Sing 2, Me? Us? Everyone!

Social media networks and applications have helped increase our connection with one another and have transformed the business world. It can be a powerful tool in creating marketing campaigns to reach audiences that we not accessible before. There are different strategies to employ when looking at different types of social media and the project at hand determines what tools should be utilized.

Looking at the upcoming release of Illumination’s newest family-friendly animation, Sing 2, social media will be beneficial to increase awareness, drive engagement, and direct traffic to search engines. To do this, we will want to focus on inbound marketing techniques to create relationships and draw in the appropriate audience (Greenhut, 2021). The key inbound marketing techniques, attract, convert, close, and delight, will work well for a theatrical movie release. We want to attract new viewers by highlighting the cast they are familiar with and music that transcends demographics. They can then be converted to look up information about the film themselves. We can close this interaction by creating enough interest through social media marketing to where they decide to purchase tickets to see the movie. The final piece would be to delight and follow up on social media to gauge their reactions. We want to ensure they value their time for the price of the movie and the experience they had.

We must look at how to use social media to follow through with our goals. We can create high-quality content with social media marketing, draw in the targeted traffic, and employ search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM), (Greenhut, 2021). This way, when they search for the movie and events surrounding it, it will increase visibility and the close rate for converting viewers. To use these methods most effectively, we must establish a set of goals that we use as a baseline in gauging our reach and marketing tactics.

SMART Goals

In order to track the success of the campaign on social media, the goals we establish have to be able to be tracked in different areas of measurement to see where we succeed, where we could improve for future releases, and how our audience responds overall. In conjunction with our KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), these goals must be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely, considered “SMART” Goals (Greenhut, 2021). Overall, our primary goals of this social media campaign will be to increase our awareness, create brand engagement, and drive website traffic to enhance our SEO and SEM.

To gauge these, we hope to grow our social media following by 10% every week to increase our awareness. Next, we hope to increase engagement on all social media channels by 25% to build relationships to enhance our engagement rates. Finally, through these tactics, we hope to drive our audience’s interest’s to independent searches to generate an 80% click-through rate. To reach these goals, we must create a plan for our various social media channels to cater to each platform’s different audiences and uses. This will also create a sense of accountability.

Campaign

Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and Twitter will be the primary social media channels used in promoting Sing 2. Each will carry their own target market and goals for the campaign to increase our overall SMART goals and KPIs. For all channels, we will change profile pictures and banners with promotions for Sing 2. These must include the release date of December 22, 2021, and a QR code and link to find a theatre near our audience to use to book tickets. These images must be optimized to fit the specifications and change with the style and voice of each app (Greenhut, 2021).

Voice

Our voice will help create a distinctive tone and brand image for our promotions and marketing across our social media channels (Chen, 2020). Our overall voice and brand will be active, fun, with engagements and responses being a priority to match the audience’s attitudes and behaviors. Responses can follow the different characters’ personalities; more sassy responses can reference Jimmy Crystal, the high-strung executive. Responses to children can take on the personality of Rosa, the mother figure, and responses to millennials and gen-z users can be like it is Johnny, the young superstar. Catering responses towards the different types of our audience will help create a personality that will encourage engagements and help stay relevant without seeming “cringey.”

Hashtags and Outreach

An accessible way to increase discovery, hashtags create a powerful way to transcend various social media apps. Hashtags are necessary to further our reach and help those looking for our content find what they need. When using hashtags in marketing efforts, they should typically be short and easy to remember as you want to encourage others to use them to increase traffic and usage (Digital Marketing Institute, 2018). While they are not mandatory for all our posts, we should utilize a few basic ones to keep them consistent, memorable, and as a way for people to go back to for information. Our key hashtags will be; #Sing2, #Sing2Me, and #Sing2movie. Additional hashtags can be utilized depending on the type of content, social media platform, and target audience, such as #comedy #familymovie #holidayplans #newmovie.

Partnerships/Influencer Relationships

The actors in this movie will be key influencers for social media. Many of whom already have a large independent audience on their personal channels, which adds to the reputation of the movie and industry. These include Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Scarlett Johansson, Halsey, Bono, Letitia Wright, Chelsea Peretti, Seth MacFarlane, Tori Kelly, Eric Andre, and Nick Offerman. Johansson and Wright are coming from the Marvel franchise, and in conjunction with McConaughey and Witherspoon, they can help reach older generations, as well as parents, and the female audience. Andre, MacFarlane, and Offerman are known for their comedic pieces and will draw in more middle-aged men. Lastly, Halsey, Kelly, and Peretti will draw in younger crowds with their popular mainstream music successes and comedic careers as they are known independently outside the franchise. These relationships can help increase our reach and draw in audiences who have not seen the first movie as it is unnecessary and will help focus on the fun, family-friendly entertainment that the movie provides.

Measurement & Tools

Measuring and analyzing our postings against our determined KPIs and SMART Goals will help us keep on track to reaching our objectives. This will create accountability and an easy way to gauge where we are and where we need to be, regardless of the social media app (Greenhut, 2021). Additionally, having a cohesive space for measurement can allow anyone on our team to access our information and metrics. We can utilize the built-in business features on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok. Social Sprout Premium Analytics will also be able to provide an additional layer of information and allow us to input our direct goals to help compare our results across multiple platforms and tailor the information to our needs (Barnhart, 2021).

Pre, During, and Post Event Content

Our initial promotion for Sing 2 begins in June of 2021, 6 months before the release date of December 22, 2021. Prior to this, Illuminations Entertainment and Universal Pictures will have released the title and concept art ahead of time, but there will have been no other feasible marketing efforts as they can get lost beforehand. During the Pre-Event stage of social media marketing for our specific campaign, the primary goal will be to establish our presence and develop an audience on our social media channels. This time period is about creating engaging content to increase awareness and visibility on social media. An example of content we can share would be an Instagram Story to show short clips with the actors blurred out talking and giving hints to the character they play with the caption, “Guess Who?”. The next clip would then reveal the actor, and they give a fun fact about the character. This would help increases awareness in the early stages and creates first connections.

The During Event time period will kick off on Monday, December 20th, 2021, before the official release on Wednesday the 22nd. It will carry through the holiday season until the third week of January 2022. This will allow for approximately one month to focus on efforts to convert our social media audiences from passive viewers to theatergoers who attend in-person showings of the movie. Postings will be most prevalent and consistent across all platforms to increase hype around the release. All social media platforms will be posting once a day to increase traffic and engagement. Some platforms like Twitter and Instagram may post 2–3 times per day depending on the events and content developed by the premiere, fans, and responses. An example would be a picture post on Twitter of the cast from the premiere with the caption, “A pig, a monkey, a wolf, and an elephant walk onto a carpet… Thank you to everyone who has come out to join us this holiday season in celebrating this fun, eclectic, and hilarious movie! You are all the reason we got to do this again, and hopefully, they brought a big scooper… #Sing2 #premiere.”

Finally, starting around January 17th, 2022, about one month after the release, will begin the post-event campaign. This time will be focused on engagement on social media to gauge reactions, reviews, how audiences planned their nights around seeing the movie, and how it related to their lives. Keeping audiences on social media engaged after the initial release helps keep interest and activity up for those who have not yet decided to see it and appeal to them to help encourage them to see it. This will also create brand loyalty with continued interactions for future projects and product releases related to the movie, like merchandise, events, and even potential character meet and greets if the demand is there. An example of content for this time period could be apicture of Rosita doing the trapeze act. This was not seen in the previews and eludes to something that people would be missing if they haven’t seen the movie. It also could prompt a conversation in the comments for people to share with each other with the caption, “Our little piggy flew! What was your favorite part of #Sing2? Tag a friend you wouldn’t trust to do the trapeze with…”

Conclusion

Our social media marketing tactics will be crucial in determining the success of Sing 2’s box office performance. Without social media and marketing strategies, our target market would not know about the film, its release date and would not have any incentive to see it. By creating several streamlined methods of connecting with our audience through various social media platforms and adhering to our strategies to line up with our voice and different demographics, we will be able to reach and expand our potential audience.

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References

Barnhart, B. (2021, March 26). 10 of the best social media analytics tools for marketers. SproutSocial. https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-analytics-tools/

Chen, J. (2020, August 04). Brand voice: What it is & why it matters. SproutSocial. https://sproutsocial.com/insights/brand-voice/

Digital Marketing Institute. (2018, August 28). Using Hashtags Effectively on Social Media. Digital Marketing Institute. https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/how-to-use-hashtags-in-social-media

Greenhut, S. (2021, August 31). Week 2: Integrated and Inbound Marketing, SEO & SEM. [Video] University of Florida, MMC5363 Introduction to Social Media.

Greenhut, S. (2021, September 13). Week 4: Social Strategy. [Video] University of Florida, MMC5363 Introduction to Social Media.

Greenhut, S. (2021, September 20). Week 5: Social Profiles, Brand, and Voice. [Video] University of Florida, MMC5363 Introduction to Social Media.

Greenhut, S. (2021, September 27). Week 6: Best Practices on Platforms. [Video] University of Florida, MMC5363 Introduction to Social Media.

Greenhut, S. (2021, October 04). Week 7: Goals, ROIs, and KPIs. [Video] University of Florida, MMC5363 Introduction to Social Media.