(This is part two of a two-part series on what those dwelling in haunted residences can do to better lure in unsuspecting victims. Click here for part one.)

In my previous post I discussed how the majority of individuals living in haunted residences have severely limited their target market by clinging to age-old ideas of how to present themselves through their properties. This section will discuss specific action items you can act on today which will dramatically increase human traffic through your home.

Live like you’re living
In the advertising world we have professional photographers shoot products and then talented designers create beautiful ads because people are more likely to interact with something that’s aesthetically pleasing.

Apply this principle to your dwelling and clean the place up a bit. Take the boards off the windows. Hang some draperies and put a bulb in your porch light. If you’re feeling really bold, plant a garden. Make it look like someone living is living there. You’re more likely to get an unsuspecting neighbor bringing you a plate of cookies if they don’t think they (the neighbors) are going to be eaten. That way – bonus! – you get dinner and cookies for dessert.

Don’t go overboard on Halloween
Consider your target audience. You may be tempted to hang entrails from tree branches and line your porch railing with skulls. Again, even for Halloween this is too scary. I recommend something like this:

Yes, it’s cliche´ and suburban. But it has the right mix of allure for the kiddies (the cartoon ghost) while the scarier elements (figures in black) help you maintain credibility amongst your peers. The owner of this house had the right intention with the pirate flag, but it looks desperate as it doesn’t go with any of the other decorations and pirates are dated (tip: vampires are in now).

The chain across the front of the street actually works on a subliminal level – people want things they can’t have, so putting up an easy-to-cross barrier works in your favor.

Adapt for the season
There’s a reason there aren’t Halloween decorations of fake cobwebs, plastic tombstones and talking heads in grocery stores all year ’round (yet for some reason, it’s totally fine to have a realistic-looking severed hand in a grocery store during the months of September and October).

The reason is this: people are fickle when it comes to holidays. They don’t like Christmas lights up in April and they don’t like creepy houses in June. So if you can maintain your residence as described here – perhaps actually putting up Christmas lights around the holidays – you can lower the barriers to entry to get people in your house.

If you’re a zombie, ask yourself, “Would a Christmas caroler knock on my door without coercion?” If the answer is “no” you have some work to do.

Take advantage of other holidays
Here are some other holidays which provide perfect opportunities for those who feed on human flesh:

Thanksgiving – Meals on Wheels. Literally.
New Year’s Eve – People like to stay up late and get drunk. Those two factors are working for you so take advantage.
Girl Scout Cookie Time – While not technically a holiday, still a golden opportunity.

Really, all this speaks to a larger point: who wants to live in a dump forever? What do your living conditions say about you? Boarded up windows? Dusty cobwebs? Unkempt yard? I don’t think it’s written anywhere that the undead have to live like pigs. Ask yourself, “Just because my flesh is rotting (if you’re still embodied) am I perpetuating a negative stereotype?” If so, it’s time for change. And that change will bring a higher caliber of victims more frequently.

Stay tuned as we continue this series with Social Media for the Undead which will include the following tips and tricks:

• Bring hundreds of LIVE humans right to your doorstep with Twitter
• Three reasons why zombies should avoid podcasting
• Use Facebook to create/recruit an undead army

Images courtesy of Pictr 30D and ScottSchrantz.

We live in a time of rapid evolution. Economic models are being turned on their heads. Newspapers are folding. The music industry is being forced to change and Hollywood is sure to follow. But this change isn’t limited to media. It’s also time for your garden-variety undead person to reevaluate how they do things.

Audience: I write this to the hungry zombie who is sitting at home wondering why he/she can’t seem to find any food around the house.

Thesis: The traditional models of 1. limping after people or 2. using a graveyard/haunted house to lure people in are all wrong if your end goal is consume human parts.

Push vs. Pull
There are two methods you can use to get a meal: push or pull.

Traditionally zombies have used push methods to claim their victims, stumbling around the streets hoping one of the fleeing masses trips, making it possible to overtake him or her. That may have been fine in decades past but it’s not cutting it anymore. Nowadays, for the nightmarishly freakish such as yourself, it’s all about The Pull – getting people to come to you.

Besides, if you stay at home instead of wandering the streets you’re much less likely to get shot in the head and die (again).

The method of finding a cemetery or house to “haunt” is becoming a universal tool for all spirits, witches, undead and others who wish to draw in people for entertainment purposes (e.g. to scare them) or due to nutritional needs/insatiable hunger for human flesh. This, however, has severe limitations. That is why we at Richter7 have created marketing and branding techniques to help the struggling undead.

Understand your target audience
The idea of voluntarily entering into a place believed to be haunted is alluring only to stupid teenagers. This seriously limits your target audience. Little kids won’t come visit because it’s too scary and adults won’t come visit because the property looks like it’s in disrepair. The result? You have the strongest, fastest and most difficult-to-capture demographic wandering through your house/grave yard/crypt instead of the old or very young. You’re at an immediate disadvantage.

In addition, teenagers aren’t likely to dare each other to go into haunted places unless it’s near Halloween. This means you have maybe two weeks to capture enough of them to sustain yourself for an entire year (unless someone’s car breaks down in front of your house which, let’s be honest, only happens in movies).

It’s harder than it looks
Catching a year’s supply of food in two weeks isn’t an easy thing to do (trust me) so why put yourself in that position when a little elbow grease could radically improve the quality and frequency of your prey?

Stay tuned for part 2 of this post where you’ll learn specific, actionable items you can take to lure more unsuspecting people into your house for consumption.

Image courtesy of Arnoooo.

Spying on your competition is legal and ethical. It is a time-honored tradition to determine what works and what doesn’t. As the theory goes, let competitors spend the time and money. Then by observing them, you can create something that will have an ROI much quicker than if you started from scratch. With that, you save yourself months of trial and error trying to perfect your online marketing strategies and tactics.

Learn From Your Competition

You probably already know who your competitors are just by reputation. You want to study these companies first because you are probably going to be in direct competition with them; these are the people that you want to outperform.

The first step is quite simple: to beat them, you want to join them. Opt in to as many of their communications as possible:

1. Subscribe to their email lists;
2. Join their site;
3. Join their community; and
4. Read their blog.

Scrutinize Their Strategy

Every business, in order to operate, has to communicate with their customers. Follow these communications; they are the best place to find a gold mine of information and will help you learn what is already working for them. Some things to look for include:

- Your competitor’s marketing message;
- Where they are advertising;
- What types of advertisements are working; and
- What types of customers they are targeting.

With this information, you can quickly shape your marketing strategies at a fraction of the cost and time of your competitors.

But it doesn’t end there. If you are just following in your competitors’ footsteps, then you are only going to be as good as they are. If you want any chance of outdoing them, you will need to expand outside your current list of competitors. If you are local, look at national competitors. If you have a national presence, consider international industries.

Gather Competitors’ Information

So, your competitors with the most high-powered back links, largest customer base, website age and authority are typically ensured a position in the upper echelon of retailers and search engine rankings for multiple keywords and key phrases (such as Wikipedia). Taking on these behemoths is going to be a long-term strategy. But in relationship to a less competitive industry, it may be more wide open to someone with a budget, a great marketing strategy and a well thought-out competitive analysis strategy.

Simply put, if you want to find out why Company A ranks so well for Term B, you need to launch your own investigation online using various methods for extracting their information.

Narrow the Focus

But where do you start? With all the mountains of data available, where is the right place to begin? The key to making this happen is to do it in an organized and effective way.

1. Pare down the mountains of data into small amounts of information.
2. Avoid information overload and analysis paralysis.
3. Quickly analyze the data.
4. Form actionable strategies.

Final items to consider:

1. Watch their ad spending;
2. Watch their top performing keywords;
3. Keep on top of who they are hiring through job posting and LinkedIn;
4. Watch bookmarks through tools such as Delicious; and
5. Watch for changes to their website with tools like Versionista.

So with all this talking about spying on your competition through competitive research analysis, you may be asking yourself the question, “What tools and methods can I actually use to level the playing field?”

This is where Richter7 enters the picture. We have strategies, expertise and tools to help you not only catch up to your competition, but to quickly and effectively surpass them.