Knowing your audience isn’t just good marketing—it’s essential filmmaking.
In my post last week, I said that I would expand on 4 of the 15 concepts in more depth this week – around connecting to an audience. Over the last decade, one of the biggest mindset shifts I’ve seen among successful independent filmmakers is this: knowing your audience isn’t just good marketing—it’s essential filmmaking.
Your film doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s a dialogue between your story and the people you hope will receive it. So the real question becomes: How well do you actually know who you’re trying to reach—and how they engage with your work?
If you’ve been reading me for a bit/heard me speak, you’ve probably heard me say: audience identification is not a one-time exercise. It’s a living, breathing part of the creative process that starts before you even roll the camera.
Here are four questions I recommend every filmmaker answer early and revisit often:
1. Who Is Your Audience?
You hear it all the time – till you are perhaps sick of it – “know your audience”. But where to start? There are a variety of ways of defining audience using psychographics or socio demographic or other techniques, many quite good. What I find it is helpful as a starting place for independent filmmakers, is to look at niche audiences and then core audiences within a niche. When you can connect to that core audience, you can then expand into secondary and tertiary audiences – potentially reaching a wider/mass audience. You can also afford to market to these core niches – and expand wider into the niches.
Niche Audiences: A niche audience is a slice of the mass audience focused on a particular interest. Otherwise known as an audience vertical. The reason they are helpful to you is that they are accessible – and you can afford to market to them.
When I hear filmmakers still say (although less and less) that their film is for women, or women over 35, or Gen Z – my response is good luck with that. Or this isn’t about saying “everyone will love my film.” That’s the surest way to fail. It’s about honing in on the people most aligned with your themes, aesthetics, and values.
To visualize – see my version of Chris Anderson’s “long tail” applied to film audiences. Audience Size is on the Y Axis. Audiences is on the X Axis. You can see the audience verticals as slices of this long tail of audience. If audience or revenue is your goal – you are trying to move to the left on the X axis to larger and larger audiences.
Core Within Niche: The reason you can reach these niches is by connecting with that niche’s core audiences. I often hear people use the terms core and niche interchangeably. This is a disservice – they are not the same. The core are the people organizations, publications etc who that the niche listens to for recommendations and information. These core audiences speak to secondary audiences who speak to tertiary/ever wider audiences eventually/hopefully reaching some broader audience demographic.
My Love Affair With Marriage which is an animated feminist film for adults that tackles the issues of love, gender norms, domestic violence, fantasies and toxic relationships to propel a woman’s journey toward independence and liberation.
When we released the film we determined and engaged three niche audiences – who filled theaters: Latvians and Eastern Europeans – the film takes place in the former Soviet Union by a Latvian/American filmmaker. The film is animated and concerns issues of domestic violence from a women’s perspective.
The Librarians is a documentary about courageous librarians on the front lines of book banning in the United States.
Note that for the niche of “book lovers/readers” you have two sub-niches – library patrons with librarians at the core (super influencers) and then authors/publishers/book influencers as a core for readers.
Considering who your audience is takes some time and work – you may not crack it at the beginning – you will discover more insight throughout the process, but thinking about it from the beginning gives you a head start and keeping it in mind – will cause you to reflect and refine.
2. What Value Do You Provide Your Audience?
Perhaps this should be #1 since it is essential and something filmmakers don’t think about besides: “I’m making a great film – that is my value.” Well you are competing against 50,000 perhaps 100,000 filmmakers plus all the AI bots that are “thinking” the same thing.
In Think Outside the Box Office, I argued that filmmakers should define not only what they want from their film (income, visibility, impact, career momentum) but also what they want their audience to take away. That sense of meaning is the foundation of both resonance and strategy.
What can you do that is beyond the film that will create and deepen that relationship?
This is not just for one film but for your career. What is your audience interested in? What do they value? Assuming your film will connect with them, how can you meet that value beyond the film to interest them in coming to your film in the first place?
Do they want connection, community, understanding you and your creative process?
Recently, we had the brilliant Ivan Askwith speaking in the Distribution Lab. Ivan is a strategist and producer who specializes in organizing and empowering fan communities to realize their shared goals. He laid this out:
“It’s becoming true that what you watch is not your whole decision criteria, it’s also who made the thing you’re watching? Why did they make it? Did they care about something, or were they just trying to make money? Did they get money when they made it, or did some studio get it? Did they do something to change the world? Did they do something to further an agenda that I have as an audience member or care about? Do I feel connected to the person who made this and the story of why they made it?” – Ivan Askwith
This relates to another concept from last week – find an underserved audience and serve them authentically.
Most importantly: your audience needs to feel that your work gives them something they can’t get anywhere else. That’s how you create long-term fans who don’t just watch one film, but come back to support you again and again.
Think Long Term
Think depth, not breadth. Use all of the tools at your disposal to create lasting relationships with audiences who will follow you from project to project. This is a key element of long term sustainability. Yes your projects will vary, but at the center will still be you.
When you treat distribution as relationship-building, you’re investing in your future, one film at a time.https://jonreiss.substack.com/p/4-essential-questions-about-your