How To Promote Your Film Screening Offline
A lot of marketing tactics today are around digital strategy, which mainly emphasizes social media. Everyone talks about Facebook ads, email campaigns, etc. But a still highly valuable and under-utilized form of marketing is offline promotions.
If you have a physical space such as venue or storefront, there are advantages that can be used to market and promote your film that relatively cheap and digital marketing cannot compete with. In this article, we are going to help uncover your assets and develop a strategy with offline promotional tactics.
Understanding Your Assets
Before beginning your offline tactics of using physical space to promote screenings, you first need to gather your assets. Assets in this scenario are defined as channels, mediums, location or methods of reaching people. Think of your assets like the items listed below:
Foot Traffic: If your physical space that has people coming in and out, you have foot traffic. Foot traffic has multiple ways to engage people as they walk into and around your space.
Car Traffic: If your physical space is by a busy roadway, you have car traffic. Car traffic is great for a passer-by who may never notice your space until given a reason to do so.
Parking Lot/Side Walks: Parking lots and sidewalks are great spaces do promotions in. Make sure you follow the rules and regulations in your city and county when soliciting on public property.
Windows and Doors: Think about the windows and doorways in your space: entering/exit your venue, bathrooms, etc. Each commonly used doorway can count as an asset.
Elevators: Elevators are great assets! People tend to stop and zone out on elevators, which makes it a great asset for promoting.
Common Areas: Food courts, waiting lounges, and other commonly used areas are assets for placing promotional material.
Start by walking around your space and making a checklist of your assets. Watch which doorways people walk through, if they take the elevator, where they park in parking, the best angle on the sidewalk, etc. This information will be very important later when you decide what marketing materials to create.
Timeline For Marketing + Competition
Now that you have your assets figured out, the next step is selecting a film and setting up a timeline. You can select your film BingeWave’s catalog and add your venue as well. An RSVP page will be automatically created for you. Afterward, the ideal timeframe to start distributing your promotional material should be 4 weeks prior to the screening. It is important to understand what you are competing against — the cell phone.
Facebook, Twitter, cat memes, Candy Crush, email and everything else on a person’s phone has them captivated and distracted. But that does not mean they do not look up and around — or else they might be walking into things (which occasionally happens). When you place these materials, expect about 1 in every 15 people to actually read what you have placed.
But as time progresses, the same people will start to notice. For example, if a person drives by every day your location, there is an 84% chance of them noticing your promotion. Eventually, it becomes committed to memory and serves as a reminder. Putting your promotional material out 4 weeks will give you enough exposure to reach a decent crowd.
QR Codes
Many of the assets we will discuss below will be in a printed format. While listing a URL on your material is helpful, people prefer to type as little as possible. An easy workaround for this is to have QR codes on all promotional material.
QR Codes are the is the white-box box with lines (as noted above) you see from time to time. They work by having a person take a picture of the code and it brings them to the website. The QR code on your marketing material should go the RSVP page provided by BingeWave for your screening.
Promotional Material
It’s time to get the meat of this article, the promotional material that will be placed in your physical space. Each material listed below is based on which assets your location has to offer.
Large Banners
A large banner is great for capturing people’s attention. When making the large banner, think “Could an elderly person clearly read my banner from across the street?”. The banner price range will from $100 to $300.
The goal of a banner to inform a very large group of people about the screening. This is perfect advertising if you have a large parking lot, good car traffic, and good foot traffic. The banner should have the date and time of the screening, the title of the movie, a potential catchy blurb, and short link of where to go find more information.
When advertising outdoors, it is important to check with local laws so that you are not fined. For example, in Atlanta, all promotional material must be 6 feet from the public sidewalk or you could be fined per promotion that violates the ordinances.
Large Posters
Large posters are a great way of promoting a film screening. Posters have enough graphical real estate to be exciting, add captivating and enticing pictures to grab people’s attention. Be sure to add the date/time of the screening, the name of the movie, a link for information, and the QR code. Also add any bonus information such as panelist that are going to be there, food vendors, and other information that will intrigue your audience.
Posters work well with a lot of foot traffic that will pass it. Put the poster on windows, widely used doorways, entry/exit points, and common areas. Consider having a mount or stand to hold the poster up. Posters could be between $30 to $100 to print.
In addition to complying with local laws when placing posters, if you do not own the space and renting it with others, be sure that your promotions do not violate the terms of your lease.
Small Posters/Pamphlets
Another great marketing material to create is small posters or pamphlets. These are items are given out people for them to take home. Similar to posters, add the date/time of the screening, the name of the movie, a link for information, and the QR code.
There are several tactics for distributing the promotional material with the goal of having people take it with them. In areas with high foot traffic, having someone hand out flyers to people can help promote the film. Depending on the crowd, expect 1 in 10 people to take the material.
If you have other assets such as parking, a guerrilla tactic is to leave them on people’s windshields. Elevators are also a great place to put the smaller poster. Place them in strategic areas such as near the numbers where people are likely to glance. Similar to posters, be sure that handing flyers out do not violate local laws and your lease agreement.
Start Promoting
To recap, after you have selected your film from BingeWave’s catalog, start by understanding what assets you have for promoting your screening. Make sure you have the assets completed a month in advance of the screening. Finally depending on your assets, distribute your promotional material accordingly.
Be sure that you are always promoting within legal parameters of your local laws and your leasing agreement. When you are having your screening, you can measure the effectiveness of your marketing by using a simple survey of “How did you hear about this?”. This will allow you to fine-tune your marketing efforts for the future.
