By Rob Millis
Facebook ads are perhaps the most targeted promotional tool available to filmmakers on a limited budget. Instead of tying your ads to search terms, Facebook advertising enables targeting based on location, particular interests, even employer.
Let’s say you’re promoting a documentary film about the Boston Marathon. Instead of spending money to reach a million people interested in “running” (who may not really care about marathons), you can focus ads more accurately by reaching people who have expressed clear interest in specific races like Bay to Breakers or the Boston Marathon, as well as those who have indicated that they are training for a marathon.
To start, you might consider who is most likely to watch a documentary about marathons online, and then set your ads to reach people who meet the following criteria:
Ages 25-55
Live within 25 miles of
- San Francisco
- Portland
- Los Angeles
- New York
- Boston
Interested in (or have ‘liked’ in some way)
- Bay to Breakers
- Training for Marathon
- Boston Marathon
When you are ready to run an ad, you can also test several variations against each other and easily monitor the statistics. So when you’ve got your first ad ready to go, it’s a good idea to run a few variations of the same ad to reach different markets or test slightly different language.
Location: Basic living habits and trends can vary greatly across different regions. For instance, people in Portland and Seattle historically watch more movies than people in the rest of the country. To reach these markets you might run the same ad in those cities and pay a bit less for places like Dallas and Houston. If it turns out that Texans are actually getting you better results (your film about BBQ sauce it really taking off!), you can easily adjust your budget to give that market a boost.
Employer: Your Boston Marathon documentary may be of interest to runners, but it’s probably also of interest to people who work in the industries that surround marathons. You may want to create slightly different ads for employees at Nike, Gatorade, The Boston Globe, even the Boston Marathon itself.
More importantly, in many cases fans of a product may be an entirely different audience from employees of the company that makes that product. Perhaps you’ll target employees at Nike if you are trying to reach sponsors of a marathon documentary, while the broader group of “fans” of Nike will be a better when releasing a documentary on company founder Phil Knight.
Reach Evangelists: To reach the broadest audience possible with your advertising, you also want to target the influencers your ideal audience is likely to pay attention to. You can use a combination of “likes” and employers to target journalists, bloggers, even theater owners who also have a particular interest in your subject matter. In the case of a marathon documentary, you might include people who ‘like’ coaching and sports medicine, as those people are likely to work with athletes and even more likely to talk about your film with the track and field stars they influence.
Experiment! Above all else, experiment in small batches, a few dollars at a time. Try several variations, get creative and have fun with it. Just make sure each ad is positive, clear and invites the viewer to click through for more information.
Rob Millis is the founder of Dynamo Media and one of the creators behind the Dynamo Player, the first online pay-per-view platform freely available to independent filmmakers. Rob was an early pioneer of online video production and distribution, and has been a founder, investor or advisor with several online media and industrial technology companies. You can find Rob on Twitter at @robmillis or learn more about Dynamo at http://www.DynamoPlayer.com
