Kris Simmons
Forum Replies Created
-
Door to door is definitely NOT the best course of action. I suggest testing your “website videos” marketing message/pitch with existing clients and colleagues before “taking it to the streets.” Existing clients and colleagues will be more open to your ideas and will be a much easier sell than those you meet while making cold calls. Another option should be to discuss your web video services with people at business socials, networking events, etc. I’ve found that you can qualify a lot of people simply by talking to them without visual aids. I wouldn’t worry about customizing your marketing materials/demos until you have a handful of interested and qualified prospects. Good luck!
Kristopher G. Simmons
https://www.MindYourVideoBusiness.com
https://blog.mindyourvideobusiness.com -
Jonathan,
I felt the way you did about 6 months into my first real job as a videographer/editor. After a squabble with my boss over a $1.00/hr raise (from $9 to $10/hr), I decided I’d be better off trying to make it on my own as a freelancer and eventually, an owner of a turn-key video production company. I was 22 when I left full-time work to build my own business. Here’s a brief glimpse at what I did to jump start the transition:
1. Called EVERY professional video contact I had made while in college and while working for my previous employer (producers, directors, video business owners, church media pastors, etc.) and told them that I was planning to start a freelance career and if there was ANY work they could throw my way, I’d be willing to travel anywhere and work for any rate. The result was an opportunity to shoot 93 athletic events at a Division 1 University at $350 per game over a 6 month period of time. It also resulted in numerous freelance gigs throughout the southeast at the same or better rates. The key is to be flexible with both availability and rates…and to prove yourself as someone that is willing to work as hard and as long as necessary to make your client successful.
2. Requested meetings with every video production company within a 50 mile radius so I could introduce myself and tell them more about my freelance capabilities. If/when they indicated that they weren’t interested, I called them the next month, the next month, etc. until they were willing to give me 10 minutes of their time. This resulted in several gigs as a production assistant and camera operator at industry standard rates…and even resulted in them throwing me smaller projects they didn’t want to mess with. I get calls all the time now for jobs that I don’t want to deal with so I recommend younger, less experienced videographers/editors all the time. You want to become one of those people that more established companies refer business to.
3. Attended every public networking event I could afford so I could get to know people in the business community and so they could connect my face with the video services I provided. To this day, 3 of my best clients are people I met in those early days of networking. A lot of people may tell you that networking is a waste of time, but it’s not. If you don’t have a substantial network of REAL people in your community, if will be difficult to break in. People want to do business with those who they know and trust. Later in your career you won’t need to network as much but you always need to make plans for generating new business relationships.
4. Joined several organizations and websites (WEVA.com, VideoUniversity.com, etc.) and put out an All Points Bulletin that I was willing and able to help edit whatever they needed help with at whatever budgets they were comfortable giving me. The result was that I picked up about 20-30 wedding videographer clients throughout the US who sent me regular editing work via FED EX. I was national before I even knew what being national meant! This process also helped me pick up a few weekly local-access television show edit jobs that lasted about a year each.
There’s a lot more to the story but I hope what I’ve shared thus far will get you moving in the right direction. Feel free to respond to this post with any questions. Good luck!
Kris
Kristopher G. Simmons
https://www.MindYourVideoBusiness.com
https://blog.mindyourvideobusiness.com -
Well said Bob! This is one of the best techniques to use in the sales process. Very effective!
Kristopher G. Simmons
https://www.MindYourVideoBusiness.com
https://blog.mindyourvideobusiness.com -
My vote is still out on social media. LinkedIn is allowing me to “connect” with new people but so far it hasn’t translated into any one-on-one meetings or phone calls for my video business. However, I have gotten calls and emails from other video professionals. I like networking with other pros in this industry but I can find that here on the COW among other industry sites. My purpose for spending time on social media sites is to cultivate new business leads and to convert them to paying customers. LinkedIn looks promising but time will tell if it ends up being the best marketing tool in the world or another tactic I can write off as a huge time and energy waster.
Kristopher G. Simmons
https://www.MindYourVideoBusiness.com
https://blog.mindyourvideobusiness.com -
I love this one! I’ve found over the years that one of the best ways to convince a successful business person that video is worth looking in to is to tell them about a video project we produced for one of their major competitors or for another well known company in the area.
Business man: “I think all corporate videos are fluff and not worth the money required to produce them.”
Me: “Well, that may be true but we help xyz competitor use videos to train their sales force on how to sell their most expensive products. Since we’ve been developed the video program for them, sales have been up 23%. How do you train your sales team?”
Business man: “Well, we have orientation when they join our sales team and we provide every sales person with product brochures and technical specs.”
Me: “Is that working for you? I’d be glad to show you a few sections from XYZ’s training video if you are interested.”
This either results in major interest which leads to a personal meeting to show the sample or it leads to exchanging business cards and sending them the sample anyway.
This tactic doesn’t always work to generate new business but I’ve had a lot of success with it.
I learned a long time ago that if you have to educate a corporate client on the benefits of using video, they aren’t going to be a profitable client. Corporations that understand video are willing to spend more per project and usually make videos a major part of their overall communications strategy.
These are my favorite clients and definitely result in the most profit for my video agency.
Kristopher G. Simmons
https://www.MindYourVideoBusiness.com
https://blog.mindyourvideobusiness.com -
I get this type of call about twice a year. They never work out. I learned the hard way that if a prospective client is that difficult on the very first phone call, they won’t be a client I’ll enjoy working with. She is already trying to squeeze you and you haven’t even met!
I’d bet the house that she is a late payer as well which means you’ll not only be working on the cheap, you’ll also have to wait forever to get paid. She’ll expect you to keep producing shows while she continues to not pay you for your work.
This situation gets ugly in a hurry. I’d be concerned that she is calling you instead of companies located closer to where the shoot will take place. We get calls every now and then from larger city businesses that indicate early in negotiations that the reason they called us was because they were hoping to find a huge discount as compared to production rates in their city. THAT INSPIRES CONFIDENCE!
Finally, you aren’t charging enough money for your services. Raising your rates to be closer to industry standards has a way of attracting the serious prospects and discouraging the tire kickers.
If you decide to submit a proposal for this project, pad your quote as much as you can get away with. If you don’t, you’ll be pissed off every time she calls you with demands for your time.
Good luck!
Kristopher G. Simmons
https://www.MindYourVideoBusiness.com
https://blog.mindyourvideobusiness.com -
There’s a lot of great advice here. No doubt you should make the revisions to your site based on the previous input but I think it’s equally important that you make yourself known in your community. You stated that you’ve been in business less than 2 years. My hunch is that there is a lot of low hanging fruit waiting for you if you’ll take the time to network with other professionals in your area.
I suggest that when work is slow, ramp us the time you spend attending business meetings in your area (chamber, etc.) or industry association meetings. (ad federation, PRSA, Manufacturer’s Association, etc.) Take a handful of business cards everywhere you go and BE SOCIAL! Hand your card to everyone you come into contact with and be sure to ask for their card as well.
Add their email addresses to your email newsletter list (if you don’t have one, create one now) so you can send them updates about your company and share video case studies of your work.
Building momentum can be a long and cumbersome process so you have to start now! The sales cycle for corporate video production can be as long as 18 months so you have to get your name in the hat now.
Here’s a nut shell marketing strategy for you:
1. Call every videographer in your area and invite them to lunch. Talk with them about what their needs are and offer to help on a freelance basis. It’s important that you position yourself early as an ally and not as a competitor only interested in taking their business. Some videographers won’t want to meet with you but most will.
2. Attend your local ad federation and public relations society of america (prsa) meetings and get to know advertising/marketing/pr professionals in your area. Once you’ve identified prospects at these meetings, invite them to lunch or ask if you can set up a meeting with them to show off your work. Do everything in your power to get face to face meetings. These will get you the best results. Most of these groups will have member directories on their websites. Send your demo and a letter of introduction to everyone on the list. You probably won’t get any immediate calls by mailing your demo BUT, they will recognize your name at upcoming meetings. As soon as someone says “Hey, I got your demo the other day” this is the perfect opportunity to ask for a meeting. At the meetings here in Chattanooga, you can pay a couple of dollars to give a shameless plug during the meeting. This is one of the ways the chapter raises money. Take advantage of this sort of thing so you can plug your business.
Another option is to sponsor a meeting. The cost to do so will vary but I’ve seen it as low as $50 and as high as $500. Meeting sponsors get to have their marketing materials all over the place and the event organizers make a pretty big deal about your company and all the wonderful services you provide. In most cases, you will even have 5 minutes or so to address the audience. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS!3. Add every email address you can get your hands on to your enewsletter list. You can determine your own threshold for what the definition of SPAM is but my rule of thumb is…if someone gives me their business card and it has an email address on it, I’ll add it to my newsletter. Other ways to get them to opt in include putting a link to it on your website, blog, podcast, or whatever so you can drive subscriptions. Then, provide interesting content each month or once per quarter to the members on your list. As your numbers grow, so will your sales. It’s the simple law of economic power. The more people you have in your network, the more successful you will be.
The key to making any of these suggestions successful for you lies directly on your shoulders. You can sit at home frustrated because you don’t have any work to produce, OR, you can dust off the golf shirt (with logo) or the blazer and slacks and get busy meeting business people in your community.
Good luck! Let me know if I can do anything to help.
Kristopher G. Simmons
https://www.MindYourVideoBusiness.com
https://blog.mindyourvideobusiness.com -
Agreed on just using the first name. You should also make sure that ALL testimonials in your video only have the first name. Mixing naming conventions may look weird and cause the audience to be curious…..which can lead to loss of credibility in what they are watching.
Kristopher G. Simmons
https://www.MindYourVideoBusiness.com
https://blog.mindyourvideobusiness.com -
Great response Todd. Our corporate video projects range from $1500 to $200,000 so it’s kind of hard to nail down exactly what corporate video budgets are or should be.
I guess my simple definition of corporate video would be any video produced for the purpose of helping a business communicate. (Marketing, Sales, Training, Recruiting, Investor Relations, Public Relations, etc. etc.) The size of their budgets depends on how much they want to spend for this service more than how big their company actually is. I’ve had Fortune 100 companies not want to spend more than $5,000 for a video and small businesses be okay with spending $40,000. It’s crazy!
I have found though that businesses that produce videos on a regular basis either already have an in-house video department or will probably move that direction eventually.
I’ve had about 10 clients in the past 7 years that started out paying us a lot of money to produce their videos. Then, I guess the bean counters got involved because they now all have some form of internal production capabilities. We still get scraps every now and then but nothing near as profitable as the early days.
Kristopher G. Simmons
https://www.MindYourVideoBusiness.com
https://blog.mindyourvideobusiness.com -
I use .Mac through the Apple website. Basically, you set up a project, create a calendar in iCal, synchronize the calendar in the .Mac project and invite each member of the project team via email. Once they subscribe to the project and to the calendar, they will get every email that you or anyone on the project sends to the .Mac project email address which keeps everyone up to date with the status of the project.
I take it a step further by asking my team to post a project update email for each project once per day. This allows me to see where each project is at the end of the day on my iPhone or as I’m wrapping up to leave the studio.
You’ll have to pay $99 per year for the .Mac account but everyone else can subscribe to your projects with a free @mac.com email address. All in all, it’s pretty easy and has worked well for a staff of 7.
Let me know if I can help you in anyway.
Kristopher G. Simmons
Video Business Coach
https://www.MindYourVideoBusiness.com
https://blog.mindyourvideobusiness.com