Bringing widgets to your movie marketing efforts
Widgets, in case you haven’t heard, are the latest hot thing in the online marketing world. The concept behind a widget isn’t all that complex. It’s a little bit of code that an online publisher can grab and put on their site to display some sort of rich media unit. The idea is that these are tools that can make the site more interactive and interesting by providing publishers with the tools to spread the word about something they find cool.
Widgets have been adopted by a number of marketers, including quite a few movie studios. Warner Bros. offered widget code on its Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix site that pointed to the official sites for the movie and the soundtrack. Disney has been a big user of widgets, pushing them as part of the campaigns for both Ratatouille and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. The latter two actually were more countdown tools, showing the remaining time to a trailer debut or even the movie’s release.
Here’s the dirty little secret behind widgets that most marketers (I hope) realize but that publishers and social networkers, in their rush to trick out their pages haven’t (I don’t think) fully realized: Putting a branded widget on your site is the equivalent of agreeing to placing an unpaid ad for that brand or product. That’s the reality of it. The functionality is the same from the publisher standpoint, where putting a widget on my site is the same process as placing my AdSense or FeedBurner . The difference is I’m not getting compensated in the same way as I am for those items for doing just about the same thing.
Widgets can - and should - be a valuable tool for the very reasons they’re so popular. They’re great tools to give to publishers to help them spread some word of mouth and make their sites more interactive and colorful. And, as a publisher, it’s easy to get sucked in by things like that and not really think about how they’re being used by the marketers.
So that leaves the onus on the marketers creating the widgets that do not violate the trust that needs to exist between themselves and the social media publishers they rely on to create online buzz. While not many people seem on to this yet they will be soon and the backlash will not be pretty. So here are some things to keep in mind to ensure that you’re adding value with your widget marketing strategy:
- Add value: What does the widget provide the publisher? You’re asking them to place an advertisement on their site so make sure that it’s something that really adds to the site experience.
- Don’t push them away: If all your widget does is push people to a new site and away from the publisher who was nice enough to put it up you’re not going to get much adoption. Make it something people can interact with on the site and not just a link.
- Stay on target: Don’t decide to reinvent your brand identity with the widget. Odds are the bloggers interested in adding it are industry or niche specific so don’t go crazy trying to do new things - just do what you are already known for well.
- Respect the sidebar: Odds are your widget is going to end up in the blog’s sidebar somewhere so either create one widget that’s a reasonable size or create multiple versions of different sizes. That way publishers can use the version that best works within the structure of their site.
- Be platform agnostic: Again, either make sure your widget works with all blogging platforms and social networks or create separate versions for each one. Don’t make people frustrated that they can’t spread the word. That’s annoying and could actually lead to a backlash.
These are good things for all marketers and widget developers to keep in the back - and front - of their mind the next time they’re working on something like this.
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