2.5x Traffic. 50% Revenue Growth. Same Escape Room.
How we took Fox In A Box Chicago from 3,700 to 9,600 visitors/month - and helped the owner keep his business alive - using SEO, Google Ads, and paid social done right.
Three Months to Prove It or Lose It
Fox In A Box Chicago is an escape room business - an independent franchisee under the European Fox In A Box brand based out of Stockholm. It has four immersive physical escape room games and team building experiences for corporate groups.
When the owner contacted us on February 14, 2019, he was direct: the brand wasn't performing as hoped, and his lease was up for renewal in three months.
We had 90 days to achieve tangible results and restore his confidence enough to renew the lease and keep the business alive.
The main focus of our campaign:
- Push rankings to the first page for the most important terms
- Reach a tolerable Cost Per Acquisition
- Identify and tap into unexplored market segments
- Make the brand omnipresent in Chicago
With a lot of ground to cover and the clock ticking, the team immediately got to work.
What We Were Up Against
Brutally Competitive Market
Chicago had approximately 48 escape rooms in 2019. Standing out wasn't optional - it was survival.
Zero Marketing Infrastructure
The brand had nothing in place apart from a few automated Google Ads campaigns running on autopilot with no strategy behind them.
A Locked-Down Website
The franchise owned the website. No new pages. No design revamp. Only blog posts with minimal features - forcing us to get creative within tight limitations.
Unfriendly CMS for SEO
The content management system made basic SEO tasks difficult. Ranking on search engines with these constraints was a massive undertaking from day one.
K.I.S.S. - Keep It Simple, Silly
Our mission: elevate the brand, make it shine, make it so omnipresent that anyone who enters their sphere of influence picks Fox In A Box over every competitor without hesitation.
After a deep competitive audit, we identified untapped opportunities and broke our approach into three core pillars:
Google Search & Display Ads
Targeted search ads, retargeting campaigns, and prospecting display to hit every stage of the buyer journey.
Facebook & Instagram Ads
Brand awareness, retargeting, and seasonal campaigns to stay top-of-mind throughout the year.
Search Engine Optimisation
Technical audit, content strategy, and aggressive link acquisition to dominate organic search in Chicago.
From Bare Bones to a Full Funnel
The existing account was basic - a few ad groups crammed with keywords, all pointing at "escape rooms in Chicago." No segmentation. No strategy.
We analysed two years of historical data and rebuilt it around intent-based segments:
Each segment got dedicated ad groups and tailored ad copy. Where no landing page existed, we created posts to fill the gap. The goal was to identify the 3–4 highest-performing segments delivering the lowest CPA, then concentrate spend there.
Beyond Search: Tapping the Display Network
We uploaded their double opt-in customer list into Google Ads to give Google richer data about who their best customers were. Then we ran two types of display campaigns:
Previous website visitors were shown banner ads to prevent them from forgetting the brand and booking with a competitor.
In any market, only 3% of people are actively searching for a solution. The other 97% don't even know they need it yet. Display prospecting put the brand in front of this cold audience before they ever searched.
Banner examples from a prospecting display campaign
Facebook Is TV, Not a Cash Register
"If Google is like a Shopping Mall, Facebook is the TV."
Most escape room owners we speak to are frustrated with Facebook Ads because they expect direct bookings. But ask yourself - when was the last time you bought something immediately from a TV commercial?
Booking an escape room involves real decisions: Who's coming? Which theme? When is everyone free? Is it suitable for an 8-year-old? These decisions take time. Facebook can't shortcut that process - but it can keep the brand in people's minds while they work through it.
Our Facebook strategy had three objectives:
Funnel cold prospects into our sphere of influence with creative, interruption-worthy ads targeted at lookalike and interest-based audiences.
Keep the brand visible to existing website visitors and past customers so Fox In A Box is always the first name they think of when the time comes to book.
Run targeted campaigns around key dates throughout the year to position the brand as always present, always relevant, and always worth considering.
Example Facebook & Instagram campaign creatives
Six Steps to Dominating Chicago Search
SEO is simple. People love making it complicated. Our guiding principle: give Google what it cares about - a great user experience. Everything else follows from that.
Step 1 - Keyword Research
We started by asking the client for a seed list of keywords, then expanded them using Google Search Console data and keyword research tools. Every keyword was grouped into four categories:
Direct commercial terms - "escape room Chicago", "Chicago escape games" - for people ready to book.
Broader variations - "best escape rooms Chicago", "family escape rooms in Chicago" - for people in research mode.
Informational queries - "are escape rooms in Chicago safe for kids?", "what is the age bracket for escape rooms?" - capturing early-stage searchers.
High-volume indirect terms - "things to do in Chicago", "what to do this weekend in Chicago" - reaching audiences not yet thinking about escape rooms at all.
Pro tip: Don't fight over the 3% of keywords everyone is targeting. Go after the 97% your market is ignoring - high-intent evergreen terms that don't fluctuate with escape room trends.
Expanding the keyword list from client seed keywords
Further expansion using Google Search Console data
The result? Rankings grew from 1,400 keywords in 2019 to 5,000+ keywords in 2022 - including ultra-competitive terms like "escape rooms for teens," "escape rooms for families," "romantic escape room," and even the head term "escape rooms".
Organic keyword profile growth from 1,400 to 5,000+ keywords
Step 2 - Competitor Analysis
We searched "escape room Chicago" and identified the top 3–5 ranking businesses. Then we deep-dived into each competitor's website and documented:
- Page layout and content length
- Common elements, words, and CTAs
- Banner placements and booking flows
- Types of products and experiences offered
- Blog activity and content strategy
Google uses machine learning to identify and reward positive user experience signals. By reverse-engineering the top-ranking sites, we could understand exactly what signals Google's algorithm was rewarding - and build a blueprint to beat them.
A sample from our competitor website review process
Step 3 - On-Site Technical Audit
Before building anything new, we needed to fix what was broken. We ran a comprehensive technical audit - typically 30–50 pages - to identify every issue holding the site back.
A snapshot of the website audit in action
The audit covered seven key areas:
Is the website architecture maximising crawl efficiency and link equity flow?
What's preventing pages from loading fast enough to satisfy Google and users?
Are the right pages indexed, and are irrelevant pages properly excluded?
Are there pages with insufficient content, or duplicate pages not marked as canonical?
Are old redirect chains wasting Google's crawl budget unnecessarily?
Are pages interconnected with the right anchor texts to pass authority effectively?
Does the site demonstrate Expertise, Authority, and Trust - the signals Google increasingly uses for all business types?
Fixes were split between what we could implement ourselves and what was escalated to the franchise's dev team.
Step 4 - Site Architecture
"Creating a healthy website architecture is like putting oil in a machine. Without it, everything runs less efficiently."
A well-structured site helps search engines crawl and index pages faster, helps users find what they need, and distributes link equity throughout the domain. The golden rule: every core page within three clicks from the homepage.
Due to the locked-down CMS, we couldn't rewrite URL paths. Instead, we used canonicalisation and strategic internal linking to partially solve the architecture challenges.
Example of a well-structured website architecture
Step 5 - Content Strategy
97% of independently owned escape room businesses don't have a blog. This is a massive missed opportunity - and exactly why we could overtake them.
Blogging isn't just "nice to have." For this campaign, it was the primary engine behind our keyword growth. Here's why it was non-negotiable:
- Creates multiple entry points to the business, reducing dependence on the homepage alone
- Signals to Google that you're a serious, active business that cares about its visitors
- Builds topical clusters around "things to do in Chicago," "birthday ideas," "team building" - expanding relevance far beyond "escape rooms"
- Strong topical authority pushes core landing pages higher in search results
- Gives customers a reason to spend more time on the site, improving brand recall
Ranking #1 for "escape rooms" - one of the most competitive terms in the category
We started with an editorial calendar built around the keyword and topic clusters identified in Step 1. Each article was designed to outrank the current top result on Google for its target topic.
Our editorial calendar - every post mapped to a keyword and intent
We scaled from 2 articles per month to 4 high-quality articles per month as traffic from the blog section surged. Today, the blog alone accounts for 30–35% of total site traffic.
Not every post needs to be a keyword play - sometimes you write to make people laugh and stay longer
Step 6 - Link Acquisition
Of everything in this strategy, link acquisition had the highest impact. But it only works this well because the previous five steps were already in place.
A quality website architecture, solid internal linking, and strong content in place will give you 10x the benefit from every link you build.
The most common question escape room owners ask: "How many links do I need to build?" It's the wrong question. Link acquisition speed should always be calibrated against what the Top 3 competitors in your market are doing - no more, no less.
For this campaign, we grew their referring domain profile from 47 to 527 domains.
Referring domains grew from 47 to 527 over the campaign period
Record Results, Despite a Pandemic
Here's what the campaign delivered by the numbers:
Overall traffic and performance statistics for Fox In A Box Chicago
We increased search traffic by 1.5x in the first year alone. Then COVID hit and shut everything down. Despite losing an entire year of momentum, we not only recovered - we surpassed previous highs and hit 2.5x.
Traffic growth over the campaign period - including recovery from COVID
On the Google Ads side, we reduced CPA from $14.09 to $5.76. The client is now acquiring three bookings for the same cost it previously took to acquire one.
CPA reduction in Google Ads - from $14.09 to $5.76
In Their Own Words
Video testimonial from the owner of Fox In A Box Chicago
Here is what the keyword growth looked like - from 1,400 to 5,000+ ranking terms, including ultra-competitive head terms:
Walkthrough of the organic keyword profile growth over three years
Let's Find Your Untapped Opportunity.
No silver bullets. No overnight promises. Just a clear competitive audit, an honest gap analysis, and a strategy built around what actually works in your market.
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