Initial Research (Methods Of Promotion): What is film promotion?

Why do distributors feel promotion is necessary in their film?

Distributors spend a big sum of money on the promotion of their film, as this is the main part of securing a target audience for their film and to gain revenue. As using promotion gains audience awareness of the film, either through trailers, franchising, merchandising and more.

Marketing an upcoming film will create a 'hype' within a target audience on the run up to the theatrical release of a film. 

By doing this they will increase the overall amount of revenue that the particular product will make during the exhibition stage which will in turn create the biggest profit that they can use to reinvest into future projects. Furthermore, this causes the distribution company to grow in terms of finance and popularity which is the ultimate goal for the company. Promotion and marketing are such key components of Hollywood films that their expenditures can equal or even exceed the cost of production. On the other hand, much smaller, independent distributors may spend very little on the marketing of their film due to having much smaller budgets to cover the costs. 
With revenue, film promotion is an important part of any film release because of the inherent high financial risk; film studios will invest in expensive marketing campaigns to maximise revenue early in the release cycle; the marketing budgets tend to equal half the production budget. On the other hand, smaller film companies may have smaller marketing and promotion on their films as they have little budgets to cover, so are in less need of more money within marketing compared to bigger films eg. Star Wars.