How to nurture cold prospects into warm leads.

Episode Transcription

Den Lennie (3s):
Howdy, guys! Den here with this week’s episode of the How to Scale a Video Business podcast, episode 182. And it’s one eighty two. Let me just double check that 182. Often these are land into each other. So Today I’m going to talk about something very, very high-level that I think will let me stretch you a little bit, but I think it’s really important to understand if you want to scale your business and reach more clients. And ultimately, I think that was my other one’s here is to get more clients, but you have to go deep with them just simply wanting more clients.

Den Lennie (46s):
So, what we have to understand is that not every person who is thinking about Video, is ready for Video right now, it seems pretty straightforward. Right? And so let me kind of break that down further. In a perfect world, clients know exactly what they want. So they are on their most aware state of being, you know, I know what I want. I know what I want to get it. I know when it gets to do it, these are the kind of the ideal client’s. These are the client’s you want to be kind of calling you on your mobile and saying, Hey Den, you know, I’ve got this project, I’ve got 30 grand, can you do it? And of course that’s not how most business works. It, this is how business works. If he put the work in and get to that point where you’ve got a really tight group of customers who are just, you know, once you got 20 to 30 clients, so you just call you and book you all the time, you can, you do you look, we have to do as much outbound marketing.

Den Lennie (1m 39s):
And, but the clients that are in the most aware state have an immediate need are a problem. They are looking to solve straight away. They want to fix it now and they want you to solve it. And they’re not budget restricted. They just want to spend the money and get it done, which would be perfect really in almost all situations. But of course, we live in an imperfect world and the reality is probably more likely, you’re going to get someone here in the past you would’ve sold to anyone who has got a pulse and you know, that can be very challenging. And because when you sell it to everyone, you end up with a lot of problems. So how do you get someone who’s completely unaware to be aware?

Den Lennie (2m 24s):
Well, it was a couple things that have to happen and, and you have to start understanding that people are prospecting way earlier in the, in the conversations that in your mind than before they actually come and talk to you. And so I’m going to introduce you to a guy called Eugene Schwartz or Eugene Schwartz was born in 1927. And his kind of regarded is one of the best copywriters to ever have lived. And a copywriter, someone who, who, who, who writes for a living, but they’re the right Persuasive words to encourage someone to buy something. Now that’s not to say it’s manipulative in is it is using psychology too, to trigger a response in someone’s mind.

Den Lennie (3m 13s):
But Eugene Schwartz wrote a book called breakthrough advertising, which, you know, if you can get it, no, it will cost you a couple of hundred dollars. It’s it’s, but it’s the God of it as the kind of Bible For direct response copywriter. You know, you might be thinking that way. And I were on a video coming out of it is to know about that bare with me because every one has to learn how to sell and, and where I see the most mistakes happening in and in Video companies is that that people are lazy. They just, they don’t, they’re not doing the day. The deep work required to communicate their core message exactly to the right customer. But more than that, understanding that different customers and different prospects are on a journey need, add different marketing approach to progress them through the journey.

Den Lennie (4m 1s):
So there, there are five stages of customer awareness that Eugene Schwartz identified from a completely unaware that they have a problem that needs solving to most aware where they know they want you with three stages in between, which are problem aware, solution aware and product aware. So what we have to understand this is how do we move people up through the different stages of awareness so that when the are ready to buy a video, they automatically think of you. And this is where I see a real opportunity for businesses who, who understand that you are a marketing business. When you do a video business, you have to be producing content that attracts your ideal client early enough in the conversation they’re having in their minds.

Den Lennie (4m 51s):
So what I mean by that is when someone is searching for a solution, they are looking to learn about is the video, the right solution for them there we’ll start to do some research. And if they Google, you know, a video production companies are our company video or how to get a video made. They’re going to see video production company to pop up on the Google. And, and I would say, I would argue that 90%, 95% of those we’ll all be the same. It’ll be like, they’ll all look the same. They’ll all say the same things. They don’t really offer any help or insight to someone who is browsing. And most video production companies make the assumption.

Den Lennie (5m 31s):
Everyone understands video, and they understand the importance of, you know, 4k or eight K our, you know, you know, Gimbels and aerials and, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But actually the, the opposite is true. Most people just want a solid pair of hands and actually a lot, a lot of creative scare corporates. ’cause the way that they’ll just get too creative. And we did a podcast on this a while back, and you know, it, you’ve got to be careful not to allow it, your own creativity to get on the way of delivering a product or a service to a client. So the five levels of customer awareness, I would go with them in too much depth to day, but understand that there are five levels of customer awareness.

Den Lennie (6m 17s):
And so what you want to be doing is moving someone progressively from completely unaware. In fact, I wouldn’t even try and sell to people that are unaware. People who are problem aware. They know they’ve got a problem that they want to solve, but they don’t know if the video’s the right solution. That is the earliest point in which I’d enter a conversation. Or even then I’d be a little bit reluctant because, you know, you were kind of battling with whether someone’s going to do a print campaign or a video campaign, and you’re trying to convince them to do video. They don’t even know if they wanna do a video yet at the solution aware stage. That is what I would start entering the conversation. And people’s mind where they know that video is the right solution for them.

Den Lennie (6m 60s):
They’re just not sure what video and who now this is the point where you can actually enter the conversation going on in a prospect’s mind and become a factor and early on in that conversation. And you can do that by simply becoming an authority. So how do you do that? Well, there’s number of channels. You’ll probably walk in and cross, but you have to be very, very clear about who you serve primarily and what it is about your expertise that puts you in front of, you know, it, it, it’s, it’s about becoming the author of the authority, excuse me, which is, you know, why I talk about creating things like eBooks and follow-up sequences.

Den Lennie (7m 51s):
And then there can be an awful lot of resistance from filmmakers on this because it it’s, it goes on to the too hard pile. And, and I often say conversations where its like, Oh, does this work, does that work? Who has done this? Who’s done what, and you have to become an authority in the mind of your prospects and the market that you serve. And so you become an authority by publishing something. And so it was every modern business, including Video businesses have to be content publishing businesses. If you want to achieve a level of success that you aspire, you have to be creating content. No, that doesn’t mean you have to be creating content every day. I mean, yes, you can create articles for blogs that will help your SEO.

Den Lennie (8m 33s):
And if you are uploading videos, you should be loading them to YouTube or making sure that are optimized across the keywords and tags. And you know, you, you want to have some sort of downloadable asset on your website, be it audio, video PDFs or something that a prospect who is in the solution stage, who is looking for a solution can download something of value. Now your market will determine what that is. And it’s something we talk about a lot in the VBA and, and that’s the value of having a weekly coaching calls is we, we bring these kind of topics up on an on-going basis. And we are constantly looking at this.

Den Lennie (9m 14s):
In fact, one of our members that, that we can put it a Kapost and saying, Hey guys, and I’m looking at all the different marketing opportunities, which one it has been working for you. And so conversation has begun so that, so that Jamie can shortcuts some of his work to get him to the result faster. And Jimmy is already running a very, very successful video business. And he’s always looking for the edge. He’s always looking for more so, you know, posting on LinkedIn, you know, ah, are you posting frequently on LinkedIn is you have as your profile articulated in a way that that says to your prospect of market will help you get what you want.

Den Lennie (9m 56s):
So, you know, there’s a lot of practical stuff, but, and it takes time, you know, and, and, and, and, and there’s a lot of work to do. And, and I wish you could just say to you, you do this one thing and you’ll get massive results. It just doesn’t work like that. You’ve got to be doing a number of different things. We call the marketing pillars, you got to have different marketing pillars supporting your overall lead generation in your business. Otherwise you just, you know, you’re throwing mud at the wall, hoping some of the stakes. And, and, and that’s really how I would say, 99% of Video businesses operate word of mouth and that’s fine, but it is not predictable and, and is not consistent. And what happens is you get busy when you were walking and you stopped marketing. And then when you’re not working, I’m not busy filming your panicking about the fact in front of the marketing.

Den Lennie (10m 39s):
And it’s the rollercoaster. And it’s just a see it again. And I’m going to have hundreds of conversations with people, and it’s the same problem. And until you’d make a decision to accept it, if you want consistency, you have to be consistent. It’s late this podcast, you know, I put two episodes a week, we were up to 182 episodes that hadn’t happened for any of the reasons that I have to do it twice a week, every week. And that consistency builds value. And we’re up around 50,000 downloads. No. So it’s just, you know, it just takes time and consistency, and then there’s work involved, but you have to be clear on who you’re serving and why you are an authority in that field.

Den Lennie (11m 21s):
Otherwise you’re just, you’re just, you’re just fighting the battle with everyone else for an airspace. So how’d you, how’d, you create authority where you create authority by becoming an authority and sharing exceptional value. In fact, we’ve just literally launched our new website at Den Lennie dot com. So I’d love you to go over there and have a check out that there is a, a brand new ebook we have just created. You can download it from the bottom of the website. And we’ve got a number of assets on our website that, that the, in the, in the encourage people who have an interest to get something of real value for free, and in return, we, we, we get their email address and we communicate with them through email and we make offers.

Den Lennie (12m 2s):
And that is how we build a relationship. And I think the first 15 to 20 emails is all just like value with an invitation to come to a call, always very transparent about that’s on this show. You know, the reason to do this podcast is to generate leads. The reason why we built a website with, with download and opt-ins it’s to generate leads and our sat, none of those prospects become a leads in certain of those leads to become clients. And that is how we fund that. We fund this buy by building a monthly subscription for a mastermind. We have a foundation program we sell, and that is how we generate revenue that funds podcasts and websites and all this other good stuff. So how then do you convert that authority? Well, you want people to come back to your website and your website.

Den Lennie (12m 45s):
It has to be a place where at least as a single landing page, where you can capture details of the visitor. And, and I, I hear a lot of resistance to this, but here’s some facts. OK. If you have a a hundred people visiting your website, the chances are that 99 will leave without taking any action at all. And the one person that remains might click a link, and it might not know if you have a look at Hotjar or crazy egg, and you put that software on your site. It’s a, it’s, it’s a heat-map software, and it we’ll show you exactly what people do on your website, how long they dwell for and where the click on and where they click off. So what you have to do is create some sort of opt-in, that’s a way for you to say, Hey, if you are interested in what I’m offering, I’m going to give you some genuine value for free.

Den Lennie (13m 29s):
And all I’m asking in return is an email address. And an email address is still valuable collateral because people are so distracted and, and they may not be that keen to give it away. Willy-nilly because people know that they make it spammed. So, so be careful not to use your own bias, because if you are creating real, genuine value, then it’s not spam, it’s valuable, helpful information that helps someone on their journey. And, and what typically happens is, is that they will remember who gave them the value. And if you get people are genuine, real value and advance, and not just like some cursory, the free stuff, but genuine free value, they are going to read that and go, well, if I get so much value from the free stuff, or imagine what it’s like when I pay them.

Den Lennie (14m 14s):
And this is a big mistake that I see a lot of people make is the, The, they try too hard to just sort of throw an email at an ebook out into the market constantly. It’s not valuable. It’s not designed properly. It doesn’t look like it’s premium. And then we wonder why it doesn’t work. You have to put some money into it. I got my ebook copy-written I have it designed. I spent a few thousand dollars on it, but I sell a premium service. So I want everything that I do to be premium. And you know what, we’ve just released our new website. We’ve spent a lot of money on it and get it copy-written and I’m really proud of it. It will be interesting to see how it compares, but I feel it better represents us. And what we’re doing is what we had previously, but that’s not to say we didn’t do, you know, fake very good for the first 10 years with crappy website, but we’re at a point now where we want to scale up.

Den Lennie (15m 5s):
So give great value. And, and it has to be full of integrity. You have to be doing it from a place of great intent and wanting to help people. And because people are trained to, to smell bullshit. And they know when someone’s just a scamming than for an email address and, and trying to get something in return, you have to be making sure you’re offering genuine value. And once you get the opt-in, there’s a couple of ways you can do this using things like MailChimp or active campaign or a web bar, or a click funnels has lots of apps, and you can do it all for 10 to $50 a month, but you know how to do it right? And maybe 50, $60 a month. But you know, the number of people you will mature through a relationship.

Den Lennie (15m 47s):
One of the things we do suggest, and I, and our VBS send out a weekly email out to, to your prospect saying, Hey, here’s what we’ve been doing in the last week. And so 50 to two times a year, your just putting yourself in front of your clients with interesting stuff, but you know, what many people were just too scared and, and you, you cannot afford to be scared. So the other thing that you can do is, is, is used at Google and Facebook and, and even YouTube, which is part of Google to, to retarget ad’s. So, you know, you’ll all of that is when you’ve know, we just got solar installed in our house. And now I’ve got lots of solar ads on my feed. And it’s about being, being people, being aware of, of consciousness, you know, understanding that you are, who you are on your own and it’s to do with the mere exposure effect.

Den Lennie (16m 36s):
And it’s to do with the number of times, someone comes into contact with your brand product or service for them to feel comfortable, that they feel like you’re getting to know you and your, for their familiar. And so you can use social media retargeting as quite a smart way to do that. So when someone comes to your website in the download an ebook, they start to get a series of emails from you that, that that’s continuing on in the relationship, but then you might see, or we talked to that are on Facebook or Google, or maybe you see a YouTube video, maybe you do, you see some case studies and they start seeing other posts. Maybe they’d go on to LinkedIn. Maybe one of your emails is, Hey, I’d love to connect with your on LinkedIn. And you start seeing LinkedIn Paul’s that you push it.

Den Lennie (17m 17s):
You can see quickly How that starts to accelerate the process of that, the exposure to your service and brand. So it’s really, that’s what a marketing system is all about. So its about having clarity about what your offering to hu and making sure whatever your prospect might be, that the, The, they are seeing you all over that hundreds of thousands of other video production, businesses that exist. And, and if you were doing that level of work than you are, you’re very clear and consistent across all socials that you are here for the long run you’ve got experience and, and you’re here to build and develop a relationship with them because the lifetime value of a Video client can be hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Den Lennie (18m 6s):
So it’s getting very clear about what your offer’s and making sure that you become the number one choice and then when someone’s ready to buy. So, you know, if a prospect comes to your website, initially they’re just browsing. But if the Senate cure ebook, you know, and let see a, a a hundred people have visited your website and maybe five to 10 sign up for your reboot, but that’s a five to 10% conversion from cold traffic to becoming a, a prospect. And, and the prospect is the first stage where they’re saying, I’m kind of vaguely interested in what you got to offer. So I’m going to give you my email address to see if it, if you are in fact, when I’m looking for, but if you try right away to go, Hey, by my video, Hey, he just jump on a call, let it slide.

Den Lennie (18m 51s):
You know what? Lets walk, how are we can help you? Its to certain, you got to think of like dating, you got to take your time. And so let’s say you’ve got a a hundred people visit your website and 10 opt in for your ebook. How did you got a great headline, a great offer? And the book is going to be of genuine value. And it’s talking to that prospect at the point where they are out on their journey. It’s not going into details of how we can use Gimbels and you know, for K to meet a video of that. Great it’s it’s about, you know, why Video might be a great solution and hear some examples of where its worked for other clients and you use some of the results we’ve gotten too to encourage them down the path we have here are the number of different videos that you can make. And, and you know, this is the, the details of the e-book has to be related to your market.

Den Lennie (19m 35s):
I can just give you kind of a, a, a, a, a, a template, what we do have in the VBA, a process for how to write an e-book based on your market. But I can’t just start to see it right on this. And this is top 10 tips. And now if you go, and Because, because that wouldn’t be F wouldn’t be, wouldn’t be realistic. So, yeah, so, you know, once you got it, people opted in a few rebuke. You can continue the conversation, and once you get those take 10 or 20% people subscribing, and you met, you can go and get as much as 30 or 40% subscribing if it was really good and maybe, maybe out of a, a hundred people that visit your website. In fact, people opt-in, maybe three will become customers.

Den Lennie (20m 17s):
That that’s a good ratio. That means, you know what, you’re actually building a system that will help people to become customers. Eventually we, we might be talking about 9,120 days, maybe even longer. I have had prospects who download an ebook five, 10 years ago, who decided that this year is the year they want to do some coaching. So, you know, when you, when you weigh up the long-term value of a prospect, it’s a no brainer. Like you, you just write the emails once, and then they run, and I’ve had email campaigns running for years, and it’s a way of just building a conversation so that when people are ready to buy, they think of you, that’s essentially what email marketing and ebook marketing is all about.

Den Lennie (20m 59s):
When they’re ready to buy you become a factor and the mind, rather than just, you know, like picking someone that you see and it’s like, there’s Podcast, you know, you know, it’s just a way to communicate with an audience. And I think we’re over 50,000 downloads. No, and we just keep pushing great content, great value. And if you’ve been listening for a while, you know, I don’t hold anything back. And there are plenty of people who listened to this podcast. So you will never pay me any money. They’ll just take their advice and run with it. And that’s cool because they’re the people that I’m enjoying Joaquin with just now are having phenomenal success. And the last week, so we do a, a weekly win and a group on a Friday or in the mastermind.

Den Lennie (21m 40s):
And last week alone, one client alone had $120,000 week. And another client had a, a a hundred thousand dollar month. And these are the people who, you know, one guy or two years ago was making a hundred thousand a year and everything, a a hundred thousand dollars months, its taken two years. He’s invested time, effort, and money, but he’s shown up every day, every day, every week, every month. And he’s, and he’s getting phenomenal success. And, and that is, people love working with people who understand it takes time. There are no overnight quick fixes, but once you build that business correctly, you have a phenomenal results. And I’ll tell you the, the, the energy in the group are phenomenal. You know, it’s so inspiring.

Den Lennie (22m 20s):
So, you know, you wanna be bringing people into your ecosystem, bring people into your world. And the great thing about an ebook as well, you know, it is like if you write well, if there’s five to 10 tips in that e-book, then there’s five to 10 blog posts. I have five or 10 videos are a five or 10 emails. Like it’s, it’s a system. It, you don’t have to create a whole heap of work for yourself, you right? The one thing that you understand the most about it well, and that’s why targeting your markets so important, you know, and, and we, we’ve done a lot of things in the past when we tried bots and all sorts of things, but they are just tactics, you know, and it’s very easy to get distracted with tactics by then.

Den Lennie (23m 1s):
I encourage you to call and download an ebook on, on the new website. I think it at the bottom, the bottom of every page and, and, and, and go through the sequence yourself and see what you think. And, and let me know what you think of it because it’s, so it’s designed to be a nurturing process, but it’s automated, it’s slow and steady progress. You know, it it’s, it’s pushing traffic into that offer. We’ve also got a separate landing page, were going to be doing some paid ads into that. But the key is you’ve, you’ve got to be absolutely clear about what it is you do and who you do it for. You know, and my business, everything we do is about helping Video businesses succeed in the business side of the commercial world of videography and in the corporate world.

Den Lennie (23m 49s):
My book was about that. My podcast is about that. The eBooks about that, everything we do is about that topic. So we, we attract people who are ready for the next part of that journey. And this Podcast, when we first did that, it was a place to come and listen too, to kind of information around building a video business and, you know, and that’s what we’ve done. And we have had numbers, numerous products over the years, but, but now our core product is just to, to help people succeed through the Podcast. And through that way, we’re getting hundreds of thousands of people. And that’s the goal. And then we, we worked with a smaller group of people who are very high level, two, achieve extraordinary results.

Den Lennie (24m 31s):
And we were doing that very successfully. And the new website has a lot of case studies and a lot of testimonials and a lot more coming online. And that’s why we have invested in it. ’cause, we’ve been doing a pretty poor job of actually sharing the success of our clients, but that was because we wanted to, to make sure the success was consistent. And we wanted to make sure that our clients who are paying us get the majority of our attention, and that’s what we’re doing. So, you know, I’ll just wrap this up by saying, you, you want to be creating some kind of ethical bribe on your website. You want to become the go-to person for your market. You want to become the authority.

Den Lennie (25m 11s):
It’s, it’s a critical component. And you know, it takes time. I mean, we’d been doing this for 12 years and I think we’ve no got this system really dialed in. We knew that we knew our numbers. We know where our conversion ratios or we know what it costs, a, got a customer. We know what it, what it costs you to put someone into our funnel. And we understand it that it’s a cost too, to acquiring prospects. And not every project that we pay to acquire through marketing and advertising will become a customer, but we knew what our ratios are, but it’s taken time, but now we can turn ad’s on and dial up their spend, knowing what our outputs are going to be on the other end.

Den Lennie (25m 54s):
And that is consistent marketing system. And that is what I’m working with with my VBA clients to build is that consistent marketing system. And we’re seeing some phenomenal results when some of the guys who are just taking some of these areas and focusing on them, but the fact that getting weekly coaching and support, its what makes a difference. So make sure you think about building some kind of email lists, some kind of free giveaway that is of genuine value to your market. You know, and then another thing, another thing to remember about email is if someone doesn’t respond to an email, it doesn’t mean they’re not seeing it and they’re not reading it. And you might see one in five emails that get sent out.

Den Lennie (26m 34s):
But if you send one email a month, that means that you only see one email every five months. If you send five emails of the week, they’re going to see the prospect is going to see one email a week. No, I don’t imagine anyone here is, is bold not to send an e-mail a day. We did it for awhile and it’s something that we may do again. And because your audience will want to hear from you. When I, when I talked about dropping this podcast on to one episode a week back in one of my clients was like, I love the two episodes a week. Please don’t do that. So we didn’t because I listened to what my clients tell me. And, and, and actually it’s as simple as that, you’ve just got to get your clients what they want and, and put them first. And that is that, that is the key, but right at the very other end of the funnel, when people don’t know who you are, is email is a phenomenal way of bringing people into your world on autopilot.

Den Lennie (27m 22s):
And when they’re ready, they’ll, they’ll start to reach out. And one of the conversation, but you know, most of all, this will feel uncomfortable care and you may not know what you’re doing. That’s why we have a foundation program. That’s why we have a mastermind. And, and generally speaking, the way we eat, the way we divvied them up is that if you’re doing on a $10,000 a month, then you’d fall into the, to the end of the foundation program where that’s just some certain things that you’ve got to do before you’re ready for the mastermind. And once you get $10,000 in a month and above you qualify for the mastermind, then it becomes a much more intense ride. Because if you’re doing a three to 5,000 a month, do you want to get the 10 that’s quite a lot of work to do, but once you get to 10 getting to 20 and 30, isn’t as hard as you think once you’ve got those foundations in place.

Den Lennie (28m 8s):
And that is why we built the VBA foundation program. So most of all take action today, pick one thing and do it and be patient. None of the stuff happens quickly, but if you plan properly and you implement regularly, you will become more successful as a result. And the fact is it will take time. And if you want help to accelerate that process faster, then please do download our e-book and, and, and consume that information. And if you wanna have a chat about John, any one of our programs, happy to have a call and, and help me decide whether or not that it’s the right thing for you, but that’s it for me guys. I’ll see you again next week.

Den Lennie (28m 48s):
You’ve been listening to the how to scale of Video business podcast with me, your host Den Lennie. If you’re a Video business owner and he hit a ceiling, we’ve been at it for mentorship support and coaching and checkout, or you can work with me over at denlennie.com. Don’t forget to subscribe and rate the shore over on iTunes. I mean, we really appreciate your taking a few minutes to leave a review and don’t forget to share if you feel you’ve gotten value from this episode and you think it would be useful for other filmmakers you know, and please do me a massive favor and share it on social media and in groups that you might be in. So thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.