Pay-per-click campaigns, and more specifically Google Adwords campaigns, are continually becoming utilized in more industries to garner attention for upcoming products. One industry that appears to be catching on to usefulness of Adwords lately is Hollywood. I recently searched for the MMA movie ‘Warrior’ (made by Lionsgate) and was greeted with a well-made Adwords ad front and center:
It’s a sure thing that the Lionsgate online marketing team realized that a large portion of their ‘Warrior’ audience would be fans of mixed martial arts, which has a well known demographic between the ages of 16-35. That is also the type of audience that would be searching for most of their information online – which provokes good reason to utilize Google Adwords to capture that demographic.
Adwords is the perfect addition to a standard Hollywood marketing campaign: it enables an adept PPC management team to launch an effective online campaign in a matter of days while a film is in its pre / early stages of release. Whether a potential movie-goer is searching for movie times, trailers, reviews, actors or general information about the film, they will have the potential to getting exposed to the Google ad.
Another reason why a PPC campaign can be an effective release tool for movie-makers is due to it’s ability to provide control in an otherwise unstable search engine landscape. A movie release can be peppered with professional critiques, user reviews, mash up videos and other forms of bad press that could potentially deter people from going to see the film. Although none of these forms of content are ‘official,’ they could potentially reach a customer’s eyes prior to branded materials. An Adwords ad shows up on top of a search results page (SERP), and if created in an attractive manner, will direct a user to a film studio’s landing page of choice (official movie site, trailer page, fandango, etc.). Having this type of movie advertising control is essential to a successful release.
An Adwords campaign also allows a great deal of user targeting for a movie studio. Let’s take the upcoming film ‘The Hunger Games,’ made by Lionsgate. The studio might want to send specific users interested in different actors within the film to different web pages that are tailored to fans of those actors. Those typing ‘Jennifer Lawrence Hunger Games’ would get a different ad / landing page combination than those searching for ‘Elizabeth Banks Hunger Games.’ These ads would likely perform and convert much higher than standard ‘Hunger Games’ ads because of the specific fan demographic.
Insight Forge is experienced in marketing films through online distribution channels, specifically Adwords and Facebook PPC campaigns. For more information, feel free to get in touch with us at contact@insightforge.com.