One of the things you hear about so much these days is the necessity of lining up Marketing/Promotional partners for your film. The main reason for this is so that you can leverage the might of some of these partners to be able to spread buzz about your film – sell DVD’s, get people to your screenings, etc.
Somehow though actually ‘engaging’ marketing partners is easier said than done….
For example, once you make a list of potential partners, how and when do you contact them? And what do you offer them in exchange for promoting your film?
The answer to the first question is that you should be getting in touch them as early in the filmmaking process as possible. Ideally during pre-production.
As to what you can offer them to entice them to help you? The most obvious thing you can offer them is money – for example an affiliate commission on every DVD they sell to their audience. But what if the film isn’t made yet and you don’t have DVD’s to offer? How do you really get them excited at this stage in the game?
This is one question that several of my clients are grappling with right now. And we’re working together on ways to approach marketing partners and what we entice them with – what we can say or do to get them to join our ’cause’ right now and help us start spreading the word on the film, get a buzz going, get some fans and followers, and in general start engaging the target audience for the film early on.
I’d love to hear from you any ideas you have….anything you’ve done that’s worked, or not worked, or anything you’re in the process of doing with regards to engaging your marketing partners in the early stages….
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I am working on a project called The Artifice at the moment; we have taken a different approach to marketing. Instead of trying to reach marketing partners, we have aimed to connect with our audience directly. So far it’s working really well, with over 850,000 fans on Facebook we have a good base of people who we can engage with and we have not had to sacrifice any future revenue. Who knows, maybe one fan could be a marketing partner or studio executive silently waiting to see what we do next.
I think the audience really is the key. At some point the biggest studio exec is going to go home, relax, and become a regular audience member, so finding a way to reach them when their guard is down can make all the difference.
The way we are trying to do this with The Artifice is by making the film making process as enjoyable for the audience to follow as the film itself. In January 2010 we are releasing something that makes this possible, but I will not talk about it here.
Paramount seems to be the first major ready to embrace micro budget film makers since the success of Paranormal Activity, but the rest of the industry needs to be as brave, eccentric and adaptable as the characters they bring to life, if film is to reach the potential that our new technology allows.
Hi there,
I think that’s a great idea about connecting directly with the audience. Can you be more specific and tell us ways you are actually getting to your audience? For example, many filmmakers put up a FB page but how do they get the fans? What have you done to connect with these folks…..maybe it has something to do with your target audience for The Artifice? (which is what by the way?)
Thanks for sharing!
Stacey
Hi Stacy,
Over at ALM Talkies we’ve been doing a fun iPod sponsorship that benefits everyone involved. The sponsor fronts the costs of the ipod/shipping, we shoot and edit the Youtube promo video which serves as a commercial for the sponsor – the winner is randomly selected from our newsletter subscribers. We’ve done two and have a third planned. Our newsletter subscriptions have doubled, with few drop offs after the contest ended. You can see one of the videos here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umiCJXWZkr8
Because these giveaways have helped up expand our subscribers, we have started doing giveaways every Tuesday on the ALM Talkies blog in a Trivia contest (www.almtalkies.com/home). We’re also dreaming up new contests that will bring in new, but related interest groups. We hope to steadily build our audience in time for a DVD release of “Dirty Step Upstage” later in the year. I’ve been receiving emails immediately following our giveaways asking when the film will be available, so it seems to be working.
Just a few small ideas that are outside of the box that other filmmakers may find useful. If anyone would like to sponsor an contest, please feel free to contact Bill at sales@almtalkies.com
do you have contact info to talk to you? I have some questions.
thanks a lot.
Hay Marlon,
I am also working on my first feature. Can we connect and share info on how to go about the marketing on facebook, beyond just setting up a page.
regards and look forward to hearing from you
Sandeep
To give a bus of something you have to have a sample of the product. I beleive is correct so in order to get followers or marketers to gain respect and interest for what you have give them a taste of the creation your are trying to give.