In this blog—I’m going to break down what you can learn about website design & marketing from The Nightmare Before Christmas movie franchise.
You’ll learn:
- Why you need to explain how & why someone can work with you in 5 seconds or less on your website home page 🎃
- How the wrong business collabs can make your business go haywire 🧟
- Ways to declutter your website so that it’s easy & simple to understand what you offer 👻
- Why Pumpkin Kings shouldn’t try & take over Christmas 💀 🎅🏻
(Never watched The Nightmare Before Christmas before or need a refresh? Click here for the summary.)
Let’s start with the marketing & launch for The Nightmare Before Christmas.
The Nightmare Before Christmas was released in October of 1993 (making this year the 30th anniversary 🎉).
So unlike Hocus Pocus which premiered the same year—not only did this movie do significantly better at the box office, it also received very positive reviews across the board. One review even said it was “74 minutes of timeless movie magic.”
Interestingly enough the movie was deemed too weird at first causing the project to pause—kind of funny considering that it’s a cult classic now after seeing lots of success with video sales each year. And out of Disney’s Halloween movies, it’s also arguably the one that’s received the most marketing via fan merch.
Tim Burton’s name was highly used in the original marketing because Disney was worried that The Nightmare Before Christmas might be too scary for their core audience. In fact, they were so concerned about it that they released the movie under a sub-name of their company Touchstone Pictures to distance their branding from the movie as much as possible (the movie was rereleased under Disney’s name in 2006).
Like I’ve said already you’ve gotta know who your ideal client is—BUT it also means you’ve gotta be careful who you collab with.
Disney’s partnership with Tim Burton ended up working out for the benefit of both parties (as far as I know at least). And the same thing can happen with your business, if you collab with another business owner—BUT things can also go as sour as frog’s breath.
Let me give you a real-life example from my business when I thought about trading services with a social media manager. Everything seemed fine on the disco{very} call—BUT after the meeting said social media manager turned into a monster.
The things that we had discussed & agreed upon on the call were forgotten & I’m very confident that while I would’ve held up my end of the bargain in the trade (a website redesign for the social media manager)—I wouldn’t have seen any of the promised Instagram help that I was supposed to get.
Thankfully I was able to end that collab before I wasted hours of work—BUT it still would’ve been bad for my business if I had continued it.
Bottom line: Be careful who you collab with in business because it can cost you hours of lost work.
And to finish off this blog…
Here are some notable quotes, song lyrics & plot points from the scripts of The Nightmare Before Christmas that can help you with your website design & marketing.
Song Lyrics: Citizens of Halloween Town: “Boys & girls of every age, wouldn’t you like to see something strange? Come with us & you will see—this, our town of Halloween. This is Halloween, this is Halloween—pumpkins scream in the dead of night. This is Halloween, everybody make a scene—trick or treat ’til the neighbors gonna die of fright. It’s our town, everybody scream—in this town of Halloween.”
Business Lesson: The Nightmare Before Christmas does a great job of introducing the movie’s plot in the first 5 minutes of the film with this song. <<< Your website needs to do the *exact* same thing when someone first lands on it (especially on your home page)—BUT in less than maybe 5 seconds. Your website’s main goal should be to either (a) get more email subscribers or (b) have someone buy from you/book or inquire with you. <<< So your website has to act like a tour guide when someone lands on it leading them closer to one of those actions (hint: call to actions will help with this). If not, your website visitors are gonna bounce off of it faster than you can sing “bye-bye-bye” (Oh wait—that’s not a Halloween reference…oops).
Song Lyrics: Jack Skellington: “What’s this? What’s this? There’s color everywhere. What’s this? There’s white things in the air. What’s this?”
Business Lesson: Near the beginning of the movie Jack stumbles across trees leading to the different holidays—ending up in Christmas town instead of Halloween town & starts singing “What’s this? What’s this?” in confusion. <<< This is very similar to how someone can randomly end up on your website & get confused if you don’t make your website super simple to understand. That’s why you need to make it crystal clear how/when/what/where/why someone can & should work with you to avoid this kind of confusion on your website. You’ll gain more leads if you do because confusion is the enemy of conversion. Again, this is why you need to include call to actions, visual cues & compelling copy on your website—all working towards getting someone that much closer to working with you.
Song Lyrics: Oogie Boogie: “He’s ancient, he’s ugly—I don’t know which is worse.”
Business Lesson: Be honest—when was the last time you said something like this ^^^ about the design of your website? <<< AND if you’re thinking this—your website visitors are too. Your website always needs to be edited & updated with the ebbs & flows of your business. So if it’s been a while since you last did a redesign—that probably means you need to do an overhaul.
Your action step:
Scroll through your website. Is it clear how to work with you & who you can help best? <<< Not sure if it is? Have a friend or 3 look at your website & have them tell you what they think you do based on your website—their answers might just surprise you.
