Marketing Strategy

At the heart of every great film should be a sound marketing strategy. A clear strategy will focus your efforts whether you are seeking traditional, hybrid or self distribution of your film. This should be established from the script stage, before seeking investment and before production starts. In today’s distribution landscape, only films with a clearly defined marketing strategy will be successful.

I will partner with you to:

-develop the overall objective for the film

-identify (in minute detail) your target audience and create a strategy and tactical marketing plan to reach them,

-identify the unique points of your story to be used to pitch writers for publicity coverage,

-researching key “influencers” who can help you reach audiences to whom they have access,

-research and outreach to key organizations that may be interested in a partnership.

Crowdfunding Strategy

While gaining in popularity over the last year and a half, crowdfunding is a time consuming endeavor that most artists underestimate. I will consult with you to

-assess your personal network and those of your cast/crew

-set an appropriate funding goal

-plan out the campaign to maximize donation over a short space of time

-develop perks that will be valuable to your donors while keeping the cost to the campaign minimal

-pitch press and influencers on helping to spread the word about your campaign

Film Festival Publicity

I strongly recommend that you use the services of a specialist film festival consultant who has contacts within the festival circuit to help plan out your most effective run and evaluate your film before submission. While I can do research on the likely best fit for your film and vet those festivals, a good festival consultant can offer many more advantages.

Once your film has been accepted, I will:

-identify and contact appropriate online publications, blogs and local media assigned to cover the festival to increase your publicity efforts,

-assemble all promotional materials to be used at each festival (posters, one sheets, publicity stills, clips, trailers, online press kits etc.)

-field requests for media coverage

-communicate with the festival press office to supply them with whatever promotional material they need or help them pitch your film to media

-engage in various forms of social media that are targeted to your film’s audience to help increase screening attendance,

-maximize any competition wins by alerting various media and adding these accolades to marketing materials of the film.

Tactical Planning

Often confused with strategy, a tactical plan identifies the methods used to reach your audience. Without a clear strategy, time and money will be wasted on tactical efforts that do not maximize your efforts. Tactics I use, depending on the audience target and the budget available, include:

-Launch of a well designed and functional website that captures visitor email addresses, updates with content regularly, and engages your audience with interactivity and community building aspects. Also will include social sharing tools.

-Establish key art to be used in all marketing materials for a cohesive brand message.

-Organize professional production stills and EPK material for use online by various media. This will include interviews with cast and director, behind the scenes footage and outtakes if applicable. These materials will also be gathered as content to populate the site to keep audiences engaged throughout the production process.

-Research, set up and maintenance of social media pages to engage fans with regular updates about the filmmaking process as well as gather information catered to the interests of your audience. The page locations will be determined by where the audience already congregates.

-Set up and maintanence of a director’s blog during the production and post production process. Director or a member of the production team will be asked to keep the blog notes updated.

-Outreach to media, organizations, “influencers” and bloggers within the niche of your film for community building around the film that will later support screening attendance and DVD/download sales. Outreach may include content creation such as articles for inclusion in newsletters, publications, and/or guest blog posts on relevant sites.

A word on distribution

I am firmly committed to artists retaining rights to their work as much as possible. With the ability to reach audiences and distribute work widely for very little cost using the internet, I believe in working with distribution companies as partners, not as exclusive rights holders. I prefer to work with artists who have prepared their budgets to take marketing and distribution costs into account and who will use the services of outside companies without relinquishing rights control. To date, I have worked in tandem with non profit distribution consultants at The Film Collaborative to help navigate and negotiate equitable distribution offers and highly recommend them for determining the proper path for distributing your work.

The biggest mistake I see independent filmmakers make is a failure to identify and build the audience for their films. Let me help you avoid this mistake and make your film the success it can be. Contact me: info [at] shericandler [dot] com