The single most underrated marketing channel in 2021.

Episode Transcription

Den Lennie (1s):
G’day guys! It’s Den here, it’s Thursday. Well, here in Australia might be Wednesday when you’re listening, that’s in the US. This is episode number 174 of the How to Scale a Video Business podcast. So after a really rough week, last week, I think just the, the whole moving house thing, just put up with me. And I just went down with like just the fatigue, right? Who would some sort of nerve have in my foot. And that came out with all sorts of skin complaints, which I think is just a sign of over doing it.

Den Lennie (41s):
I’m sure you can relate to ah you know, getting run down after a busy period of work. And, you know, it’s funny how our bodies kind of remind us where we need to start by just shutting us down and forcing us to lay on the sofa. But, you know, bill yeah. Binge on Netflix, which is pretty much what I did for a couple of days last week. And it’s interesting. I was supposed to do a podcast interview with Brian Carl comes to your shop was on Friday and he called me last minute. So I’ll do it. I can do it. I’m just not just at a COVID job. And he had called it a few months back then he got COVID when he was feeling really rotten. And so I think, you know what, it doesn’t matter where you are in your journey.

Den Lennie (1m 24s):
We’re all human. We all suffer from the same thing, which is if we don’t look after ourselves this way, if we don’t prepare our bodies, we don’t consume the right food, get the right rest, stay hydrated. Then at some point we all know by now. And I know as a filmmaker, we’ve all done that there’s been periods where you are not a shoot comes along. A project comes along back to back and you just, you just on it full time. And then that means sometimes, you know, work on a Sunday or putting extra hours in and that’s okay for short bursts, but ideally you wanna be, you know, creating a more consistent environment to work with it. And, and, and the reason that I think, you know, that often we get caught up in these kind of extreme periods is because we have not been consistent in some other areas.

Den Lennie (2m 12s):
So what I’m talking about specifically is marketing. And for some reason, when I say the word Marketing, a lot of film makers, flinch, and I’m not quite sure why I I’m going to try to explain it in today’s episode. I think it’s because when we think marketing, somehow it can feel sleazy or that we’re trying to convince someone to buy something. They don’t need it by using your own tactics. That’s really not what marketing is marketing in. Its most simple form is simply putting the right message in front of the right people at the right time.

Den Lennie (2m 52s):
And if that message is relevant, if it is significant, if it helps the prospect solve a problem that they’re having that they’re thinking about, then you will become a factor in that prospect’s mind as someone who has provided some value. And what I, what I often see is Video businesses are looking for a shortcut, looking for like a, kind of a magic pill, looking for a kind of guaranteed method to get success. You know, if, if we had guaranteed method’s to get clients, then we we’d all be using it, right? The fact is that human beings are not binary machines.

Den Lennie (3m 36s):
They are people with feelings and biases. And, and so they can, they, they are not easy to manipulate and into doing something that they don’t want to do. Now, what we have to do is, is, is as marketers, as filmmakers who are running a business, you need to market that service. You know, if you want to just sort of set up your website and go, Hey, where here and wait for the phone to ring, that’s fine. You go ahead. You do that. I’m not interested in that. You have to go out and pitch your services to the world so that you have some thing that is unique and special and different too, to present the world.

Den Lennie (4m 18s):
And all marketing is doing is amplifying that message to the right target market. And yet there seems to be a massive gap between those who know who they’re targeting in what they’re offering and, and those that don’t. And, you know, I will mention Ben, who is one of my clients have been with me probably a year and three months now at a fantastic guy. He runs an amazing business and the UK and has just diligently applied the methods of the VBA without fail. He’s gone back and listen to stuff again, he’s just implemented everything step by step. And as a result has getting some really, really kind of consistent results.

Den Lennie (4m 59s):
No, and what I love about Ben as he is very realistic, that nothing happens overnight and that anything worthwhile takes time, but also that you have to be diligent and put some of your own biases to one side. When, when, when working in the marketing space and let me be clear, any business doing less than a million bucks a year is a marketing business, because you might think you’re a filmmaking business, but in order for you to get more filmmaking clients, you have to market that business and it’s become harder. It is ha has become a harder, harder, because there are more kids working at the bedroom with camera’s offering to do a video for a knockdown price. And I had experienced recently actually, which I’ll tell you about that.

Den Lennie (5m 41s):
Just demonstrated that and how, how, how it’s impacting the world. However, when I see the world, I mean, you know, businesses that are employing videographers, however, there is still an enormous amount of opportunity for premium service. And there always will be because I’m a certain clients just don’t want cheap. They want a trusted advisors. They want a reliable, you know, premium, premium products. And, and so all of that comes down to your marketing and how you present yourself. So I’ll quickly tell you a story here. So we just, we just bought a house. We, we, we bought a house where, and in July last year, and it was off the plan and we had just moved into it.

Den Lennie (6m 25s):
I know I’ve mentioned that it would just be at the beach now, it’s, it’s fabulous. We’re loving it. But part of the process was we had, and we were asked if we’d do a testimonial video and, and some of them were more than happy to do it because we’re used to be on camera and we really enjoyed the experience. So we had this testimonial video or film. And what was interesting was it was just this young kid. He was filming it. Umm, and he had, you know, some really fancy looking at Canon camera’s like our fives and something really, really over the top, you know? And, and, and he set up this interview against the window. So we, we were sitting in front of a window at new lighting, zero lighting, a couple of rod, a little microphones And, and he had one camera locked off on a wide and a second camera on a gimbal.

Den Lennie (7m 15s):
And at the time I was just, I just thought it was blew. My mind is like, what, what is this going to look like? It was, there was, there was no, there was no, there was no structure to how it was going to work. It was like, I think that the, the epitome of what a squat regardless, you know, the equipment to become so affordable and as so much stuff around and that every kid with enough notice is like, well, if I just kind of get a gimbal and some fancy 4k cameras, I can become a filmmaker. Now, what was interesting was almost everything on this interview was filmed in a gimbal. All the B-role was shot and a gimbal. He didn’t give us any direction at all.

Den Lennie (7m 57s):
And we had our dogs sitting with us and the dogs were literally panting in front of the microphones. And I was just, I was just gobsmacked by how this kid is showing up. Now that I’ve since seen in a cup of the video and it, yeah, it looks okay, but, but there is no, there is no formula. There, there is no, there’s not, there’s nothing that kind of tells you, this has been filmed by someone who’s who studied cinematography or, or, or photography or, you know, our structure of how to tell a story. It, it just kind of like bolted together with a bunch of shots of it at the shots don’t relate directly to what’s being said, yeah, it hasn’t been lit and, and you can hear the dogs panting.

Den Lennie (8m 43s):
And so what is done is to kind of overcome the dogs panting. He’s just boosted the audio on the, on the soundtrack, which makes it very hard to hear. And I was being, I was played it by someone and this company and I’m on the laptop. And it said that that, that, that music track’s too loud or you can actually hear what we’re saying. She was like, Oh, is it a whole, I’ll talk to the filmmaker now, the interesting thing, because it’s quite a big company that hires this kid, but he didn’t know, or they weren’t listening out for the audio. So it was like, it was like, okay, well, that’s kind of crazy. And obviously because I’m in that space, I did point to it anyway that it may, it may be irrelevant. I mean, who cares?

Den Lennie (9m 22s):
Well, I think, you know, but I thought from a point of view of sharing with you, what was interesting was like the client didn’t really know what was good and what wasn’t. They were just simply listening to the content. And so as far as they are concerned, that looked okay, looked like a video. And so I think, I, I think there’s always a difference between what we believe is is he a certain level of quality and what the client might perceive? But I thought it was an interesting example of just like that. That’s kind of a, you know, I don’t know what he was charging, but I mean, it took him like six weeks to bring an edit to the table. And he was kind of talking about how busy he was in how crazy things where I, and he just saw it. It had like a, a van full of Gear.

Den Lennie (10m 3s):
And, and I guess its like, you know, we sit in this over the last 10 years, this is people with Gear or just, you know, buying Geer for Gear sake. And they got all the time, but no real concept on how to craft the story. And I might spend a little far, okay, this that feels like, you know, this is important. Maybe it’s not important to anymore. Having said that, I work with clients at the other end of the Scale who are charging 20 or 30 grand for our project and clients really do care about it. So what I want it to touch on today really briefly was just this idea of marketing. And, and what does that mean? ’cause what it means to me is your telling a story of the problem that you solve for your target market.

Den Lennie (10m 48s):
And you know, you, you can fight me on this all you want, but the bottom line is if you want to really expand your business, you need to go niche. There is no two ways about it. You know, I’ve seen people who don’t and people that do in the people that do, you know, 80% of the business comes from one niche and they become known in that area. And life becomes a very, very easy. So when we talked about marketing, what are we talking about? Well, we’re talking about you being very clear on what it is you do that solves a problem for your market. And this is where I think a lot of filmmakers get stuck because a lot of filmmakers actually just want to be filming because they just want to make films.

Den Lennie (11m 28s):
And so the business side that the marketing site can, it can be a real challenge. And it, it was a challenge for me when I first started doing it. But what I’ve learned to do over the years is, is see the results of doing something that is not comfortable. And I realized that if I wanted to grow my business and ultimately for me, it was about growing a business and moving away from the UK, living in Australia, because that was something that just felt very, very important to me. It was where my heart Leigh. I had a connection to Australia that are still can’t really explain why, but it just feels more like a home for me. And so I had to find a way to, to create a business that would enable that to happen.

Den Lennie (12m 7s):
And that was a very kind of long and involved process. But fundamentally it meant I had to start moving and shifting from waiting for the foreign to rank, which was a very freelancer men Talenti to generating opportunities and to generate opportunities. You have to think of marketing. It’s the first step, which is who are you talking to? So in any marketing conversation you’re having, you need to be thinking about our strategy evening. Who are you talking to? Because if you try and talk to everyone, you’ll end up talking to no one. And this is a common mistake I see with Video businesses and freelancers, particularly as they say, they’ll do work for any one at any price at anytime.

Den Lennie (12m 51s):
And that is okay as a freelance. So I’m not knocking the freelance. Okay. But it, but if you are someone who’s tired of that, rollercoaster are tired of that feast and famine. So I just knocked my pop filter off if you’re tired of that feast and famine. And the only way out of it is to start thinking strategically about marketing. And so the first thing you got to think of is who am I talking to? Who is my target market? Who do I love working with, who appreciates me and who had a lot to do more wild West. So if I think back to when I was running my video production company, my target market were broadcast manufacturers, equipment manufacturers and Business is related to the broadcast and film-making arena.

Den Lennie (13m 34s):
So they were a Sony or they were a Canon or they were a Panasonic. They were. And a majority of my work at the time was Sony. I mean, I did bits and pieces for a Panasonic and cannon over the years, but predominantly it was Sony. And as I say, you know, my, my earlier years I did a bit for Canon Panasonic. As soon as we started doing a big one for Sony, I had to kind of drop away from it was on the brand’s coz it wasn’t, it wasn’t a line and it wasn’t, it wasn’t good business to be doing work for a competing brands. But then there was like, you know, a corner Tiffin and I did stuff for Sennheiser. I did stuff for road. I did stuff for Zeiss, a matte box manufacturers, Vinton and An and associated brands.

Den Lennie (14m 22s):
So I became known for producing content that that was in that space. So a, a, another client Pat, who does a lot of work with the health care space. And so once you understand the market, you’re in, they have a specific way of describing and talking about that market. So one of the major advantages of going niche or niche is that you get to communicate with that market in a language, any torn and in, in a, in a, in a method that they feel like you get them.

Den Lennie (15m 6s):
And so, you know, one of my clients grant had worked in kind of distribution, haulage manufacturing, and he was recently doing some outreach on LinkedIn and, and he was a, he got a response from someone who says, Oh, you know, this, this is really interesting. I get a lot of people reaching out to me, but no one who’s a specialist in haulage and distribution. And so that began a conversation. And so, you know, with that in mind and its very important that when you have a conversation with someone you’re talking to a market that, that understands that, you know what you’re talking about, it’s going to open doors far faster than anyone else.

Den Lennie (15m 47s):
And the biggest mistake I see videographers make is they just go, Hey, we make videos. Yes, we can do it. All the answer to everything is a yes, we can do it and then figure out on the back end. And that will get you so far. But if you want to be at a mature business, one that has sustainable growth and predictability, then you have to start pigeonholing who you are for and becoming a specialist in that field because it does two things. One is, is it means you’ve talked to that set of clients in a way that they understand. The second thing is, is that you get to become an expert in those eyes, the eyes of the prospect’s. So therefor, what also happens to them as a direct byproduct of that is if you are working in the, and the health care space and you are working from a healthcare manufacturer than they probably worked in other healthcare companies, they probably worked with colleagues who are still friends and you might see on the weekend and what will happen is, is you can expand your network through their network.

Den Lennie (16m 52s):
And that is something that is very, very key. And so when you think about marketing, you’re talking about working in a sector that has organizations, maybe governing bodies that might have its or magazine. And my mom was on the Facebook group than that. You can become the kind of the go-to expert for anyone. Who’s got a question about video production and therefor you can elevate yourself to becoming an authority, which leads me to the next aspect of Marketing, which is, which is writing a book now for most people that the idea of writing a book is, is terrifying. And I often hear this being said, or I don’t think my market or go for it. And which is a bias, it’s a bias that says you might not read the book, but that’s not to say you’re market might not read the book.

Den Lennie (17m 38s):
And here’s the other thing you don’t actually have to write a book. You can write an ebook. eBooks are still highly, highly effective. They are affective because it gives you an opportunity to position your authority as an expert. ’cause if you’ve got a new book and someone else doesn’t, it just shows that you’ve done more work and they are willing to explain and express your authority and your knowledge to help someone who is not yet ready to make a buying decision. So with an ebook where that comes in handy from marketing perspective is that you are entering the conversation in the prospect’s mind before they’re even thinking about hiring a Video company, they are just thinking about it.

Den Lennie (18m 23s):
A problem that you’ve got to solve and Video might be one opportunity to solve a problem. So if you have an eBook that helps the prospects solve a problem, then, then there’s every chance as they’re doing their research. They might just download that and, and read it. And that is going to put you in the primary position. I would say Paul position against another company, it was just going, Hey, click this button to get a quote. And some people may not be ready to press the, Get a court button, but there might be willing to downloaded an ebook because it was very like all they’re giving away is an e-mail address.

Den Lennie (19m 4s):
Okay. In return for an eBook. And the chances are, they’ll give you a, you know, a, a, an e-mail address that you use specifically for that, so that they are not threatening, that they are not being threatened. Now that they’re not, they’re not feeling vulnerable towards the data being used and being spammed. And, and the most important thing about e-books and email marketing is the, it has to be relevant to that target market, which is why knowing your target market is so important. If you are sending stuff out that people aren’t interested and then yes, they will see it as spam. But I’ll bet there are emails you get into your inbox, which you don’t unsubscribe too, because you are interested in what they’ve got to see.

Den Lennie (19m 46s):
And that is where our email marketing and eBook funnels are still very, very powerful as part of a broader marketing strategy. So the biggest mistake I see filmmakers make in marketing is the peak one or two things and go, what I’m doing work on LinkedIn. I’ve got a website. So that’s my marketing. And I mean, they are getting enough work, but I’m not. And the chances are, you’re not because you’re just not putting enough effort into the right areas of marketing. So you need five to 10 pillars. Now, if you think about it, a, of a Greek, a, a Greek Parthenon, there are proc across a Cropper lips.

Den Lennie (20m 27s):
And in, in Athens, it’s got this huge triangular heavy roof, and it’s supported by big marble and sandstone pillars. Now, if you have that way on the roof and you only have two pillars, then that’s a very vulnerable position to be M. But if that Parthenon roof is, is, is held up by 10 different pillars, then one pillar can start to rot away and it’s not the roof’s not going to follow them. And so the mistake I see, time and time again, is filmmakers, who are you fundamentally don’t wanna do any marketing, so of dabbling in it. And they dabble in it and they may get a result and they may not. But the truth is in marketing terms, we have an expression which is Mark.

Den Lennie (21m 12s):
Just don’t think the test. So I will often hear people say, Oh, who is, who’s tried this eBook thing, or who’s tried this email marketing to go, who has tried this Facebook thing? What, what results did you get? And, and as soon as you get a kind of a negative result, like, or it didn’t really work for me, it validates their decision not to do it. And that is a huge mistake because in every market is different and every market responds differently to the same marketing. You can produce two pieces of marketing the identical, and it will absolutely fly in one market and dive bomb and another. So what’s critically important is that marketers don’t think of the test. And so what that means in terms of mindset is this that you are going to have to start putting money and time and effort into things that will not work.

Den Lennie (21m 59s):
In fact, eight out of 10 pieces of marketing probably won’t work in your space, but the faster you get to know the quicker you get to a yes. So by that, I mean, the quicker you can test 10 different pieces of Marketing, you’ll know what does it work? And you’ll know what does, so we have an exercise in our eBook, a module, which is you have to create 20 headlines for an eBook. And most people that I come across, right? One or two, and this is not something that I created. This was something from David Ogilvy, who is kind of the grandfather of, of modern day advertising. He used to get his copywriter’s to raise a hundred headline’s 101, zero to a hundred headlines and pick five and split test to five.

Den Lennie (22m 47s):
So the true way to Mark it is you would write 20 Headlands of your book and you’d pick three and you’d split test all three headlines, two, or your foam, one that worked. And a great example of this is when Tim Ferriss wrote the four hour workweek, that’s exactly what he did. He split tests, I think three or four different headlines that he come up with for the book. And he ran the Google ads too, the headline and the one that performed the best on the ads became the title of the book, the four hour workweek. And so, as I wrap this episode up, it’s critically important that when you put your marketing cap on, as a filmmaker, you, you stop thinking and you start testing.

Den Lennie (23m 30s):
And this is, is, is difficult because as a filmmaker, you’re always thinking about creative ways to tell a story. And so what are the most challenging aspects of being a business owner, who is a film maker is understanding that, you know, you’ve got to work in two very distinct spaces when you’re creating it’s when you think, and when you’re running your business, its where you just look at the logic and you apply it kind of binary testing algorithm, too, everything that you do. And so you have to understand that that there’s the, there’s two different mindsets going on. And if you try and think about marketing and trying to think about what’s going to work and you try and overthink it, you’ll end up getting a wall, you will end up having it. He had it against the wall.

Den Lennie (24m 11s):
The only way to go ahead is to just split test something. I mean, I’ve, I’ve had multiple times where I’ve come up with what I think is a great headline are a great, a great a landing page and, and this is really going to work and you put it to the market and it just dives. And yet sometimes the simplest ugliest things that you would, or you wouldn’t think would really represent you end up flying because it’s about heading the conversation and the prospect’s mind. And that is the hardest thing. And it’s something that we talk about a lot in, in the VBA is like, you know, and one of the reasons we have that the, the mastermind group is the power of the mastermind is that you’re not just getting access to me and what I think and my experience, you, you can be sitting in on a coaching call and have a problem and have 10 different businesses through a solution at you and give you a 10 different ways out of that hole.

Den Lennie (25m 4s):
And that is what my members tell me all the time is one of the most powerful things of being in the mastermind is that it’s like a, it’s like a board of directors questioning and supporting and offering you solutions too. Every single problem you might have in our Video business. So if that’s something that you feel like would be beneficial, then we should never call, have a chance to see, see if this is a good fit, because otherwise you got to just be stubbornly going out alone and, and weave, you know, w we are launching a new website very, very soon, I’m going through it. Just know we’ve got so many success stories are so many key studies that, you know, this is a system that works. This isn’t something we’ve just kind of, you know, conjured up. This is something that we’ve been doing consistently for four years, and we’re seeing consistent results when you follow our system.

Den Lennie (25m 49s):
So, anyway, guys, I hope this has been helpful Marketing really as your friends, if you get stuck into it, but it’s not going to be easy. And it’s going to take some time to figure out anyway, I’ll talk to you. You’ve been listening to the How to Scale a Video business podcast with me, your host Den Lennie. If you’re a Video business owner, you hit a ceiling we’ve benefit from mentorship, support and coaching and checkout how 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 you taking a few minutes to leave a review and don’t forget to share if you feel you’ve gotten value from this episode, when you think it will 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.

Den Lennie (26m 36s):
So, thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.