$10k to spend on marketing

[Steve Wargo]

[Jason Jenkins] “But, I figure if the agencies I’ve worked for can bill out my work at $250 per hour, I should be able to bill my work at $125.”

A lot of people think that they won’t get the work unless they’re the cheapest guy on the block. If that were the case, we’d all be eating at MacDonald’s.

We service a marketing company and they said, at a conference we were shooting “Double your prices and watch your bottom line grow. Ignore those who leave to go somewhere else”. Scared to death, we did just that and lost 40% of our business overnight. That means that 60% stayed on and we were doing half the work for the same money. Duh! When my clients ask why the guy down the street is cheaper, I reply “Because they’re worth it.”

Steve Wargo
Tempe, Arizona
It’s a dry heat!

Sony HDCAM F-900 & HDW-2000/1 deck
5 Final Cut (not quite PRO) systems
Sony HVR-M25 HDV deck
Sony EX-1 has arrived and it’s fascinating.

[Bruce Bennett]

[Steve Wargo] “When my clients ask why the guy down the street is cheaper, I reply “Because they’re worth it.””

Steve, you started out my day right:) I’m going to have to remember this one!

Bruce

Bruce Bennett,
Bennett Marketing & Media Production, LLC – http://www.bmmp.com

[Bruce Bennett]

Jason,

First off, congratulations on your success. Ten years and $65K this year is something to be very proud of.

Most people who regularly read this post know my position on marketing our type of businesses. I think mailing DVDs to potential clients is a waste of money. And if your local ad agencies are like the ones here in Madison, WI, they are very loyal to their existing production companies and breaking those relationships is very, very tuff to do.

My biggest suggestion for marketing has been (and always will be) is to increase your meals and entertainment budget. I would consider a

[Brendan Coots]

Here’s my input:

1. Don’t focus on price competition. This is a race to the bottom, I assure you, and it also limits your future options. Once you find the need to raise your rates, all the customers you roped in with your “cheaper guy” value proposition will no longer be interested. It CAN be valuable to point out that your prices are affordable, but think long and hard about how to phrase this without making it the core of your VP.

2. Spending $500/month on SEO (purchasing inbound links, directory listings, paying someone to tweak your site text etc.) is a good start to getting your web site out of the shadows, but it takes time to reap the rewards. In my experience, an equally important step is to set up an account with Google Adwords. While it doesn’t improve SEO, it will bring you a lot of potential customers while you wait for your SEO efforts to pay off. You can choose how much to pay for each lead, tell Adwords to only show your ads in the cities you want, and you can use exclusion words to ensure the “wrong” people don’t see your ads (such as students or people looking for freebie animated GIFs). You could easily spend $500/month on Adwords alone, depending on how stiff the competition is in your local market. As such, you may want to tweak your budget to allow some $$ for this.

3. You are wise to allocate some funds to your web site. I visited the site, and while the design is clean it doesn’t really tell your eye where it should go, so it clearly needs a facelift. It also needs some serious redesign for it to ever come out of the shadows and show up in the search engines. $6k should get you a comprehensive redesign, just make sure that the person you hire knows and understands SEO so that they employ those principals in the design so that you don’t have to hire a separate SEO expert.

[Jason Jenkins]

Hi Steve,

I’m not trying to be the cheapest on the block, just somewhere in the middle. If I lost 40% of my clients, I’d have about 3 left! Going from $75 to $125 per hour would be a good move upward for me. If I were to start charging $250 per hour, I would literally lose 90-100% of my clients. So, I guess the real question is; how do I attract the high end clients?

[Randall Raymond]

[Brendan Coots] “an equally important step is to set up an account with Google Adwords.”

Probably the most important step. Most people think Google ads are about searches – but the lion’s share of click-throughs comes from your image ads and video ads on their content network. I’m an adwords agent for a number of clients – and create image and video ads for them – and track what’s working – typical day for one of my clients: 3 clicks on searches, 66 clicks on image and video ads on Google’s content network. The thing is made for video-guys!

[Jason Jenkins]

Brendan,

Thanks so much for your input. The problem with my website is that I made it! It’s totally graphical -pretty much straight out of Photoshop. I’m on the lookout for someone who can revamp it and give it the SEO help it needs as well.

[Jason Jenkins]

Randall,

It’s really good to hear some real world stats. I’m going to research Google Ad words since everything I know about them I learned from your post!

[Jason Jenkins]

Thanks Bruce,

At the very least, I will be doing some lunches with my clients, which I have never done before –except when they took me to lunch!

[Randall Raymond]

[Jason Jenkins] “I’m on the lookout for someone who can revamp it and give it the SEO help it needs as well.”

I can do that for you – video web sites are my specialty – let me know.