Project
Landmark Cinemas Canada: From Silent Sundays to New Church Connections
Project Scope
Digital Marketing
Lead Generation
Engagement of Church Leaders and Communities
With 40 theatres nationwide, Landmark Cinemas Canada sees a lot of foot traffic on most days. In an era when so much of our media is consumed on small screens, there’s still something special about walking into a movie theatre. When the latest summer blockbuster debuts on a Friday night, Landmark’s lobbies are packed with movie-goers. Everyone, from families to first dates, is buzzing with excitement as the smell of popcorn and the anticipation of seeing a film on the big screen takes hold.
However, entering the local cinema on a Sunday morning is a much different experience. The lights are dim, and the popcorn machines are silent. With Landmark’s typical footprint of 36,000 square feet per theatre, that’s a lot of valuable space going unused.
The Challenge: Making Quality Connections
Given the intrinsic value of real estate in Canada, especially in urban centres, Landmark was faced with a challenge: How can that empty space on a Sunday morning be utilized as a revenue generator?
Landmark cinemas are adaptable, accessible, and available for rental opportunities. It only made sense to offer their theatres to churches for potential long-term or short-term venue rentals. But without a direct channel for church engagement, how could they make the necessary connections?
Having previously worked together, Landmark was aware that Graf-Martin had 15 years of experience resourcing Canadian church leaders. Knowing they needed to reach those same leaders, Landmark presented us with a goal of securing qualified leads for their sales team to follow-up on, specifically within Ontario.
The Solution: Digital Lead Generation
Graf-Martin’s deep knowledge of the Canadian faith market identified an opportunity for Landmark Cinemas to make a connection. Rising venue rental costs, limited accessibility, and the recent growth of new church plants offered a perfect opportunity for Landmark to present church leaders with a solution.
We engaged our list of 15,000 Canadian church leaders—a group accustomed to hearing from Graf-Martin with updates on relevant resources, events, and opportunities—with news of Landmark’s rental opportunities. A customized Meta (Facebook) campaign was also launched, targeting church audiences.
Rather than simply passing along information about rents and facilities, Graf-Martin developed a creative solution that would capture the attention of church leaders: a contest for an in-theatre experience valued at $500.
The contest was an excellent tool for collecting email addresses. But more importantly for the client, it connected Landmark directly with church leaders by asking if they would be interested in a follow-up call to learn more about their church facilities options. The contest also provided one church with an opportunity to experience first-hand what Landmark Cinemas could offer on an ongoing basis.
The Result: Loads of Leads
Graf-Martin’s digital marketing creativity resulted in 150 contest entries and generated 94 qualified sales leads for Landmark Cinemas. The email that went out to church leaders had a well above average 33% open rate. The Meta ads also performed well with a 3% click-through rate (industry standard is 0.90%).
3% CTR
(Above industry average of 0.90%)
33% Open rate
(Above industry average of 27.48%)
150 Contest Entries
94 Leads Generated
“Graf-Martin has been invaluable with their insights into the faith-based community and has shaped our strategy in connecting with this audience. We continue to see positive results with our annual marketing campaigns and would highly recommend them.”
Landmark Cinemas has been partnering with Graf-Martin to generate sales leads within the church community for over four years. This 2023 campaign saw the strongest results to date.
Your Best Partner for Connecting with Your Audience? It’s No Contest.
Ready to find your people? Graf-Martin will work with you to ensure:
You’re in the right place (choosing your platform well),
At the right time (knowing when your outreach will have maximum impact),
Connecting with the right people (through tested and proven testing, and years of audience building),
With the right messaging (knowing how to reach the people who care about you and need the solution you offer).
Years of building and implementing well-targeted campaigns have made us good at maximizing clients’ budgets to meet their goals. Really good, in fact. We’ve been blowing past industry averages to get our clients extraordinary results.
We can do it for you, too.