Marketing transmedia

I read a good post by Marc Binkley the other day, entitled ”Transmedia Storytelling and Content Marketing”. The post brought up what I believe will be a very hot trend in marketing; realizing that (as Marc lines up in his post) 1. Consumers are media, 2. People yearn to belong and 3. Communities identify themselves in each other’s presence.

It is all about conversation, about not only being in front of your potential customers but also about having a reason for being on front of them other than the obvious ”we want to sell you stuff”. This reason should surpass the banalities of trying to sell things to people; they should be about telling stories and/or enabling the audience to tell stories and give them sufficient reason to want to do so.

Now, this is all laid out quite succintly in Marc’s post, so I’ll let you read his take on it. What occured to me is the fact that everyone involved in transmedia storytelling need to take proper note of this development as well. We need to sell as well, the only difference being that we (often) do not have a physical product in the end (unless you count possible DVD:s or merchandize connected to a main property). What we need to sell is what we create – content. We need people to invest time and engagement in it in order to make the returns that will make our project count as a success, in order for us to be able to obtain funds or commissions to make the next project. In this, we can learn a lot from marketing.

One thing I see quite often is a strong belief in a sort of ”if we build it they will come” mentality. This might’ve worked for Kevin Costner, but it’s most assuredly not the right fit for everyone. What is needed is marketing; what is needed is knowledge of how to get through to the ones that might actually want to partake of what you have to offer. Rob Pratten has a good post up at Transmedia Storyteller, where I would urge everyone producing transmedia (and not building on something that has a clear and eager fanbase already in place) to read the paragraphs on the stages of audience engagement closely. They feel very true to me – that there is a discovery stage (where the content needs to deliver the goods to the extent that people care to engage further), the experience stage and the exploration stage. Well, the stages could perhaps be named differently, but the fact that most people won’t want to explore further if the first stages are too demanding or not rewarding enough, that’s just common sense.

To continue on what I wrote above, that transmedia can learn a lot from marketing, let’s – as conclusion – take a look at some general marketing advice and translate it into a transmedia reality:

 1.     Look at marketing in the right light. Marketing should be seen as an investment, not an expense; a way to get the attention of possible clients and audiences. Attention is the second most important aspect of any transmedia project (the first being the quality of the content, naturally). Have great content and grab the attention of enough people, and you’re sorted. 

2.     Do not frown at market research. In the vein of ”build it and they will come”, many people creating transmedia do not really know who they are creating their content for. Market research can, as with any other product, help you find out whom you should target; what demographic, what age, what media habits and so on. This will make the first point above click a whole lot better. 

3.     Following up on that, do not frown at marketing research. Where market research focused on the market, marketing research delves into the spending habits and behaviours of the target group you’ve decided to target with your content. Use it to help you avoid mistakes, basically; the more you know about the people you ideally would want to be interested in what you have to offer, the better odds you have of achieving that goal. 

4.     Spend time on your marketing plan. Your content is worth spending time on, right? If you’re at all like me, you’ve spent more hours than you ideally want to realize (waking and sleeping and in-between) on your content. Now, you want people to take part of it, so that it won’t all have been in vain. Use a marketing plan to find holes in your strategy for reaching your customers, and in the long run as a road map to give you stability and security (and success, no doubt). 

5.     Be realistic with your marketing budget. Talk to someone, look it up on the web… there is advice to be had on the subject of budgeting for marketing. Don’t be too cautious. But neither should you overstretch. 

6.     Stand on the shoulders of others. Just as with developing transmedia in the first place, there is no shame in using a tried and tested successful method of marketing. So look around, look into similar projects; what did they do right? What did they do wrong? What can you learn and how can you implement it?
 

I hope this has been of use to someone; would be happy to discuss. Hit me on Twitter or comment here! 


The points above are based on Laura Lake’s basic marketing advice over at http://marketing.about.com.