What can mar­keters learn about how to be vis­i­ble and per­sua­sive in the moments that real­ly mat­ter from research on movie trail­ers? Well, accord­ing to a sur­vey by Unruly, 31 per­cent of U.S. movie­go­ers said they would buy a tick­et after watch­ing a trail­er online. Most mar­keters would be thrilled to get con­ver­sion rates one-tenth that high. So, even if you aren’t a mar­keter for one of the film stu­dios, there is a lot that to take away from this new research.

Here are sev­en key find­ings from Unruly’s research:

• Movie pro­mo shares are cor­re­lat­ed to movie box office rev­enues.
• Movie pro­mo videos present a unique­ly rapid shar­ing pat­tern.
• Watch­ing movie pro­mo videos spurs tick­et sales.
• Neg­a­tive word of mouth harms open­ing week­end rev­enue.
• Stu­dios use the same set of emo­tions to dri­ve shar­ing of pro­mos.
• Peo­ple share movie pro­mos to invite friends to go the the­ater.
• Tra­di­tion­al movie trail­ers are not the most viral movie pro­mos.

Based on this research, what can mar­keters in oth­er indus­tries do to dri­ve sales, out­smart the com­pe­ti­tion, and max­i­mize online buzz? Well, if you con­sid­er a movie pre­miere to be the equiv­a­lent of a prod­uct launch, then there are sev­en lessons to learn. Let’s take a clos­er look at each one.

Lesson 1: Track The Metrics That Matter Like Active Engagement & Economic Value

With view­ers who share videos near­ly 6x more like­ly to pur­chase movie tick­ets, mar­keters should track shares as a mea­sure of suc­cess. Views are a van­i­ty met­ric (usu­al­ly indica­tive of bud­get spend) and don’t mea­sure the deep engage­ment required for a con­sumer to take action. So, track:

• Active engage­ment, which includes social media met­rics like con­ver­sa­tion rate (com­ments per video),
• Ampli­fi­ca­tion rate (shares per video).
• Applause rate (likes per video).
• Eco­nom­ic val­ue, which includes cal­cu­lat­ed met­rics like the real con­ver­sion rate per user and gross cal­cu­lat­ed prof­it.

For exam­ple, Juras­sic World — Offi­cial Glob­al Trail­er (HD) has 28.5 mil­lion views and 416,000 engage­ments, accord­ing to Tubu­lar Labs. More impor­tant­ly, Juras­sic World brought in a record break­ing $208.8 mil­lion domes­ti­cal­ly over its first week­end.

Lesson 2: Launch Your Strongest Content On Wednesday To Use Buzz To Drive Sales

Since 62 per­cent of video shares occur with­in 3 days of launch, social videos launched months in advance of a prod­uct launch are too ear­ly to dri­ve buzz that can con­vert to sales. Wednes­day, Thurs­day, and Fri­day are the days with the heav­i­est shar­ing. So, launch your strongest con­tent the Wednes­day before a prod­uct launch. The excep­tion to this rule can be seen in the series of promi­nent spikes in Google and YouTube search inter­est – which cor­re­late per­fect­ly with the release of:

• Star Wars: The Force Awak­ens Offi­cial Teas­er more than a year before the movie’s pre­miere.
• Star Wars: The Force Awak­ens Offi­cial Teas­er #2 eight months before the movie’s pre­miere.
• Star Wars: The Force Awak­ens Trail­er (Offi­cial) two months before the pre­miere.

Now, Star Wars: The Force Awak­ens went on to break numer­ous box office records, includ­ing:

• Biggest world­wide open­ing week­end and sin­gle week­end gross – $529 mil­lion.
• Fastest film to gross $1 bil­lion – 12 days.
• High­est-gross­ing 2015 film – $1.870 bil­lion.

Nev­er­the­less, this just rein­forces its sta­tus as the excep­tion to the rule. Most oth­er movies – and most oth­er new prod­ucts – can’t and shouldn’t start pro­mot­ing a launch more than a few days in advance. Heck, the Star Wars: Episode VIII Pro­duc­tion Announce­ment has more than 10.7 mil­lion views and 266,000 engage­ments, accord­ing to Tubu­lar Labs, and that film isn’t slat­ed to be released until Decem­ber 2017.

Lesson 3: Experiment With Nontraditional Videos & Test More Provocative Content

Your strongest social video may not look like an ad. Add stand­alone, provoca­tive con­tent to your con­tent plan or a music video. Pop­u­lar music videos have the added bonus of gen­er­at­ing addi­tion­al organ­ic views over a longer time peri­od. For exam­ple, Ed Sheeran’s “I See Fire” / The Hob­bit: The Des­o­la­tion of Smaug.

Lesson 4: Improve Shareability By Provoking Intense Emotional Responses

Read Viral Mar­ket­ing: The Sci­ence of Shar­ing by Karen Nel­son Field to learn how to cre­ate social videos that grab atten­tion and com­pel peo­ple to share. Use less com­mon psy­cho­log­i­cal trig­gers or hit the more com­mon trig­gers of hap­pi­ness, amaze­ment and exhil­a­ra­tion hard to over-index vs. the US mar­ket norm and increase your chances of social suc­cess.

Lesson 5: The Greater The Number Of Views, The Greater The Number Of Shares

The greater the num­ber of views, the greater the num­ber of shares your con­tent will receive – even if the share rate is low. Invest in paid dis­tri­b­u­tion to guar­an­tee you achieve the earned views and online buzz. Accord­ing to the YouTube Cre­ator Play­book for Brands, “The YouTube plat­form allows you to opti­mize your invest­ment in paid media by acti­vat­ing the vir­tu­ous cir­cle that links Owned Media (your video con­tent), Paid Media (paid video adver­tis­ing) and Earned Media (‘free’ views obtained when peo­ple share the video ads).” It adds, “It is not uncom­mon to see cam­paigns gen­er­ate at least one earned view as a result of every two paid views.”

Lesson 6: Make The Most Of Mobile Which Generates About 50% Of YouTube’s Views

Accord­ing to YouTube CEO Susan Woj­ci­c­ki, more than half of YouTube views come from mobile devices. And mobile video con­sump­tion is pre­dict­ed to account for 72 per­cent of all mobile traf­fic by 2019! So, if you’re mak­ing con­tent for a mobile audi­ence, you should real­ly con­sid­er mak­ing ver­ti­cal videos. For most smart­phone users, it’s just more nat­ur­al to hold the device one hand­ed and upright, so the ver­ti­cal for­mat is more palat­able for many.

Lesson 7: Create Urgency With Strong Triggers Of Exhilaration & Amazement

Unruly’s data shows that stu­dios can increase box office rev­enue by attract­ing less fre­quent movie­go­ers. Mar­keters in oth­er indus­tries can also use audi­ence tar­get­ing to get their social video seen by occa­sion­al users, and high­light the exhil­a­rat­ing moments which will be aug­ment­ed by using their prod­uct more often. Need an exam­ple? Watch The Revenant | Offi­cial Trail­er [HD] | 20th Cen­tu­ry FOX. Accord­ing to Tubu­lar Labs, this video trail­er has 16.4 mil­lion views and 247,000 engage­ments.