Marketing

You have to spend money to make money right?  Sadly, that’s true especially if you see your time as having a monetary value (and you should.)  If you’re like me, you’re working a day job to pay the bills and making your movies on the side with the dream that you’ll be able to one day leave all that 9 to 5 madness behind and just make movies for a living.  But until that day comes, remember that just because it’s called free time, that doesn’t mean it comes without a price.

So where should you spend the precious little money you have for this venture into independent film marketing?  Well you can start with a solid poster and trailer.  Those are your main selling points.  People will look at those two things and decide in an instant whether or not they want to spend their time and hopefully some of their cash watching your movie.

Then there’s your website.  That’s a showcase piece as well.  You might hire someone to make yours and optimize it’s performance.  I thought about that, but I ended up going with wix.  I tinkered around with the design for a while before I decided to spend any money and I like the ease with which I can update and change things.  There are other similar sites, squarespace comes to mind, Weebly, maybe you’re a Word press person.  There are lots of options.

Getting reviews and press about your movie is extremely helpful.  I'll talk about doing a theatrical release in the next post and how you can get movie reviews, but in the mean time get to working on a press kit, you'll need that.  You can google articles on how to make a good press kit for your film, but briefly you'll need: contact info, a short, medium and long synopsis, bios for your cast and crew, photos, and you might want to include a director's statement.

You’re not likely to make the nightly news with your big DVD release, but after you’ve gotten the accredited critics to review your film, you might find some smaller online places that will give you a fresh review just before your online release.  You’ll probably want to do a google search for these wonderful, lovers of movies who are willing to take the time to not just watch your work, but also write about it.  I got a review from Rough Cinema.  In the past I’ve had reviews from Film Threat, they charge a small fee, but honestly I’m surprised anyone will do that kind of work for free.

Mail Chimp is a real thing, it’s not just something you hear about on podcasts.  It’s pretty awesome too.  You can have multiple lists of people and send out customized “campaigns” which are just a way to mass email people on your list.  Hopefully lots of people have signed up to get these, which means they’ve expressed an interest in what you’re doing and won’t see these email updates as spam.  It’s free up to a point.  There’s no reason not to start using it.  I think if you get to the point where you have so many subscribers that you have to pay a fee, it’ll be well worth the money.  They do automation, but you have to pay for that too.  So if you don’t mind doing everything manually, it’s a great way to reach your target audience.  Want to subscribe to my email list?  Click here. See how easy that is? 

Traditionally feature films would spend as much on P&A (Prints and Advertising) as the budget of their film.  Make a million dollar film, spend a million to market it.  But if you don't have a million laying around, here's a range you might be able to work in from very low to very high:

Marketing Budget Breakdown

Poster design: $300 to $2,000
Website hosting and design: $120 on a DIY platform to $4,000 for pro design and SEO
Trailer: $100 canned music and you cut it to $15,000 for a trailer house to do it all
Business Cards: $20 for small batch free template to $2,000 for a custom design
Social Media Guru: $0 and just your time, if you do it to $25-$50 per hour
Advertising: $1 on google ad words to infinity
Publicist: $3,000 to $10,000 per month (usually with a 3 month minimum)