What All Small Business Can Learn from The Hobbit

We all know that The Hobbit could have been released with virtually no promotion and still been huge at the box-office. Everyone had been waiting years for its release and it was destined to be huge.

But the brains behind the movie didn’t get lazy. Instead, they launched a full-fledged branding and marketing campaign that we can all learn from. Take a cue from this monster success on how to successfully market yourself. Sure, you likely don’t have the budget that was put behind their efforts, but you can easily take small steps based on these examples.

Commercials, Billboards, Working With Other Brands

There were 16 different TV spots for The Hobbit. There were also billboards on just about every major highway in the universe (this is only a slight exaggeration on our part). There were special collector’s editions of Rolling Stone featuring Hobbit characters. The film even went so far to partner with Denny’s in what seemed like an unlikely pairing. But the promotion worked rather well, as Denny’s released a Hobbit-themed menu. Creative tricks like this tend to grab people’s attention.

Showing Up in Public

Okay, so the appearance at ComicCon is something you’ll likely never achieve (but hey, keep dreaming!) so it’s unfair to even mention it. And you probably won’t get any time of The Colbert Report whereas there was an entire “Hobbit Week” scheduled on the popular show. Again, remember….baby steps. But look at these examples and try downsizing them to fit your local scope and online presence. What can you do to mimic these moves?

Social Media

Actors from the movie showed up in photos on Facebook with Lego miniature figures of themselves. On Twitter, some of the actors participated in real-time Q and As with those anxiously awaiting the film. What can you do mirror these actions for your own band?

‘Sometimes it can do a lot of good to look at what big companies and projects are doing to spread the word. While they have a budget most us could never dream of, it’s the ideas behind their marketing that are what you need to pay attention to.