In 2005, audiences were greeted with an incredibly over-the-top show about supernatural happenings. This show, aptly named Supernatural wasn’t really one that had a lot of critical success in the beginning, but that soon changed. The show’s producers and show runners just wanted to make sure they made it to season 5, to wrap up the incredible “end of the world” story they started. However, they soon found out that fans were slowly attaching themselves to the show, and it grew from there.
Eventually, the show became a major success amongst loyal fans and found new fans via the ever-popular Netflix. But, how did Supernatural attract these fans? And how is the show still growing their fan base? I am going to take a look at this, as well as how much you can learn from this show to apply to your own copywriting campaigns!
They Are Involved In Social Media
One thing that this show does very well is utilizing social media to spread news about it, and engage with their fan base. Oftentimes, you see only a handful of show stars participating on social media, and many times they are secondary characters. This isn’t a bad thing, but by having the lead stars tweeting to fans and live tweeting the show, Supernatural has created an incredible presence on social media. Each night the show airs, Jared Padalecki (Sam Winchester), Mark Sheppard (Crowley), and Misha Collis (Castiel) will live tweet the entire show, engaging with fans and telling stories. They’ve had several incredible moments with social media promotion, as well as some interesting moments from fans, including the hilarious Mishapocalypse that took over Tumblr.
What can you learn from Supernatural’s spooky ability at utilizing social media? People really enjoy knowing that there is a person behind a social account. Many fans follow the show’s Twitter account, but many prefer the actors because they get a personalized view of the show. While you don’t have to live tweet your work day, you can utilize how the actors and show runners handle social media by being personal with your followers, opening up dialogue, and having fun. You can always keep it professional, but consider showing your personality and letting people connect with the person behind the Twitter handle.
The CW Knows How To Market It To Their Audience
Supernatural makes its home on the CW channel, and it is quite obvious that the channel knows how to market to their audience. The audience is different for each show such as Vampire Diaries or Supernatural, making it vital that they reach people where they are at in order to not lose interest. When it comes to Supernatural, they advertise the most on Tumblr where their loyal fan base spends a majority of their time. This is also a great opportunity for them to reach out to others who haven’t watched the show, yet spend their time on the social site. The CW knows that in order to reach and market to a Millennial crowd, they have to meet them where they are at and that, sadly, isn’t in the dusty pages of a newspaper.
The same is true for you; you need to know your audience and you absolutely need to market to them and where they are. You might not be marketing to Millennials, but you can still learn where your demographic spends the majority of their time. This includes social media, but also whether or not your audience is one that reads press releases, white papers or other sources of information you have available.
They Utilize The Familiar And Give It A Supernatural Twist
Something that many new and old fans enjoy about the show is that they take something familiar and add their own twist to it. For example, vampires and werewolves; they take the original folklore of these monsters, and then add a difference to them to make them adapt to the world of the Winchester brothers. No matter the story, the writers of Supernatural give it a great flair while also making sure to stay true to what audience’s find familiar.
How can this inspire your copywriting? You can simply make sure to keep your content familiar. This will be a great way to make sure your content doesn’t stink, as well as giving people something to engage with. This goes for blogs, web content, and social media. Be familiar to attract people to your posts, but add your own flair to it to make it unique to you. This will help make you more memorable to clients and can help you bring in more clients and revenue.
One way that you can make sure to stay familiar is to host a giveaway of one of your products. Giveaways are vastly popular right now, and people love winning things; I know that I love when I win a giveaway! You can make a giveaway purely you very easily, yet it is familiar enough to bring in current customers, as well as new clients. In fact, the giveaway might just be what converts your website visitors to buyers.
Cliffhangers and Copywriting: They Keep You Coming Back For More
The show is now in its tenth season. That’s right, tenth! How did they get so far when they only recently met success? They made fans desperate to know what happens next. They do this through the classic cliffhangers that end shows for the season, but they also utilize internal cliffhangers throughout the season. Will Sam go dark-side? When will Crowley come in with some crazy, yet genius idea? They make fans ask these questions regularly, which is why the fans keep coming back for more.
Guess what, you can use internal cliffhangers too! You can use them in your copywriting to make people desperate to read what is coming next. This is a great way to ensure that your readers will not only read a small portion of your blog, web content, or social post but that they will read the entirety of it. Utilizing internal cliffhangers will help you craft great storytelling pieces, as well as make your content relevant to readers. Take a leaf out of Supernatural’s book and attempt to utilize internal cliffhangers in your content.
Until Next Time
Supernatural is not only a show that you can enjoy on a dark, spooky October night; it is also a show filled with excellent copywriting inspiration. Do you plan to use anything you’ve learned from this show to craft excellent content in the future?
Image source: Supernatural on Twitter