Movie and Film Marketing Guide

Online Film Marketing – and insiders guide!

First of all there are 2 main elements to the marketing of your movie:

1. Offline – PR events at festivals, press releases, premieres - basically anything that is predominantly a ‘real world’ promotional opportunity. For offline film marketing please see this series of articles by Susie Tullett (ex-head of DDA’s PR Unit in Cannes for 10 years – DDA are the leading global film PR company) on the OneFatCigar.com website.

2. Online – viral marketing via: email/social networking sites/PR newswires/newsletters/social bookmarking – anything that is an ‘internet’ based opportunity. I will focus on social bookmarking and web2.0 sites in this particular article.

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.

Firs t 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

A domain can be purchased relatively cheaply and it is worth building a site that fits the style of the movie – a horror – clearly must have a different style to a romantic comedy. 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 what are known as ‘On-page factors’:

1. Put some written content on the page – Google and other search engines focus heavily on text based content so on your opening page make sure that this is there and available for google to see – it should not be image based, and if you do use images make sure you place your keywords in them! i.e. instead of 1234.jpg call it HorrorMovie.jpg. In this way it is visible to search engines.

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 ‘Best Horror Movie’. It is more focused and specific.

4. The order of your keywords matters, make sure you are consistent.

On-page factors (elements that you can control about how you build your website) account for between 30-40% of the amount of traffic you are able to achieve for your film website... but without ‘Off-Page’ factors you’ll never really achieve any traffic!

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

Before you build your movie website there are 3 websites I would recommend to build traffic and create a fan base:

1. Facebook – the obvious choice since it is easy to invite your friends and get them onboard to follow you, as well as keep them updated with the latest developments on your movie project.

2. Twitter – regular status updates about the film is a great way to boost traffic and create awareness

(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 professional film website specifically for film marketing (which we’ll talk about in a moment) and recommend to any film maker seeking to market their work. What is great about this site is that you can do this as soon as you have your idea/script and begin to build a fan base immediately – and can cast and crew the project, if you wish, through the site.

Promotion on One Fat Cigar

Another tool that we’ve been provided with a sneak preview into is the One Fat Cigar website which launches in November 2009 are there are some really powerful features that will help with marketing your film.

One Fat Cigar is designed specifically to help with the process of marketing of films online. It allows producers to reach huge numbers of film fans, while promoting their film from day 1 of script so that by the time the movie is finished there is already a big fan base supporting the project – which is always helpful when seeking to attract the interest of film distributors. More importantly the people using the site are film lovers, and so conversion to following your film production is as simple as making it sound as interesting and exciting as you can make it.

I suggest reading their mission statement.

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 – show some interesting and creative imagery typifying the mood of the film.

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 – ask your fan base questions, get their input, run competitions and create a dialogue since if people like you, invariably they will be happy to spend money and take time to watch your movie.

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.

Once you have a fan base you can then drive the fans to do what you want them to – buy your DVD, watch your film in the cinema, check it out at a festival, or even petition a distributor!

Fans can sign up for free to the site, but you’ll need premium membership to be able to create projects but the membership charge isn’t significant and there are discount opportunities for launch to fans of their Facebook page and 500 free 1 year premium membership available. We think it will certainly be worth a punt!

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 ‘Best Horror Movie’ 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. Put your One Fat Cigar link, links to your Facebook/Twitter and website out on any press releases you may have – that way the press have access to your material online for viewing.

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

So hopefully that provides a solid basic introduction to film marketing and promoting your film online and will begin to generate interest about your project. I’d love to know how some of you get on using some of the techniques outlined above.

Don’t forget you won’t get high in the Google rankings overnight, and you will need to track your progress. You’re not looking for the name of your movie, but you are looking for your competitive keywords. There are various rank tracking tools available to do this.

To search for the best keywords Google provides its own tool to help get you started:

http://www.google.com/sktool/#