When it comes to marketing movies, standalone showtime websites may seem like a beautiful and film-branded solution. However, these websites act as a short-term band-aid solution with several drawbacks. Let’s explore the pros and cons of using a standalone website versus a content discovery platform to help you make an informed decision.
Pros of a Standalone Showtime Website
- Beautiful website styled to match the brand of your film, to market your specific movie to its target audience
- Automated cinema showtimes and streaming data for your film, allowing audiences to discover and buy tickets, boosting sales or streaming revenue
- Each website can be unique to each film and incorporate appropriate features like games or apps relevant to the movie’s audience
- Quick and easy to launch – suitable for urgent or one-off marketing campaigns.
Drawbacks of a Standalone Showtime Website
- This is a short term, band-aid solution that doesn’t support a longer term strategy
- All your efforts building search engine positioning and recognition for this site is lost when you throw out each website.
- You will need to manage/monitor multiple webpages and pay for all domains separately.
- You miss out on easily redirecting audiences to more films in your catalogue that they would want to see.
For example, if you have 10 websites each with 1 million visitors, and you decide to throw them out and start fresh with a new website, you lose all the SEO value you’ve built up. However, if you consolidate them into a content discovery platform, your traffic will skyrocket, growing your organic traffic. By centralizing, you could have 10 million website visitors instead of throwing away 10 websites of 1 million people each.
How A Content Discovery Platform Can Help?
A content discovery platform overcomes many of the drawbacks of a standalone showtime website. In addition to building a stronger relationship with the audience, a content discovery platform offers even more.
Content Discovery Platform Advantages
- Connect to Asset Locker so Press/Cinemas can access film metadata directly, as well as B2B pages so film sales agents can use them when needed.
- With a CDP, you’ll have access to usheru Analytics to track and enhance the performance of your marketing campaigns – get detailed insights on your audience demographics and measure their intent across various channels and sources.
- Get all the benefits of standalone websites with none of the drawbacks – Host multiple movie-branded pages with all the functionality, features and quick delivery of movie specific websites but without the lost SEO and lost audience each time.
- Incorporate tools to cultivate your community including competitions, quizzes and gamification, or even your own streaming player.
- Secure hosting, fully managed by usheru, to ensure your platform and content are safe from cyber threats and data breaches.
Most importantly, a content discovery platform puts the audience at the heart of the experience. It enables you to become an incredible curator of content for your local market. By offering a single platform where audiences can discover your other relevant/interesting content and entire catalogue, you can hook them on your film choices and become not just a film distributor but a trusted source of great content.
What’s more, a content discovery platform enables you to build your audience and increase your organic traffic. It is the best choice for filmmakers and distributors who want to reach more viewers and generate more revenue.
What Is the Right Solution?
In conclusion, while standalone showtime websites may have some advantages, they pale in comparison to the many benefits offered by content discovery platforms. A content discovery platform is a long-term solution. It enables you to put the audience at the heart of the experience.
Moreover, with it, you can become a trusted curator of content.
Lastly, it helps you to build your audience and increase your organic traffic. It is therefore the best choice for filmmakers and distributors who want to reach more viewers and generate more revenue.
