Social media has become increasingly more important in the promotion of feature films. It has also become critically important to start developing the fan base well before the film is released. This past week I’ve interviewed a dozen social media experts to learn what they can offer our team, so I thought I’d share some insights.
Each social media guru has access to specialty lists, not too dissimilar to the mailing lists of yester year. The coverage can be pinpointed down to the activities and purchasing choices that each potential fan makes, giving us a clear picture of the exact type of person that is willing to buy a ticket to see our movie.
My development team is looking at a primary audience of women between the age of 18 and 39. Our primary woman loves intrigue, wants a movie that requires some thinking, and wants a romantically pleasant ending. She is a person who loves a great theatrical experience that includes some good-natured humor, little foul language, and characters that suck you into their lives.
With this in mind, we can search vast databases for a handful of films and books that generate similar responses and do a demographic sort based on these elements. By cross referencing Hulu, Netflicks, and other online distribution channels, we are able to create ideal lists of people who are interested in our film before we start principal photography.
Our secondary audience is people of all ages that like wholesome and moral films. This category gives us access to 2,000 bloggers that reach 1 million likeminded people and an additional 6 million Twitter impressions. By adding in our primary audience with an expectation that they each share info about our film with two people, we can generate more than 100 million impressions before we start filming.
Once we begin filming, we are able to add in magazines, news outlets, and promotional tracks that will provide us an additional 200 million impressions. And, during the film’s release, our ad dollars will help us target the exact geographic areas of our theaters. Our goal is to have 500 million impressions in total.
These numbers are very realistic, but will cost thousands of dollars. However, the value is worth every dollar and then some, as retailers will want to join us in cross promoting products within each of our promotions. This of course is limited based on related content.
We have set a social media marketing budget in place that should outperform any other film of the same type and genre. It will be fun to see how the approach works. I’m really looking forward to it. And you…You will be able to help us with social media too. I’ll let you know more about that in the near future (October).
CJ's Corner 