Marketing Plan for Actors

A Marketing Plan for Actors

This blog contains practical advice on marketing yourself, at the end of the day, show business is a business – we even call the recorded media an ‘industry’. If you’re not lucky enough to have a good agent AND a continuous flow of work, then the business skills related to marketing a product will equally be useful for those of you attempting to market yourself to agents, casting directors, producers and directors.

Let’s start at the beginning:

You are niche, unique – one of a kind, you are product like no other and as such, you should market yourself like that.  You are not Canon, with hundreds of different cameras, you are you, a single product, your skills and personality.

 I’m not going to outline a full marketing plan for actors here with SWOT analysis, just a simplified version that allows you to take action as soon as possible.

STEP 1: Describe the Product

What is your product? Most actors don’t know. If you are out there desperate to sell yourself but with no idea of what your actual product is, you’re going to struggle to sell it.

Take a photo of yourself. What roles do you imagine you will play? Some people put themselves forwards for castings on the ‘off chance’. This might work 1 in 100,000 times, and if you are willing to take those odds, go ahead and pour your time into that activity.

Are you: an energetic and experienced actor in her mid 30s, with a strong background in television. Most suited to roles such as:  the mistress, seductress, the posh bird, the lawyer, the WAG.

(You won’t share this with your customers, so you can be honest. If you struggle with working out what roles you could play, take your headshot and ask your friends what roles they could see the person in the picture playing (not you, the person in the picture mind)

STEP 2: Describe the Features of Your Product As Benefits to Your Customer 

Describe what’s so good about you, what makes you something they should buy. But describe it in terms of the benefit to them.

Recently graduated the So and So School of Acting – which means I am highly trained, have worked with X director, Y, director and Z director, full of enthusiasm and the latest techniques. 

Experienced in Television Acting – which means I understand the industry, can work quickly, learn big chunks of script over night and don’t require training to act for camera on the job. 

National Profile – which means I add value to new projects

Make a list – and yes, it isn’t very easy, but it’s worthwhile seeing what your features really are…

STEP 3:  Identify the Target Customers 

Who is going to buy your product? If I was selling blue widgets, I would look to find out who uses and buys blue widgets and where they get them from. Find out who can use your services, i.e specific casting directors, producers, directors, role play companies, theatres, television production companies, TIE companies, film schools (they need actors) etc.

Research these people. Google them. Find them in Contacts. If you don’t know who can buy your product, you don’t know who to sell it to…

Carpet Bomb or Smart Bomb?

Don’t carpet bomb everyone – you must smart bomb them. Carpet bombing hits everything, it works indiscriminately, it does hit SOME targets, but it destroys a lot of unintended things too.

Smart Bombing targets the specific customer and creates a marketing activity designed to hit that specific target with laser guided precision.

So, let’s say your target group is: people that cast television in your area – professional casting directors.  Research them thoroughly, read their websites, look at their policies.

STEP 4:  Select Marketing Activity 

Whatever you are going to do to sell yourself to your specific target customers, now is the time to design a specific activity that suits that group.

Email Marketing Campaign with Showreel link

Construct a short, informative email introducing yourself and giving a link to your best work as showreel. Don’t fill their inboxes with attachments, send them links, if they want to know more, they will ask.

STEP 5:  Deliver Marketing Activity

Spend considerable time writing a simple, informative, friendly message. Run the wording past your friends or industry contacts.

Make sure that you specifically ask them to take action as part of the email.

To find out more about my experience in television, click this link to view my showreel, it shows the various television roles I’ve had over the years, in just 2 minutes.

At the end of the message, ask if you can get a meeting.

Send it.

STEP 6:  Measure Results

After 2 weeks, measure your response.  Did you get any responses? If you have used Google Analytics on your YouTube account, you should be able to see if people have clicked your link, or you could keep the YouTube or Vimeo account private and just look at the number of views.

Make sure that your activity is measurable.

STEP 7:  Learn from the Results

Get no responses?

Get no views?

Can you do it differently?

Change activity.

I can’t do it for you, but I hope that stimulates you to start thinking about yourself as something that others want to buy, think about what’s special about you and why that matters to the potential buyers, who the buyers and how to engage them.