How long should my showreel be?

Introduction

Every video production professional has a showreel. It's the most important part of your marketing, right? Well, it turns out it's not. You spend days, if not weeks, compiling your best shots, name dropping your best clients, and finally working on a project that you have complete control over. We believe our showreel is what stands us out in a crowded marketplace—but there's a much bigger picture to consider.

Today's Q&A is: "How long should my showreel be?" And while I'll give you the precise answer from research, I'm also going to share why this might be the wrong question to obsess over.

What You'll Learn

• The ideal showreel length based on research with 147 marketing professionals
• Why your showreel only works on 1% of your target audience
• The three stages of the buyer's journey and where showreels fit
• Why thousands of talented video creators are all fighting for scraps
• How to tap into the 99% of prospects your competitors are ignoring

The Research-Backed Answer

I work with production companies to build powerful marketing, sales, and retention strategies. But that's only half of my day-to-day work—the other half is putting in place video content strategies with many of the world's leading brands. I have a database of over 10,000 marketing leaders, and I recently sent out a short questionnaire about the use of showreels.

So, for those of you that want the answer straight away: the perfect length of a showreel is 74 seconds. Quite precise, right? That's the average answer that came from 147 marketing and communication professionals, business owners, and advertising folk. It couples up nicely with industry research—it's not too long (everybody's got 101 things to do), and it's not too short (enough time for your prospect to see that you are indeed capable of delivering high production values).

The Problem: Everyone Has a Showreel

Here's the thing: everyone has a showreel. Have you ever seen a videographer, an editor, or a production company without one? No, it doesn't happen. So why do we have showreels? To show off how creative we are, to show the standard of our edits, to show the level of our productions, to name drop clients that we're proud to have worked with, to excite potential clients.

As video creators, we believe that our showreel is the most important weapon in our marketing arsenal. It's easy to think that a killer showreel will win you work, win you clients, win you projects. But let's think about this subjectively for a moment. How do we use our showreel? When do we use it? Typically we slap it on the homepage of our website, put it on our Vimeo channel, maybe YouTube. Sometimes we may even give it a little boost on social media and promote to people that we think will want to work with us.

Understanding the Buyer's Journey

There's a concept in the marketing world that is vital for us to understand as video production professionals. It's called the buyer's journey. Whenever anyone is looking to buy something, they go through three stages: the awareness stage, the consideration stage, and the decision stage.

In the awareness stage, the buyer becomes aware of an issue that they need to fix or an opportunity that they can take. For a marketing professional, this could be that they're not hitting their targets, there's a new competitor in town, or they've got a new product to launch. Once they become aware of an issue or an opportunity, they move into the consideration stage where they look for ways in which they can fix that issue or take hold of that opportunity—this could be pay-per-click advertising, out of home advertising, radio advertising, influencer marketing, or perhaps video.

And finally, once they've decided upon the way in which they're going to fix their issue or achieve their opportunity, they move into the decision stage, which is where they decide who is going to help them do that. If they've decided that video is going to be the route they're going to take, that's where they start looking for a video production company or video freelancers. And that's where your showreel comes into play.

The 1% Problem

Your showreel is only ever going to be effective when someone has made their way to the decision stage of the buyer's journey. It's only going to work on someone that is looking for the person or team to create their content. But here's the thing: only about 1% of your ideal target audience is going to be in the decision stage at any given time.

And here's the other thing: your competition—other video creators, other videographers, other production companies—are all doing the same thing. So everyone is fighting it out for the 1%. Because of the way in which our industry has developed—thousands of people rolling out of film school each year, the cost of equipment coming down year after year—the barriers to entry into our industry have dropped significantly. Within any city, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of supremely talented production professionals, all with beautiful showreels. Maybe they're even 74 seconds long, doing exactly what you do, fighting it out for the 1%.

Ultimately, that puts the client in a very strong position. They know that there are thousands of incredibly talented video creators out there, so it all comes down to price—and that's not a good place to be in. Massive effort, massive competition, low conversion rate, low profit.

The 99% Opportunity

So that's the 1%. What about the other 99%? Where are they? What are they doing? They're still your target audience, right? They still have marketing, advertising, and business goals. They still need to achieve the same thing as the 1%, but they just aren't in the decision stage yet.

This creates a huge opportunity because these people just need a nudge. They just need to know how powerful video can be for them. It's the video production professionals, the freelancers, the production company owners who understand this key concept that are the ones that are smashing it—because they aren't competing on price. They aren't fighting it out for the scraps. They're attracting a constant flow of perfect prospects into their buyer's journey and there's nobody bothering or able to compete with them.

Take Action

Yes, a showreel is important and it's of course vital in the decision stage. But the lesson here is that you have to get your prospects to the decision stage first for them to be minutely interested in your 74-second showreel.

You can learn the exact 10-step framework that has helped thousands of video production professionals drive a constant stream of opportunities that are perfect for them into their video business in my book, video course, and audio book, The Lead Generation Machine—available for free via the link below. You can also get my two other frameworks, one dedicated to sales and one dedicated to retention, plus a ton of free resources and pre-built templates.

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:01:26:00
Every video production professional has a show reel. It's the most important part of your marketing, right? Well, it turns out it's not, but I'll come on to that. Today's Q&A is, "How long should my show reel be?" So, every production professional has a show reel. You spend days, if not weeks, compiling your best shots, name dropping your best clients, and finally working on a project that you have complete control over. So, I understand today's question. It's a question that we've probably all asked ourselves. Our showreel is the most important part of our marketing. It's what our clients want to see. It's what stands us out in a crowded marketplace. Well, no. I'll come on to this in a minute. But it's natural to wonder how long our showreel should be. We want it to be perfect, right? Is there a perfect amount of time? Is there a golden ticket? What is right, short and sharp? Or let it breathe. Now, as you may know, I work with production companies to build powerful marketing, sales, and retention strategies. But that's only half of my day-to-day work. The other half is putting in place video content strategies with many of the world's leading brands. I'm lucky enough to have worked with thousands of marketing professionals over the years, and I have a database of over 10,000 marketing leaders. My weekly emails to my marketing database are not only used to deepen relationships to feed my consulting business, but it's also to conduct research on all the questions that we as an industry have.

00:01:26:00 - 00:02:51:00
I recently sent out a short questionnaire about the use of show reels. What do our client base want to see? And I'm talking about marketing and communication professionals, business owners, and advertising execs. So, for those of you that want the answer straight away, the perfect length of the show reel is 74 seconds. Quite precise, right? Well, yeah, but that's the figure that came back from that research, and it's the average answer that came from 147 marketing and communication professionals, business owners, and advertising folk. And it couples up nicely with industry research. It's not too long. Everybody's got 101 things to do, and it's not too short. Enough time for your prospect to see that you are indeed capable of delivering high production values. But here's the thing, and I've mentioned it already. Everyone has a showreel. Have you ever seen a videographer, an editor, production company without a showreel? No, it doesn't happen. So why do we have showreels? To show off how creative we are, to show the standard of our edits. To show the level of our productions, to name drop clients that we're proud to have worked with, to excite potential clients. Well, yes. And that is the purpose of a showreel. As I've said, as video creators, we believe that our showreel is the most important weapon in our marketing arsenal. It's easy to think that a killer showreel will win you work, win you clients, win you projects.

00:02:51:00 - 00:04:06:00
But let's think about this subjectively for a moment. How do we use our showreel? When do we use it? Well, typically we slap it on the homepage of our website. We put it on our Vimeo channel, maybe YouTube. Sometimes we may even give it a little boost on social media and promote to people that we think will want to work with us or look like our perfect clients. Now, I talk about this a lot in my training, but there's a concept in the marketing world that is vital for us to understand as video production professionals. It's called the buyer's journey. And I have a video that's dedicated to this very subject, which you can watch after this. But the buyer's journey is very simple. Whenever anyone is looking to buy something, they go through the three stages of the buyer's journey. The awareness stage, the consideration stage, and the decision stage. In the awareness stage, the buyer becomes aware of an issue that they need to fix or an opportunity that they can take. For a marketing professional, this could be that they're not hitting their targets or there's a new competitor in town or they've got a new product to launch. Once they become aware of an issue or an opportunity, they move into the consideration stage where they look for ways in which they can fix that issue or take hold of that opportunity. Again, for a marketing professional, this could be pay-per-click advertising, out of home advertising, radio advertising, influencer marketing, or perhaps video.

00:04:06:00 - 00:05:04:00
And finally, once they've decided upon the way in which they're going to fix their issue or achieve their opportunity, they move into the decision stage, which is where they decide who is going to help them do that. If they've decided that video is going to be the route that they're going to take, that's where they start looking for a video production company or video freelancers. And that's where your showreel comes into play. So, yes, your showreel is important. And I suppose it's good to know how long it should be. But why have I hijacked this video to talk about the buyer's journey? Well, it's because it's important. Your showreel, the piece of video that you spend so much time on, is only ever going to be effective when someone has made their way to the decision stage of the buyers journey. It's only going to work on someone that is looking for the person or team to create their content. But here's the thing, only about 1% of your ideal target audience is going to be in the decision stage at any given time.

00:05:04:00 - 00:06:16:00
Okay, that's just business, right? Well, no. Because here's the other thing. Your competition, other video creators, other videographers, other production companies are all doing the same thing. So, everyone is fighting it out for the 1%. And because of the way in which our industry has developed, thousands of people rolling out of film school each year, the cost of equipment coming down year after year, the barriers to entry into our industry have dropped significantly in recent times. So within any city, there are hundreds, if not thousands of supremely talented production professionals, all with beautiful show reels. Maybe they're even 74 seconds long, doing exactly what you do, fighting it out for the 1%. Ultimately, that puts the client in a very strong position. They know that there are thousands of incredibly talented video creators out there, so it all comes down to price, and that's not a good place to be in. Massive effort, massive competition, low conversion rate, low profit. So that's the 1%. What about the other 99%? Where are they? What are they doing? They're still your target audience, right? They still have marketing, advertising, and business goals. They still need to achieve the same thing as the 1%, but they just aren't in the decision stage.

00:06:16:00 - 00:07:46:00
And this creates a huge opportunity because these people just need a nudge. They just need to know how powerful video can be for them. It's the video production professionals, the freelancers, the production company owners who understand this key concept that are the ones that are smashing it because they aren't competing on price. They aren't fighting it out for the scraps. They're attracting a constant flow of perfect prospects into their buyers journey and there's nobody bothering or able to compete with them. So yes, a showreel is important and it's of course vital in the decision stage. But the lesson here, I guess, is that you have to get your prospects to the decision stage first for them to be minutely interested in your 74 second show reel. So, how do we do that? Well, you can learn the exact 10-step framework that has helped thousands of video production professionals drive a constant stream of opportunities that are perfect for them into their video business in my book, my video course and audio book, The Lead Generation Machine, for free via the link below this video. You can also get my two other frameworks, one dedicated to sales, one dedicated to retention for free again, via the link below, too. Plus, you'll get a ton of free resources, pre-built templates, and so much more, all for free. So, I hope that's been helpful, but if you have any questions about this or any other topic, feel free to pop them in the comments below. Have a fantastic day.