Being a middle-aged man, I am partial to an action movie or two. One of my favs is Jason Statham. Perhaps I like him because he isn't huge like The Rock, doesn't have hair like most of my mates or can actually fight. But whatever the reason, he is pretty popular. His new movie is out called Wrath of Man and I was reading about it when a particular statistic stood out to me as a marketing teacher. Check it out...(RelishMix)
“social star power is driving the movie’s social media universe, with 69% of its entire 209.4M footprint. The cast which counts 146M total followers spurred a strong launch over a shortened marketing runway.”
What this means is that of all the millions of dollars on advertising and social media investment that went into marketing this movie, 69% of the audience reach came from the starts itself promoting the movie, basically for free.
So how does this relate to us normal people in business who don't have millions of followers? Glad you asked :)
If you work in marketing for a mid to large organisation do this simple calculation:
number of employees X number of LinkedIn follower = Reach
Let's use a simple example in a real company, say RMIT University where I work.
11,000 staff X 500 average LinkedIn followers each = 5,500,000 total reach
That's the equivalent of a prime time TV audience commercial. For those MAFS fans our there a commercial during that season has an ad reach of 1.816 million.
Alternatively, footy fans who watched the AFL opening round totalled of 4.53 million viewers of ALL matches. That's still less than the social reach of RMIT.
But the problem is why would the staff promote the company?
That, my dear reader, is the million-dollar question. Literally, millions of dollars in advertising RMIT spends each year attracting students.
The answer is creating content that is actually of value to the intended audience. Who doesn't want to share something that is useful and that they feel involved in? The issue, is most marketing programs don't add any value, they just push a position.
Back to the movie, check this out...
In his film debut, Post Malone is partially activated on Twitter and Facebook with close to 40M followers, and credited as Austin Post as Robber #6.
This is super smart of the movie to include a famous and strong social media star as a bit part actor. It's worth it just for the social media reach! Of course, he likes the movie and wants to promote something he is proud to be involved in. He is engaged.
What could your company do to engage your staff in that they would be proud to share with their LinkedIn followers?
If you could save millions on your ad spend, wouldn't that be worth looking into?
Food for thought to be sure.
Cheers Andrew
