What It Costs To Market Your Independent Film or Series

+ a tale of two marketing plans

Photo by Oleg Laptev on Unsplash

This week I spent a lot of time working with clients on marketing strategies to match their distribution ambitions.

In a previous newsletter I talked about my marketing cheat sheet for distribution and also what a bulletproof distribution strategy looks like.

And one of the questions that keeps coming up is this how much does it actually cost to market an independently produced film or series release?

The conventional wisdom is that someone else (a streamer, distributor, sales agent) will do the marketing for you. But for various reasons we wont’ get into here, that’s no longer the case!

Now if you’re lucky and do get picked up by a major streamer or distributor they may help market your release but let’s assume not.

Here’s the thing - I’ve worked with marketing budgets of $15K and $500K (and everything in) for indie releases and YES, more money does help in that you can hire experts to help with a proper campaign and throw more at paid advertising, as well as professional design, visual assets, etc.

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A Tale Of Two Marketing Budgets

We have an FS Pro member currently funding a self theatrical release and doing it totally DIY - no service company has been hired - it’s pick up the phone yourself and call theaters too book and negotiate a rev share deal (not four walling pay up front deal). So the main cost in this plan is DCP creation, poster art, paid reviews, a little PR, and a small amount for FB ads to drive local traffic. A totally sustainable model for a micro budget film!

On the other end of the spectrum, I’m working on a custom impact release for a high profile documentary with a major festival premiere, and the financiers agreed to pay top dollar to get the message out - so we can pull out all the stops in hiring a publicist, a social media agency, and social impact agency that does all the theater bookings and getting people to attend, prepare educational materials, etc. It’s quite an operation!

This production company and similar ones I’ve worked with in the past on these bigger budget releases also have significant internal resources and infrastructure to be able to handle design tasks, organic community building, and more.

The bottom line is you’ll need some money to put towards your release but you can always raise it down the line once it’s time or on an as-you-go basis.

And you can pick and choose from a menu of items that work for your film and budget, but optimizing for traffic, sales, and in some cases impact.

I think the old advice of just doing social media promotion for your release doesn’t work for every film - it’s much more nuanced than that and don’t forget how much social media has changed over the years. There’s way more noise now so you really have to get creative to cut through all that.

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What are you doing for marketing your film or series release? Any clever tips you want to share or questions for me?

Let’s discuss in the comments section below!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I’ll speak to you again soon!

Stacey

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