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(By Troy Price) Since I enjoy scary movies, I just watched the 2018 film Heredity. Whew, it’s well made, creepy, and weird. Afterwards, I needed to Google and read an explanation of the movie’s ending. While Googling, I discovered that the same director just released another scary movie: Midsommar. Googling results for that movie brought up some first-page complaints that I thought have relevance for those wanting to launch their niche podcast.
A recurring complaint online about Midsommar is that the movie’s release schedule has not allowed for piracy of the film. In the words of simbafan3000 on Reddit, “Here the movie has been in theaters for over a month and I can’t find it online anywhere.” This means that people who want to see it have to go to the theater to enjoy the unsettling storyline. This has resulted in a movie with a $9 million budget making over $34 million (as of this writing – according to the wiki page).
Here is how they stemmed the piracy tide and maximized profits.
The movie is about some American 20-somethings who go to a festival in Sweden. It was released in the U.S. in the first week of July, and then in Sweden a little bit later, and then the rest of Europe after that. Midsommar was finally released worldwide on August 1. Rather than a major worldwide release from the very beginning, they first focused on a group of people that would be interested in the movie and then focused on another group, and then another, and finally the general public.
In our podcasting world, a show’s launch is important. There’s lots of advice to blanket lots of people with information about your show and try to have your show trend on some of the charts at the beginning. This has worked for some people.
However, I wonder if we can learn from Midsommar…
Rather than trying to be everywhere with our pre-launch strategy, what if we just focused on one group that may have the most interest in our topic? Maybe become really involved in one Facebook or LinkedIn group that is made up of the exact people we are making our show for. Lurk there for a month. Chat with them for a couple of weeks. One day, mention to them that you are about to start a podcast. And finally, sharing a link to our new show and ask them if they will subscribe. Those people will listen. Then we maybe focus on another online group where we have been lurking. I think that kind of launch would create a predictable growth of downloads that would continue beyond the initial launch of our shows. If we follow this strategy maybe fans of our podcasts will create subReddits complaining that we should be more places online!
_Troy Price is the co-founder of _Front Porch Studios_ in Berea, Kentucky. He’s been involved with podcasting for over a decade. Reach Troy by email at _Troy@frontporchstudios.com.