The longer the internet continues to dominate media, the more it feels like Pandora’s box for entertainment companies. On the surface, your brand now enjoys an unprecedented array of channels to create a lasting connection with fans. But nurturing that relationship requires discipline — and not just from the perspective of always giving customers what they want.
In a content-hungry world, your fans are starving for updates about your next product from the moment you announce the launch. A well-executed digital portal provides a conduit for all the information your fans crave in a single, evolving resource.
However, planning content for these sites is a delicate balancing act. What kind of information should you reveal and when? Just as importantly, how can you build excitement while avoiding spoilers that give too much away?
Successful campaigns aren’t solely measured in dollars, cents, and sales numbers. Anticipation is the most precious commodity to generate and sustain among your fans. Digital content that nurtures their interest will transform your launch into something more than a date on the calendar. It’s an urgent appointment.
Curated digital portals are conduits for fan excitement
Toys, games, movies, and videogames all require their own marketing formulas, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Fans have expectations, and you need to understand the diversity of interests for each audience.
Below, our breakdown of what works — and what doesn’t — for the digital portals designed for each medium.
Movies: Focus on the stars while hitting select highlights
Less is more when it comes to teasing information about the next would-be blockbuster. Moviegoers spend nearly $20 for a two-hour experience. Fans want to get excited, but they still want their money's worth. To avoid giving away too much, teaser and trailer sites need to focus on the story, a few highlights, and the stars.
Expectations for teaser content often shifts in terms of how much a digital portal should reveal. But overall, movies require less information.
Movies have looked for ways to engage fans by creating sites that offer more than the usual cocktail of video content. For example, the promo site for Netflix’s upcoming sequel to the hit “Knives Out” recalls the puzzle-solving nature of the source material. Rather than just finding video at the portal, users must solve interactive puzzles to access any teaser content.
When compared to other formats, movies are passive experiences where the audience simply needs to sit back and absorb the story onscreen. Unlike toys and video games, the technical details of the experience remain unchanged. Viewers just have to buy a ticket and have a seat. The challenge for teaser and trailer sites comes down to keeping fans excited until that moment arrives.
Toys and Games: Highlight play and bring static experiences to life
The nature of movies and video games translates to an advantage when it comes to building a teaser site. Promoting key scenes and sequences for either format is as easy as splicing some clips together. Toys and games are ultimately static.
For these formats, your portal should bring the experience to life for each visitor. More than setting your products in motion, the digital experience needs to capture the essence of your product.
For example, trading cards are basically one image on a few inches of paper, which is a pretty flat experience. However, when a portal creates an environment that displays the details of each card with a vibrant expression of how they're used, you can create a dynamic presentation. A website that creates a more active experience with visuals reflecting the world of the cards transforms a two-dimensional card game into something engaging and new.
Serve existing and prospective fans with product portals
Product portals for toys and games are vital tools for onboarding new fans. Showcasing details of how you play, how you win, and how you become a good player demonstrates to curious fans what the game is like. Plus, by showcasing unique details of individual pieces, your brand promotes the collectable aspect of the game to new and existing fans alike.
Despite being most dependent on an in-person experience, toys and games are just as capable of transforming into a dynamic digital presentation. Your brand just needs to focus on the most vibrant details that resonate with your audience.
Video Games: Express vital details while capturing the title’s world
As the audiences for video games have grown, approaches to their digital marketing can mirror promotional patterns for movies. Bigger games start a campaign with a single-page teaser for fans that lightly touches on aspects of the game while pointing toward pre-order buttons. Four to six weeks before launch, the portal expands with different areas to explore along with guides to game play, characters, and more video previews.
Just as importantly, your portal should create a unified experience. Every detail, from the background to how buttons respond should be an extension of the game’s world. The site should walk a fine line between creating the feeling that users have already started playing while not spoiling the game’s journey. Once your audience is in the mindset of your game, they’re that much more likely to continue that experience by following a link to purchase.
Even if the game is part of a franchise, its website should still make room to introduce your characters. Your brand may have beloved characters with decades of stories, but your campaign needs to accommodate a wide audience. Your users could range from your biggest fans to the family members shopping for them. The site should provide them a place to start.
Plus, focusing on your characters or their stories enables you to introduce new mechanics to the game that make this instalment unique. Every release has something new to talk about, and those elements build excitement among fans.
Strike the right balance when highlighting new features to nurture fan excitement
Even for video games, your title also carries an element of spoiler risk. Games build worlds that are so expansive they inevitably demand many more hours to experience than a Hollywood release. You should work with your digital agency to ensure the right elements are held back.
You still want to allow your audience the capacity to be surprised, especially for games driven by a complex narrative. That said, with some titles costing close to $100, your portal should still share enough that your audience is assured they will get a return on their investment
Any portal requires that your brand understand its audience, especially when marketing to a younger demographic. However, by creating a digital experience that reflects the best of your next release, you can ensure your fans remain engaged and are excited to start playing.
