Strategic Pete · Museums, theme parks, zoos & aquariums
Attractions Marketing Agency
for Museums, Theme Parks, Zoos & Aquariums
You already own the thing people would drive two hours for. What you do not own is a reason for them to believe it before they get in the car — and that gap is a marketing problem, not an attendance problem.
Documentary-led storytelling, earned media, and the search and booking work that catches the demand those two create. One accountable team, not a film vendor and an agency and a freelancer who never speak to each other.
Tell us what visitors expectRead this before you enquire
We are not a promotions agency. If you need attendance this weekend, a discount and a paid boost will do more for you than we will, and we will say so on the first call rather than take the retainer.
What we change is what people believe about your attraction before they ever look at a ticket price. That takes a season, not a weekend — and it is the only work that also moves memberships, donations and the goodwill you need when a county commission asks what you are for.
What we actually run for attraction operators
Four things, and they are sequenced. The last one does not work without the first two.
Story capture
Long-format film shot on site with your keepers, curators, educators and operations crew — not actors reading your brochure back to you.
Earned distribution
National and regional press, streaming placement and social distribution, so the story reaches people who have never heard of you.
Search and booking paths
The route from “I just saw that” to a ticket in a cart, fixed so the attention you earn does not leak.
Membership and donor work
The second visit and the annual pass are cheaper to sell than the first visit. Most attractions market only for the first.
Attendance, membership and community goodwill are one marketing problem
Operators usually bring us one of the three and discover the other two were the same problem wearing different clothes. A family that does not understand what you do will not buy a ticket, will not renew a membership, and will not defend you at a county commission meeting.
The perception gap is the real problem
People think they already know what a zoo, a museum or a family entertainment centre is. Most of what they think was formed twenty years ago, or by a headline about somebody else’s facility. Paid media does not move a belief that old.
Proof beats persuasion when you sell an experience
You cannot sample an attraction before you buy it. The nearest substitute is watching somebody else have the experience, honestly filmed and long enough to be believed.
Then, and only then, the performance layer
Ads, listings and booking-path work multiply demand that already exists. Run them first against a perception gap and you pay full price to be misunderstood faster.
How the work actually gets made
Five stages, in this order, because each one needs the one before it.
Map the perception gap
What visitors, lapsed members, local media and your own staff believe about you — and where those four disagree. The disagreement is usually the campaign.
Find the stories that already exist
A conservation programme, a rescue, a restoration, a forty-year employee, a species nobody in the state has seen. Attractions are the rare category with more real material than they can use.
Film them without sanding down the truth
No script that flattens the work into a brochure. Visitors have seen ten thousand promotional videos and can smell the next one; what they have not seen is the thing that is plainly, verifiably real.
Put it where the decision gets made
Earned media, streaming and social — not only your own feed, which mostly reaches people who already bought a ticket last year.
Convert attention into tickets, memberships and donors
Search, site and booking paths fixed so somebody who just felt something about your park can act on it in under a minute, and so this season’s attention is still working next season.
Who we work with
Attraction operators. If you are a tourism board or a destination marketing organisation, we are the wrong agency for you and there is a note about that further down.
Zoo marketing agency work for zoos & wildlife parks
Accredited and independent, single-site and multi-site — including facilities running an active conservation or breeding programme the public has never heard about.
Aquarium marketing
The same conservation story, told about animals most visitors only see through glass. Aquarium marketing works when the rescue, research and breeding work is on screen, not just the tanks.
Museum marketing agency work for museums, science centres & historic sites
Where the collection is not the problem and the reason to visit this year is.
Theme park marketing for regional parks
Regional operators competing against a two-hour drive to a national brand.
Family entertainment center marketing
FECs competing against a living room, and against school holidays they cannot control.
Attraction associations & member networks
Where the perception problem belongs to a whole category and no single operator can fix it alone.
What the work has produced in this category
One engagement, published in full: a pygmy hippo born at Tanganyika Wildlife Park in Goddard, Kansas, on 26 June 2025, and what happened when it was framed as a conservation story rather than a cute-baby-animal story.