Episode Highlights:
Den’s Introduction: 00:00
VBAP Intro: 00:39
Growth Accelerator 3: 01:05
Social Media: 02:09
The Mere Exposure Effect: 04:42
Quiz Funnels: 06:29
Lead Capture: 11:53
Using Videos Effectively: 17:09
VBAP Outro: 19:16
Den’s Introduction
G’day folks, Den here. And this week, I’m going to delve a bit deeper into one of the 9 Growth Accelerators. 9 Growth Accelerators are a mechanism that I’ve created on how to build a sustainable and consistent video production business with solid repeat business, consistent cash flow, and without you having to work crazy hours. And we’ve already talked about growth accelerator one and two. This week, we’re going to talk about growth accelerator three. And that is to educate. So sit back, grab a cup of coffee, and enjoy this episode.
VBAP Intro
Welcome to the Video Business Accelerator podcast. Each week, we uncover the secrets to creating a wildly successful and scalable video production business with your host, Den Lennie. Discover how the accelerator program is transforming the lives of our members at www.videobusinessaccelerator.com. Enjoy this episode.
Growth Accelerator 3
So today I want to talk about growth accelerator three. And that is to educate. You’ve been following this podcast for a while there is a series of growth accelerators that we’re pushing out intermittently in between some of the guests interviews, because what I want you to do is share what I believe are the nine core strategies to build a consistent and sustainable video production business. So what do I mean by educate? Well, all too often, if you spend too much time in filmmaking circles, all you end up talking about is filmmaking stuff. And the thing that comes up again, and again, when I talk to clients is they don’t necessarily understand our world of filmmaking. And so the businesses that do extremely well and do very well consistently, are the ones who spend time and invest time in educating their audience prioto them ever calling up and asking for any business.
Social Media
So how do you do that? Well, there’s a number of ways you can do that. But in the first instance, that’s where social media can play a really important role. No, it’s very important when considering a social media strategy, to not get confused with social media tactics. So what do I mean by that? Well, I mean, that it’s very easy to get caught up in the latest, you know, technology, the latest app, the latest way of publishing content. And another common misconception with social is that you have to be everywhere. Now we’ve done extensive tests, to discover where our audience is. And, and certainly there’s a degree of testing involved when you begin your campaigns. But I digress.
The important thing is, once you’ve established where your audience are, is to speak to them in a tone and a way that works them. But social media is all going well at raising awareness. If you think of the funnel, people that don’t know about you are at the top of the funnel, and they’re what we call cold traffic. And what I mean by cold traffic cold traffic is people who don’t know you, they don’t know if they like you. And they certainly don’t know if they trust you yet. So your job in marketing is to raise the awareness of your offering, and how you are different from the other thousand production companies out there in your country, if not more.
So one way to do that is to engage the audience by solving a problem for them. And if you know your audience well enough, you’ll know what keeps them up at night. And if you can understand what keeps them up at night, you can create content or create giveaways that you can share in exchange for an email address or phone number. They can provide genuine value to your audience. So examples of this might be an ebook, where you create, you know, the five top mistakes businesses make when hiring a video production company. And then you go on to explain what those five mistakes are.
But then what you do is you brand each page with your branding and links to your website. So it’s a great way to help a client on their journey. All too often I hear production companies just trying to sell their video production service. And that’s the wrong way to go about things. You want to be approaching things from a service first a value first perspective. And you do that by giving up front. Gary van der Chuck talks about this in great detail is give, give, give, then ask.
The Mere Exposure Effect
So I want to introduce something here called the mere exposure effect, the media exposure effect is the number of points of contact, a cold prospect has to have with your product brand or service before they feel comfortable reaching out to take the next step. Now, that is currently 15 to 18 points of contact with a product brand or service before someone feels comfortable taking the next step. So what you want to be doing with your marketing is you want to be helping accelerate that process. So some of the ways in which you can do this are to use an ebook, it could be to create some video content that actually helps walk the client through a process, it could be a series of videos, that you take them on a journey.
And so you start them with a kind of a call to action on a page. And, and you entice them to sign up to give you their name, phone number email address to get access to the other content. And by doing that, you find yourself beginning a relationship with someone. So there’s something called reciprocity, which is from Stephen Covey’s book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People reciprocity is when you give someone something up front, they feel naturally drawn to all use something. And so if you give someone something of real value for free, they’re more likely to come back to you. In fact, the study shows I think 79% of buyers usually come back to the first place that delivered any service or value to them. So if you can be at that in the marketplace, giving value to the audience, before they’re anywhere near buying anything up yourself in a very strong position.
Quiz Funnels
Another thing that was very, very well is quiz funnels. Quiz funnels are mechanisms where you can take your prospects on a journey by asking them a series of questions on your website. And so that they can kind of help them figure out their journey. So it could be, for example, Hey, you know what kind of video you’re looking for you today? Are you looking for an event video? Are you looking for a promotional video? Are you looking for an educational video, and you could have tick boxes? Next question would be Do you know duration of the video you want to make? Is it one to two minutes? Is it? Is it less than two minutes? One minute? Is it a two to five minutes? Is it longer?
The next question could be when are you looking to complete this project in the next week in the next month in the next three months. And then you can get all this information sent to you. And what you could do is run a Krieger creative process like this, that would essentially take that client on a bit of a journey. So put yourself in the shoes of the prospect, they might have been tasked with finding a production company, they go on to Google, the Google Video Production Company, London. And you can do this yourself, do this. And anytime that you might be in our city, and just put video production company video production and the name of your town or city, and up will come literally dozens of options.
And what’s really interesting is in most cases, they’re all the same. It’s like the same story of we’re passionate filmmakers using the latest technology using 4k. To tell your story. We’re passionate toy storytellers, we just want to tell you a story. There’s very little points of differentiation. And I made this point at this point at my mastermind a couple of years ago. It’s like it’s a given that filmmakers love to tell stories. That’s kind of why we’re in the industry. And I think the audience has become wise to that. That just just being a good storyteller is no longer a point of difference.
It’s like well, how are you good storyteller? And and why should I care? That’s what the person who’s making the inquiries thinking. They’re thinking, What’s in this for me? How much effort Do I have to go through on this website? To get an answer to my question? And so quiz funnels are an incredibly powerful way to take your customer, your prospective customer on a journey with Brian Cassingena on just a few weeks ago. And Brian talked in detail about them using quiz funnels at Mine Valley, and how effective they are. Because a prospect to searching for a solution just wants an answer to their problem as quickly as possible. And your website, your landing page, your production company, your process is just an obstacle in the way of them getting their results, I’ll say that, again, your product or process or company or website is just an obstacle to the prospect getting their result. Once we understand that and live that everything becomes much, much easier.
So how can you make that process smoother? How can you make that journey easier for them? How can you set yourself apart as a video production company, from everybody else out there by actually doing it differently. And part of the process is, is these accelerators. Now there are nine accelerators, we talked about the three so far, this is the third one, there are six more, and I’ll be revealing them over the coming weeks. But if you want to learn more about the accelerators, you can go to video before accelerator.com. And check out the accelerator program and it breaks down what the accelerators are if you really want to get there quicker. So a quiz funnel is a very powerful way of engaging someone, it also has the added benefit of keeping them on your site longer if they’re on your site longer because they’re having their questions answered.
And you know, they’re not on somebody else’s side. And that’s pretty basic, but it’s pretty important to understand. So what you can do at the end of the quiz funnel is actually ask a question about budget, you can say, hey, do you have a budget for this I is it? Is it less than $2,000? Is it two to $5,000? Is it $10,000 more, and get them to select an option. And then that way, what you can do at the end of it is say well, based on the information you’ve given us, this would fit into this ballpark of price point for a video production. Now this point, you could create a video and you could say, well, you know, video production is much like building a house, you can build up a timber shed.
And or you can build it with concrete and gold taps. And with and with marble, they’ll both do the job, but will cost different amounts of money because of the raw materials and the processes involved. Now, video production much like building a house is is flexible you can you can choose what materials you use, you can choose what kind of labor you have, you can choose to have a big crew, you can do it quickly. Or you can have a small crew and do it more slowly. What’s important to you. So if you’re if you’re trying to identify through a series of questions, what’s important to a client, you will have a far better understanding of that client and have a far better chance of winning the work.
Lead Capture
So having some sort of lead capture on your website is absolutely critical. Because email is still a very powerful tool. And as Brian said in the session we did on email marketing, if you are willing to go down the route of capturing someone’s email address and build a relationship with them. It’s another touch point. It’s another aspect that you can you can you can you can use to build a relationship. And so you know, regardless of your own personal opinions of email, if if someone is actively searching for a solution, and they receive an email, and they see social media posts, and they’ve been through a quiz, that’s already three or four touch points.
So you’re moving closer to the decision making process by taking them on that journey. So having some sort of lead capture on your website. And if you go to Video business accelerator calm right now you will see we have a lead capture form on our website. In fact, if you want to go through that process, fill in your details, and you will be you will experience an automated email sequence. Now that first email sequence has 10 emails, and then it goes on to a second email sequence which has five or six emails, and then it goes on to an ongoing email sequence. All of that happens automatically. And so if you are listening to this right now, and you wanted to find out more about the program, and you went to the website, you thought, okay, I’m just not quite ready to go there yet.
Well, you can sign up for the ebook, you can get a really valuable ebook called video Business Breakthrough, the nine growth accelerated rate is to building a consistent and profitable video production business that is full of valuable information. There are links in there to other resources, and then you will go through a 15 part email sequence. That happens automatically that happens while I’m sleeping. It happens I’ve got a day off, it happens if a mountain my bike, it happens automatically.
So what we do is we run ads to Facebook. And that generates leads coming into our business on a daily basis. This podcast is a lead generator for a business, we provide valuable free information. And oftentimes, people who listen to the podcast, get in touch with us have a conversation and and join our program because they feel a connection to what we see how we do things. And and they say things like you know, this is the only podcast that exists specifically for video production companies. And within that we’re very, very specific. This is not for every Freelancer out there.
Although if you’re a freelance listening to this, great, I’m really glad that you get some value from it. But typically, the clients that we have the biggest success within the program, our video production companies have one to two people or more, who are actively looking to grow to multiple, six figures and beyond. And some of our clients are already doing seven figures. Some of our clients are just in the last six figures, and lots of clients are in between. But we apply these nine accelerators to every aspect of your business. And all of our members go through a quiz funnel to measure their score out of 90 on the accelerator.
And and the goal is to get to 90 out of 90. And then when you’ve refined that you start looking at a second issue. It’s It’s It’s a fluid process. So educating your clients, maybe you should be thinking about doing a podcast, maybe your clients listen to podcasts, it’s all about getting to build the know like and trust factor way before you are anywhere close to selling them anything. And oftentimes what I find comes up again and again with video production companies as they just they just missed out this critical step of nurturing. And we’ll talk about nurturing it and growth accelerator for in a future episode. But it’s a face to see, you don’t exist in the minds of most of your target market.
And and many business owners talk about you know, getting referrals and word of mouth. And that’s a very powerful way to get business. But sometimes, and this always breaks my heart is that you know, people kind of struggle because they’ve only got one or two jobs from a client. And and it’s so easy to fix that problem by just following up regularly. And we have strategies for how to do that in the program. And we have scripts for what to say, to reconnect with the client you haven’t been in touch with for a while. So if you’re interested in learning more about that, please do go check out videobusinessaccelerator.com. If you feel like it’s a good fit, apply to have a chat with us, we can see if there’s things we can do to help you.
And if not, you can just keep listening to the podcast or read the books, we’ve got lots and lots of resources. The important thing for us is that not everyone is a good fit for our program. It’s quite high level, it’s not cheap, and but we get results. So we can’t cater for everyone. And so in your video production company, you shouldn’t be catering for everyone, you should be setting yourself, I deal with a certain part of the market. And from there, make sure that you are targeting that market with relevant information.
Using Videos Effectively
I just want to start wrapping this up by saying not enough video production companies actually use a video effectively to sell their services. So think about that for a second. You are looking to sell somebody has a 10 or 15 or 20 or $30,000 video product package to someone, but you’re not using video on your website apart from a showreel. Doesn’t that seem like a disconnect to you? So if you’re not using video, think about how you could be using video because it’s a powerful tool.
And let’s let’s be honest, if if you are going to go to a baker and buy a nice loaf of bread, but the baker doesn’t eat bread, you’d be like it doesn’t use on bread What’s wrong with it? So think about that, you know, how could you be using video in your own business? Be video testimonials be behind the scenes video you to explain your processor, behind the scenes videos to tell the story about how you got to be where you are today. People are fascinated by story. And I see a lot of people talking about being powerful storytellers. And yet they’re not telling a story of their business on their website.
So just to summarize, growth accelerator three is educate How are you educating your market on how you solve their problems. And you do that via ebooks, checklists, video content, using quiz funnels. And using a combination of all of those things. We use a combination of all those things, and then social media to amplify your message. And and when you’re using social media, be Be sure to be social. So when someone likes your post or leaves a comment, please make sure you respond please make sure you go and like this stuff. If you’re on LinkedIn, connect with them say hey, I saw that you liked my post. I’d love to connect with you. It’s such a simple, but often overlooked aspect of social media. So there you go guys growth accelerator three, educate. Catch you soon.
VBAP Outro
You’ve been listening to the video business accelerator podcast with your host Den Lennie. If you’re a video business owner who is tired of going it alone, and would benefit from mentorship support and weekly accountability, then mouse over to www.videobusinessaccelerator.com to learn more about how the Accelerator Program can help you today. Don’t forget to subscribe and rate the show over on iTunes. And we’d really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a review.
