Digital marketing lessons from Wreck It Ralph 2!

In the end of 2018, Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck it Ralph 2 was released, with Ralph taking to the digital world this time. Sagarika Khanna shares some digital marketing lessons from the legendary Ralph! 

A few weeks ago, I saw this hilarious movie - Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck it Ralph 2. This saga of friendship revolves around this old adage - If you love someone, you should set them free. 

 To save his friend, Vanellope's game, Ralph broke the internet. (Literally!) When they needed cash, Ralph, a game character from the '80s made himself self-relevant again.

How? Well, the answer to that is in some digital marketing gyan.

1. He capitalized on the trends:

Ralph took advantage of all the trends that had taken the internet by storm. Moving too slowly is usually what kills brands. Nobody knows who you are, which means they don’t trust you yet, and they definitely aren’t searching for you by name.

So, the best strategy in the early days was to simply piggyback on the popular trends. Ralph did just that.

Like Ralph, the brands must learn to spot the trends and capitalize on them before the competition does. To spot the latest trends, brands must anticipate change and see it coming. They can use tools like Google Trends and TrendHunter to help zero in on the trends. They must also distinguish between short term and long term fads.

Netflix India is a standing example of a brand that used the trolling of one its stars, Radhika Apte to its advantage. Within a short span, they created not only posts expressing their love for Radhika Apte, to releasing a spoof video of the shooting of ‘Omnipresent’ a project that only stars Radhika in every role.

Netflix even went to the extent of creating memes on Instagram and Twitter which went on to state it was just another fan account of Radhika to even showing the love letter it has written to her and even calling themselves ‘Radflix’.

Zomato joined the bandwagon of omnipresence by highlighting the versatility of Paneer.

But Netflix was not to be left behind and what ensued was some witty repartee.

2. Ralph befriended the Algorithm

Yes, the algorithm made him realize that there’s no magic button to press that would rank him in the #1 spot without fail. While there’s no magic, there are steps he can take to soar to the top of a search engine results page.

Ralph realized that Search Engine Optimization is a competitive, ever-changing landscape that requires marketers to adapt fast for Google changes its own algorithm up to 600 times every single year. He understood that keeping up with changes is extremely hard. But it’s also necessary if a marketer wants the organic traffic to be consistent and continue to improve.

He saw that SERPs are changing fast. He could not watch and let his rankings dwindle. So, he would have to generate better content and that means answering the questions before the user clicks. To do that, he would have to understand what the users want.

For that, conducting research on users' interest is imperative. One could utilize social media platforms to do the same.

He could use -

1. Use social media platforms like Quora
2. See the most popular pages in Google Analytics
3. See what posts get the most shares
4. Listen to visitor comments on his blog posts

Ralph knew that his website would have to outrank the more prominent ones. For that, it is essential for him to have high-quality links. He understood that the key to ranking with Google’s PageRank is to provide relevance in links and content.

In image: Ralph with Yess, the algorithm and Vanellope.

3. Ralph mastered the art and science of viral videos

He realized that there were certain factors that determined the virality of videos, like viral videos have shorter run times. According to research, 60% of the viral videos have short run times of less than 3 minutes.

He understood that virality now is relegated to a coefficient: If the brand’s video ad is getting a few thousand shares for every million views on Facebook, they are officially in the top 5 percent of "most viral" advertisers on Facebook. But truthfully, it's not really viral. They just have a high engagement rate, an above average viral coefficient. The social media platforms are reaching a saturation point. The algorithms reward upload consistency, duration, watch time, relevance, quality and other metrics. He took advantage of this fact and uploaded videos that were at par with the standards set by social media page platforms.

Viral videos are funny and have an element of surprise. The audience of Ralph's videos was enthralled when they saw the beloved gaming character from the 80s make such a splash. Ralph imitated kittens, goats and went to war against an armada of bumblebees to reach the top of the trending lists.

Ralph knew that longer he could keep someone engaged, the more they would remember you. This increased the shares, comments, and all the fundamental conversion metrics such as click-through rate. He could track and attribute his social video ad efforts to conversions through pixel tracking. Keeping this in mind, he could earn the money that saved her game.

Ralph showed that he could make the most entertaining, relatable, and powerfully convincing video in the world, but if the destination he sent his viewer to is sub-par, then he would make no money.

If the conversion rate on his website is less than a few percents, if he is not remarketing to people with mid- and low-funnel content properly, if he isn’t being aggressive with an email sequence based on people's' actions, if he isn’t running search ads properly, then his CTRs would drop.

Also Read:  Is it really Snapchat vs Facebook for original video content? Experts share!

4. He had an army of pop-ups

Ralph used pop-ups to go viral.

Popups are a useful, powerful, in-your-face technique that can skyrocket conversions of a brand on content.

According to research, the average pop – upconverts at 3.09% and the best pop – up converts at 9.28%.

Ralph understood that pop-ups with more context have higher conversion rates. Context is what he surrounds his message with as it gives additional meaning and understanding to your message. Research shows, context is what gives the best pop-ups conversion rates over 40%.

The highest-converting popups don’t appear immediately. Rushed pop-ups have low conversion rates. According to research, of the top 10% of pop-ups, only 8% had pop-ups appear in the 0-4 second mark. And the majority of that 8 % were on pages where the pop-up was expected to appear quickly. For the ideal time for pop – up placement, he could utilize the Google Analytics Time On Page.

He would have to be clear and direct with his headline. This would give the visitors the reason to take an action. They don’t have to guess. They just have to decide.

Pop-ups with personality create interest. Ralph realized that he would to find the tone of his brand and inject it in the pop – up.

Pop-ups offer something of interest. They must offer contextual and inherent value and should not appear immediately after a visitor leaves the website.

To conclude, the movie was certainly a goldmine of marketing nuggets for digital marketing enthusiasts