The more promotional budget you submit, the more profit you receive

Film marketing is a complex and extremely expensive thing to penetrate in. It costs literally millions of pounds and frequently constitutes the larger part of a film budget. While everyone knows the risks, even such professionals as Red Rock Entertainment Ltd in England and HBO pros from the US continue investing huge sums into film promotion. Why? What for? And is the game worth the candle? Let’s take a look and try to sort it out.

Is there an impact of budget promotion on the sales?
Well, this kind of question is akin to “is there an impact of the Sun on the Earth?” Of course, there is! The more important question is how big is the influence of professional marketing and promotion on the sales and general success of a film. Let’s turn to the numbers to answer the question.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is the film that grossed more than £258 mln in total at the expense of £153.5 mln. And among those £153.5 about a third (which is £57.5 mln), Disney spent on advertising and marketing. Now think, would such a huge mogul invest such big money into something useless? Well, we doubt that. However, this example shows one very important fact – big guys are ready to spend big money – a third, frequently a half, and in some cases even more than 100% of the total budget on marketing. And the reason is as follows: a simple number of 3% that a company spends on print advertising promises about 6% increase in sales; 4% of the total budget spent on online video marketing promises about 16% increase in sales.

Yes, you need to be ready that marketing costs continue to grow year by year. So something that cost a couple percent in the past now may require half of your whole film budget. Yet, the impact of promotion can be explained on a simple example. While you may have pretty much no-name cast and an inexperienced crew, you still will get the film done; but if you have no marketing for a film, don’t expect to sell it at any reasonable cost. If you want to earn money, you have to be ready to spend them first.

What channels of promotion are better?
Traditionally, film marketers see three main channels of promotion, namely printed advertisements, online advertisements, and TV advertisements. Statistics say that on average, filmmakers in the US spend over 82% on TV advertising while digital ads get only up to 10%. Production experts from Red Rock Entertainment explain these numbers pretty easily – TV advertising is still the most effective way of film promotion. Note, that such a strategy works for blockbusters and big-screen films while it might not be the best tactic for indie and low-budget works.

For example, everyone knows the Star Wars saga. And no wonder that it already has millions of fans worldwide. So throwing a huge TV advertising campaign is a beneficial step in the overall film promotion. However, if you take, for instance, Sunday’s Illness (yes, you are likely not even to know the name) then a huge TV promotion may turn a complete failure since this indie film doesn’t have star-cast or a famous director, even though its rating is pretty great.

So when you’re choosing the promotion channel for a film, carefully consider which one suits your film most. Smaller films, just as well as big works, should go into the web. This is a great opportunity to use the word-of-mouth strategy and attract greater audiences via short stories on social media, curious articles on independent blogs, and biting interviews with your cast in the media.

Is there too much promotion? And how much is too much?
Remember, that every single thing in this world has an end, and so does a promotion campaign. Yes, we know the rule of 7 that says that a viewer needs to see an ad seven times to have the intention to buy a product. And what happens after these seven times? Statistically, there comes a decrease in interest towards a product and so the will to buy it diminishes significantly.

If we transfer these numbers to the film industry, you’ll see that your potential viewers need to see information about your film many times to like it and get interested in watching it. However, there is a very thin line between getting people interested and annoyed of your promotion. Do post, do remind them of your project, do create content, and do share it. But don’t’ do it all at once within a half-an-hour time frame. Too much advertising and promotion will only draw your audience away, especially if they were not fans from the beginning. So filter your actions and approach promotion very carefully if you don’t want to have the negative result.