Marketing Your Offer To Ideal Clients. EP #194 - Den Lennie

Hey guys, it's Dan here. From the how to Scale a Video Business podcast, dipping in today to another one of our growth accelerators. Now, if you new to the show or you haven't been part of the previous episodes, we're running a micro series breaking down the eight growth accelerators, which are the eight areas of growth, business growth, business development, personal development that we've identified.

Are what our most successful clients have implemented. So it's really a deep dive into the reality of building and scaling a business.

You know, I like to pride myself in the fact I'm a straight talker, a straight shooter. You know, I don't believe in using hyp marketing to sell you into a dream that is not actually achievable in a reasonable time frame. And having been in this industry for 26 years and in business for 12, you know, and I work with a lot of mentors and a lot of clients. I know how long things take to, to mature and to become stable and predictable and, and that is something that can't be done quickly, but it can be done in a very measured way. And so our eight growth accelerators are actually part of our Video Business Breakthroughs ebook which is available on the website completely for free. What we've done is we've decanted what we believe the eight growth accelerators are that if implemented correctly, will help you scale your video business fast and help you find that freedom that you've been looking for. And we've been talking so far about managing, improving belief systems, how to create strong business foundations. And then more recently we talked about planning for a long term business strategy. And today I want to talk about marketing and marketing your offer to your ideal clients. Now, everything is marketing and marketing is everything. In fact, if you're a business generating under a million dollars a year, you are a marketing company. And by that I mean you want to be putting an offer in front of the right people at the right time. So they turn to you and say, yeah, you're the person we want to work with. And so we're going to be talking about strategy around marketing and tactics to help you attract ideal clients that you actually want to work with and that love working with you and appreciate you for your unique flavor that you bring to a production. So there's a great expression which is if you chase two rabbits at the same time, you'll catch neither. So what does that mean? Well, it means that if you imagine standing in the field and trying to catch two rabbits both running in different directions, then essentially what you're going to do is you're going to find yourself running after one and then running after another and not getting any outcomes.

So what does this mean in business terms? Well, it means that if you chase every opportunity that's out there, then you likely won't achieve any success. And oftentimes I come across businesses that are trying to chase too many rabbits. They're just trying to go after too many different types of businesses, too many different, too many different sectors. And therefore their marketing message is muddled up. It's confusing, it's not, it's not concise and doesn't talk to any one person in the market. They say that you try and market to everyone, you end up talking to no one. So what does this mean in real terms? What the question you've got to ask yourself is, are you clear about who you serve?

And you know, this is far more important than most video businesses realize. The only way to scale and build a business predictably is to go after niche verticals. That's it. Now, within that, that could be a style of the way you work. It doesn't have to be. You only work with bakers, for example. But too many video production companies try to serve everyone. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. So in the process, they end up serving no one and trying to attract anyone. And generally speaking, they'll lose gigs on price because it's the only determining factor. If you're a generalist, you know, if you're in a general video production environment, then you are competing with every other video production company out there and the only differentiating point is price. So if you want to embrace real growth.

You should only target one sector or one target market at a time. And it's actually not as hard as it might sound. I mean, it could be as simple as we support marketing agencies with video production, with white label video production. That could be your niche. And that's not to say that you can't have other sectors in your business. But the one challenge I see repeatedly in video production companies is they're just chasing too many rabbits. They're trying to appeal to too many people.

And literally will say yes to shooting anything for anyone at any price. And this problem begins because they don't have a clear idea of who their ideal client is. They fail to understand their audience's pain, their needs, their wants, their aspirations and desired outcomes in enough so they can service them at the highest level. And guess what? It comes back to bite them in the backside. Because you know, when you're trying to chase everyone, you get no one. Whereas when you target your offer at a specific market sector, you know, a client of mine is working in the healthcare space and then he works in healthcare and medical device and it's probably 80% of his business. He does other things, but the majority of his business is healthcare. So we've been working with him to market his offer specifically to healthcare. And one of the tactics you can use is have different pages on your website for different sectors so that if someone in the healthcare space is introduced to your company, they can be directed to a healthcare page. So it's completely okay to have two or three different sectors in your business. Maybe it's healthcare, maybe, maybe it's education, maybe it's corporate. But you don't want the corporate person going to the healthcare page and watching a lot of healthcare videos because they're going to feel like that you're not relevant, whereas the corporate video page will be relevant. So be clear on who you're wanting to target. And also within, within your sector, who is the person, the individual who you want to target? Because at the end of the day, businesses, it's people to people, it's person to person. So what you're trying to do is pitch your concept to a person who's in charge of marketing for that division of that company.

So getting really clear on who that person is is absolutely critical to you being able to connect with them, understand the language they use. And this is all to do with the client avatar. We actually have a 13 step client avatar process, which is a questionnaire. And we also have a process called the Ask framework where we actually ask a specific set of questions to your niche target market or your existing clients. And that helps to evoke the right language and text that you can then use in your marketing.

So be honest with yourself. How well have you documented your target clients so that you can communicate directly with them in your marketing? Is that something you can hand on your heart, say, I know exactly who my clients are, because that is a really significant part of the process. Understanding who you want to do business with. And then also how well do you know your clients and what matters to them? If you've not documented this, then you're going to find yourself struggling to communicate a marketing message directly. And this is where most businesses fall down. Their marketing doesn't hit their targets accurately enough. You know, clients, when we were talking about this on a coaching call the other day, and very rarely do clients have budget as the number one factor. Oftentimes it's more than just price they're looking for. You know, if you're chasing more than two markets or trying to sell video for everyone, then you're going to be run ragged on the hamster wheel like every other kid with a camera and some website skills. But if you get this right, you can become an authority in your space and you only have to be an authority and a hero in your space. You don't need to be famous, you don't need to be a celebrity. You just need to be a celebrity in your niche. And then you can start to command higher rates and generate repeat business more consistently. In fact, one of my clients was seeing the other day, they've got a bunch of clients now who literally just call them up and say, hey, we want you to do this project. Just send us an invoice. They're not even looking at the price because they have such a strong relationship. And this is a relationship that's been built over a month and years and many years in some cases. But that's what we're looking to build here at the vba. It's not some quick fix course that's going to suddenly turn your business around in minutes. That's just not what it is. It is a coaching program that helps you to develop opportunities on an ongoing basis so that in two or three years time you have so many clients that you rarely have to do any marketing because you've got this body of.

Engaged, happy clients who buy from you repeatedly. And that's really what we're looking to do with marketing, is put the right offer in front of the right people at the right time. Now the other thing is, that's really important here is that this takes time. It takes time to set up. But like anything, you know, once, once you think about shooting. Okay, how long did it take you to learn to shoot really well, I'd say probably took me three years and easily 10,000 hours, you know, thousands of interviews, learning how to do it properly, how to light, how to shoot, how to create sequences. But once, once, you know, it becomes second nature. So, you know, we put a lot of effort into the skill side of training ourselves for lighting and shooting and editing and sound and grading. So, so why aren't you putting the same effort into business? Why aren't you focusing on the fact that the business journey is going to take some time? And in the same way as you get training on how to figure out color grading, for example, why wouldn't you go and seek some, some, some guidance on how to build your business. So we help businesses in two ways. We have a, which is really for businesses doing 5 to 10,000amonth or under 10,000, let's say who want to get 10,000, you might be doing 2 to 3,000amonth, you want to get to 6 or 7. That is really a very hard part of the business growth journey because you have to learn some foundational business skills to help you generate inquiries and get some opportunities coming into your business and learning how to sell them, which we'll be covering in future episodes to turn them into kind of, you know, lifetime value clients who come and buy from you more than once. Then we have the video business accelerator Mastermind which is a e mastermind group for businesses that are doing in excess of 10,000amonth and we help them get to 20, 30 and 40. And that is actually, I'll say easier. It's not. The really heavy lifting is done getting from 5 to 10, from 10 to 20, it's actually surprisingly easier with the right guidance and support. So if, if you are in any of those camps at two to three thousand a month, you want to get to six, we can help you with our accelerator foundational program. If you're in the 10,000amonth plus and you want to get beyond that, then we can support you in the video business accelerator Mastermind, which is a much more hands on program where we have weekly coaching. But either of those will help you and assist you to accelerate the growth of your business. And I always say to people, you know, the investment to join these programs should come back at you multiple times over. It is just that it's an investment to help you accelerate the process. So if anyone here listening to this is sitting thinking how can I do this faster? Then it's worth booking a call with us and having a chat to see if it is in fact a good fit for you and for us. And maybe you can join one of our programs and become a case study which, which would be really co. You know, because I love helping people succeed. It's a purpose of mine and I think that, you know, we can all benefit from, from accelerating the process through, through coaching. And I still invest in coaches myself because I know it helps me to have perspective. It helps me to have someone to reference and on our coaching programs, you know, the communities that are built inside them really are very valuable and help people to, to move faster through the process. Anyway guys, I will talk to you again very soon. You've been listening to the how to scale a Video business podcast with me, your host, Dan Lenny. If you're a video business owner who's hit a ceiling and we benefit from mentorship, support and coaching, then check out how you can work with me over@denlenney.com 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. And don't forget to share. If you feel you've got gotten value from this episode and you think it would be useful for other filmmakers you know, then 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.