FREE Film Marketing Plan Template (Gantt Chart)

Why use our Film Marketing Plan Template instead of Excel or Google Sheets?

Get started with our Film Marketing Plan Template in seconds while skipping the hassle involved with Excel or Google Sheets.

Build Gantt charts in minutes, not hours.

No project management experience? No problem. Tom's Planner offers a user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface that's intuitive and easy to learn. Creating Gantt charts is a breeze, saving you time and effort. Compare that to the time-consuming, frustrating, manual formatting-intensive process of building a Gantt chart in Excel or Google Sheets.

Create a Gantt chart in minutes, not hours

Move at the pace of modern business with no learning curve or Googling formulas.

Good luck figuring out how to make a Gantt chart work in Excel or Google Sheets. Excel’s user manual weighs in at a hefty 500+ pages. It takes just five minutes with Tom’s Planner to start planning your first real project plan.

Headache-free collaboration and sharing.

Tom's Planner offers powerful options for sharing and collaborating on Gantt charts, including public links, PDF exports, and team access with customizable permission levels. It’s never been easier to communicate or ensure everyone’s on the same page. Compare that to Excel, where sharing and collaboration mean jumping through hoop after hoop and dealing with confusion and chaos.

How to use Tom’s Planner’s film marketing plan template to build and share your marketing project.

Getting your project off the ground is as easy as 1-2-3.

Step #1

Click the 'start with template’ button to open the Film Marketing Plan Template.

Step #2

Register for a free account and watch a short video on using Tom’s Planner. The account is free forever, with no strings attached.

Step #3

You’re all set to use the Gantt chart template. Need additional help? Our AI assistant can create a custom Gantt chart Film Marketing Plan Template based on your project description.

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What is a film marketing plan template?

You’ve put in all the work, logged all the hours, and endured long days and nights, and now it’s time to show your creation to the world. Whether you’ve created a hard-hitting documentary, a heartwarming rom-com, a chilling horror, or something else, getting the word out there about your film is critical. You need to build anticipation and hype. You must whet appetites. Most of all, you need to convince movie theaters that they want to show your film and moviegoers that they want to see it.

Your film marketing plan is the key to achieving those goals. Of course, creating a marketing plan for a film is no simple task. A film marketing plan template can help you streamline the creation process, stay organized, and keep everything on track while reaching your goals in terms of visibility, word of mouth, and excitement.

The key to results with your movie marketing plan: Using a film marketing Gantt chart

You can use almost any tool to create a documentary planning worksheet or guide. That includes Word, Excel, and Google Sheets. However, none of those is really up to the task. Instead, consider a film marketing Gantt chart, like Tom’s Planner.

You need more than a checklist. You need a living guide that can evolve with your film marketing plan. A Gantt chart is a living document that grows and changes over time while providing you with the flexibility and granular planning capabilities required to market a film in today’s world.

When to use a film marketing plan template

A film marketing Gantt chart is a critical tool, and it should play a central role in several different processes. Some of those include:

Planning:

Your marketing strategy should start development long before you’re done filming. You should be marketing while the filming is still done. So, you’ll need to use your film marketing plan template during the planning stages for the film itself.

Production:

Your film marketing template provides important guidelines for the marketing steps you’ll take while filming is in production. That can include teaser trailers, stunt highlights, actor interviews, and more.

Post-Release:

Once the film is released, your marketing plan template should still play a role. What interviews will you do? What publicity stunts will take place? How will you support the film and keep it in theaters as long as possible?

With a film marketing Gantt chart like Tom’s Planner, you can plan your marketing strategy, assign tasks, and ensure that your marketing efforts are moving the needle.

Who needs to use a film marketing plan template?

Creating an effective film marketing plan that generates the buzz you need for success requires that many people have access to the marketing plan Gantt chart. Some of these people include:

Creative Directors:

Creative directors are often the ones responsible for creating the vision for a film’s marketing campaign. They can use a film marketing template to assign tasks, track progress, and communicate with other stakeholders.

PR Partners:

PR partners like publicists and public relations firms can use the film marketing plan template to verify the creation of various marketing materials, the use of correct channels, and more.

Film Marketers:

Film marketers can use the film marketing Gantt chart to track tasks like audience identification and campaign creation, as well as budget-related tasks.

Having a fully realized film marketing plan at the outset is critical. Tom’s Planner provides the customization and planning capabilities that you need.

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The top three pitfalls when planning film marketing

Give your film the best chance of success by avoiding these pitfalls:

Not Segmenting Your Audience
No film production has a monolithic audience. Failing to segment your audience can mean missing the mark in your messaging.
Solution:
Make audience identification and segmentation key parts of your early planning.
A Trailer That Falls Flat
Ever watch a movie trailer and think, “Well, that doesn’t look very good”? If your trailer misses the mark, it could turn off more potential viewers than it engages.
Solution:
Plan your trailer early in the marketing strategy creation process and ensure that it’s engaging, evocative, and doesn’t give everything away.
You Start Planning Too Late
Small filmmakers and production companies sometimes leave marketing for last, but that’s a huge mistake that will cost you money and rankings at the box office.
Solution:
You should start planning your film marketing strategy early, long before you start shooting.

What does a film marketing plan template include?

Each film marketing and distribution plan template is unique. Yours will hinge on the film itself, your audience, goals, and budget, to name just a few. However, your film marketing Gantt chart should include a few specific things to plan:

Market Research:
Your film marketing plan should be based on a solid understanding of the market. That means conducting a trend analysis, studying competitors, exploring your target market, knowing what’s going on in your movie genre, and evaluating potential distribution channels within your documentary film marketing plan template.
Audience Identification:
No film is appealing to all audiences. Your job is to identify those most likely to want to see it. You’ll need to delve into audience demographics, identify behavioral traits, spot geographic locations where your audience is most concentrated, segment potential audience members, and then create profiles to use in your marketing.
Marketing Strategy Development:
Once you’ve done some legwork, you can start building your marketing strategy. What are your objectives? What’s your marketing budget? What channels will you use? What mix of content will be most effective?
Marketing Material Design:
Speaking of marketing content, you’ll need to set aside time and money for their design, as well as assign people the task of creating marketing collateral. This can include copywriting, graphic design, digital content creation, print material creation, and material distribution.
Pre-release Promotion:
One of the key objectives here is to build buzz surrounding your film. That requires things like releasing a teaser trailer, publishing press releases, getting the word out on social media, forging partnerships with the right influencers, launching the full movie trailer, and finding ways to engage your target audience.

A film marketing plan template like Tom’s Planner makes it easier than ever to create a solid marketing strategy that promotes your film and maximizes both viewership and profitability.

Four tips on how to make sure you reach your deadlines

1. Make Marketing a Key Priority:

Want to reach your marketing-related deadlines? Make film marketing a major priority in your planning. After all, if you’re not able to get the word out, no one will come to see the film.

2. Delegate and Hold Accountable:

There’s a ton to do when it comes to marketing your film. Delegate tasks and then hold your teams accountable. The goal should be consistent forward progress toward achieving key marketing objectives.

3. Don’t Do It All Alone:

Even if you have a relatively robust film marketing team, you’re going to need some outside help. Identify potential partners early on in your planning process so that you can reach out at the right time.

4. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate:

No matter how much expertise your marketing team has, a lack of communication can doom your efforts. Bake communication into your planning and strategy sessions with a film marketing plan Gantt chart like Tom’s Planner.

Gantt charts in Tom's Planner vs in Excel

	Excel	Tom's Planner
Cost	License required	Free version available
Learning curve	Hours	Minutes
Create your first Gantt chart	Hours	Minutes
Making an update in your chart	Several minutes	Seconds (drag & drop)
Sharing charts with others	At some point you will save and email a file titled: version_4_def_usethisversion_reallyfinal.xlsx	Online, one source of truth, always up to date, with no confusion
Look & Feel	Messy	Clean, polished and professional
Dependencies
Filtering
Zoom in/out
Automatic Legend
AI-assist		Let our AI assist do the work for you
Export to image or pdf	Requires workarounds to export	One mouse click

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