How to create more opportunities within my video production business

Introduction

It's tough running a video production business. Competition seems to be growing, budgets are being slashed left, right, and center – yet all we hear is how video is such a powerful marketing and communications tool. Every brand, every business, everyone should be using video.

So why is it so hard to generate opportunities within your own video business? And why is it so hard to generate opportunities that you actually care about, that pay you properly, that respect and appreciate your skills?

In this how-to, we work through the steps you need to take in order to ensure that you have a constant flow of opportunities coming into your video business – using a proven marketing system that has helped over 3,000 video production professionals around the world.

What You'll Learn

This framework is broken down into four key steps:

• Understand the key marketing concepts – The Buyer's Journey and Blue Ocean Strategy are two concepts that, when used together, allow you to see your marketing in a completely new light.
• Understand your audience intensely – Go beyond basic demographics to uncover what your perfect prospects truly want to achieve, what their aspirations are, and what they struggle with.
• Open up your clear blue ocean – Create awareness stage content that hooks prospects into your buyer's journey before your competition even gets a look in.
• Progress prospects through the buyer's journey – Move engaged prospects through consideration and decision stages using automated systems that work in the background of your business.

Why This Matters for Video Production Companies

Video production professionals typically only ever market with their showreel and some case studies or portfolio pieces. This content only speaks to people in the decision stage – those who have already identified an issue, already decided video will help them, and are now looking for someone to create content for them.

Here's the problem: less than 1% of your target audience is in the decision stage at any given moment in time. This creates a race to the bottom where it comes down to price – massive effort, massive competition, low conversion rates, low profit.

But what about the other 99%? They're in a giant blue ocean full of your perfect prospects, but none of your competitors are fishing there. With the right marketing strategy, you can attract, convert, and work with them, moving them through your own buyer's journey.

The Power of Awareness Stage Content

When production professionals think about promoting themselves on social media, they typically grab their showreel or case studies, select people they think might be interested, boost the post, and wait for opportunities to roll in. But nothing happens because they're serving decision stage content to people who aren't even aware of a challenge they're facing.

The secret is this: awareness stage content has one single purpose – to find people that have a challenge or opportunity that you, through the creation of video content, can fix or achieve. It's short and sharp.

If they engage with that content – visiting a page, watching a video to over 75% completion, liking, commenting, or sharing – we know something has resonated with them. Now we can serve them consideration stage content, and when they engage with that, we serve them decision stage content (our showreel, case studies, about us content).

The beautiful thing is that it's all automated. It works in the background of your video business whilst you focus on delivering beautiful video content to your clients.

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:46:00
It's tough running a video production business. Competition seems to be growing. Budgets seem to be slashed left, right, and center. But all you hear of is how video is such a powerful marketing and communications tool. Every brand, every business, everyone should be using video. We read all the reports. We see video becoming more and more powerful online. We see all the social media channels making video content a central part of their platform. So, why is it so hard to generate opportunities within your own video business? And why is it so hard to generate opportunities that you actually care about, that pay you properly, that respect and appreciate your skills? Well, today we're going to learn how to do just that. How to create more opportunities within my video production business.

00:00:50:00 - 00:01:36:00
So, welcome to this how-to. Today we're going to work through the steps that you need to take in order to ensure that you have a constant flow of opportunities coming into your video business. And before we begin, the lessons from today's video are taken from my book, The Lead Generation Machine, which has helped over 3,000 video production professionals around the world to build a simple marketing system that returns a constant stream of opportunities that are perfect for them into their video business. You can get that book, which comes with the full step by steps for free, along with the video version and audiobook version, via the link below this video. You'll also get access to my two other books, courses, and audiobooks. Conversion 90, which teaches you how to sell and retain, which teaches you how to build recurring revenue into your video business.

00:01:36:00 - 00:02:12:00
Okay, cool. Let's get started. Now, a bit of context. I first got into the video world back in 2010. I started from scratch in my grandma's spare bedroom as a freelance videographer and quickly transitioned into a fully-fledged video production company. At its peak, I had 33 full-time members of staff working on projects with brands such as Adidas, Nike, and Yves Saint Laurent. We had offices all over the UK. We had hundreds of freelancers working on projects around the world at any given time. And I grew that company to being valued at over $20 million. Then in 2018, I lost it. We filed for bankruptcy.

00:02:12:00 - 00:03:02:00
I talk a lot more about that journey within my book. When I lost that business, I took a year off partly to deal with the stress and embarrassment of losing my business, but also to regroup, to learn from my mistakes, and to lay the foundations for building back stronger. I'm happy to say that I did indeed achieve that goal. And from that review, I was able to build a simple marketing system that allowed me to never look back. Today I consult with many of the world's leading brands on their video marketing strategies. Brands such as Shell, Deloitte, and the International Olympic Committee in an ongoing capacity. But because of the journey that I've been on, the lessons that I've learned and the frameworks that I built, I'm also in a position where I teach marketing, sales, and retention strategies to video production professionals around the world. And it's that marketing system that we're going to learn today.

00:03:02:00 - 00:03:50:00
This isn't finger-in-the-air stuff. This isn't regurgitated marketing strategies shoehorned into the production world. This is the learnings of 16 years within the game, seeing what works, what doesn't work, testing, retesting, fine-tuning, and it's a system that has shown itself to be the most powerful for video production companies. And it's a system that's been built specifically for our industry. So, let's first run through the steps that we're going to take and then we'll work through each of those steps in a little more detail. The first step is to understand the key marketing concepts. Then we need to understand our audience intensely. Then we'll look at how we open up our clear blue ocean. And then finally, we'll look at how we progress our prospects through the buyers journey. Now, none of that will make any sense until we talk through those steps. So, let's do that.

00:03:50:00 - 00:04:45:00
Now, let's start at the well, the start. Step number one, understand the key marketing concepts. Now, there are two key concepts that you absolutely must understand in order to be in a position to drive a constant flow of opportunities into your video business. These are the buyers journey and blue ocean strategy. I actually have two deep dive videos on those two concepts for those that want to learn more about them, which I've linked to below this video. But when we understand these two concepts and we use them together, we see our marketing in a completely new light. Video production professionals will typically only ever market with their showreel and some case studies or some portfolio pieces. And that's natural because that's what we think our prospects will want to see. But it's a bit backwards. Let me explain.

00:04:45:00 - 00:05:59:00
The buyer's journey is broken down into three stages. The awareness stage, the consideration stage, and the decision stage. In the awareness stage, our prospect becomes aware of an issue that they're facing or an opportunity that's presenting itself. If our target client is a marketing director or a business owner, it could be that sales are dropping or they're not hitting their target or there's a new competitor in town. Now, once our prospect becomes aware of an issue that needs to be fixed or an opportunity that they can take, they move into the consideration stage, which is where they start to look for ways in which they can fix that issue or achieve that opportunity. So again, for that marketing director or that business owner, this could be looking at SEO, pay-per-click advertising, influencer marketing, out of home advertising, or potentially video marketing or video content creation. And finally, once your prospect is set on the vehicle that's going to help them to fix their issue or achieve their opportunity, they move into the decision stage, which is where they look for the person or team that's going to help them do just that. This is where they become provider aware.

00:05:59:00 - 00:07:02:00
Now, this is important because if you're like every other video production company in the world, your marketing collateral probably only consists of your showreel, some case studies, your portfolio pieces, maybe an about us video or part of your website. But what's the issue with that? Everyone does it, right? Well, yeah, but think about that content. Who is it talking to? People in the awareness stage, consideration stage, or decision stage? It's the decision stage, isn't it? The people that have already identified an issue or an opportunity, the people that have already decided that video is going to help them fix or achieve it, and the people that are now looking for the person or the team that's going to create that content for them. Now, here's the issue with that. Less than 1% of all of your target audience, so in this example, that's marketing directors or business owners, are in the decision stage, ready to hit the button at any given moment in time. And that ultimately creates a race to the bottom. And it comes down to price. Not a good place to be in. Massive effort, massive competition, low conversion rates, low profit.

00:07:02:00 - 00:07:43:00
But that's just the 1% of your target audience. What about the other 99%? Where are they? Well, they're in a giant blue ocean that is full of your perfect prospects, but none of your competitors are fishing there. It's a gigantic opportunity. And with the right marketing strategy, you can be fishing there to your heart's content, attracting, converting, working with them, and moving them through your own buyer's journey. Does that make sense? Like I said, I've got two deep dives that I've linked to below that go into this in a lot more detail, but that's a top level view of it. And it's the video production companies that understand these two key concepts that are the ones that are flourishing. Not worrying about where the next project is coming from, charging what they are worth, working with clients and in industries that they love.

00:07:43:00 - 00:08:55:00
So that all makes sense. But the question that you're probably asking now is how do I open up that big blue ocean? Well, that's the next step of the framework. Understand your audience. Now, to really take advantage of this newfound knowledge, you need to be clear on who your perfect prospects are. Because when you are, you can easily make them aware of an issue or opportunity and take thousands of your perfect prospects through the buyer's journey without worrying about the competition. So, we need to truly understand who these people are, where they're spending their time, what challenges they face, what opportunities they face, what their true intrinsic motivations are. Because when we do, this whole thing becomes so very easy. To help you with this, below this video, there is a link for you to download my three books, audiobooks, and video courses. And within those courses, there are a ton of resources, pre-built templates, tools, and so much more. Now, this isn't your usual audience persona. We're not just covering off bland things like gender, location, age, income bracket, and so on. I mean, we do cover those things, but we go deeper here. We look at what their key intrinsic motivations are, what they really want to achieve, what their aspirations are, what they struggle with, because when we know that, we're able to hook them into our buyer's journey and transition them into an opportunity.

00:08:55:00 - 00:09:55:00
So, when you finish watching this video, go grab all that stuff. And like I said, it's all completely free. Once you've got all that stuff and develop your own audience persona, you'll be crystal clear as to who you're targeting and how you're going to hook them in. Okay? So, we understand the key concepts. We're clear on our audience. What's the next step? Well, now we need to open up our clear blue ocean. As I mentioned earlier, the buyer's journey is broken down into three stages. The awareness stage, the consideration stage, and the decision stage. To truly create a constant flow of opportunities that are perfect for us, we need to hook as many people in as possible that have the same challenges, opportunities, and aspirations as our perfect prospects. So in the awareness stage, we simply create a few bits of content. This could be video, social media posts, blog posts that tap into these. Now this part is key. We then put that content in front of our audience. And we do this in the most cost-effective way possible.

00:09:55:00 - 00:10:55:00
When production professionals think about promoting themselves on social media or via ads, here's what they do. They grab their showreel or some case studies or some of the most recent projects and they then select all the people that they think might be interested in working with them. They promote their content or they boost a few posts. But because they have no clue as to whether or not that person is interested, they waste their budget serving their decision stage content, their showreel, case studies, portfolio pieces to people that are most likely not even aware of a challenge that they're facing or an opportunity that's presenting itself. So 99% of the people that you are paying to serve that content to have zero interest in a showreel or a case study or a recent project. They're not even aware of a challenge that they need to fix or an opportunity that they can take. So they're not aware that video will help them to fix an issue they don't even know that they have. And they certainly aren't looking for someone to create the content for a challenge that they're not aware of.

00:10:55:00 - 00:12:00:00
So what happens? The videographer or filmmaker or production company owner turns off the ads and comes to the conclusion that advertising on social media just doesn't work for them. They waste their budget and move on to the next form of marketing to drum up interest, cold calling, referral gathering, attending networking events. But here's the thing, more often than not, that videographer, filmmaker, or production company owner will be paying for clicks or traffic or maybe even conversions. And that is super expensive, especially to a cold audience. A click can cost upward of $5. A conversion can cost upwards of $50. So here's the secret. Our awareness stage content has one purpose, one single purpose, and that's to find people that have a challenge or opportunity that we through the creation of video content can fix or achieve. That's the sole purpose of our awareness stage content. It's short and it's sharp.

00:12:00:00 - 00:12:43:00
Now, this part is key. If they engage with that content. So that could be visiting a page on our website, watching a video to over 75% completion, liking, commenting, or sharing a social media post. If they show any one of those engagement actions, we know that something in that video, that post, that blog has well engaged them. So now we can serve them our consideration stage content. And when they engage with that content, we can serve them our decision stage content, which is our showreel, our case studies, our about us content because we know that when they reach this stage, we are only paying for clicks and conversions for people that we know are engaged and will convert to an opportunity. And the beautiful thing about this all is that it's all automated. It works in the background of your video business whilst you focus on delivering beautiful video content to your clients.

00:12:43:00 - 00:13:27:00
And that in a nutshell is how you create a constant stream of opportunities that are perfect for you into your video business. Now, you may have some questions at this point. What content should I create? How do I set this up? Where should I be promoting my content? How do I do this? Well, if what I have talked about in this video has resonated with you, if it's made sense and you want to build a system into your video business, if you want to create a constant stream of opportunities, opportunities from industries and with clients that you love, well, you can get every single step outlined in detail within my book, The Lead Generation Machine. And you can get it for free along with the video versions of the book and the audio book and all the resources, all completely free. And the link is waiting for you below this video.

00:13:27:00 - 00:13:48:00
So, that's how you create a constant stream of opportunities that are perfect for you into your video business. And it's so simple once you know how, which ultimately is what my marketing framework, the lead generation machine, does for you. I hope that's been helpful. If you have any questions, please feel free to drop them in the comments below. Thanks for being here and have a fantastic day.