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Filmmaking resources for indie filmmakers, including, screenwriting, financing, producing and film distribution

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How To Find A Niche Audience For Your Film

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Attend any film festival and you’ll probably hear a bunch of filmmakers rattling on about how you need to build an audience for your films. And while this sort of talk is trendy, I think it’s a crock of crap. You don’t need to build your own audience. But you do have to identify a niche audience for your film, figure out where these people congregate both online and offline and then get your film in front of them.

In other words, filmmaking is a lot more fun when people actually watch your movies. And it is even more fun when you’re able to make money from your work. Being able to understand, find and target a niche audience for your film lets you do just that.

Niche Audience For Your Film

How To Find A Niche Audience For Your Film

Major studios have the resources and funds to churn out a bunch of movies, each one targeting a different segment of the population. And even though most indie filmmakers don’t have millions to spend on marketing, learning how to target a niche audience is still essential. So how do you inexpensively find and engage a niche audience for your film? To begin with, you’ll want to take a few minutes to figure out one simple marketing element: Your Unique Selling Proposition, or USP.

Here are three simple questions to ask yourself to help with this:

  • What’s your movie about? 
  • In a sea of similar movies, what makes your film “unique?”
  • Does your movie already have an audience? 

At first glance, it is easy to answer “yes” to those two questions. Most filmmakers will say: “my movie appeals to everyone!” But that’s not an useful answer. Not everyone on earth has an interest in every film. And the reality is that certain people simply prefer one genre over another.

Here are a two ideas to help you see if your film has a niche audience. 

  • Is there a  print magazine devoted to the subject-matter featured in your film? 
  • Will a google search turn up large amounts of media on the subject-matter? 

If you have difficulty finding built-in audiences for your subject, you may have to broaden your search. For example, instead of focusing on “purple pinecones” you may need to focus on “pinecones.” Make sense?

Assuming you find websites, forums and publications, you’re in good shape. Make a list of these publications. Then reach out to the editors and community managers and build a relationship. When your film is ready, these people will help you spread word of mouth.

Knowing your niche audience lets you craft a targeted marketing message. And depending on your stage of production, this will help you generate crowdfunding income, test your concept, and eventually use targeted promotions to reach your ideal viewers. In short, being able to find the niche audience for your film can lead to much better results for your film and your filmmaking future. Don’t ignore it. And if you like this sort of filmmaking stuff, make sure you check out the filmmaker action pack.

What is Your Filmmaking Niche?

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In movie marketing, there is this phrase I really like: “Marketing to everybody is marketing to nobody and niches will make you riches.” And while not every movie is guaranteed success, it is much easier to find your audience when you choose a filmmaking niche.

What is a filmmaking niche? It’s making a movie for a small slice of a larger audience. For example, let’s say you were making a horror movie. Horror is a very broad genre. But a subset of the horror genre is zombie movies. So in this example, making a zombie movie for a zombie loving audience would be your filmmaking niche.

So this is where you start. Will you make a horror movie, romantic comedy, action movie or a girl with a horse movie? (By the way, a girl with a horse movie really does well internationally.)

filmmaking niche

What is Your Filmmaking Niche?

Knowing your filmmaking niche is important because in order to make non-discriminatory distribution channels, such as iTunes and Amazon profitable – It is required that YOU market your movie on the internet. This means that you must work on sourcing your target audience and then drive those folks to your point of sale.

Having spent the last few years working in distribution, I can tell you that most filmmakers screw this up. They make a movie for everybody. And it is frankly too expensive to market to everybody! So before you even think about making your movie, answer these filmmaking questions:

  1. Who Is Your Target Audience?
  2. How Large Is Your Target Audience?
  3. How Will You Reach Your Audience?
  4. What Is Your Marketing Strategy?
  5. How Many VOD Sales To Break Even?

Since both iTunes and Amazon are internet, transactional marketplaces, it makes sense that most of your sales will come via the internet. And as a result, you must create a web presence that speaks to your audience. In other words, you need to make sure the right people know your movie exists.

Who are the right people? People who love your type of movie.

Your Movie Website

When it comes to designing a movie website, most filmmakers never think about their filmmaking niche. They know they need a website for their movies. The problem is, most filmmakers put way too much crap on their site. And none of it speaks to their audience.

Goals

It’s essential to have goals for your movie website. When people come to your website, what action do you want your visitors to take? Do you want them to Tweet about the site? Join you on Facebook? Get into your audience list? Or buy your movie?

Distractions

Once you know your website goals, you need to determine if your website architecture and design is inline with your goals. To do this, install Google Analytics and monitor your traffic. If you find people are getting lost in a bunch of silly pages, remove those pages. Keep what matters.

If you like these tips, you’ll love the Independent Producer’s Guide To Digitial Distribution

How To Sell Your Movie Idea

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If you want to sell your movie idea and actually get your movie made, stop procrastinating and take action. Start the process by breaking your BIG filmmaking project into small, manageable chunks. How do YOU plan on taking your movie project from script to screen?

Do you plan on finding prospective investors outside of Hollywood to fund your movie? Or do you plan on moving to Hollywood and then networking your way through the studio system?

sell your movie idea

How To Sell Your Movie Idea

1. What Are You Selling?

Everybody has an idea. Trust me. The other day, while waiting to get my oil changed, I sat within earshot of two idiots pitching movie ideas to each other.

Both thought the other was gonna jump at the chance to “produce” each other’s epic story. The problem was, both of these yahoos wanted the same thing – to get THEIR movie made.

(And both bragged about knowing some movie star.)

In this example, even if these guys were real, there was no buyer in the conversation, just sellers.

Before you make your pitch, make sure you’re actually pitching to a buyer. And secondly, make sure the buyer actually cares about what you’re selling.

2. Make Sure Your Movie Is More Than An Idea

Everybody in Hollywood has an idea for a movie. Everybody thinks they can write screenplays. Everybody thinks they are special.

Everybody is crossing their fingers, waiting and praying that SOMEONE ELSE will recognize their talent and sprinkle them with Hollywood famous fairy dust.

Ideas are everywhere and ideas are worth less than something tangible.

If you want to be taken seriously, make sure you have more than an idea. I suggest having the rights to an outstanding story, or some money in the bank, or the interest of a NAME actor. At least this is something.

3. Speak The Language Of Your Buyer

Everybody asks: What’s in it for me? If you don’t get this, you will pitch water to fish – with no success. (Fish do not need additional water!)

While I enjoy all movies, my own interests involve skateboarding, time travel and science fiction that explores theories of physics. I also like knowing if there is an easily accessible market.

Is there a niche target audience for your story?

Story aside, some people are interested in helping you because they think it will help them get laid, make more money or simply feel good on the golf course, bragging that that they are now a film producer.

What does your buyer want? If you do not know, you have no business pitching.

If this aspect of film producing seems totally cray, cray and you never sold a thing, I highly recommend you get some sort of sales job. This will teach you cold calling skills, how to face rejection and if you’re good, you might just make few bucks in the process.

Or you could just grab a copy of my buddy Scott’s book – Writing For The Greenlight. In it, you will find out what Hollywood script readers, producers, and studio executives want in a screenplay (and why) from someone who’s been there. Grab your copy now.

How To Create A Movie Marketing Plan

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If you’re looking for info on movie marketing, this 12 week promotional plan may help. While there are no guarantees that your movie will become the next viral, breakout hit, doing something is better than letting your movie collect dust.

This movie marketing plan provides grassroots strategies you can implement over a 12 week period.

movie-marketing-plan

Movie Marketing Plan Overview

The first step in your movie marketing process involves setting realistic goals about your project. Take a moment to answer the following questions:

  • How many movie views / unit sales must you sell to break even?
  • Who is your general target audience?
  • What do you hope to accomplish over the next 12 weeks?

Week 1 – Define Your Movie’s Target Audience

There is a saying in movie marketing that everybody is nobody and niches make you riches. With the democratization of film distribution (through companies like our advertiser Distribber), it is now essential to define your target audience before you even put pen to paper. Is there an audience that already exists for your movie? Where does your audience congregate online?

We will provide you with some tips on how to define your market.

  • Make a list of 5 ideal movie fan categories for your title.
  • Figure out why these fans should watch your movie.

Week 2 – Set up Your Movie Website

A large part of movie marketing involves internet marketing. The reason for this is simple: We are quickly approaching a time where there will be no delineation between your computer and your television. Everything will be on demand and accessible. As a result of these changes, you will need to drive targeted Internet traffic to your desired point of sale and convert these visitors into customers.

In your second week, we are going to cover the following topics:

Week 3 – Know Your Prospective Audience

While there are no hard and fast rules in the brave new world of indie filmmaking, without retail DVD distribution, your most important goal (aside from making the movie) is to seek out your audience for both your current project and your filmmaking career. To many, this type of audience engagement represents a paradigm shift.

Your audience is your movie business. Without an audience, you simply have no business!

Here is what we are going to investigate in week three:

  • Discover where your fans congregate, both online and offline.
  • Create as list of popular publications that cater to your fans.

Week 4 – Track everything

In movie marketing, it is very common for everybody involved in a project to present a gazillion ideas on best marketing practices. But the truth is, the only good marketing idea is the one that works. And the only way you know if your strategy is working is when you test it.

In your fourth week, you will set up tools so you can understand user behavior:

  • Add tracking tools to your website.
  • Modify your website to influence user activity.

Week 5 – Refine Your Movie Marketing

Have you ever noticed when a big studio releases a movie, they sometimes first push it as an action flick. Then later, the advertisements shift to a love story? Why does this happen? These changes take place because movie marketers are consistently testing the movie messaging in front of sample audiences.

And it is usually the audience, not the filmmaker who reveals what aspects of the movie are most interesting and memorable.

During week 5, you will focus on the following:

  • Refine movie messaging based on audience feedback.
  • Create your hook and refine it to emphasize your unique story.
  • Get your movie in front of influencers  in your target market.

Week 6 – Search Engine Optimization For Your Movie

Since you do not have a multi-gazillion dollar movie marketing budget like the big Hollywood studios, you will focus on the internet. Your goal is to implement inexpensive marketing strategies so you can drive targeted traffic to your website (in the hopes these visitors will buy your movie). There are quite a few ways to do this, but one of the most effective ways of attracting traffic is by creating useful content, aimed at your target audience.

In week 6, you will complete the following tasks:

  • Conduct keyword research relevant to your audience.
  • Implement your movie website, with SEO friendly framework.
  • Define your content strategy, based on keyword research.

Week 7 – Create Relevant Content

When it comes to movie marketing, creating relevant content is essential for attracting visitors to your movie website. It is at this point when most filmmakers start to feel overwhelmed, thinking they need to focus on busting out a gazillion blog articles.

While writing keyword specific, relevant content is a useful way to attract visitors, writing is not the only way to create content. Internet content can be created and delivered as audio, video and text. Since each prospective viewer has preferred modality, your goal is to create a content strategy that incorporates all three.

In week 7, we will focus on fulfilling the following objectives:

  • We will create and outline a content strategy based on movie/story/genre specific keywords.
  • Then we will figure out timeline for how frequently we will deliver the content.

Week 8 – Spread The Word and Build Buzz

Here is the thing. Lets say you are making a zombie movie and you  decide to conduct an internet search for zombies. You will very quickly find thousands of websites devoted to zombie movies. Unless you have all the time in the world, contacting the owner of each blog or website is going to be impossible.

During week 8, your goal is to sort through the noise and focus on activity that will garner us the greatest potential for results.

  • Build a database of the top 50 publications in your niche.
  • Test several low cost ads to drive targeted traffic to your movie website.
  • Refine your trailer and post it everywhere!
  • You might also want to distribute a press release.

Week 9 – Leverage Social Networks and Blogging Community

A lot of filmmakers are stupid when it comes to social networking. They look at the tool and say “I HAVE A MOVIE. PLEASE (potentially) WASTE 2 HOURS OF YOUR TIME AND WATCH IT!” While you know that your movie is way better than most the other crap out there, the rest of the social community does not. And if you utilize a crappy social networking strategy, the best we can say is: Good luck!

In week 9 your goal is to implement a social media strategy that encourages word of mouth.

  • Engage with potential users via social networking channels.
  • Implement a guest posting strategy on several blogs.

Week 10 – Hit The Red Button (and launch!)

If you spend all sorts of time and effort and money making your movie, the last thing you want to do is wait around. You want to get your movie seen, sold and if possible – maybe you can find a 3 picture studio deal in the process. While movie marketing is not totally a science, your results (both good or not so good) will be easy to measure.

In week 10, we will hit the red button and see what works.

  • Divide our launch strategy into several tiers and milestones.
  • Send copies of your movie to popular review websites and schmooze for good reviews.

Week 11 – Utilize The Power of Email.

If you subscribe to the exclusive Filmmaking Stuff Newsletter, you know that I really believe in email marketing. I think it is a great way to stay in touch and to build a relationship with your audience.

In week 11, we are going to focus on creating and executing an email marketing campaign (ad).

  • Write a half-dozen targeted emails and send at pre-determined intervals.
  • Reach out to other filmmakers and see if they would send similar emails to their list.

Week 12 – Grow Your Community!

By now, these words should echo in your filmmaking mind: “My audience is my business. Without an audience, I have no business.” When it comes to modern film distribution, you can no longer plan on simply selling 10,000 DVDs to the big box video rental chain, because that doesn’t exist anymore. Instead your audience is your business – not just for your current project, but for all future titles as well.

In week 12, we will focus on creating long term community engagement.

  • Establish a community for your fans.
  • Get fans into a database that you control.

So there you have it. This is a broad overview of a 12 week movie marketing plan that you can implement for your next title. If you know someone seeking film distribution, you might also want to check out my sell your movie system.

The Zen of Digital Film Distribution (So You Can Sell Your Film)

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The demise of DVD distribution, coupled with inexpensive production technology has flooded the marked with cheaply produced, accessible movies. For most filmmakers, basing an entire distribution strategy on outside studios “picking up” completed films is silly.

Digital film distribution is now a primary way movies are getting seen and sold. This paradigm shift makes it necessary for every filmmaker to create a specific marketing, sales and distribution plan for their movie.

digital-film-distribution

The Zen of Digital Film Distribution

To succeed, you need to figure out how many units you need to sell to breakeven. For example, lets assume your budget is 100K and you’re going to launch with a 10 dollar release price on your film. Then lets assume the platform (like Amazon) takes fifty percent. That means you’ll need 5 dollars per sale.

To recoup 100K, you will need to sell 20,000 units.

How will you achieve this? At this stage, it’s important to write out a marketing and distribution plan that you control. This plan will outline your target audience. It will include specific tactics for reaching your audience and promoting your film. Your plan will also detail the marketplaces you will utilize to achieve your goals.

  • Will you take the festival route? What is your goal?
  • Will you sell your movie on iTunes, Google Play, Amazon and more?
  • Will you send your movie directly to sales agents and acquisition pros?

Once you figure out how you will leverage online and offline media to achieve the necessary sales, you will need to budget for this. How many units will you need to sell at a defined price point to break even? How much will it cost you to sell enough units to make a profit? How much time will you need to execute your marketing plan and achieve these goals?

Success in digital film distribution is dependent upon audience engagement. Regardless of any technological trends coming into vogue. Without finding out where your audience congregates online, and then making a plan for reaching them, you really have no business.