Film Marketing: How Independent Film Makers Can Promote a Film Costing $15,000 or less!
By: Ross Jones
Submitted: 2009-12-02 16:28:14 | Word Count: 1286
Introduction
It goes without saying that different films, types and genres require a different level of approach, however there are some general rules that you can follow to generate high traffic levels on the internet.
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First of all you will need some place or places to direct all this traffic that you are going to get. In all likelihood this will be a website about your movie. Now of course this might not be your own movie website, it could also be a blog about your movie (which is much more likely when you are still in the production phase).
Your Movie Website
When building your site you must optimize for search engines and there are some basic rules to remember – and your site must be optimized for ‘On-page factors’:
1. Put some written content on the page – search engines spend a lot of time examining the copy on your website which is massively important. So here we must make sure there is text copy with keywords on the homepage.
2. Keywords – keywords drive traffic to your site and therefore your main keywords should be included in your: title, H1, H2, tags, meta description, (and if you can URL) – use different keywords for each page of your site. Use the keywords early in the description.
3. Do your keyword research – it is no use entering keywords that have a massive amount of competition since it is unlikely that unless you have a huge PR budget and lots of high quality sites linking to you that you will ever really be competitive for these keywords. It is best to use what are known as ‘long-tail keywords’. Typically this means instead of ‘Horror Movie’ as your keyword, you might choose ‘Action Flick for Girls’. It is more focused and specific.
4. The order of your keywords matters, make sure you are consistent.
Now these on-page elements, which you are able to control, account for a probably 1/3 of the traffic that will be driven to your site. The rest comes from 'Off-Page' elements and these are absolutely crucial to how to drive traffic to your website.
What are off-page factors? Off-page factors are things that are effectively beyond your control. Backlinks – i.e. links from other websites and pages which link directly to your website. Certain websites will have more ‘authority’ than others and therefore command greater respect from Google and backlinks from these sites will push you up the rankings. However there are ways of doing this yourself and having ‘influence’ over the search engines.
Set up accounts on the following websites, talk about your film (what’s it about, who’s in it) and then link through to your own website or blog:
1. Digg
2. Propeller.com
3. Del.icio.us
4. Mister-wong.com
5. Hubpages – write articles about your film, what is involved in the making of the movie etc.
6. Squidoo – create a ‘lens’ to talk about your project
7. You Tube – use video to promote your film and drive traffic to your site
8. StumbleUpon
9. Mixx.com
There are of course, some sites which have been left off the list, quite deliberately, and these sites should be used to provide a major source of traffic and promotion to your production:
1. Facebook
2. Twitter
(For both of the above see the brilliant Mashable.com for great ways to effectively build a fan base on this platform and it would be impossible for me to add to it - its that good!)
3. One Fat Cigar - a new website for professional and up-and-coming film makers specifically to help them market and promote their productions. It's good because as soon as you have the idea/script for your project you are able to really promote it from day one.
So what can you do to build more followers and fans?
1. Content is king – without having a significant amount of high quality content no one will become a fan, and once you have people as fans, they need to be continually updated with new, and more importantly interesting content to keep them engaged.
2. What types of content work?
a) Use video footage to take your potential fan base behind the scenes on potential locations, run interviews with key actors and crew members (don’t forget to get release forms signed off with them first!)
b) Stills photographs – very important! imagery and styling always help promote the movie and give the audience an insight into the production
3. Frequency – Updates 2 or 3 times a week are perfect, it could just be a piece to camera discussing where you are with the production and status updates can be done whenever there is something interesting to say, perhaps 2/3 times per day.
4. Interact – why not get involved with your fan base? ask them questions, talk to them and let them feel like they have direct access to you, the film maker. In this way the tie is an emotional one.
5. Share – recommend other high quality film projects you have been following – your fans will thank you for bringing another exciting production to their attention, which present you as a ‘cool’ authority and generates trust with your fan base.
6. Be Interesting – do things that are fun, and show the more interesting side of film making – the characters, the challenges, the difficulties in achieving certain shots.
Ok, so you have your following. Now is your chance to ask them to come and see your film at the cinema, support you at a festival, buy your DVD or download online!
What to do once you have set-up your One Fat Cigar Project/Facebook Page/Website
While it is likely that you’re going to pick up a fair few fans by simply having your project up on the site, it is also important to promote your project to the search engines.
1. Use a number of the high authority sites (Digg.com/StumbleUpon etc.) listed above to link to your project on One Fat Cigar, Facebook and Website
2. Use Ping-o-matic.com to ping the address for your particular project
3. Link to your project through Twitter/Facebook and then do status updates every time you post something new on the One Fat Cigar site
4. Use anchor text which focuses on your keywords to link through to your page – i.e. if your keyword is ‘Humourous RomCom’ use this text to link through to your project page on the One Fat Cigar site, and not the name of your film or the One Fat Cigar site. This makes it easier for your keywords to appear in the search engine listings.
5.Use press releases and always always add links to the sites which are promoting you e.g. Twitter/myfilmisseriouslycool
6. Keep adding content – and don’t forget that your fans will immediately have the opportunity transfer over to your next project and so you’ll begin promotion of your second movie from a running start!
Conclusion
This process will take time and there is no possibility to rank highly over night. But, choose your keywords well and there will be rewards in the near future and you will begin to see promotion for your film, and have people following it even before the end of production - and who can ask for more than that!
To search for the best keywords Google provides its own tool to help get you started:
http://www.google.com/sktool/#
Author Resource:-
Susie Tulllett (former head of DDA's PR unit in Cannes for over 10 years) guide to Film PR can be found on the One Fat Cigar blog.
Ross Grayle Jones is co-founder of One Fat Cigar.com a movie website for people who love film.
