Entertainment and hospitality marketing

Marketing Built for Experience-Based Businesses

An entertainment marketing consultant has to understand the experience guests actually have. Hidden Lever connects family entertainment center marketing, attraction and hospitality marketing, venue marketing, guest acquisition, group and event bookings, and multi-location entertainment marketing into one practical plan that accounts for digital systems and on-site operations.

Talk through the real problem See what the work includes

Based in Northeast Ohio · Working with businesses locally and nationwide

01 Who it is for

For businesses that sell a place, occasion, and experience

Experience-based businesses operate differently from products bought on a shelf. Demand is local, capacity is perishable, occasions vary, and the promise made online must survive the handoff to the venue.

Multi-location entertainment operators

You need consistency without flattening the local differences that influence demand, community, staffing, and competition.

Hospitality, venues, and destinations

The business serves multiple occasions and audiences, each with a different path to inquiry, booking, arrival, and return.

Attractions and experience brands

Marketing, operations, guest service, technology, and promotions must work together to deliver what the campaign promised.

When it becomes useful

Signs the current approach needs a clearer view

Corporate campaigns and local marketing compete instead of reinforcing each other.
Promotions create traffic but not the right demand, timing, margin, or repeat behavior.
Guests encounter friction between search, location pages, booking tools, confirmation, arrival, and follow-up.
Location teams lack a clear playbook—or receive plans that ignore operational reality.
Reporting tracks clicks and reach without connecting them to bookings, calls, visits, capacity, or business priorities.

What Hidden Lever examines

Look across the system—not at one channel in isolation

Guest occasions, audience segments, local demand patterns, and competitive context
Location pages, listings, reviews, search visibility, paid media, and local content
Booking paths, party or event inquiries, phone and form handling, CRM, and follow-up
Promotional calendar, pricing, offers, capacity, margins, and operational execution
Corporate-to-location communication, assets, training, reporting, and accountability

02 What comes out of the work

Useful, specific, and built to move

Clarity has to become decisions.

01
A guest-journey and demand strategy tied to real business occasions
02
Clear roles for brand-wide, local, organic, paid, sales, and retention activity
03
Stronger booking and inquiry paths across websites and digital systems
04
Promotion planning that considers operations, capacity, margin, and guest expectations
05
Multi-location playbooks, reporting, and leadership rhythms that locations can use

03 Phil’s approach

Direct thinking, honest tradeoffs, practical follow-through

The work stays close to the business problem, the people who must execute, and the realities that determine whether a good idea can become useful action.

Start with the occasion

Phil looks at why a guest chooses the experience—family time, celebration, competition, work event, date night, travel, or something else.

Walk the real journey

Marketing is reviewed from local discovery through booking, arrival, the in-person experience, follow-up, and return.

Connect marketing to operations

Plans account for staffing, capacity, food and beverage, technology, signage, sales handoffs, and location execution.

Build for local scale

The system creates shared standards and tools while leaving enough room for each market and location to act intelligently.

What working together looks like

You work directly with the person doing the thinking.

Phil works across leadership, marketing, location teams, sales, technology partners, and operators to understand how the business performs in the real world. The work may involve strategy, audits, promotional planning, digital systems, team leadership, or fractional marketing leadership.

Recommendations are built for use—not presentation. That means respecting the calendar, staff capacity, venue economics, local competition, booking technology, and the realities of executing consistently across locations.

Relevant experience

Phil’s experience includes multi-location entertainment marketing, experience-based brands, in-person experience audits, customer acquisition planning, websites, analytics, promotion systems, and team coordination. He understands why the marketing plan has to work at the location level, not just in a strategy meeting.

04 Common questions

Questions worth asking before you start

Do you only work with entertainment businesses?

No. Hidden Lever works with growing businesses more broadly. This service is specifically shaped for venues, attractions, hospitality companies, destinations, and other businesses where an in-person experience is central to the sale.

Can you support multiple locations?

Yes. The work can address brand-wide strategy, local marketing responsibilities, location pages and listings, promotional systems, team communication, booking paths, and reporting across locations.

How do you balance local marketing with the larger brand?

The goal is a clear operating model: what should be consistent everywhere, what should adapt locally, who owns each decision, and how locations get the assets, context, and feedback they need.

Can you help with group events and bookings?

Yes. The customer journey for parties, corporate events, groups, and other booked occasions can be reviewed across acquisition, website experience, forms or booking tools, sales handoff, follow-up, and measurement.

Start with the real business problem

You do not need to know which service to ask for.

Tell Phil where the business feels stuck. The first conversation is about understanding the situation and deciding whether there is a useful next step.

Start a conversation →