What is your marketing strategy for 2020 EP#058

G' day guys. It's Dan here with this Tuesday, the 28th of January's microcast for the how to Scale a Video Business Podcast. Week five of the year already. Isn't that insane? Here in Australia, most people are now kind of back to work. Australia sort of shuts down for January, but I can't believe it's almost, almost through January already. And it's a tough month for a lot of people. Which is really the topic of today's little snippet really is, how's, how's it going? You know, how is January going? How is your marketing working? Is it working? Is it not working?

I've got some, some cool stuff coming up. I've actually got Alana joins coming on the show on Thursday with a two parter to talk about marketing for small business. Because I think it's the really important topic that we should be focusing on, especially at this time of year. You should actually be focusing on marketing at all points. In fact, any business is generating under $500,000 a year should be their number one focus should be sales and marketing and marketing and sales, in that order. Marketing is about getting your message in front of the right people at the right time and for that message to resonate with them. And you know, I am a big advocate of focusing on marketing. It should be about 30% of the amount of time you spend on your business should be on marketing and sales because without it you're not going to generate any opportunities.

So it's really important that you come up with a way to communicate to your target market very clearly. And we've just come off a coaching call with the accelerator clients and it being week five, we have a kind of bonus session. We actually broke down how I quoted and pitched and won and we delivered the Sony FS5 launch film back in 2015 and we had a big discussion about Quartz and how you should lay Quartz out and things like production fees and contingency. But you know, to get projects like that or any kind of projects, you know, one of our clients was just saying he's having a negotiation with an American client who he's built a relationship with on LinkedIn. And as I've mentioned a few times, this, this, our whole approach within the accelerator is to really lean heavily into LinkedIn. It's a very powerful tool, but it's a connection content strategy. And so you have to be creating consistent content on social and I must say social media, LinkedIn to build a relationship. And you can't do that if you're trying to appeal to everyone. You know, there's a great analogy in marketing which is if you try and appeal to everyone, you'll end up appealing to no one. So you've got to get clear on who you're focused on. In fact, Edwin, on the call, excuse me, was. Was has just won a job with a mining firm and he'd put a post up on LinkedIn and it was for a big mining client and they got behind it and they promoted it and it was just a behind the scenes picture. But this behind the scenes picture ended up with 15,000 views and off the back of that he had a new client approach him and he's just signed a fairly decent size project, one in Brisbane, one in Perth here in Australia, to go and shoot some, some ancillary equipment to do with that. So a direct example of posting content, building relationships, following up and the thing with the content strategy around marketing is that you've got to actually be social, you've actually got to be human, you've actually got to offer some value. And that's very difficult to do if you're trying to appeal to multiple markets. So my advice to you is pick a niche, pick a market, pick a sector, or pick a style of work that you do which allows you to speak to one specific target market at a time. It's just what will happen with LinkedIn. It will become like all other social media platforms. There's a golden opportunity just now. It's a window of opportunity to really get in there, be consistent and deliver value to your market and let them come to you. Because the way we set up our profiles, it's very clear what you do, who you serve and what your offer is. So when you connect with someone, they're going to look at your profile and when you look at your profile, they're going to decide whether or not you're someone who could be of value to them in the, in the future. And if they think there is some value, they'll accept your connection request. Now this is where it gets interesting because that means they'll start seeing your content, if indeed you start to post content regularly and what you'll see from my feed and if we're not connected on LinkedIn, please do reach out and connect with me on LinkedIn and let me know you listen to the show and where you are, because I'd love to know that.

As a little aside, we have no idea really where people are listening. We've got our stats and we can see people are listening all over the world and it's really exciting. But if you love the show, please connect with me on LinkedIn. Tell me that you listen to the show and you'll start to see my content on there as well. Because I post pretty much three days a week on LinkedIn, either podcasts or videos or other insightful stuff around scaling a video business. So if you're listening to this and you want to scale your video business, there's going to be more free good stuff coming out on LinkedIn.

But yeah, what I'm finding with my group of accelerator clients is they're really embracing this. And the more consistently they are posting on LinkedIn, the more consistency they're getting in the marketing. So let's go back to that whole idea of a marketing funnel and a marketing pipeline. A pipeline is like, you know, an example would be if you did 30 days of marketing now for the next 30 days, you may not see returns on that for 60 to 90 days. Think of it like planting a seed. You got to plant the seed, water it every day before the bud flourishes. It's the same in marketing. And what. And what I often see, and I get it because I've been there myself, what I often see with filmmakers and video producers is that they're inconsistent with what they're posting. They don't know what to post, they procrastinate about what they're going to say, they think too long and hard about what they're going to say, and they don't do anything. Whereas if you know your target market well and you understand the challenges they face, and you understand what they need and want in their, in their lives, you can provide that. And here's the magical thing about this. If you can describe a client's pain, problem, need or want or desire better than they can, they will automatically assume you have the solution. They will reach out, they will get in touch and they'll say something like, hey, I've been watching your stuff for a while, I've got this problem. I think I'd like to have a conversation about you helping me solve it. It's happening time and time again to our accelerator clients who are following this process. Of course, part of the advantage of them being in the group is they have weekly accountability. So we're always talking about this. And the people that don't do so well are the ones that don't implement. And this is true for any industry. If you don't do the actual work, you're not going to get the results. And it's very easy to exert a lot of effort doing a lot of different things. I mean there's so many social media platforms. For example, you know, if you try and post on LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram every day, it's exhausting. So I personally do a little bit on Facebook. Most of my effort goes into LinkedIn because I know my target market and I'm getting great response there. In fact, just recently we've been testing some videos. Both videos have trended within a couple of days. So, you know, we're really getting to grips with what's working on LinkedIn. In fact, I'm going to do want to do some more LinkedIn specific training. So keep an eye out for that. I'm going to do some sort of LinkedIn webinar or offer a LinkedIn course because it's so powerful. I want to share it with you because it's such a great opportunity. So back to marketing. Yeah. So you know, most businesses don't have a marketing strategy and they don't have a marketing calendar and they don't have a plan and oftentimes it's because they just don't know what to say and what they should be saying. So coming up on Thursday, we've got the first part of our two part marketing series with Alana joins and it's the five step marketing strategy for small businesses which you're really going to enjoy, which is she breaks down and shares what are the steps you got to take? Because what I want for you as a listener of the show is to become more successful. That's it. That's the reason I do this. I want you to become more successful. Some people will want more help and they reach out and if they're a good fit, we bring them into our accelerator program. But if you just listen to the show, if you just do nothing but implement, you will become more successful. But if you're struggling for some reason to get off your ass and actually do the work, you could ask yourself why. And oftentimes it can be procrastination and procrastination is not serving you. You've got to start getting out of your comfort zone and start being consistent with your marketing. So guys, I think you'll, you'll really get a lot out of them. Of Alana's podcast on on Thursday and, and then we've got another episode coming out next week and please make sure you connect with me on LinkedIn. If you've got any marketing questions, send me a message. Maybe we'll do an episode of the show. Anyway, guys, until Thursday. See you later. You've been listening to the how to Scale a Video 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@denlenny.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 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. See you next week.