The size of its customer base dictates the success of a business. For that reason most business owners start marketing long before a new business opens its doors. For example, they erect “coming soon - grand opening” signs on the building, send announcements to local media, mail-out flyers to prospects within its buying radius, and any number of other outreach activities. Frequently we receive calls from filmmakers and producers asking about what type of marketing they ought to be doing to promote the film after they put the film in the can. Our advice is that filmmakers and musicians, once they decide on a project, should begin an outreach campaign–even before shooting or recording begins. Whether a project goes DIY or not in the future is irrelevant. Having fan base data can help you with event, theatrical, and retail distribution deals.
Creating an outreach presence in the early stages can be quick and inexpensive. Maintaining blog or social networking page like a MySpace or Facebook page will suffice until there is a product ready to be sold. Just make sure to update the entries consistently–minimum at least once per week. Creating a website at this stage is not necessary, unless you already have one. If the project is still in development, a lot of things may be changing, and you can end up spending a lot of time and money on website changes. Blogs and MySpace/Facebook pages lends itself to fast updates. Regardless of blog or website, this is important: have a way to allow fans to opt-in their names and emails to “join our list”. While fans may subscribe to your blog, it is still preferable to have them join your mailing list on an opt-in basis.
When e-mail and other fan base data start to accumulate, be prepared to manage it effectively. Magic Rock created a free service called Box Office Widget to let anyone create a “join mailing list” button that can be posted in blogs, MySpace/Facebook, emails, websites, etc. BOW allows you to create different lists, export email data, or launch marketing campaigns directly from BOW. Which ever tool you decide to use, don’t get in a habit to leave email lists in an application like Outlook. Trying to organize several hundred or thousand emails using the wrong application will waste many hours, and possibly risk loss of data.
As the project nears completion, it’s time to construct a website. Or if you decide to start selling DVDs and merchandise online, you will need a website, as well as a shopping cart and payment processing (I’ll cover more about how to setup the e-commerce infrastructure next time). The website need not be very fancy, but it should have good content and a catchy trailer. For reference, here are some Neoflix clients’ websites. Note these websites have common elements: a compelling description about the project, a trailer, and a join mailing list button.
The Reflecting Pool
King Corn
Women and Spirituality
There are also some good companies offering self-service website development tools (see www.valueweb.com, www.nsi.com) at reasonable prices. You can create a functional website within a few hours. A site does not need to be fancy to be effective. It just need to have easy navigation and good content. Add a catchy trailer and the join list button, you have the makings of a usable site.
A note on trailers. At least two types of trailers are needed.
On a practical note, each trailer should have your company name and website address at the beginning of the trailer and during the black fade at the end of the trailer (at least for 3 seconds). If you can add a watermark of your website address at the bottom of the trailer, even better. This lesson was learned by one client who found out that their trailer was appropriated on YouTube by another user. The copy-cat registered close to 23,000 views, while our client only garnered 4,700 views. Unfortunately the client’s trailer did not mention the movie, company, or associate back to their website. All those views by potential customers were wasted.
–JC
