Every wonder how Hollywood spreads the word about new movies, and creates such a viral buzz that movie-goers flood the theaters on opening day?
On page 36 in the book iLead, I share with you the same social system we use to help Hollywood get their marketing message in front of millions of fans.
Here's a step by step plan that works not just for filling seats on opening-day, but also for getting politicians elected, launching a new product, or driving your sales crazy:
Think of your marketing in 3 distinct "acts":
- A year or more before the movie hits theaters (or before your product hits the stores, or before election day), you introduce the uniqueness of it with ninety-second teaser trailers and viral Internet "leaks" of gossip or early footage, in preparation for the main trailer.
- The main trailer (or marketing message) comes out four months before the release
- Five weeks before the movie opens, you start saturating with a flight of thirty-second TV spots
- When the movie hits, you remind with fifteen-second spots, newspaper ads, and billboards.
We've helped companies, movie marketing firms, and politicians dominate their marketplace by customizing this basic model to the specific goals of each client.
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The reason Hollywood's method works — and the reason most businesses can't replicate it — comes down to one thing: audience first, message second. Hollywood does not make a movie and then figure out how to market it. They build the audience while they're building the product. The trailers, the interviews, the behind-the-scenes content — those are not marketing. They're audience conditioning. By the time the movie releases, the decision to go has already been made.
Most businesses do the opposite. They build a product, launch it, then wonder why nobody shows up. The product is ready but the audience isn't. Building an audience after you launch is ten times harder than building one while you're still developing the product. The first principle to steal from Hollywood: manufacture anticipation before you deliver the offer.
The second principle is story. Every blockbuster has a story that travels without paid media. People talk about the movie before they see it because the premise is inherently shareable. When someone asks what your business does, can you give them a story worth repeating? Not a list of features — a story. Businesses that grow virally do it because their story carries itself from customer to friend, from referral to conversation.
Hollywood also understands reach before conversion. A studio spends the majority of its marketing budget expanding reach — getting the movie in front of as many people as possible so that when the release date arrives, there's a massive pool of primed prospects ready to buy tickets. Most small businesses invert this entirely. They skip the reach and go straight for the sale, which is why their marketing feels expensive and hard.
Applied to business growth: build your email list and social following before you need them. Every piece of content you publish, every video on YouTube, every article you post — these are your trailers. They condition your audience to expect value from you. When you eventually make an offer, the conversion rate is dramatically higher because the trust is already there.
The one thing Hollywood does that most entrepreneurs never do is treat credibility as a marketing asset. The cast list, the director's track record, the awards — these are social proof that compounds before anyone sees the film. Your equivalent is the results you've produced, the clients you've advised, the companies you've built. Leading with credibility — not claims, but documented results — is what separates businesses that scale from ones that grind.
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