This is for the DIY filmmaker who understands they must be involved in marketing their films to be successful. Yes, even if you sell to a traditional distributor you will not be exempt from marketing your film to make it successful.
Marketing should always start with knowing and setting your goals. Lets pick one:
Goal: Create a sustainable career as a filmmaker.
Sustainability
Thinking of each film as a startup is a flawed approach for the indie DIY filmmaker who wants to build a sustainable film career. What you are creating is an ongoing business based on entertainment content as opposed to a series of individual films. Each film, and everything connected to that film, is another “product” that you sell. Think beyond the film and create an ongoing business. It’s hard enough to start one business. Approaching each film from ground zero will limit your possibilities.
Before you begin building out your social profiles on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook; and before you begin press coverage and any other tactics you are thinking of, you should first think of your strategy. Here is one approach:
Strategy
Build an ecosystem for your brand (you)
Here, Chris Brogan has his blog at the center. You see how he has developed a flow of information from his listening posts and resource centers to develop relevant and useful content. He then distributes this content through his various channels. Chris writes primarily about marketing, though his insights go far beyond that. This is a model that can be adapted by filmmakers.
You may want to have your YouTube channel or Facebook Page as your center. The important thing is to understand that to create sustainability you must engage with your audience (customers) over time. Building a community around you as a filmmaker by engaging and communicating with your audience is the foundation for success. By keeping your fans/customers engaged they could become possible funding resources and early word of mouth ambassadors for your brand.
What themes can you build your ecosystem around to market your film/career? What kind of experiences do you offer your audience and what role will it play in your marketing?
Post Script
Not every filmmaker wants to be a marketer. Some don’t want to think about audiences, building a personal brand or a sustainable career; they just want to make the films they want to make. If they are successful and happy they should continue. But be aware that this is what your competition is doing. And not just in films, but in all other forms of media that require attention that is so scarce these days.
Love this Dennis, especially the chart. As you know, I
Love this Dennis, especially the chart. As you know, I fully believe in starting to build your identity as a filmmaker before you build one for your project. The supporter base for you as an artist carries over into all of your films, build that right now before you even have a project and you will be way ahead of all the rest who don't even think like this.
People invest in people, they connect with people, they hire people, they champion people. Nothing happens until they know you exist, as a person.
Yes, but... don't confuse who your project's audience is :)
Hey Dennis,
I do agree with this, but there is a potential pitfall for people to fall into when going down this path: can easily get caught up marketing projects to peers rather than your audience.
I'll use the example of a self published author (case study on my blog http://yetanotherstrugglingwriter.blogspot.com/2010/02/viral-marketing-o...) who spent a huge amount of time and energy networking, communicating, building relationships online via several of these channels... but to other self published authors like himself, who have no money, and are trying to flog their own book.
When we communicate as ourselves, especially in the early stages of our career before we've made a "public" brand name for ourselves, our personal audience is frequently different to our project's audience. Many people I follow on twitter for their knowledge leadership have completely different film tastes to myself. So I want to know what they're doing from a business perspective, and I may really like them as people, but, for example, if their project is B Grade horror I'm not going to watch it much less pay money for it.
The author I mentioned fell into the mistake of targeting other people like him, rather than people who would like his fiction book. Sometimes these people are one and the same, but rarely.
This kind of thing works well for someone like Chris Brogan - because his blog and communication is about new media marketing, and his target audience is made up of people who want to know more about marketing and might consider hiring him.
If you're a very "topic" specific filmmaker, so all your films are related to, for example, the environment, then blogging etc about the environment will draw in an audience interested in your films.
However, if you work across a slate of varied projects, then your personal identity won't have clear overlap with your projects audiences - and your personal audience is more likely to be peer filmmakers rather than a target audience...
While we all love films and want to support each other, we also have hundreds, maybe thousands, of film friends and we can't possible "support" every one of them with our attention and money - not to mention that there's a bigger potential audience outside the industry than within it.
My pet peeve is being heavily marketed to by filmmakers who really should be going after a more relevant audience for their project. i.e. Just because I'm a filmmaker and support crowdsourcing doesn't mean I have the dosh to buy into their film on a topic I'm not interested in!
Sorry for using up so much of your webpage with my rant :)
Luci
Luci thanks for the insightful comments. You’ve touched
Luci thanks for the insightful comments. You’ve touched on many great points.
I just want to respond to a couple and maybe others will join in the conversation.
As I see it, at the heart of the problem is that filmmakers unknown to the general public create most of the indie films. Why don’t more people watch indie film? Is it the perceived quality? Storylines? My viewpoint is it’s a matter of attention. As you mentioned, even as a supportive filmmaker you only have so much attention and money to devote among the thousands of indie films produced each year. The general public has the same issue.
As much as we would like to think we’re immune to advertising/marketing the research shows it just isn’t rue. The brands (films) that are recognizable get chosen over the ones that aren’t. Building a brand around you, meaning something you represent that audiences can connect to, is something an indie filmmaker can cost effectively do to create awareness and differentiation in the market place. This isn’t topic or genre based on a per film basis. As an example, Spike Lee is a filmmaker who in the beginning of his career understood this and created a brand that transcends not only genre but also his films.
If you haven’t produced anything then a good place to start to build awareness is within the film community. At least here you will find people interested in what you are saying/doing. Are they your customers? Probably not. Can they help spread the word that you are a filmmaker; yes. After all, in addition to being a filmmaker I am also a father, a chess player, etc involved in other communities. I spread the word about other filmmakers, to non-filmmakers, who I think are doing interesting things. No one lives in a vacuum. However, I completely agree with you that if you’ve produced a film and all your effort goes to selling it to other filmmakers you won’t get very far. Here is a link to another post I wrote about helping you get started in finding your audience. http://heavybagmedia.com/blog/2010/04/06/how-to-find-audience-for-film
Thanks again for taking the time to comment. In the sake of time/space I didn’t address your pet peeve about the endless crowdfunding among indie filmmakers to each other. Anybody else have a thought about that?
There is a lot to be done to become a successful
There is a lot to be done to become a successful filmmaker. The making of the film is just the start of it. At the beginning of my career that was my main problem. I didn't know how to market my films. Thankfully, with the help of friends and collegues, I was able to configure the best plan to help garner success.
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