It’s Friday the 13th. As most of Jason Voorhees’s victims would probably agree, it’s considered the dreaded unluckiest of days. On this day, fewer people go out, and according to some estimates, over $800 million is lost by businesses on this day. Since Friday the 13th has such a huge impact on businesses, we decided to find out if marketers can get lucky and learn something positive about marketing strategy from one of the biggest movie franchises of the same name.
The Friday the 13th franchise comprises of twelve slasher films, a television show, novels, comic books, a video game, and numerous tie-ins. Jason’s hockey mask is perhaps one of the most recognisable horrors and popular culture icons out there. The producers of the franchise recognised the sheer value of the original 1980 film. So they kept repurposing the main character for the next three decades.
In the same way, marketers should also update older content, especially pages on their website that have a constant flow of traffic. The website’s key pages including ‘About Us, ‘Services,’ and ‘Products’ become dated over time. Keeping these pages updated will help Google crawl the website more often, which in turn improves search engine ranking.
Most of Jason Voorhees’s victims are hacked to death or decapitated by a machete. He has killed over 200 people, yet he often finds little creative ways to mix things up a bit! While he keeps his basic tools of death the same, he repurposes his methods to suit the scene.
Stay sharp and identify content (video, text, infographic) that brings in a steady flow of traffic and repurpose it to suit new audiences. If a blog post on the website has received a lot of attention, consider creating summary tweets to get the most out of that content. Alternatively, turn it into a longer white paper for the nurture list.
In the original 1980 film, a young boy named Jason Voorhees drowned at Camp Crystal Lake and soon fires and bad water thwarted the camp’s reopening. However, a few years later the camp re-opens in spite of “Crazy Ralph’s” warnings – “you are doomed!” he says. But everyone ignores his prophecy. The rest, as they say, is (horror) history. In all subsequent movies in the franchise, warnings were thrown out like confetti at a kid’s wedding. However, none of the characters tended to heed them.
Repeating past marketing mistakes and not heeding obvious warning signs will spell doom for marketing campaigns. Mistakes will always happen. How marketers recover from these mistakes is what sets the business apart.
Analyse what went wrong. Often, this is where a data-driven marketing approach comes into its own. Once marketers have figured out the discrepancies in the marketing campaign, quantify the goals. Create a new campaign to bridge the gap between expectation and execution.
Every horror trope “expert” will agree that splitting up when a crazed masked killer is on the loose is a very bad idea. In Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (2009,) two of the protagonists, Rob and Trish are under attack and instead of sticking together, they decide to split up. *Spoiler alert* – of course, one of them gets killed.
The marketing team cannot work in isolation – so don’t try to split up from the team. A good marketing campaign will need contributions and buy-ins from all other departments. For example, the sales team are the ones talking to prospective buyers all day, every day. Marketers need a thorough understanding of the target market – and the sales folks have this information. Why not work together in coming up with personas and lists that actually align with the business goals?
That being said, there are a few areas in marketing that definitely require splitting up. Segmenting the email marketing database and personalising the email content to appeal to individuals will positively impact the company’s bottom line.
Unluckily, there’s no 13th part to the franchise – at least not until 2019. However, we have some good news! If you have been running into some machete-wielding marketing monsters of your own, we are here to help.
Friday the 13th is a lucky day for Matrix Internet’s contacts. We are offering a free audit of your web presence, including SEO, Digital Marketing, and User Experience.
To avail of the offer simply fill in the contact form from the link below. Enter the code FRIDAY13 in the comments section.
SEIZE THE ALARMING OFFER!
By Matrix Internet
By Conor McCaffrey