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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The Next Evolution of Social Media Integration

A few years ago, when brands first began wading in to test the waters of the social media pool, the concept of social media integration was very straightforward and simplistic: add icons linked to your company’s social media profile pages on your website, and consider the job done. The message to visitors was, “Like what you see here? Please come join the conversation happening on our company’s social outposts!” And as brands continued to jump on each new social bandwagon that came along – YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. – the once-standard three buttons became four, then four became five and so on. Shortly thereafter, brands discovered the benefit of serving content across multiple sites in the name of message continuity. The advent of social media management tools like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck set this activity on fire, as marketers began exploiting newly available scheduling tools to republish content to all their profiles with the click of a single button, with no regard for tailoring their message to the culture and syntax of each platform and audience. And this run-of-the-mill, low-quality content made its way back to these companies’ websites as embedded Twitter and Facebook feeds – all in the name of integration. And customers noticed. Actually, everyone noticed. Because this robotic, efficiency-driven method of social media integration began to strip these platforms of their primal social element — the very reason why sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are so popular in the first place. So with a little push from Google, Bill Gates’ postulation, “Content is King,” became every marketer’s buzz phrase. Companies began pouring big dollars into developing relevant, original content in every arena, from sharable blog posts and traffic-driving SEO landing pages to viral videos — each fighting for a just few fleeting seconds of consumers’ precious attention. As companies started to find their footing, they realized success in social media demands integration through and through – not at the superficial level of icons and links but at the very core of a company’s business growth efforts. Rather than treating each marketing medium (e.g., television, radio, email, pay-per-click, social, etc.) as existing within its own self-contained silo, social should be seamlessly interwoven throughout the brand’s marketing initiatives in ways that are a natural fit with how real customers think, behave and make decisions. When done well, social media integration steps inside and outside the four walls of the Internet fluidly, supports customer engagement while maintaining the social integrity of the platform and, inevitably, drives sales. Here are a few excellent examples of companies who are doing it right by today’s standards:

Well that’s Pin-teresting

Recently, Banana Republic sent out an email blast that combined the best of social media, direct marketing and e-commerce into one cleverly crafted campaign. Subscribers to the company’s mailing list received an email message featuring images of customers’ most-pinned styles. Within this email was a link that took recipients to a dedicated landing page on the brand’s own website where they could shop these looks, creating a direct, distraction-free path between email, website browsing and checkout, greasing the gears for a quick and easy purchase decision. Smartly, Banana Republic executed these promotional efforts in the other direction, too. Their Pinterest profile includes a board of most-pinned styles, each of which of course links directly to the item featured in the pinned image for interested buyers to purchase from the website. This creative campaign not only integrates the company’s social media, email and e-commerce efforts, it also capitalizes on a key psychological motivation for the fashion-minded by giving them insight into what’s on their fellow shoppers’ wish lists so that they, too, can be seen sporting the season’s most-wanted looks.

Tweet to eat

If you’ve got a fanbase that’s actively engaged in talking about your brand on social media, it begs the question: how can you take advantage of their promotional activities to reach a broader audience? The answer: integrate your social media campaigns into your traditional marketing efforts. Case in point: Panera’s highly successful #PaneraFaves campaign. Over the past several months, Panera Bread has been encouraging customers to share photos of their favorite menu items on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – providing added incentive by giving those who participate a chance to win Panera gift cards. While this initiative provides great value on its own by prompting fans to promote the brand to their own friends and followers, Panera has taken this campaign to the next level, running national TV spots that feature these #PaneraFaves tweets and pics. The strengths of this TV campaign are multifold, as they position Panera not only as a brand that pays attention to its customers and their opinions but one that is well loved by those customers, too.

Add it now, buy it later

In May 2014, Amazon launched a feature that lets Twitter users add items directly to their Amazon cart simply by typing a hashtag. First, the user must connect their Twitter account to Amazon. Then, anytime they see an Amazon product link on Twitter, replying to that tweet with the hashtag #AmazonCart — or #AmazonBasket in the UK — adds the product to that user’s shopping cart, where it will be ready and waiting for them to purchase at their convenience. This stroke of marketing genius essentially turns Twitter into a retail pipeline for Amazon, extending the reach of the e-commerce giant beyond its own website to the social hubs where its customers live and talk about products day in and day out. In doing so, Amazon is also wisely fending off the rising threat of social networks transforming into social commerce outlets in their own right. While there is still a learning curve for customers and a few technical kinks to work through, Amazon’s “add it now, buy it later” concept clearly has tremendous potential to shape the future of social commerce.

As seen on TV

Also in May 2014, TaylorMade partnered with Chirpify, a marketing conversion platform, to host a live sweepstakes for their SLDR S golf club during the CBS broadcast of the PGA Byron Nelson Championship. Using their #actiontag (#DistanceforAll), anyone could enter for a chance to win the SLDR S or a trip to the US Open. According to Chirpify, “55 percent of people who saw the message on TV and responded to the sweepstakes on social completed the registration.” This 55 percent conversion rate is nothing to scoff at. It means social is no longer limited to merely reflecting engagement. Instead, it can be used as a clear and defined component of the sales funnel — exactly the kind of approach to and innovative use of second screen and social that defines the next stage of evolution in social media integration.

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