Today, I’m going to discuss how well subscription video packages work. Listen to this episode to learn how to avoid the pitfalls you may encounter along the way.
Today, I’m going to discuss how well subscription video packages work. Listen to this episode to learn how to avoid the pitfalls you may encounter along the way.
Den Lennie (3s):
G’day, guys! Den here with episode 211 of the How to Scale a Video Business podcast, this week’s shorty. So I’ll, have you ever had an idea for a business? And that should be a really good moneymaking idea. Thinking along the lines of something like Subscription, video or services, it’s a topic that I hear come up again and again and again, and I wanted to address it because I think it’s really important. And that is because I’ve actually run our business where we have a degree of subscription service, and I think there’s a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. And I want to touch on that today in this time, shorty.
Den Lennie (47s):
A really important question, you got to ask yourself, why do you wanna create a subscription for your service? And I think it we’re being honest. Usually the main motivation is because we want to have consistent revenue. We want to have some form of revenues coming in that is consistent and predictable. And I am a big fan of a subscription revenue. Okay. It is how I run the most of my businesses, but its important that the, the service, your offering on the subscription marries up well with what you can deliver. I have some clients who run this very well and they have like a package of video content that involves a certain number of days of filming in a studio and then a certain number of dates of post production.
Den Lennie (1m 35s):
And that’s sad in a number of a bits of content and you have a client and the UK who there’s a lot, it’s very well where he’s got two or three clients. One’s, one’s a nightclub, one’s a manufacturing company, one’s a logistics company and they have a need for ongoing contents. So companies like e-commerce, you always have a need for ongoing content. They are always having to update their lanes are always having to update their product lines in and the communications in. So I think a subscription can we work very well and e-commerce or in club’s or in gyms where people need to have ongoing content, but the secret to really successful ongoing subscription product is in you controlling the parameters.
Den Lennie (2m 21s):
So you know that your costs are fixed. And if you, if you allow that to blow out, it can kind of bite you in the ass. Because if you’re just promising a certain number of filming these and edit these, the challenges are the clients are going to just see that as we’re just, we’re just getting a bunch of films. They are not going to necessarily understand the nuances of what it isn’t. Isn’t included in a subscription package. And you’ve got to be careful that you don’t damage your reputation by promising one thing, to get the sale over the line. And then down the lane saying will actually, you know, that that shit out of town isn’t actually covered. And in this ad, it’s only covered it. We do this graphic is that client, it might just be sit and thinking, well, you sitting in your office editing or it doesn’t matter which button you press, why am I paying more for it?
Den Lennie (3m 5s):
So you’ve gotta be really careful how you pitch and deliver those kinds of services to avoid any pitfalls. M as in, before you that the key we, we did this subscription service where we are helping a couple of different companies. One is a, a coach in the automotive space and one was a recruitment firm and there are on different packages, but basically one was on, you know, a a hundred and eight ninety six videos a year. I think it was like 16 videos a month. And what we would do is we would get that person into the studio. Would we approach this? This was simply, we get the marketing department to ask the owner of the company or a bunch of questions, they’d record those interviews and we get them transcribed and we’d turn them into this script.
Den Lennie (3m 51s):
So the key to this process is you controlling their creative process of a client pays and you do kind of everything. So we would then turn them into scripts. We’d load them into a prompter. We’d send a script to the owner of the company and ask them to rehearse them prior to coming into studio. Then one Saturday, a month, we come into the studio and we’d recorded for three or four hours and we’d record 16 videos. Now the pitfalls where the person who is on camera was the owner of the company. It wasn’t a natural presenter and wasn’t all that confident. Now when they’d rehearsed, they were very good, but being a busy entrepreneur, they didn’t always have the time or they weren’t focused on it.
Den Lennie (4m 30s):
And so we’ve come in, a studio are unprepared and it was something that’s very hard to get a good performance. Now, as far as we were concerned, we were there to deliver high quality video or audio editing. We did it, all of that. And, but, but ultimately the video city, it wasn’t that successful for them cause they didn’t promote it properly. They hadn’t put the effort into the delivery. And so re re reflecting on that. They probably didn’t feel like they had a great experience, which then in turn reflects badly on us, even though it’s out with our control. I mean, we can direct and we can advise and we can guide as much as we liked, but if someone’s not gonna do the rehearsal or the, or our planning doesn’t matter, there’s just a, there’s just a matter of, so we, yeah, we, we saw in a situation now where it’s like, okay, well, how can we, how can we change this?
Den Lennie (5m 18s):
And, and so we did it for someone else who was a very good presenter at a white out very well. The point is his, it was a very different business to our regular video production company. And it has to be very heavily processed, driven. It has to be very heavily systemized and you have to be very clear in what is, and isn’t included in it. It can be a really good source of income and a really good source of revenue. And so I’m not seeing you should discount it altogether, but I think that oftentimes these ideas come into play and the, it seems like a great idea to have a subscription video services, but I don’t think people necessarily understand much work has involved in systemizing that and delivering that in a way that things don’t blow out now on the flip side, if you do it well, and you can sell, you can upsell additional options, you can upsell different things.
Den Lennie (6m 14s):
We actually ended up selling another $20,000 worth of products to this company because the owner wanted to turn, he wanted to write a book. And I said, well, we could take all these videos and transcribe them and then edit them into chapters and create a book. And he created a book and we had a publisher and he sells on Amazon. No, and he was really happy to have that as his kind of, you know, a, a authority piece. So all I know is with 80,000 sixties of the $80,000 worth of work over the course of the year, it was a, it was a sizable a client. It was a good client to have, but it was, it was a quite a difficult thing to manage because of expectations and, and, and delivery of the service.
Den Lennie (6m 55s):
And I think if I had my choice where we actually end up shutting it down and moving of production altogether, but that was, it was a lifestyle choice. Cause we wanted it to move to a different part of regional Australia lived by the beach. And you know, I I’d done it for so many years, nearly three decades. I had nothing to prove I had nothing else to do. And I know for half of all, my time focused and dedicated to helping businesses, scale, helping systemized video businesses and, and coaching video business, owner’s in how to run a video business that gives them everything you ever wanted. So yeah, if, if, if you’re thinking about having a cyst, he, he, he subscription service thinking about the pitfalls and an, if you need some help with that, we can do or help ask yourself, this has owning your own video business and everything you dreamed.
Den Lennie (7m 47s):
It would be when you first got started. It might be hard to admit, but think about whether you’re genuinely achieving everything you set out to. When you made that decision to grab the camera and go it alone, or you are really working less or are you really earning more? And our, you really in control of chances are you’re bloody good at what you do, but your having to work out like a dog or 70 plus hours a week, whether it’s filming, editing, marketing, or any of the other jobs that come with being the big boss of your own video company, when you’re managing projects are constantly searching out for new clients and wanting about cashflow, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture or make real progress. Let’s face it. That stress is the lasting you need.
Den Lennie (8m 27s):
When you’re trying to run a profitable company that supports you and the people you care about. Truth is a business. It provides financial professional and personal freedom really is achievable, but maybe you’ve got that nagging feeling that you’re overworked, lacking stability and struggling to get to where you really want to be right now. It could be a, you just don’t know how to make a positive change on your own. So I created the video business accelerator coaching programs to really supercharge your video business with these unique coaching. You’ll learn all the tools you need to get complete confidence in the success of your video business. You can take the first step on your journey to a successful business that doesn’t control your life.
Den Lennie (9m 8s):
Let me show you how, head over to denlennie.com and click on Accelerator.
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