The Smart Way to Build an Audience for Your Films
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We’ve all been told that we should build an audience for our films.
But here’s the hard truth. It’s tough to make the economics of audience building work as a filmmaker.
If you’re not careful, you can put in all of that time and energy, and still not be able to earn a consistent living.
After all, films are a uniquely tricky product to profit from.
Many indie features take years, and tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to make (if not millions).
And because the marketplace is flooded with cheap or free commodity media, it’s damn difficult to get people to stream your film for free, let alone pay $10 for it.
That’s the ecosystem we’re trying to do business in.
Consumers have endless choices when it comes to entertainment, much of it produced by billion dollar companies with marketing budgets that are 10,000x more than our films cost.
Point is, the economics of filmmaking are skewed against us right out of the gate, especially as an indie creator.
However, building an audience is one of the best ways to mitigate those shitty economics.
An audience can help you sell your films more reliably, and at higher price points. All without middle men eating up the lion’s share of that revenue.
An audience gives you options for how to monetize your work, instead of being locked into old distribution models that rarely benefit the filmmaker.
And more than anything else, an audience, when built the smart way, gives you genuine certainty in an unpredictable, competitive media ecosystem.
But notice how I highlighted “built the smart way” above.
I emphasized that point because it’s entirely possible to build an audience and not reap any of those benefits.
If you’re not intentional about how you approach the process, you might just find that it was wasted effort.
The “Dichotomies” of Audience Building
Today, we’re going to dig into a concept I call the “dichotomies of audience building.”
A dichotomy is simply the contrast and tension between two seemingly opposed ideas.
For instance, there’s a dichotomy between science and religion. Between good and evil. Nature and nurture. Etc.
And in the context of building an audience for your films, there are two crucial dichotomies you need to understand.
Once you do, you’ll have a clear path forward for building an audience in a way that leads to earning a living from the work you care about.
So let’s dig into the dichotomies, shall we?
Dichotomy 1: Short Term vs. Long Term Audience Building
The first dichotomy is the division between short term and long term audience building.
This is all about the length of time you intend to serve a particular audience.
More specifically, short term audience building refers to building a new audience for every film you create.
It means you do the hard work of niche research, influencer outreach, content creation, email newsletters, etc. And for that one project, you have the focused niche attention required to turn a profit.
But when it’s time for a new project, you stop serving that audience and start fresh with a new one. You go through all of that difficult work again.
Long-term audience building, on the other hand, is about serving the same audience with multiple films over the course of several years or more.
“The real money in an audience comes from the long-term relationship you’ve built with a specific group of people. Like all relationships, it takes time and continuous effort to reap the rewards.”
My friend Mike Dion is the perfect example of this.
Since 2010, he’s built an enthusiastic audience of people who are passionate about bike packing. (In case you’re curious what that is, it’s basically a combination of endurance cycling and backpacking.)
In that time, Mike’s made 3 features, and several other products, to serve and satisfy that audience.
He could have made one film, built an audience for it, then moved onto something different. And he might have made a little money with that approach.
But by buckling down and focusing on his niche over the course of nearly a decade, he’s built a thriving business around his films.
(Speaking of which, be sure to check out the podcast episode I did with Mike awhile back. It’s packed with so much good entrepreneurial wisdom.)
Long-term audience building is less work, and way more profitable.
The real money in an audience comes from the relationship you’ve built with this group of people.
Like all relationships, it takes time and continuous effort to reap the rewards. And those rewards, no matter how great they might seem at first, deepen and grow more profound with time and continued work.
In a business sense, the longer you serve an audience, the more you’ll create true fans or superfans—people who will follow you to the ends of the earth, and buy anything and everything you ever create.
These are the people who, if you were to launch a Patreon, would whip out their wallets in a heartbeat, and gladly pay you each month in perpetuity.
That kind of option just doesn’t exist without long-term commitment to a singular audience.
“Taking the short-term approach is not only way more work, but there’s significantly more risk, both in terms of finances and fulfillment.”
The other benefit here is obvious.
Like I mentioned, building an audience is a shit ton of work.
There are many different pieces to that puzzle, and even for experienced marketers, it’s never a sure thing.
Some niches are just more profitable than others. And some have plenty of profit potential, but aren’t enjoyable, and will eat away at your soul if you spend too much time in them.
In other words, taking the short-term approach is not only way more work in the long run, but there’s significantly more risk, both in terms of finances and fulfillment.
And let’s be real. There’s already plenty of risk in indie filmmaking. Why take on more when there’s a desirable alternative?
With the long-term approach, once you get over the initial hurdle of building the audience, you’re on easy street, relatively speaking.
Once an audience has proven that it’s hungry for the content you create, there are so many different options for profiting from that hunger.
And if you commit to serving that audience and satiating their hunger over the long term, you get to reap the rewards of that work for years to come, instead of having to start over every time you want to make a new project.
The only downside of long-term audience building
Now, the obvious downside here is that many of us don’t want to be locked into a niche. As artists, we like to explore, with every new project being an opportunity to map new terrain.
When you choose to serve a single niche audience over the long term, you are indeed locking yourself into telling certain types of stories.
But one of the exciting things about serving a niche is that traditional notions about having to stick to a certain genre go right out the window.
“If you commit to serving an audience and satiating their hunger over the long term, you get to reap the rewards of that work for years to come, instead of having to start over every time you want to make a new project.”
As long as you tell stories that resonate with this specific group of people, you have an incredible amount of leeway to make what you want.
It could be a feature in any conceivable genre. It could be a web series. It could be an experimental animated choose your own adventure film.
Even though you’re committed to serving up stories with familiar substance, the menu of flavors at your disposal can be enough to satisfy even the most curious and exploratory of us.
The trick to making this work is to serve a niche that you’re genuinely passionate about.
Ideally, it’s a niche you’re an enthusiastic member of yourself. A niche you’re excited to explore further—where your curiosity can pull you in any number of directions that will be artistically fulfilling for you.
So it is indeed possible to commit to serving a single audience for years at a time, and not get bored creatively.
It’s just a matter of finding the right niche, and realizing how much freedom you have to play within those confines.
There’s one last thing I’d like you to consider before we move on to the next dichotomy.
Genuinely serving a community over the long term feels great.
No joke. When the work you do resonates so deeply with a group of people that they thank you on a regular basis, it can warm even the coldest of hearts.
We all have a deep human need to feel useful and connected and serve others. It’s built deep into our psyches—a remnant from our tribal ancestors, where cooperation and status where the key to survival.
Filmmaking as it’s traditionally practiced doesn’t really fulfill that need. But when we commit to tell stories that matter to a certain group over the long term, it absolutely does.
And that benefit, however intangible it may seem, is worth its weight in gold when it comes to living a good, fulfilled life.
Dichotomy 2: Reactive vs. Proactive Audience Building
The second dichotomy to consider is proactive vs. reactive audience building.
Let’s start with reactive. This is when you go through the entire process of making a film without thinking of the audience.
You don’t know who it’s for, and you haven’t already done the work to reach them.
Basically, it’s when you finish a project, and then think, “Oh shit, I need to start marketing this. I wonder who would enjoy films like the one I made.”
This is how most indie filmmakers approach it.
They’re so excited about their ideas and stories that they just plow ahead and make it, telling themselves they’ll figure out the business stuff later.
Then when “later” comes, they’re very often exhausted, without clear direction on how to make money.
That’s what often sends people down the endless cycle of “let’s just submit to as many festivals as possible and hope for the best.”
“The trick to profitable niche filmmaking is telling stories that are tailor made to resonate with a specific group of people. ”
What’s worse, when you take the reactive approach, it’s entirely possible—likely even—that you end up making a film that just isn’t a good fit for online audiences.
I’ve said this multiple times already, but the trick to profitable niche filmmaking is telling stories that are tailor made to resonate with a specific group of people.
If you don’t consider that group as you’re writing and making your film, it’s highly unlikely you’ll create something that fits any particular niche like a glove.
And that’s 80% of the marketing battle right there.
It’s so much easier to market and sell a film when you can say, “Hey, I made this film just for people like you. It’s about something you really care about, so tell your friends!”
Instead, when we take the reactive approach, our marketing messages are more like, “Uhh, I made this thing. I don’t really know who it’s for, and it’s not much different from anything else out there, but ya’ll should still totally watch it. Pretty please??”
See what I mean? The difference is night and day.
Proactive audience building
Proactive audience building, as you’ve probably guessed, is about building an audience before and during the process of making a film.
It’s about fully understanding who you’re trying to reach ahead of time, so that you can craft something that fits them like a glove.
Additionally, it’s about doing the work to reach and build relationships with those people through each stage of the filmmaking process.
That way, by the time you’re set to release your film, you’ve already got an audience who’s hungry to see what you’ve made, because they know you made it just for them.
Basically, building audiences proactively is a destroyer of uncertainty.
No more getting to the finish line on a project, only to say, “Uhhh, now what? I guess we should submit to festivals or something, right?”
Nope. Instead you’ll be able to use a wide array of launch and e-commerce techniques to get your film out there, and start earning real revenue right away.
The downside of proactive audience building
Now, the pushback I always hear about taking the proactive approach is that making a film is enough work as it is. How could anyone possibly have time to build an audience in addition to that?
To that, I say that it is indeed more work, but even the busiest of filmmakers have time they could be using to nurture their audience.
For instance, even when you’re on set, there’s downtime between takes or setups. During those times, you can whip out your phone and snap some BTS photos, or record a quick video to post on instagram.
Same goes for pre and post-production. There’s plenty of time throughout those processes that you could be using for building your audience.
And even if you’ve got a day job, or your schedule truly is booked wall to wall with priorities, it’s always possible to make more time.
Get up 30 minutes earlier each day, and commit those few precious minutes to the crucial work of connecting with your niche.
It’s simply a matter of shifting your priorities around a bit, and using your time in ways you’re not used to.
That’s the added layer of responsibility that comes with being an entrepreneurial filmmaker. To get results beyond what everyone else is getting, you have to commit to work that few others are doing, and do it consistently.
But if building an audience proactively is a true priority, you will find or make the time for it.
Final thoughts
As you can see, you have an array choices for how you approach building an audience for your indie films.
You could do what most do when embarking on the entrepreneurial path, and take a reactive, short term approach.
After all, that still counts as “building an audience,” right?
But as you know by now, success is far less likely in that scenario. You’re rolling the dice, financially speaking, and committing to a never-ending mountain of work for yourself.
The smart way—the profitable way—is to build niche audiences proactively, and serve those audiences over the long term.
Granted, it’s more work, and there are sacrifices you’ll have to make.
But if you care about maximizing revenue and minimizing work, this is the path forward.
It’s certainly not the easiest path. But if we wanted to avoid hard work, we wouldn’t be making films in the first place.
Good luck, and godspeed.
-Rob
