Adventures in Self-Releasing: Building Buzz Around the DVD Rlease

by Jeffrey Goodman | Published September 25, 2009

All right I’m getting close to releasing a limited, first edition DVD of the movie. As I’ve said before, this is something we’ll be offering off the Website (www.thelastlullaby.com) and in conjunction with Neoflix.

I’ve been thinking of ways to increase the interest around the DVD. Obviously, we don’t have a huge marketing budget and can’t afford television spend or even print ads. So, as an independent moviemaker, what can you do to make enough noise to build awareness around you and your movie’s release?

I’m currently doing a couple of things, and am always looking for other things I can do, as well:

1. Targeting our niche audience
The more I do this, the more I realize that a major element of making a small movie work is identifying your niche audience and rallying them around you and your movie. Lullaby has always been a difficult movie in this respect. Aside from the world of crime fiction, our niche audience isn’t really that clear. In fact, I’m starting to feel like this whole concept of targeting your niche audience actually works better most of the time for documentaries than narratives. In other words: Make a documentary about organic foods. It’ll be clear, then, who your niche audience is.

But I do know the world of crime fiction recognizes Lullaby as one of their own and supports it. And so, at the very least, I can make sure that crime fiction enthusiasts are aware of the movie. Marc Rosenbush, who I have mentioned numerous times now in this blog, recommends the site Quantcast.com. In essence, you can visit Quantcast, enter a Website and it will tell you the number of visitors that site receives each month. It’s a great way to determine what sites within a niche receive the most traffic.

For instance, through Quantcast I was able to determine that ThrillingDetective.com was one of the most popular Websites for crime fiction enthusiasts, so I decided to place a banner ad there, announcing our upcoming DVD. Banner ads are not terribly expensive and allow you to target your audience in a very specific and, more importantly, cost-effective way.

2. Social networking
It’s become vital for independent moviemakers to take more responsibility in building audiences around them and their work. To this end (and most moviemakers I know
are now doing the same), I have a Facebook group for the movie, a Twitter account, a blog and a monthly e-mail update list. But how do you grow these groups,
particularly at important times like your DVD release?

It’s a tough question. And, I’m sure there are many different ways. But, I just did a promotion that cost me nothing and proved enormously successful, so I wanted
to share.

Essentially, here’s what I did:

I sent out an e-mail to all of my groups telling them that if they helped me grow their respective group to a certain size, then I would issue their entire group a 20 percent discount on the DVD. Because of this promotion, in less than four days, I saw my Facebook group grow by more than 350 people and my other groups grow significantly as well. I have never tried anything like this, but its success makes perfect sense. Everyone pitches in because everyone benefits. I think the underlying philosophy is really sharp and that variations on this same idea would also be successful. I’ll keep trying things and let you know about the results. In the meantime, I’m curious if any of you want to share some grassroots or inexpensive promotional techniques that have worked for you? Oh, and of course, if any of you want to join one of my groups… We hit our numbers, and you’ll get a 20 percent discount, too.

After living in Los Angeles for seven years, Jeffrey Goodman returned to his hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana to direct The Last Lullaby. Co-written by the creator of Road to Perdition, and starring Tom Sizemore and Sasha Alexander, The Last Lullaby was filmed entirely in and around Shreveport and financed by 48 local investors.

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COMMENTS | POST A COMMENT

Comment by twenty4fps on 9/30/09 at 9:04 am

Jeffrey,

When it comes to Independent film marketing, the strength lies wihtin pre-market strategies. I am talking in terms of marketing from the onset of pre-production.

It also helps tremendously to recognize the niche market strengths for genres. Dramas are one of the hardest genres to sell, unless big recognizable names are attached.

You discussed twitter, and Face Book, a blog, and an email mailing list. That is barely breaking the surface of the virtual world.

Other sources of virtual marketing also include transmedia narrative, or otherwise known as Alternate Reality Gaming, or ARG. Speilberg did ARG for A.I., called “The Beast”, and credited ARG for the success of A.I. sales.

There’s Youtube. Now don’t snicker, as a lot of people do, when I tell them it is part of my pre-market campaign. Youtube is the number one site for hits, right now on the internet. Something like 1M hits an hour, currently!!! That’s major viewer traffic!!

Coppola did Youtube for “Tetro”, his Independent film, with a channel called tetrofilm. If Coppola felt it credible enough to do, then shouldn’t we all? And he started his channel before they started lensing, drawing a huge audience into the whole process. Gave it a feel for personal participation. His audience was given the opportunity to feel connected.

There are also many more websites for video posting, that any Independent film maker should utilize and take advantage of. Daily Motion, Revver, Movieset, and on and on.

Traditional P & A platforms, which are exorbatant, and costly, are being replaced by virtual “pull” marketing platforms, and it’s a platform that even the majors are realizing and acknowledging.

Pre-market campaigns need to be developed during budget development, as a E-PR person is an essential element for pre-market buzz, in the Indie world.

Also, another weapon in the pre-market arsenal is the fan base.

Work the fan base websites of your leads, if they have one. It gets the word out to dedicated fans, and spreads like wild fire.

We have a five layer pre-marketing campaign and following is an example of one effective layer.

We are hosting a contest link on our Main leads fan based website, and their fan based site hosts 175K fans, worldwide. The contest winner wins a Friday on the set, and dinner on saturday night with our lead, then flies back home on Sunday. Cost? 6K dollars.

We effectively reach 175K people and those folks will tell at least five of their friends. And all of this takes place during principle photography.

Developing pre-dvd release marketing buzz is hard to do, and kinda late in the game. And offering discounts will slow the recoupment of Investment. It’s like wholesales, and not retail. Basically most discounted dvd sales happen after all of the other seling rights have been exploited and exhausted.

Your next picture out needs the necessary tools to be able to market it.

Talent with a big following is essential and key. Leveraging the exposure of that talent attached to your picture is key.

Also consider offering a Producers attachment to your Leads, at least one of them. Doing that enables and encourages them to work your picture before their actual DOOD’s. They feel a real sense of responsibility to the success of the picture.

Hope this helps, and that you actually will reflect on it and learn from it.

Good luck selling your picture.

Comment by Jeffrey Goodman on 9/30/09 at 1:23 pm

Hi twenty4fps,

Thanks so much for your comments. I think there’s some very solid advice in here. I completely agree with you about the effectiveness of Youtube and the importance of the leads’ fan base. I also think you make a great point about making one of your leads a producer in the picture. That makes complete sense and could obviously end up being very helpful.

If you would, share the title of your movie, so that I, and all of my readers, can learn from your approach. And compare some of the techniques you’ve incorporated with the ones used on LULLABY.

All the best,

Jeffrey

Comment by Anne Fox on 10/02/09 at 10:29 am

I can relate with all your points above, especially the social networking aspect. Actually, some independent movie makers are now engaging themselves to social networking sites. With these technological advancements, movie makers can now lessen their advertising budget. One best example is the campaign made by all the staffs of one independent movie. They used twitter, facebook, youtube and other sites to promote their movie. Luckily, they got a very positive result! There are so many people who watched their movie.

Comment by Jeffrey Goodman on 10/02/09 at 10:41 am

Hi Anne,

Thank you so much for your comments. I completely agree.

All the best,

Jeffrey

Comment by cufflinks on 10/13/09 at 4:37 am

You are totally correct in regards to Viral Marketing.

This is one of the best methods for getting vast amounts of traffic FREE. You Tube is an excellent source for showing previews of yout films to entice people to watch your new releases.

Comment by Jeffrey Goodman on 10/13/09 at 10:59 am

Hi cufflinks,

I completely agree with you. Thanks so much for your comments. I hope that you’ll continue to follow along.

All the best,

Jeffrey

Comment by Alexander Thomas on 3/12/10 at 4:14 am

As a independent movie maker, you really need focus on your audience to make your movie a great success. With the use of our technology, you can really get more audience. Most especially with the use of social networking sites.

Comment by dresses on 4/25/10 at 9:19 pm

As a independent movie maker, you really need focus on your audience to make your movie a great success

Comment by Shane on 5/10/10 at 5:24 pm

One of the biggest rookie mistakes that beginning filmmakers make is that they try to stuff everything into their movie and end up with a six hour monster. Problem is, most beginning filmmakers don’t have the experience or the skills to pull something like this off and they end up with a muddled disaster.

Comment by Jeffrey Goodman on 5/11/10 at 7:11 am