The most important marketing concept for video production professionals to understand

Introduction

There are two key concepts that are absolutely vital for video production companies to understand when it comes to their own marketing – one of which is The Buyer's Journey.

Without understanding this key marketing concept, people that run video businesses constantly try all different forms of marketing, but nothing ever sticks. Whether you've spent weeks on your showreel, are considering cold email, or are developing your own content – by understanding The Buyer's Journey and relating it to your video business, you'll start to look at your marketing in a completely new light.

In this Deep Dive, we explore what The Buyer's Journey is, why it's so vital for video production companies to understand it, and most importantly, how to apply this knowledge to transform your video business.

What You'll Learn

The Buyer's Journey, popularised by HubSpot founders Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan, is broken down into three critical stages:

• The Awareness Stage – Your prospect becomes aware of an issue they're facing or an opportunity presenting itself. They become problem aware.
• The Consideration Stage – Your prospect starts to research ways to fix their issue or achieve their opportunity. They become solution aware.
• The Decision Stage – Your prospect is actively looking for the product, service, or provider that will help them. They become provider aware.

Why This Matters for Video Production Companies

The majority of production professionals only ever market with their showreel, client projects, or case studies. This means they're only able to attract and convert prospects that have already made their way to the decision stage – representing less than 1% of their potential market.

By understanding The Buyer's Journey, you can tap into the 99% of perfect prospects that your competition is completely ignoring. You create a giant blue ocean of potential buyers well before they're solution aware, allowing you to convert them into clients before any competition even gets a look in.

The Power of Awareness Stage Content

When you serve awareness stage content, you're not trying to generate leads or convert customers immediately. You're simply using this content to find out who you can help. The key insight is that engagement or video views cost significantly less than clicks or conversions – typically less than half a cent per engaged view, compared to upwards of $10 for conversions.

By targeting engagement first, then remarketing consideration and decision stage content only to those who've shown interest, you make social media marketing work for you as a video professional.

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:40:00
There are two key concepts that are absolutely vital for video production companies to understand when it comes to their own marketing. One of which is the buyer's journey. Without understanding this key marketing concept, people that run video businesses constantly try all different forms of marketing, but nothing ever sticks. So, if you've spent weeks on your show reel or if you're considering cold email or developing your own content by understanding the buyer's journey and relating it to your video business, you'll start to look at your marketing in a completely new light. And that, funnily enough, is what we're going to cover in today's deep dive.

00:00:40:00 - 00:01:14:00
What is the buyer journey and why is it so vital for video production companies to understand it? So, welcome to today's deep dive where we look at key marketing, sales, and retention concepts, tactics, and strategies in detail. The goal for these sessions is to give you a deep understanding within a particular subject and provide you with everything that you need to benefit from that knowledge with actionable takeaways. And today we're looking at the buyer's journey, a key concept to understand for video production professionals and most importantly, how to take advantage of your newfound knowledge.

00:01:14:00 - 00:01:54:00
So let's start by understanding what the concept is first and then we'll move on to how we apply this to our video business. Now in the marketing world, there's a concept called the buyer's journey. You may or may not have heard of it, but one thing is for sure, you would have experienced it, perhaps without knowing. The buyer's journey sets out the path that any buyer takes, no matter what they are buying. It could be a car. It could be a set of golf clubs. It could be hiring a video production company or a videographer or a filmmaker. But it plays a major role in the way in which you're going to attract your perfect prospects that have never heard of you before right through to becoming a client.

00:01:54:00 - 00:02:32:00
So this is a key concept to grasp. The buyer's journey has been around for many years, but it was the founders of HubSpot, Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan, who coined the phrase and made it a cornerstone of the marketing world in their book, Inbound Marketing. That's a highly recommended read, by the way. I don't want to get too caught up here with the background, but this marketing strategy completely reinvented the way in which marketers market, and it's one that is so often overlooked by production companies. It allows you to open up a whole new market of potential buyers well before the buyer or the prospect is solution aware.

00:02:32:00 - 00:03:10:00
We'll come on to that. But by understanding this concept, you create a giant blue ocean of all the people that are suited to your services and you give yourself the ability to convert them into a buyer, a client, a customer before any of your competition even gets a look in. By not understanding this concept, you just like pretty much every other video production company in the world are only ever going to be able to sell to prospects that have already transitioned through the buyer's journey and are looking for someone or some team to create their video content. And that's a problem because that's where it is incredibly competitive and the buyer is in a strong position because well because there is no lack of talented video creators today.

00:03:10:00 - 00:03:58:00
The barriers to entry have dropped significantly in recent years. The cost of high-quality equipment continues to fall. Thousands of people are rolling out of film school each and every year. So within any given city in the world, there are literally thousands of talented videographers, filmmakers, production companies doing exactly what you do. And the buyer knows this. So ultimately it comes down to price and that's not a good place to be. Massive effort, small prospect base, massive competition, low conversion rate, low profit. And incidentally, those prospects that are aware that they need video content created and are actively looking for a provider represent a fraction of all of the other potential prospects that are just like them at any given moment in time. We're talking less than 1%.

00:03:58:00 - 00:04:43:00
So, you can see why it can sometimes feel like you're banging your head against the wall when it comes to marketing your video business and converting your opportunities to sales. But what if you were able to turn the 99% of your perfect prospects that aren't yet ready to buy into genuine red-hot leads and opportunities? And what if it was just you speaking to that 99% whilst your competition fights it out for the scraps with the 1%? That would be quite powerful, right? That would give your video business a new lease of life. That would allow you to pick and choose the projects that you worked on, the clients that you worked with, the industries that you worked in. That would take away the uncertainty, the competitive pitch process, the unknown.

00:04:43:00 - 00:05:17:00
And that's why the buyer's journey is such a critical concept to fully understand. Now, I've been doing this for some time, and I can tell you that this is often the most overlooked concept when it comes to marketing a video production company. So, whenever I work with production companies, I implement this strategy straight away. And you'll see how we do that as we progress through this video. But the first thing that I do when I take on board a new consulting client is to make sure that they are absolutely crystal clear with this philosophy. Because when they are, the results are abundant and genuinely life-changing.

00:05:17:00 - 00:05:59:00
Now, the concept of the buyer's journey is simple, and it's broken down into three stages. The awareness stage, the consideration stage, and the decision stage. In the awareness stage, your prospect becomes aware of an issue that they are facing or an opportunity that is presenting itself. They become problem aware. In the consideration stage, your prospect starts to research ways in which they can fix their issue or achieve their opportunity. They become solution aware. And in the decision stage, your prospect is actively looking for the product, service or provider that will help them to fix their issue or achieve their opportunity. They become provider aware.

00:05:59:00 - 00:06:47:00
Understanding this is important because at each stage of the buyers journey, your prospect is looking for different things. They have different questions that need answering, which means that we need to talk to them in a different way and provide them with the answers or information that they require at that stage. The majority of production professionals will only ever market with their showreel or their client projects or their case studies. So, if you're doing that, you're only ever going to be able to attract and convert prospects that have already made their way to the decision stage. Think about this. Whenever you receive an inquiry, a request to quote, a request to pitch, the buyer is in the decision stage. They're looking for someone or some team to help them achieve their goal or fix their problem.

00:06:47:00 - 00:07:32:00
But they've already decided that video is going to be the route for them. They've already taken the journey. But were you the one that made them aware of that issue or that opportunity? And how many other marketing professionals just like them have the same goals, need to achieve the same thing, have the same challenges. That's where the real power of this concept comes into play. If we can attract and convert prospects that are just like those that are in the decision stage, we are able to completely eradicate the competition and open up a whole new market of potential customers. So how do we apply this to our video business or our freelancing operation? Well, we shape the journey that our prospect goes through by understanding what resonates with them whilst they are in each stage of the buyers journey.

00:07:32:00 - 00:08:08:00
Then we shape the journey that they go through and the content that they engage with from that. Because our competition and pretty much every single video production company or videographer or filmmaker is marketing with only their showreel, case studies, portfolio pieces, their cred, they are leaving a huge untapped ocean of potential clients ready and waiting for you. So if you can hook your potential clients in at the awareness stage, well before they've decided that they need a video and certainly well before they are looking for the person or team that's going to create it for them, well, you've just dramatically changed the future of your video business for the good.

00:08:08:00 - 00:09:13:00
So, let's go into the three stages in a little more detail and then we'll look at how we use this to start driving an untapped flow of opportunities into your video business. The awareness stage. In the awareness stage, we make our prospect aware of an opportunity or an issue relating to what we know are their key motivations. That may be moving away from pain or moving towards pleasure. In this stage, we're going to be creating content that taps into their core intrinsic motivators, their pain points, and we show them that we have the answer. All we are looking to do at this stage is to build a huge group of people that engage with this content so that we can confidently say that our service can help those people. You may be asking at this stage, how do I know what those core intrinsic motivators or challenges that my perfect prospects face are? Do not worry. I'll come on to this and I'll make sure that we're crystal clear on what they are.

00:09:13:00 - 00:10:08:00
So, our content and messaging cuts through. But what we're basically doing here is creating content or delivering marketing messages that speak to the pain points that our ideal customer faces. If they're a marketing director, it may be that they're not driving enough sales-qualified leads. Or if they're in fundraising, it may be that they're not driving enough donations. Or if they're in internal comms, it may be that they're not cutting through to their internal team and getting the right message delivered. Recruitment, not attracting enough qualified applications. The list goes on. But there's always a reason that your video services will genuinely help your ideal prospect. In the awareness stage, it's all about bringing that to their attention. And because our awareness stage content is speaking directly to their pain points, we know that if they engage with these videos, so watching that video to over 75% or commenting, liking, sharing, or clicking on one of those pieces of content, well, it's pretty safe to say that this person is an ideal prospect and you can transition them to the consideration stage.

00:10:08:00 - 00:10:58:00
How and why we do this, I'll explain shortly. So the consideration stage, once our prospect has put their pain, challenge, question, worry, or aspiration into a box and we've shown them an answer to that motivator, we then educate them through our content or messaging and we show them how our service can help them fix that problem or achieve that opportunity. We overcome their common objections and we show them why and how video will help them to overcome those challenges. How do we do that? Again, I'll come on to that shortly. But one of the most important pieces of work that we need to do is to put in place systems that identify where the prospect is within the buyer's journey. So we know that we're serving them the right content at the right time. And we can do that all automatically to run in the background of our business. So once it's set up, you can let it run.

00:10:58:00 - 00:11:52:00
So then finally, the decision stage. Once our prospect knows that our service, video production, has the ability to help them, it's time to show them how we have helped other people that are just like them achieve the very same goals or fix the very same challenges that they face. This is where we speak directly to their problems, giving them the answers and showing them that we are here to help them. So, as you may know, I've written three books and have turned them into three complete video courses with over 24 hours of free pre-recorded content. There's a section in those books or courses called Your Perfect Prospect, and we go through an exercise to extract this information and understand exactly what content we should be creating at each stage of the buyer's journey. The link to all that free content is below this video.

00:11:52:00 - 00:12:56:00
But what I want to do here is to now talk about how we utilize what we uncover through that process and how we apply what we've learned so far to our business because this is where the magic happens. When we have our content ready for each stage of the buyers journey, we then serve this content to those that are in the awareness stage. So that's the people that aren't yet even aware that they have an issue to fix or an opportunity to take. These people are also incidentally the 99% of your prospect base that your competition are completely ignoring. So let's take a look at our awareness stage content, messaging, social media posts and so on. Now this is important. Our awareness stage content is designed specifically to hook and uncover people or brands, prospects that would be perfect for us and our services into our buyers journey. This content is short and sharp, but the only thing that we are looking to do here with this content is to drive engagement.

00:12:56:00 - 00:13:58:00
No big call to action, no contact us now, no request to quote. Feels unnatural for sure, but hear me out. If somebody watches one of those videos to over 75% or they click on a link or they comment on a post, share it, or even like it, well, it's safe to say that something in that video or post or blog resonated with them. Remember, our awareness stage content is only speaking to a pain point that your ideal customer has. So, if they show any one of those engagement actions, well, it's safe to say that they are well engaged and most likely have the pain point that you've been speaking to in that video, blog, or social update. And because of that, they are now ready for our consideration stage content, which shows them how video can help them to fix or achieve their newfound issue or opportunity. Does that make sense? We're not trying to generate a new lead here. We're not trying to convert them into a customer. We're not trying to get them to pick up the phone. We're simply using this content to find out who we can help.

00:13:58:00 - 00:14:54:00
Why do we do this? Good question. And there's a good reason. This allows us to make our marketing work for us. Here's something that happens all the time in the video world. A video production company or a videographer or a filmmaker or whatever you want to call yourself decides that they need to get more clients. Maybe a project has come to completion or that pitch that you needed didn't come off. So, you spend days on your show reel, maybe developing some case studies, and you head on over to Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn or YouTube and you decide that you need to boost or promote that video. You select a few top level demographics of people that you think would be good prospects. You boost the post and wait to see the opportunities roll on in, but nothing happens apart from wasting a load of budget and the view count on the videos rising a little. So, you turn the ad spend off, feel deflated, and tell yourself that social media marketing just doesn't work for you.

00:14:54:00 - 00:15:58:00
That's common. And at the risk of sounding like one of those cringe gurus, it's not your fault. I see it all the time. But why do you think it didn't work? Why have you wasted your hard-earned cash? Well, it's because you're serving decision stage content, your show reel, your case studies to anyone that looks like your target audience. But we already know that 99% of those people are not going to be in the decision stage. They're not aware that they have a challenge to overcome or an opportunity to take. So why would they be minutely interested in a showreel or a case study if they are in no way thinking at all about creating video content? That's why it doesn't work. That's why you waste your budget. That's why you walk away feeling deflated telling yourself that social media just doesn't work for you. You have to serve the right content to the right people at the right time depending on which stage of the buyer's journey they are in and what questions they need answering.

00:15:58:00 - 00:16:58:00
Your show reel and your case studies are important, but they will only ever work on someone that has made their way through the buyer's journey and are looking for someone or some team that is going to help them. But we haven't even talked about the real benefit of doing this and why this is so important. So, let's focus on the technical side, the financial side of why this is so important. Now, depending on how much you know about paid ads, you may or may not be aware that when you're setting a campaign up, you have different campaign objectives to choose from. The three most common campaign objectives are conversions, getting people to become a lead or some other conversion goal such as a sale subscription and so on. Click, getting people to visit your website or landing page. And engagement, which depending on the platform that you're using, may also include video views.

00:16:58:00 - 00:17:34:00
Now, typically when a video production professional sets up a campaign, they will opt for conversions or traffic. But there's a reason why this is so detrimental to their campaign. When we promote our awareness stage content, we set our campaign up to target engagement or video views. Why? It's simple. An engagement or a video view costs a whole lot less than a click or a conversion. An engaged video view will typically cost you less than half a cent. Whereas a click or a conversion can be upwards of $10 or 1,000 cents. But video views are pointless. They're a vanity metric. That's not what we're doing here.

00:17:34:00 - 00:18:31:00
Think back to what our awareness stage content is doing. It's speaking to the pain points that our ideal customer has. So, if they engage with that video or post in a meaningful way, I mean, watching to over 75% clicking, commenting, liking, sharing, well, it's safe to say that they have that pain point. They wouldn't bother sticking around watching a video to 75% completion or doing any one of those engagement actions if they weren't interested in the video. So, because we are only looking to see who engages with our awareness stage content, we can use engagement targeting to make this incredibly, incredibly cost-effective. We're in effect prospecting at under half a cent per prospect. And then anyone that engages with that post or that video, we are able to start serving them consideration stage content where they become solution aware and decision stage content where they become provider aware.

00:18:31:00 - 00:18:31:10
In these stages, we do use clicks and conversion campaign objectives which are more expensive. But the difference here is that we are only now spending that money on people that we know have the problem or aspiration that our service video production can serve. This is how we make social media marketing work for us as video professionals. And this is why understanding the buyer's journey and relating it to the video world is so important. So does that all make sense? Now that's obviously just an overview of the buyer's journey and why it's so important to truly benefit from the concept that we have just learned here. There are some actions to take and that's all available for you for free along with everything else that you need to make your video business fly. No pay walls, no sneaky marketing tactics, just three books, one on marketing, one on sales, one on retention, over 24 hours of pre-recorded video content and 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. And finally, if you're wondering what the second marketing concept that is vital for video production companies to understand is, well, the link to that video is below, too. Thanks for taking time to watch this. Let me know if you found this valuable. Share, comment, like, whatever. You're the best.