CINEMA MARKETING: 3 REASONS WHY EASTERN EUROPE LEADS THE WORLD
This post is the first in a series we will be publishing designed to show how some marketing practises adopted by various cinemas around the globe are leading the way internationally, highlighting valuable lessons that could be learned by their exhibition counterparts in Western Europe and the US.
The biggest cinema chains in Ukraine, Poland and Russia are streets ahead of their Western counterparts when it comes to ecommerce and their cinema marketing strategy. State-of-the-art Ad Operations setups allow them to successfully target and personalise all online interactions with their audiences, which truly moves the needle when it comes to generating additional revenue from incremental ticket sales. How exactly are they doing that?
1. TRACKING
Ukraine’s two largest cinema chains (Planeta Kino and Multiplex) use a Google Tag Manager setup to track all of a users’ marketing interactions with social media ads and their deep engagement with the website.
Monitoring their audience’s trailer views, film choices and ticket purchases enable them to run multiple ad executions across various social media channels that target & retarget existing audience segments, whilst also using that data to create lookalike groups to prospect for new audiences.
Cinemas in Central and Eastern Europe are spending a significant proportion of their annual marketing budget on this process, as it is generating a highly impressive Return On Investment.
Examples of successful tracking - results of TAG analysis
2. TAILORED MARKETING EMAILS
Each user receives a personalised marketing email, with the “Coming Soon” and “In Cinemas Now” listings selected & prioritised according to the data gathered from their previous interactions with the cinema website.
These emails also include targeted promotions & offers from the cinema and appropriate external partners, along with bespoke content pieces. These learned customer preferences encourage & increase engagement, nudging the user towards a ticket purchase.
Tailored marketing emails from Ukraine 'Multiplex' cinema chain
3. SEO SET UP
Money has been spent by both the Planet Kino Multiplex chains in Ukraine to fully optimise and maintain the SEO setup of their websites: type in the name of a film and city and their local cinema appear at the top of Google’s suggestions.
While a few select exhibitors are currently delivering similarly impressive SEO results (including Odeon in the UK and Norway, Cinema City in the Czech Republic, Multikino and Helios in Poland, Pathé in the Netherlands, Filmstaden in Sweden and Finnkino in Finland), cinemas in many other territories (particularly other European territories) are failing to generate similar results.
Search Engine Results Pages: Ukraine 'Multiplex' & 'Planeta Kino' cinema websites in lead positions.
CONCLUSION
The creation and exploitation of behavioural audience data has never been a more important part of the cinema marketing mix, and these Eastern European cinemas show once again the importance of truly knowing your audience’s behaviour and the choices they make. Knowing what people DO is more important than knowing who they ARE and Gruvi is a market leading in the exploitation of behavioural audience data in the entertainment sector.
Built-up over recent years, The Audience Programme (TAP) is Gruvi’s bespoke tool that enables us to identify and target a particular audience segment via their actions online, before subsequently refining that targeting further (based upon initial campaign results) and using that data to expand the audience to also include custom lookalike groups. This ongoing process ensures an absolute minimum of wastage in terms of actual media spend, with knowledge accrued and acted upon throughout the campaign.
If you need to build the audience for your consumer offering, be it PVOD, SVOD, AVOD or theatrical, Gruvi can help: get in touch with us to set up a free consultation.
HOW CAN YOU GET A FREE AUDIT?
UNSURE WHERE YOUR SERVICE STANDS IN TERMS OF DIGITAL OPTIMISATION? DROP US A LINE TO CLAIM A FREE REVIEW OF YOUR SITE & APPS WITH ONE OF OUR EXPERTS.
TO SEE AN EXAMPLE OF AN AUDIT, CHECK OUT OUR ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF UK CINEMAS' DIGITAL MARKETING PRACTISES FROM DECEMBER 2019.
NOTES
In late 2019 Gruvi undertook an audit of Europe’s major cinema chains, in terms of their effective engagement with online audiences. We published our first territory-specific deep dive analysis (for the UK) in early March, but the impact of COVID-19 and the subsequent closure of cinemas around the globe meant we decided to hold off on compiling similar reports for other territories at that time.
