The Distribution & Marketing Budget

Part of the process to prepare for distribution has been to determine a marketing and distribution budget which best leverages funds so that all parties are incentivized and so that there is a clear path to return revenues to investors. We were careful setting up distribution deals so that this could happen as efficiently as possible.

I can’t disclose exact numbers at this point, although I’d like to be able to share those in the future for educational purposes.

We are trying to stay lean and leveraged, just as during production, post, and tour.

Our current distribution and marketing budget is split into these categories:

Staff
- theatrical
- publicity
- social
- graphics

Promotional Materials
- posters
- promotional items & giveaways for partners
- theater point-of-sale materials (postcards, standees)

Shipping
Travel (cast & publicity)
Influencer / Spokesperson Partnerships
Social Advertising

Deliverables
- Foreign
- DCP creation, replication and shipping
- Digital

MPAA (done last year)

Thankfully, we already had completed many of the deliverables last year before the festival premiere, in particular, the key art, website and trailer.

As we move into the outreach & marketing phase, we will continually re-evaluate the allocation of funds between categories to make sure they are most leveraged.

For example, currently we are weighing the best split of funds between promotion, influencer parternships and press events. We also must reserve funds for the ramp up to the digital release in June.

The trick is determining how to be shrewd overall and then assertively spend in high impact areas. We have swung the pendulum both ways on past films. On Calvin Marshall, we spent too much without fully understanding the purpose and impact of each expenditure. On Black Road, we released without a marketing budget.

We are able to lean on these past experiences as well as guidance from our distributors to develop a strategic and highly-leveraged marketing plan — one which is focused on both delivering the film to the audience and efficiently returning revenues to investors.

♡ Annie

Photo by Fabian Blank on Unsplash

Originally published at http://www.jomafilms.com on January 25, 2020.