Fantastic Four: Blockbuster Secrets from the Marvel Marketing Machine

Recently, a trailer for the upcoming movie “Avengers: Age of Ultron” was leaked online. Marvel, acknowledging that the trailer was out there, decided to release their official version of the trailer a short time later. Twenty-four hours after the leak first hit the Web, the official trailer had already racked up 34.3 million views on YouTube! Marvel has what we all want – an audience eager to view, share, and discuss their content. The top two-US-grossing movies this year, namely Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, are both from Marvel. In 2013, another Marvel movie, Iron Man 3, brought in $409 million while Thor: The Dark World rang up an additional $206 million for Marvel. The year before that was 2012’s Avengers, which was worth $623 million and the number one spot for that year. With that kind of success, it’s amazing to think that Marvel Entertainment Group actually filed for bankruptcy protection less than 20 years ago. How Marvel has gone from the brink of bankruptcy to one of the biggest names in entertainment, with blockbuster movies, televisions programs, video games, toys and, of course, comics, is a great story. There are a number of lessons we can learn from Marvel as we seek to add the same level of superpowers to our own marketing campaigns and websites!

1. Start with great content.

It all begins with content. Marvel focuses heavily in making sure that all their products are top notch. The value of this cannot be overstated. You can market all you want, but if your content (or whatever you are marketing) is mediocre, you will be facing an uphill climb. If your content is great, it will be much easier to find that eager audience. Marvel assembles a team to create their amazing entertainment properties, including actors and actresses, writers, filmmakers, illustrators, and more. While you may not need as large a team for your own efforts, you certainly should not attempt to do it alone. If you have in-house marketing resources, they will obviously play a role in this effort, but you should also look to the subject matter experts in your organization for what they can contribute. Finally, you will want to work with whatever web or marketing agency you partner with to get their expertise added to your campaign plans and help you develop amazing content.

2. Diversify your promotional efforts.

When Marvel is preparing to launch a new movie, they look to the range of channels they have available to them to promote that release. They run ads on their television shows, they release special edition comics meant to raise awareness and excitement for the characters and the film, they even time the release of toys for the film perfectly so that kids see the figures on store shelves and make sure their parents know that they want to see that movie. This multi-faceted approach to marketing is often called “multi-channel marketing.” For websites, multi-channel marketing means using all the appropriate resources at your disposal to connect with an audience and make them aware of, and drive them to, your site and your company. If you are using social media to promote your content, that is great, but you cannot stop there. Email marketing, search engine and other online advertising, and sponsored content are all ways you can reach an audience online. There are also offline options you should consider, from traditional print and mailing pieces, to articles in print publications, to appearances on news or radio. Not all of these may make sense for your campaign, but the point is that all of these, and more, should be considered. This is another thing you will work with your marketing agency on – identifying which channels make the most sense for your particular campaign. Whatever you decide on, however, you are almost certainly going to find that multiple channels will play a part in your eventual plans.

3. Tie it all together.

One of the things that Marvel has done expertly is to tie their properties together to create something that is bigger than just the sum of its parts. The Avengers movies are an obvious example of this since they combine characters from a number of Marvel’s solo-movie projects, including Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor. In addition to the Avengers films, which feature an all-start cast of their characters, Marvel has also made it a point to include ‘teasers’ at the end of their films. These tie-ins create excitement and get people talking not only about the movie they just saw, but also what is coming next. When you are considering your own content and campaigns, you should be thinking about how you can tie things together. This could be something as simple as cross-promoting similar products on an Ecommerce site or adding links to related articles at the end of a blog post. These are both ways that you can tie things together and increase overall exposure. If you are a services driven organization, another avenue you may consider is explaining how those various services you offer tie-in together and complement each other. If you’ve ever told an existing client about another service you offer, only to hear them say, “I didn’t know you did that!”, then you can see the value in cross-promoting your offerings by tying them all in together in some way.

4. Introduce new offerings and embrace new audiences.

As mentioned earlier, this year’s top-grossing movie in the US is Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. This is notable because, before the movie’s release this summer, few people outside of diehard comicbook fans had ever heard of these characters! Heroes like Iron Man and Captain America were well known prior to their movie debuts, so there was already some name recognition that certainly helped fuel the success of those films, but Guardians of the Galaxy is about as obscure as it gets. Still, this movie has taken in over $738 million dollars in global ticket sales. The reason for this success is because the movie is great, but what is interesting is that, for people to discover how great the movie is, they had to give it a chance. People gave it chance because they trust Marvel. If you are consistent in the quality that you deliver, whether that is in the products you sell, services you offer, or content you publish, then you will build trust with your audience and customers. That trust is critical for when you want to introduce new offerings to help expand your business. Just like movie-goers trusted Marvel enough to give Guardians of the Galaxy a chance, if your customers trust you, they will be more inclined to give your new offerings a chance. If you are following the tips mentioned previously and tying things together, this trust can be doubly helpful as customers will be introduced to new offerings and the trust they have in you will encourage them to give them a shot.

In summary

We may not all be able to release a video and attract 18 million views in 24 hours the way that Marvel has done, but by following some of the same steps that Marvel uses to promote their releases, we can help our own campaigns take off.

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Writer’s Block Be Gone! 9 Sources to Mine for Endless Blogging Ideas

“Content is king!” is the chief mantra of today’s marketing. And in the king’s service, many a business has begun blogging with fervor, only to have those efforts languish a few weeks or months later as the novelty wears off before the long-term benefits kick in. The challenge facing any business blogger is not only to produce top-quality content that people will love and share but also to establish a regular rhythm of publishing new content over time in order to build a following and develop a community around the brand. Perhaps you’re a sole proprietor – and therefore a solo blogger – juggling too many responsibilities and too little time. Or maybe you’ve been handed the torch of managing your company’s blog, and you have no clue where to begin. Perhaps you’ve been blogging for your company for some time now and are starting to feel the well of inspiration running dry. Wherever you currently stand on the blogging spectrum, don’t give up. Great content ideas are all around you; you just have to know where to look to find them.

Here are nine reliable sources you can always turn to whenever you need inspiration for that next great post:

1. Your company documents

In the course of doing business, your company cranks out tons of documents. While many of these might seem boring or commonplace, there are seeds of inspiration to be found if you look hard enough. Has someone from your company recently given a presentation at a conference or hosted a webinar? Find a way to mold the content into article form, and embed a video or audio recording (if available) for those who’d prefer to watch or listen rather than read. Has your company published an ebook or whitepaper? You’re in luck! Take that content and break it down into bite-sized snippets for near-ready-made posts. Even the most mundane documents can yield surprising gems. Your company’s annual report, for example, probably highlights the past year’s major accomplishments. Seek out the individuals responsible and interview them about the process of reaching those milestones. Ask them to share lessons learned along the way and advice that would be helpful to others (without giving away any trade secrets, of course). Transcribe your sessions and – just like that – you can check another blog post off your list.

2. Your coworkers

Every person within your organization brings a unique set of skills, experience, interests and expertise to the table. Tap into that brain trust to keep your blog humming with an interesting and diverse array of content. Recruit your coworkers to write posts inspired by their own particular strengths and areas of expertise. Different minds think differently, so you’ll likely discover that they’ll explore ideas that might never have occurred to you. Plus – as a bonus – having many voices and perspectives represented on your company’s blog will only make it that much more useful and appealing to readers.

3. Your customers

If you’re doing your job right, your customers are your blog’s readers. But they can also be an invaluable source of its content as well. After all, who’s better qualified to share creative and practical ideas for how your products or services can be used to make someone’s life (or business) better, easier, richer or more efficient? For example, Evernote regularly features customer interviews on its corporate blog as a way to tout the limitless possibilities its suite of apps offers for personal organization and productivity. Within each post, Evernote includes screen shots from the featured customer to demonstrate the software in action. The firm has even taken this approach one giant leap further, recruiting their best customers as brand ambassadors in areas relative to their particular expertise. For example, they’ve instituted a food blogger as their Home Cooking Ambassador, a workout guru as their Fitness Ambassador and a personal tech expert as their Parenting Ambassador.

4. Studies, surveys and polls

If there’s one thing we’ll never be lacking in today’s information age, it’s data. Every day, new research is being published on any number of topics. Find a recent study that’s relevant to your audience and digest what the results mean for them in practical terms. Do the numbers indicate a shift in trends? If so, how should your readers adapt their approach to stay ahead of the curve? Does the research suggest that the status quo is here to stay? If so, how can your readers respond to make the most of a proven winner?

5. News headlines and pop culture trends

A sure way to spice up any blog post is to find a tie-in to current news headlines and pop culture trends. The trick is to take two seemingly unrelated concepts – such as comedian Louis C.K. and customer service – and create an analogy that brings them together in a way that offers a fresh perspective on a topic that’s been covered countless times before. Whether it’s The Amazing Spider-Man or the Olympics, Tom Cruise or the presidential election, by linking subject matter that may seem either unfamiliar or unoriginal to something very familiar and timely, suddenly your topic – no matter what it is – becomes much more relatable and of the moment to your reader.

6. The calendar

Life – and business even more so – is cyclical. With every year comes tax season, summer vacation, the holiday rush and the lull that follows, a new year and new budgets...you get the idea. Think critically about what types of challenges each season brings for your readers, and write timely posts centered around useful tips and advice to help them through.

7. Your own blog

Just because you’ve written about a certain topic before doesn’t mean it’s off the table now. There’s always more to say or a different angle to explore. Perhaps the original was an entry-level, 101-style post. Now it’s time to delve deeper to help those readers who’ve mastered the basics and are ready to learn more. Perhaps enough time has passed since the previous post that new research has been released on the topic, or industry trends have shifted in a different direction. Revisit the topic and bring your readers up to speed on the latest developments.

8. Other blogs

You never have enough time in the day. Guess what? Neither do your readers. Sometimes the best way to solve both of these problems is not to create new content but to curate the great content that already exists. What does that mean? It means aggregating the best, most useful posts that you’ve found in your travels across the Web into a single post (giving due credit to the original sources, of course). This type of article can be organized either around a central theme (e.g. “Pinterest: 10 Articles to Help You Get Started”) or by timeframe (e.g., a “Week in Review” round-up of your favorite articles from the past seven days). Either way, you’ve done your readers a great service by sparing them the time to cull through all the riffraff to get to the good stuff, and you’ve published another great post that required minimal time and effort to compose.

9. You

We began with one mantra, so let’s finish with another: “Write what you know.” The best source of blogging inspiration will always be your own life experience. Readers engage more with true-to-life stories of obstacles overcome or goals achieved. Generally, if something triggers an emotional response from you – whether it’s excitement, anxiety, frustration or curiosity – you’re likely not the only one who’s encountered this situation or felt this way, which means it’s worth considering how to spin the event into a relevant article for your company’s blog. Also, you can harness personal challenges to put yourself in the shoes of your readers. For example, this article was inspired by my own strategizing process for a new company blog – how would I keep the content flowing when the obvious ran out? Keep in mind, too, that there are certain basic building blocks of life and of business that are universal. Every person who owns a business, for example, has to figure out how to win new customers, what they can do to grow their market share, the best way to manage employees and company resources, etc. If your target readers are business owners and entrepreneurs, any wisdom you have to offer in these areas based on your own personal experience will be appreciated. And don’t be afraid to share your failures as well as your successes; both offer equally valuable lessons for your readers. To make the most of life’s inspirational moments, practice actively paying attention to the events of your day-to-day routines. Keep a running log of content ideas – whether it’s in a physical notebook or just a simple text file that lives on your desktop. As you go through your day, write down every minor annoyance and small victory. Doing so will help train your mind to be aware, and soon you’ll discover that you’re finding blogging inspiration in even the most unexpected places.

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