How do I attract video projects that I actually care about?

Introduction

Have you ever taken on a video project or worked with a client that you know isn't right for you, doesn't fire you up, but you've had to take it just to keep cash flowing? Do you dream of the day that you get to work on projects that mean something to you, projects that you are proud of, projects that pay well? Have you ever wondered how to attract video projects that you actually care about?

We've all been there. We notice a slowdown in our pipeline or we're scratching around for a project, and an opportunity for a project that we know we don't care about comes in—and we're forced to take it to keep cash flowing. Everyone's done it. It happens all the time. But deep down, you know that's not the reason you got into the game in the first place. These aren't the projects that you're proud of, that you post about on Instagram, but they bring cash in and sometimes that's needed.

What You'll Learn

• Why understanding your perfect client's personal challenges is the key to attracting better projects
• How to create an audience persona that goes deeper than demographics
• Why promoting your showreel to cold audiences wastes money
• How to use engagement signals to identify prospects ready for your services
• The correct order of content in your buyer's journey

Understanding What Your Clients Really Want

Let's go back to basics. We create video content. Video content is a tool for our clients to generate results, either to fix an issue or to achieve an opportunity. If our clients are marketing directors, it may be that they have a new product to launch or they're not hitting their targets. If they're a business owner, it may be that they're noticing a slowdown in sales, or their shareholders aren't happy, or there's a new competitor in town.

But ultimately, the person that is going to pay you to create video content for them will see the video you are creating as a means to driving results. That's important because it's the video productions that get too precious about the creative that are the ones that find themselves scratching around for projects. Don't get me wrong, the creative is important. High production values are important because they're part of the equation that will help your client to drive real tangible results.

Creating a Deeper Audience Persona

The first thing we need to do is identify who our perfect client is. We can run many exercises to unearth this, and in my book The Lead Generation Machine, we run through those exercises step by step. One of those tasks is creating what is called an audience persona.

But we're not just talking about the regular audience persona items such as age, location, income bracket, profession. We need to go deeper than this. What are the challenges that our perfect prospect faces? What do they struggle with? What opportunities do they have? How can we, through our video creation services, help them on a personal level?

And that part is key—on a personal level. This sounds stupid, but video companies and freelancers often overlook this: you are always selling to a person, a person who has their own fortunes at the forefront of their mind. If you can show them how you and your production capabilities are going to help them achieve results, you will be able to hook them into your buyer's journey and transition them to a project.

Attracting the Right People Into Your Funnel

Once we have spent time mapping out who our perfect client is, we need to ensure that we are attracting a constant stream of these people into our marketing funnel or our buyer's journey. We do that by creating content that is specifically created to poke the pain points of our perfect prospects.

Now this part is key. If they show any engagement on that content—so it could be a like, a view, scrolling to a certain depth of that page on our website, watching a certain video to 75%—we can safely say that this person is well engaged and our services will be able to help them. We can then utilise our showreel or case studies or other marketing material to encourage them to pick up the phone or to provide us with a brief.

Where Most Video Professionals Go Wrong

This is where so many video production professionals get it wrong. They think that their showreel will attract those people. So they promote their showreel or their case studies or their portfolio items to people on social media, but then nothing happens and they waste a whole load of hard-earned cash.

Why? Because the people that they are serving that content to are not ready to buy, or do not have the issues, challenges, and opportunities that their perfect clients have. The showreel and case studies are decision-stage content—they work on people who are already engaged and considering hiring you, not on cold audiences who haven't identified their problem yet.

Take Action

So that's how we attract customers, projects, or clients that we actually care about. We shape our marketing to talk directly to their pain points and we move them through the buyer's journey.

You can get clarity on your ideal audience with my free resources, including worksheets and a powerful audience persona generator. Click the link below where I make it all available for you for free, along with everything else that you need to make your video business fly. No paywalls, no sneaky marketing tactics—just three books (one on marketing, one on sales, and one on retention), over 24 hours of pre-recorded video content, and a ton of resources, templates, and worksheets.

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:58:00
Have you ever taken on a video project or worked with a client that you know isn't right for you, doesn't fire you up, but you've had to take it just to keep cash flowing? Do you dream of the day that you get to work on projects that mean something to you, projects that you are proud of, projects that pay well? Have you ever wondered how to attract video projects that you actually care about? We've all been there. We notice a slowdown in our pipeline or we're scratching around for a project and an opportunity for a project that we know we don't care about comes in and we're forced to take it to keep cash flowing. Everyone's done it. It happens all the time. But deep down, you know that's not the reason that you got into the game in the first place. These aren't the projects that you're proud of that you post about on Instagram, but they bring cash in and sometimes that's needed. I've certainly been guilty of this plenty of times in the past and I see it all the time with the production companies and freelancers that I consult with.

00:00:58:00 - 00:02:02:00
So the question is this, how do we stop that? How do we attract clients that are perfect for us? Projects in industries that we're fired up by, proud of. Well, it all comes down to your marketing. Now, if you've engaged with any of my content, you would have heard me talk about the buyers journey. If you haven't, I've linked to that video below so you can watch the deep dive and understand the importance of it. But in essence, we need to first truly understand who our perfect client or project is and then we can shape our marketing around attracting those people into our buyers journey. Let's go back to basics. We create video content. Video content is a tool for our clients to generate results, either to fix an issue or to achieve an opportunity. If our clients are marketing directors, it may be that they have a new product to launch or they're not hitting their targets. If they're a business owner, it may be that they're noticing a slowdown in sales or their shareholders aren't happy or there's a new competitor in town. But ultimately, the person that is going to pay you to create video content for them will see the video that you are creating as a means to driving results.

00:02:02:00 - 00:03:19:00
That's important because it's the video productions that get too precious about the creative that are the ones that find themselves scratching around for projects. Don't get me wrong, the creative is important. High production values are important because they're part of the equation that will help your client to drive real tangible results. So, the first thing that we need to do is to identify who our perfect client is. We can run many exercises to unearth this. And in my book, The Lead Generation Machine, we run through those exercises step by step. One of those tasks is creating what is called an audience persona. But we're not just talking about the regular audience persona items such as age, location, income bracket, profession. We need to go deeper than this. What are the challenges that our perfect prospect faces? What do they struggle with? What opportunities do they have? How can we through our video creation services help them on a personal level? And that part is key. On a personal level. This sounds stupid, but video companies and freelancers often overlook this, but you are always selling to a person, a person who has their own fortunes at the forefront of their mind. If you can show them how you and your production capabilities are going to help them achieve results, you will be able to hook them into your buyers journey and transition them to a project.

00:03:19:00 - 00:04:15:00
So, the first step is to identify who these people are. And underneath this video, I've linked to a free resource, a worksheet that will take you through how to unearth this information step by step. Then once we have spent time mapping that out, we need to ensure that we are attracting a constant stream of these people into our marketing funnel or our buyers journey. We do that by creating content that is specifically created to poke the pain points of our perfect prospects. Nice bit of alliteration there. Hey, now this part is key. If they show any engagement on that content, so it could be a like, a view, scrolling to a certain depth of that page on our website, watching a certain video to 75%, we can safely say that this person is well engaged and our services video production will be able to help them. We can then utilize our show reel or case studies or other marketing material to encourage them to pick up the phone or to provide us with a brief.

00:04:15:00 - 00:05:02:00
But this is where so many video production professionals get it wrong. They think that their show reel will attract those people. So they promote their showreel or their case studies or their portfolio items to people on social media, but then nothing happens and they waste a whole load of hard-earned cash because the people that they are serving that content to are not ready to buy or do not have the issues, challenges, opportunities that their perfect clients have. So that's how we attract customers or projects or clients that we actually care about. We shape our marketing to talk directly to their pain points and we move them through the buyers journey. Now you can get that clarity on your ideal audience with my free resources, including worksheets and a powerful audience persona generator.

00:05:02:00 - 00:05:25:00
Click the link below where I make it all available for you for free along with everything else that you need to make your video business fly. No paywalls, no sneaky marketing tactics, just three books, one on marketing, one on sales, and one on retention. Over 24 hours of pre-recorded video content, a ton of resources, templates, and worksheets. I will ask you for your email address to get access to that content, but I will only ever send you one email relating to my paid stuff. Have a fantastic day.