According to CNN Business, the Barbie movie has now made over $1 billion in three weeks since its release! The Barbie movie’s success was no accident, Mattel and Warner Bros. used specific marketing tactics to make the Barbie movie reach this level of success.
If you want to read part 1 of my Barbie marketing strategies post, just use this link to read part 1 now.
Keep Your Brand Identity Consistent
Just as Barbie’s iconic pink and white has been her brand for years, you have to be consistent in using your brand identity in everything you do; social posts, Pins, your website, emails, videos, etc. You get the picture. When you are consistent in your brand marketing & messaging, your ideal clients will quickly be able to recognize & trust you in a sea of competition. Your business will rise to the top, and consistently grab the attention of your ideal clients!
Collaboration
You don’t have the connections or the money to do the type of collaborations that Barbie marketing did, For example, You can team up with businesses that share your ideal couple that don’t compete for the same services and products. For example, Lou and I teamed up with a Bridal Salon and did honeymoon nights after our wedding shows. We would combine our leads, and send out an invite to couples from the leads list inviting them to our honeymoon night at the bridal store.
It was a win-win!
We sold honeymoons and destination weddings and the store sold wedding dresses.
ONE CAUTION:
Don’t be so desperate to get leads, that you partner with another business that doesn’t make sense with your brand! That’s when it can become disingenuous. For example, a swimsuit company partnering with a sunscreen company makes sense, but a swimsuit company partnering with a florist or restaurant, isn’t as cohesive or intuitive as a weight loss or workout company partnering with a swimsuit company. Reach out to other businesses to see what partnerships you can work out.
The Barbie Movie Used PR
The Barbie movie was highly successful in using professional PR firms to get attention for their film, but you don’t need a PR firm to get PR on your own.
You can.
- Be a guest on someone’s podcast or Facebook/IG LIVE as a guest speaker.
- Taking over someone’s social media account for a day. In this case, I would first have the wedding vendor you are partnering with introduce you and your business to their followers first, so the day you are posting about your business, will make sense to that audience.
- You can be a guest blogger on someone else’s blog.
These are things that don’t cost hardly any money to do for your brand.
Follower & Fan Posts
If you can get your fans, followers, and clients to post about your business and the great job you are doing, or did for them, this is a HUGE WIN! This is the best kind of marketing, because it’s free advertising, and it’s coming from real authentic people, which builds more trust in new wedding couples who like and follow, you.
Barbie marketing was heavily promoted with user-generated content: Social media filters, photo filters, so many everyday people got to play with the Barbie filters that were created.
You should strive to create something fun & shareable. You don’t have to always be selling or promoting your services. Sharing things that are fun, useful, or full of relevant information is going to get wedding couples checking your business out and following you online.
Examples: Create a fun filter, make a quiz, and design a contest. Consider what’s trending now, and how you can jump on that trend and try to flip it to your business. For example, back when our daughters and Tami would watch the Batchelor regularly, we would write a blog post about the particular resort that was featured in the episode, since it was trending.
Play the Long Game
The Barbie movie was consistent and intentional, over time. Everyone wants overnight success, but the reason why the Barbie movie was so successful, is that Mattel used a slow & consistent pre-build. Starting in 2019. Mattel announced the Barbie movie was going to be in production and would be showing in theatres shortly.
For months before the Barbie movie opened in theatres, there were movie previews, television Ads, branded partnerships, collaborations, and all kinds of hype being spread everywhere. Mattel and Warner Bros leaked images and scenes from the movie in 2022, and the first trailers came out months ago.
Rocket Mortgage even had a Barbie dream house commercial during the Super Bowl in Feb of this year. Even though it seemed like the Barbie movie was an overnight success it was a slow and deliberate pre-launch campaign that made the movie look like an instant success when it opened in July.
Give Them Bread Crumbs
The Barbie movie slowly released bits of their movie, little by little without giving away too much that kept their audience interested with each “bread crumb” increasing their excitement to make them hungry to see the movie as soon as it opened in theatres!
Using The Bread Crumb Strategy in Your Business
You can use this same strategy in your business as well. This is what a “breadcrumb” strategy could look like in your business for increasing your destination wedding bookings for the Riviera Maya Mexico.
Week 1: Write a blog post on the best wedding destinations with five exceptional features. Share it on social media, including a few Reels, to encourage readers to read your blog.
Week 2: Write a blog post with your top 3 destination wedding picks that fulfill the 5 crucial elements. Share on social media and post reels to reach more people.
Week 3: Highlight the Riviera Maya as the ultimate destination wedding location. Utilize Facebook Live, Reels, and posts to showcase the five essential elements that make it stand out. Answer wedding couples’ questions on Facebook Live to give them a first-hand experience of this dreamy location.
Week 4: Write a blog post on the top 4 resort wedding venues in the Riviera Maya, publish a social post, and Reel on each, but this time you will be offering your consultation services. By this time all of the other “bread crumbs” have worked together to get couples excited to contact you so that they can get their destination wedding booked at a resort in the Riviera Maya that they saw in one of your posts.
Wrap Up
As you can see, you don’t need to have the brand recognition or advertising dollars the Barbie movie had to use similar tactics to grow your destination wedding business. Try a few of these tactics this month, and watch your leads, followers, and bookings increase!
