website has a map feature so you can find a room closest to you, and tags to divide the broad variety of rooms into categories. All of these features are directed towards making the choice process easier, and therefore attracting new potential customers. You can list your room for free, and it is a great way to increase brand recognition.

3)  We believe the future is with online marketing. The majority of the target audience for escape rooms goes online to look for rooms and to buy tickets and generally does not read newspapers/pay close attention to fliers. Online marketing reaches a broader scope of people and can bring in tourists and travelers, while print advertising only reaches local folk. Lastly, online marketing usually has a higher cost-effectiveness rate.

4)  World of Escapes is owned by people just like you – we started as customers and played 100+ rooms before we decided to try our hand at creating our own escape rooms, and now we have 50+ franchise companies all over the world. We own the biggest directory of escape rooms in Russia and plan to use our experience and marketing strategies to make World of Escapes a great place to choose an escape room from. We have big plans for our future development, and, ultimately, our main goal is the same as yours – a satisfied customer.

Tyler – The Scare Factor

1)  The Scare Factor is primarily a Halloween haunted attraction review website and directory. We currently have 10 “Scream Teams” that tour different parts of the country to provide professional, original reviews and our haunt directory was built to help our followers find attractions near them that they may not have known about.

 

In 2016, The Scare Factor received an average of 11,000 unique website visitors per month. Of course, it’s important to note that most of those visitors came to us during the months of September and October; our total count of (2016) unique visitors was over 130,000. In contrast, because haunted houses are so seasonal and our Escape Room Directory is so new, we’re only seeing an average of 2,250 unique visitors so far this year.

2)  Escape rooms can benefit by being listed on The Scare Factor because we manually check each of our listings for accuracy at least once a year. We mainly look for name, address and website/Facebook URL changes, as well as updated phone numbers and email addresses. Furthermore, we add any escape rooms that we can find that aren’t listed and we remove any listings for attractions that have permanently closed or remained inactive for the last year. This helps us to remain the most complete and updated resource for escape room information possible, aside from actually visiting the attractions’ pages directly.

Listing an attraction on The Scare Factor is 100% free. Along with the information that we look for during our manual checks, escape rooms have the option of uploading a logo image, promo images, a motto/tagline, how many rooms they have, a description of their attraction and more by sending their information to us themselves. This can be accomplished by filling out the “Directory Contact” form on our website.

Another reason why escape rooms should be sure they’re listed with us is because we are so involved with the haunted house industry. Escape rooms share many of the same thrill-seeking customers that haunted houses attract, so having the chance to be seen on a neighboring directory that organically draws one of their target audiences is kind of a no-brainer.

3)  With the advances in today’s technology, marketing an attraction online is absolutely necessary. Print advertising can certainly be a budget-friendly means of putting your name in front of hundreds or thousands of locals, depending on where those ads are placed.

But, therein lies the problem; printed ads rely on said customers being in the right place at the right time to see those ads…

With digital, businesses can effectively target their ads to only their current and potential customers; i.e., people who have a valid interest in the services or products that they offer.

Dan – EscapeRoomDirectory.com

1)  EscapeRoomDirectory.com gets around 15,000 uniques monthly.  Update: This site is no longer being updated / maintained.  EscapeRoomSubmitter.com still works though. (see below)

2)  There’s really no reason *not* to be listed – go to escaperoomsubmitter.com, it only takes a couple minutes to fill out the info, and there’s no fee or anything. Plus for that one submission you end up in a bunch of directories. But really an escape room owner should probably make sure they have a listing in all the major directories.

3)  Lol I’m no marketing expert! I have no idea! Marketing for escape rooms is hard! Most escape rooms I know have very little marketing spend, and rely on viral word-of-mouth plus some press hits. Usually in any given metro only the top dog will do any kind of advertising — and mostly they’re advertising the concept of escape rooms as much as their own room — and that’s local brand advertising, which is harder to do effectively online. But again I have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about.

4)  Yo, fill out the form on our site, it’s quick & easy & makes sure you get listed. Do it not just once but whenever you have major changes (open new locations or new rooms, etc).

Directory Sites for Escape Rooms

World of Escapes

The Scare Factor

EscapeTheRoomz

Escape Room Source

Escape Rooms Near Me

Escape Room Black Book

Escape Authority

Escape Cracker

Escape Room Freak

Escape Game

Escape Fan

Now Escape

Escape Games America

Escape Room Addict

EscapeinGuru

EscapeSpy

Escape Room Submitter – submits listing to the following directories:

Play Exit Games

Escape Room Hub

Room Escape Artist

Intervirals

Escape Base

Have I missed any escape room directories?  Let me know in the comments!