How to define the ideal audience for your film! Ep69

This week I’m sharing the Two Steps you need to know in order to master how to define your ideal audience.  Because once you know who your project is for it's much easier to reach them. 

And if you follow these two steps you’ll be much more likely to release your film to an audience who will connect and engage with it.  And let's face it, a big reason for making movies that matter is so that the right people see them.   

So hit subscribe and listen in to learn how to define your audience.

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Welcome to the Moonshine Moonshot Podcast episode 69. I'm sharing with you two steps that you need to understand in order to master defining who your ideal audience is. Because once you know who your project is for, it is so much easier to reach them. And if you follow the two steps I'm sharing, you'll be much more likely to release your film to an audience who will connect and engage with it. And let's face it, a big reason for making movies that matter is so that the right people see them. So keep listening, and I'll be sharing these two important steps that you need to take, and also some bonus tips on how to identify your ideal audience. Step one and two are both things that you will learn and implement right away if you want to. So that's what's going to make the difference in your film getting seen is doing these two things that I'm sharing. So, welcome to the Moonshine Moonshop podcast. I'm your host, Sue Collins, and if you've landed here, it means you're wanting to find out how to make filmmaking a sustainable career. And you're probably curious about how to make meaningful work that fills your cup. So you're ready to learn how to make movies that matter, build a sustainable career, and have a positive social impact on your audiences. You are in the right place. Filmmaking has so many parts to it, and I'm sharing what I have learned over the past 15 years about producing impact films that reach their intended audience and support real world change. So let's get into today's episode. So when you think about the topic of the project you're developing, how do you think it will be captivating your audience? Will they relate to the characters and their plight? Will they be inspired to be part of a change once they see your film? Now remember, I am talking about impact films here, not films developed for entertainment alone. There is nothing wrong if that's what you're doing. But it's a different approach because for an impact film, for a film to have an impact on the audiences in a way that has them wanting to do something after they see the film, it has to connect with them in a very powerful way. They have to be inspired and engaged to take the next step. And I'm not talking about just having a quick chat to their mates about what they thought, but I'm talking about a life-changing action, a deep conversation, going to a website and registering to join a movement, making a donation, choosing to host a screening of the film for their own community. The what that they do will come down to your call to action. And that's where an impact film is different to just a film for entertainment, because you will be asking your audience to do something. So this episode is about sharing the two steps I use to help identify who my audience is right from development. Defining my ideal audience early, it really helps alleviate that fear that I'll spend months, years, hundreds of thousands of dollars producing a film only to have it fall on deaf ears. Crickets, zero box office. So defining my audience also helps stop my fear because I'll have worked out who they are and I'll be communicating with them on social media, email marketing, YouTube, and doing that for many, many months before the film comes out. So they will be ready and waiting when my film is released. So how do you identify who your audience is? Look, this is deeper work. It is not just demographics, it's more about psychographics. Film audiences are very different to a social media audience or an audience that a digital marketer would identify through that traditional customer avatar or customer persona type of an approach. Now, identifying the demographics is a really good starting point. So, you know, is your audience mainly men or women? What age range and what stage of life are they in? Where do they live? But there is so much more to it than just these types of demographics. So you need to go deeper, especially when you're talking about making an impact film. You need to figure out what your audience cares about, what they're interested in, what are the emotions that compel them to make the choices that they make? What are their priorities? This is a values-based approach that I'm talking about, and it's what I'm meaning by psychographics. You're digging into your audience's aspirations, their attitudes, their worldview. So how do you figure that out? Well, market research. And you're likely now thinking that this all sounds really hard, and you don't have the budget to engage a market research company and you don't know how to do it yourself. Well, not yet. But yes, you will learn how to do this yourself. It is actually easy to figure out. Well, kind of. Now don't get me wrong, it is a lot of work. But if you really want your film to land on your audience and get people engaged through the promotion of your film in the lead up to release, you've got to know who your film is for. And this is one of the biggest mistakes I hear people make. The phrase, but my film is for everyone. My film is for a broad audience. Look, this should be banned from all filmmakers' lips, pitches, and proposals. There is no way you could even begin to reach the majority of the population with your work. And I realize this is a huge blow for many of you, but no, your film is not for everyone. And that's actually a good thing that ultimately makes your job easier and more rewarding. And I'm going to cycle back to why in just a minute. But why can't you reach everyone? Well, from a marketing standpoint, unless you have a mega marketing budget. And if you do, frankly, I'm not sure why you're listening here, because everything I teach through the Moonshine Moonshop podcast is about how to produce a successful, independent film. And that means you're very unlikely to have millions in marketing budget, which is what you'd need if you want to reach a broad audience and have your message land in a way that got them to a cinema. The other reason is that when you're pitching your film for finance, there is almost no way that any broadcaster, distributor, or non-theatrical traditional funder will see a broad audience as a positive thing, as they know that their channel, their platform is for a targeted demographic. And it's almost impossible to market to a broad audience. And worse, they'll also know that you're saying you want to pitch to a broad audience or your films for a broad audience, they'll know that means you haven't done your homework. Or worse yet, they'll think you don't really know what you're doing, and that is not a good place to build their confidence in your project or you from. So as I mentioned before, what I'm sharing with you today is how you can build an audience for your film in the months leading up to release so that when you're ready to share your film with the world, you have a warm, engaged audience ready to go and see your film as soon as it opens. So you can't use excuses like, I don't know where to find that information, or I just really don't have the time to do this kind of work. Because when you're developing your story, it's actually the perfect time to do this market research. It will make the story you're creating stronger and more targeted, and it will help you land your story in a way that truly connects. And that's part of the art and magic of impact filmmaking. So the first step, remember this is a two-step process, and the first step is really understanding that as a filmmaker, you need to know who your audience is. And I hope everything that I have said to this point in this podcast has got you really clear on that. So that is step one. Done. See, you've already achieved it. Step one, you're already there. Ticking off that list. And no, I'm not being cheeky by making that, you know, the understanding of this step, the step itself. You would be amazed how many people don't know who their film is for and have never thought about it. They assume that they will sell their film to a distributor and that it's a distributor's job to figure that out. And I strongly caution against this approach because first, distributors are a whole nother episode in and of itself, but also because no one knows your film like you do, and no one can make sure your film is going to reach an audience because the story is well crafted in a way that can connect other than you, the filmmaker. That is your job. So now we're clear on step one. Let's move on to step two, the second step, market research. Now, when it comes to market research, you can do this through the communities that you already have available to you. You could do this online through social media. The, you know, you're talking to people in your life, you can turn to organizations that are already connected to the topic of your film. Oftentimes, what I find interesting is that who I assumed would be the audience for my film actually isn't. They might be a segment of the overall audience, but the core audience are actually somebody different. So what do I mean by that? Okay, so what I mean is it's at the very start of your project and you've picked your story and you've made a big assumption about who's who it's for. And I recently released an impact film called Live the Life You Please to Australian Audiences. It's a film about end of life care, and I initially thought when we were developing the project that the main audience, the core audience, would be older Australians approaching end of life. Um no, much of the feedback was Yikes, I don't want to be thinking about death. I'm not gonna watch a film about that. Hmm, okay, so it turns out the audience is actually the children of older Australians, people who are preparing for their parents to need support in their older years as they require medical intervention or age care. So the audience actually skews heavily towards women in their 40s to 55 age range. So had the team and I not identified that the demographic was most likely to engage in the film was primarily women with aging parents who work in health or had some connection to healthcare, we would have had a really hard time building and promoting the film and getting folks along to the cinema. So what I'm saying through this example is that although there were older audience members very engaged and wanting to see the film, they were just a small segment of the audience, not the core audience, which was actually the women with aging parents and working in health. So because we've been able to identify this difference through the type of market research that I'm talking about in this episode today, we were able to identify that. And you can imagine that trying to market a film to a really an older Australian demographic versus women in their 40s to 55s. You can imagine everything about the marketing would be very different talking to those two different groups. So that was really critical for us, and we were able to overcome that because we figured it out right at the start. So, two big questions that you need to be asking yourself here at the start of step two is who is your story for and why should your story matter to them? So here's some tips on how to get started with your market research online. And online, this type of market research is available to everybody. So first think about what's the overarching theme or topic of your film? Now, what sorts of groups or organizations are active in that area? Do they have social media profiles? Explore them. So on Facebook, for example, do they have a company page or do they run a group? And what's the focus of that group? What are they talking about? What are the questions they're asking? What sort of comments are the participants in that group leaving? So create a spreadsheet. Doesn't matter what platform, you can use Google, Docs, Excel, whatever you want. Create a spreadsheet and start copying down all of this data that you're finding. And make sure that you cut and paste comments that are relevant and the way the questions are asked because that can also really inform how you share your own content for the tone and style later on. You could jump on something like Instagram. What sort of posts are being created? What is being shared in Reels? Are the stories on a similar topic or do they have a similar focus to the story that you're creating? What sort of comments are being left? Can you get a sense of the people that are following those accounts? You know, their age, their interests, what they're concerned about, what type of comments they leave should help you work this out. And sometimes doing a hashtag search with the key topic or keyword that relates to your story on Instagram is a really great way to bring up relevant profiles and posts. And again, compile this data in a spreadsheet. At this point, it might be all feeling a little bit vague, but the more you dig and drill into all of this, the clearer it's going to become who is actually talking about the ideas in your story online, what type of people they are, where they're hanging out. And you can do this exact same process on just about any social media platform that you use or that you think your audience might be hanging out on, you know, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and also where your audience is hanging out online is definitely going to tell you something about their demographic attributes, you know, like their age and location, because you know, Facebook audiences tend to skew a bit older than Instagram audiences by way of example. So this is a really great kind of fact-finding, data mining mission that you're on here. And a great way to do this research is, you know, as I mentioned before, what organizations come up? This is really important because they could be potential funders. Because if the values in your story really align with those organizations, they're probably people you should be talking to about finance as well. But that's another aside, we're talking audience here. So what about offline? What sorts of things can you do offline? Well, you've just discovered a whole lot of organizations that are connected to the focus topic of your film. Can you speak to them about what you're doing and perhaps ask them who their main demographic it is? It's likely to be similar to yours. A few other tips on how to find out what people think and feel is to run a quiz. You could set up a quiz on a social platform. You could email your networks with a bunch of questions. You know, you could email your friends, your family, your colleagues, your classmates, co-workers. What do they think about your topic? Can they connect you with other people that might have opinions about your topic? Now I mentioned earlier that this work would make your job as a filmmaker easier and more rewarding. So what did I mean by that? Well, making a film that people want to see is obviously a really important thing. And when you do that, it is really rewarding. And I've received many thank yous over the years, including from people who've said that one of my films inspired them to focus their career away from the work they were doing in health and focus on children's palliative care. The film actually inspired them to change their profession. And after watching a different one of my films, another person reported that their hospital administrators were so moved that they dusted off plans that have been on the shelf for years and green lit a new cancer hospital. This is a true story that happened in Zambia. So there are really great rewards from producing impact films, but ultimately this work makes your job easier because once you know who your audience is, you can speak to them in a much more personal way. You can really connect and engage and grow the audience ahead of your film's release. It's pre-marketing and it's everything that you need to have a successful release of your film and ultimately get the impact that you're trying to make in the world. Now, if you're needing more guidance other than the two steps and tips I've given on how to conduct market research, head over to Moonshine Communications Academy.com because I created a whole online course on defining your ideal audience because I think it's that important for people to learn how to do this really well. And it's the kind of thing once you've learnt it, you know it and you can apply it to every project that you do moving forward. So, Moonshine Communications Academy.com, look for Define Your Ideal Audience course. And this is where I go into real depth on how to do this work and really deeply understand who your audience is and what they think and feel. So I hope this has been helpful. It was a lot of information. You might want to re-listen if you haven't been taking notes. And um I'm also going to be back next week, of course. I'm here every Tuesday, and next week we're already up to episode number 70 for series two. So looking forward to sharing that with you next week. Happy defining your audience. Thank you for joining me today and every week here on the Moonshine Moonshot Podcast. If you're wanting a deeper dive into the topics being discussed on the show, then I would encourage you to head over to Moonshine Communications Academy.com and sign up for the weekly drop of moonshine via your email. Being on our newsletter community means we can support your filmmaking journey in a more tailored way as well as keeping you up to date with the resources we share on how to make movies that matter and so much more that we deliver inside your inbox every single week. So head over to Moonshine CommunicationsAcademy.com and at the bottom of the homepage you'll see a little box to add your email address and as a thank you for signing up, we'll also send you a bonus ebook to support your messaging. So voila, you'll be on the way to receive all the best content weekly.