I think it’s key to note that for the purposes of this media plan that I have two different approaches to my online promotion:
- Firstly is the building of my community, where a lead is somebody that follows my ad and signs up to take part. A conversion is if that person then goes on to post something and contributes to the community through the boards or content submission.
- For my sales business, a lead is somebody that signs up for our mailing list. A conversion is somebody that goes on to rent from my company.
I will look at and discuss both avenues for this part of the plan.
For the community –
For the building of the online community, there are a few of the channels that I would rule out instantly. The use of paid search, advertising and affiliate marketing would be detrimental to the profitability of the site. All three require a much higher monetary investment that would potentially not see a return in sales through the main part of the rental company. The leads for the community do not generate revenue directly, at least not at first, so the spending of money to build up the fan base would not be a sound idea.
SEO is going to be key for the filmmaker community because there aren’t a lot of instantly go to places for people to visit. Before I went to film school I searched out numerous communities as a place to learn my craft but never found a one-stop-shop that could help me. Through careful use of keywords that attract different career paths in the industry I can guide upcoming filmmakers to my site before they even start their careers. Constant community interaction will in turn breed word of mouth, especially between students.
It’s an interesting concept to use social media and social public relations to promote a social media site, but that is essentially what we’ll be doing. The community is a socially interactive site for filmmakers and we don’t want to draw members away to side Facebook groups and pages, but they are essential for generating awareness for new users. We’ll use social media and online PR to alert people to our mini-festivals and events that are occurring. Social media will be just another channel for people to hear news about the site and our events.
Email marketing will be used to alert customers to our community special offers and events that will be taking place. Our mailing list will be generated from our rental customer base and customers will have the option to opt in or out of the marketing. I’m not a fan of spam but if you clearly give the option to customers in every email to opt out if they wish, then it makes you less of a bad guy. There’ll be incentives to receive the emails such as special offers only available to subscribers.
For the rental company –
SEO and Paid Search will be a big part of the rental side of the company’s marketing strategy. After doing research, it’s hard to find consistently reliable looking websites for rental of equipment and studio space in Florida. All the sites look dated or badly designed and with careful use of paid search and organic rankings The Hub could place highly in the eye of the consumer. Especially with the new film incentive bill coming to Florida, production companies around the country are going to be searching for rental houses in the area so they can secure a tax rebate. A well placed website in search results could generate a ton of out of town business.
The majority of the PR and Social Media interaction for the rental side of the business will come directly from the filmmaker community focus of the company. Special deals and offers will be available as an incentive to join and contribute regularly to the community. This will in turn drive up rentals in the money making portion of the business.
Email marketing will be used to alert customers to our community special offers and events that will be taking place. Our mailing list will be generated from our rental customer base and customers will have the option to opt in or out of the marketing. There’ll be incentives to receive the emails such as special offers only available to subscribers. Every new rental customer will be offered the chance to sign up for the mailing list.
Affiliate marketing will play a big role in our business. Each customer will get a referral code without having to sign up for an affiliate account. Every time they get a new customer to come and rent gear or least studio space, both they and the new customer will get a one-time discount. The numbers of referrals are limitless, however only one discount may be applied at a time. We will also have a more traditional online affiliate program where even people who aren’t customers can sign up and receive monetary payments instead of discounts for purchasing leads.
2 – Campaign Budget
2 – A – Budget Total
For my company I have allocated $10,000 a month for Internet based advertising out of a budget of $27,640 of total advertising that is going towards billboards and more traditional local advertising sources. This money will be divided non-equally between the rental and community sides of the business with the larger weight going to the profit generating rental side.
2 – B – Budget Allocation
The largest portion of our budget will go towards paid search and generating awareness of our company to local and national production companies. We will spend a lot creating a position for ourselves as a go to company for Florida productions.
Then, although not costly, we will spend money on email marketing. Once our email templates are designed however, this cost will not be extensive because it can be done in house.
Both affiliate programs won’t affect the budget because the money will be added as a variable commission, reducing profit rather than being charged to the marketing budget.
The remaining money will be spent promoting the community. This will again be largely done in house so the costs, minus wages, will not be extensive.
2 – C – Man Hours
Our in house web and community manager will manage SEO and Paid search for both sides of the business along with the community itself. This person’s job will be to promote the community and keep our web presence up to date. This will be a full time position, although much of the job will be able to be done remotely. They will also be responsible for our email marketing campaigns. They will work closely with the executive team to plan community events. 30 hours a week at least will be spent on this position.
3 – Campaign Duration
Essentially this campaign will run forever. For the first year the push will be heavy handed and deliberate. As the community and customer base matures, we will be able to rely more on word of mouth and less on calculated marketing. Ideally we could eventually reach a point where we didn’t have to market, however, that really doesn’t seem like it could become a situation we would find ourselves in.
