The Data Behind Film Marketing

All about those area codes.

I feel like analytics gets lost in digital strategy. When running campaigns, I can't stress enough how important it is to analyze the data. So, this is how "Shiva Baby" went on to stay at #1 at Quad Cinema for 4 weeks and also wound up grossing $1mm in combo with the TVOD campaign. "El Planeta," a debut foreign language, black-and-white film, stayed at #1 at the IFC Center for SEVEN weeks.

It has to be more than guts and feelings. So, let's break down some film marketing campaigns. It also helps that these were, in fact, very well-done films!

The first part of the campaign was the general trailer launch and organic posting. It had to be launched in various sizes. I wanted a placement for Stories, Feeds, YouTube, Video Feeds, etc. I also wanted cutdowns of different lengths, from 90 - 60 - 30 - 15 seconds. I also wanted enough lead-out time to get some data on the organic posts for two weeks. These would prove to be important down the line and also helped to determine which assets got the most engagement to use in ads.

Now, it was time to test them against multiple interest-targeting audiences, including people who engaged with the film's social media pages, the film distributors, and the talent in the film. People who liked a post over the past 30 days, for example. People who were cinema lovers, people who might be more casual cinema fans but fans of the talents' other work or similar work, or more general lifestyle fans, such as fans of Variety, Vogue, etc.

After this, it was important to look at View Rates -- who was sticking around to watch. Which versions of the trailer garnered the most engagement, and in which demographics/age groups? Also, where were they most engaged? Which exact locations? Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn? Lower East Side? West Village? Maybe East Village? Did it make sense to target the financial district? All important questions, and yes, a lot smaller/cheaper ads to test this.

As it turned out, the 90-second trailer was good as the intro trailer. Then, people disengaged. The shorter videos were much better at driving clicks at a lower price to ticket landing pages, particularly the 15-second video. Also, the vertical videos proved to do well. And, despite Instagram being "the younger audience," the younger audience clicked through more at a higher rate on Facebook's Feed.

Now, I could switch on the go-to ad for a few days, leading to a show in the exact zip codes I wanted to target.

Trust your gut, but follow the data.