Transform Your Bookings with Strategic Creative Communications

If there's a host who's listening to this thinking, well, I'd like to have more video content. What would you say to them about choice between just getting started with what they've got now, like just a good quality phone and that sort of thing, versus high production value?

So I think that very much depends on who you are as a business and the quality of the service that you're trying to sell. I would always, always advocate quality over quantity. I would. I run a video production business, I want to sell my services. But genuinely, if you have the ability to get in a team who will come and who know what they're doing and are specialists in the sector, that's important as well. Especially if, if you have guests, you need people who can come in and work around your guests and appreciate that your guests are the number one. They're important, but are still able to guide you into how to get the very best content.

Having a blast, Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee. Cause it's so hard and the tea is loose leaf Making up those rhymes don't write it, just do it loosely. If you want my respect, you're better butt direct.

Mmm.

Here are the words in the podcast. That's what comes next.

Hi, welcome back to the Boostly Podcast. This is the podcast that gives you the tools, the tactics, the training and most importantly, the confidence to go out there and get yourselves more direct bookings. My name is Liam Carolan. I'm the co host of this podcast and we do a series called the Spotlight Series where we look at businesses, people in and around, well, everywhere in the world these days. But for this particular guest, we're based in the UK and we're really diving into her story, we're diving into video production and what you can do by listening to her story within your hospitality businesses. So our guest today is Gillian Davies. She's the director of Contour, which is a communications company. She's got an awesome resume of professional work. She's worked for ITV of you can go onto the website and you can see her presenting the weather and doing all sorts of production and amazing things. So I'm really excited to dive in today to learn from Gillian's experience and things that we can do to take into our own hospitality businesses and in life in general. So welcome along, Julian, thank you for joining me.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here.

Gillian, what would you like the listeners who are tuning in to learn in the Next sort of 20 or 30 minutes. What would you like them to take away from, from your story and from the podcast?

I think probably the most important thing is just getting the basics right. So if you're in hospitality, which most of your listeners most certainly are, I think lots of people tend to over complicate things, tend to overthink things, especially when it comes to marketing. And actually it can be really, really simple and comes down to a few probably quite basic points and consistency being consistent with what you're delivering marketing wise and also being true to your brand making. Who are you? Do you know who you are? So a lot of people, when you really, really drill down, they actually really struggle to tell you who they are, who they're targeting, who their target market is. So if you can figure all that out, then you're onto a winner and. And then it's just about sourcing out your marketing strategy and everything that goes with it.

100. I mean this is the number one lesson that we speak about, which is know who you're selling to. Ultimately, I know who your market is and I couldn't agree more. When it comes down to what I've seen from the website and from the bio and even just having this chat before we've hit records, it's clear that you absolutely love what you do. Why is it important to you, this business and the career? How did you come to be doing what you're doing at the moment?

That is an excellent question and there are many different answers. I'm trying to decide which one's the most appropriate for you and which one I should share, which one I'll get shouted at for sharing. So I did work in journalism for a really long time, about 15 years across many different aspects of it and absolutely loved it was my lifelong dream. But then I had children and I was on the road a lot. I wasn't seeing them. So I also got a little bit disillusioned with journalism and I wanted to. I still wanted to tell people stories. I'm very much a human journalist. I love telling human stories. For example, all of the politics, for want of a better word, rubbish that's going on at the moment. I don't really have much of an interest in it. I like to tell human stories and get to the bottom of what, what real people are doing. And that was why I used to, before getting up to go to ITV super early in the morning to get about half four. And that's how Contour started. We early mornings, late evenings, until we actually got some bites and people started to really trust us and trust in what we were doing.

If there's a host who's listening to this thinking, well, I'd like to have more video content. What would you say to them about the choice between just getting started with what they've got now, like just a good quality phone and that sort of thing, versus high production value? How important is the hey, just get started because you need to start recording stories and assets versus hey, when you record, make sure it is high quality equipment and actually looks professional. What would your advice be around that?

So I think that very much depends on who you are as a business and the quality of the service that you're trying to sell. I would always, always advocate quality over quantity. I would, I run a video production business, I want to sell my services. But genuinely, if you have the ability to get in a team who will come and who know what they're doing and are specialists in the sector, that's important as well. Especially if you have guests. You need people who can come in and work around your guests and appreciate that your guests are the number one. They're important but are still able to guide you into how to get the very best content. I would absolutely do that because from one filming day you can get a video from your. As long as you organize it properly and plan it, you can have a video for your website. You can get multiple videos, short snippets. We've just done our editor just today as I was out filming, piece together 12 and a half minute piece for a website and nine social media clips that will serve our client for the next six months. You can use it for external communications, in newsletters, backlinks for press releases. But having said all of that, if you are just starting out and the budget isn't there, then do something rather than nothing. I think. You know there are plenty of incredible social media sites out there, aren't there, that you can really push your business on as and when you get the opportunity, do it professionally, do it well. Google loves a well made video. We all know that your SEO will thank you. But if it's a choice between doing something or doing nothing, do something. Absolutely.

We need to obviously know how we can find out more about the business, where to go. But just before we do, I wanted to chuck in a couple of quick fire fun questions, Jillian, just because I know that it's just fun basically. So yeah. So what is your karaoke song of choice?

Jolene by Dolly Parton. Every time.

Classic. Classic.

Yeah, there are many, but that would be that's the one.

My other half would definitely be up there sharing a mic with you. She, she absolutely loves Dolly Parton.

Give me a few drinks. I don't need Give me a few drinks karaoke machine. I just need a table and a microphone bottle and we're. We're good to go.

Awesome. Awesome. So we're all about hospitality and book and direct. Where would you like to go next or where is on the wish list to go next for your travels, for your holidays?

I have always, always, always wanted to go to Oregon in America and I don't know why. I love America. I've been to America, lots of works in America, but I've never been to Oregon and I'd really love to go there. But I think the next holiday is mentioned to you. Before we started, we've had not long dogs, not long had 10 puppies. So we're stuck here for this summer. But next summer we're looking at France for three weeks which is as I was telling you before, conta means storyteller in French. I half grew up in France. France. I love it over there. Love the food. So hopefully, yeah, it would definitely be Oregon and. Or France.

Nice, Nice. And I was going to mention that the puppies and we did hear them briefly in the background, but congratulations on, you know.

Thank you.

You mentioned beforehand the Labrador and black Labradors and also red coated Labradors, which is amazing. So they will be, you know, sort of breaking some hearts at the moment as imagine breaking my heart.

And currently I think ripping up a garden chair. But you know.

Oh no. Well, the last two questions is how can we get in touch with the business if we want to follow more about Contour's journey, how do we do?

So probably the website would be wonderful. As I said to you, I'm absolutely rubbish at this sales stuff. I should have thought about this more, shouldn't I? But Definitely the website www.contour, which is C-O-N-T-E-U-R.co.uk Awesome.

Thank you so much. And of course, if you listen to this on the podcast or watch it on YouTube, that'll be in the show notes somewhere as well, so you can click the link. So the last question is, if you could go back to the start of your journey, what would you tell yourself and why?

Oh, it's really cliched, isn't it? But probably just have faith it's all going to be okay. Work hard and I mean, I've always been really lucky and I've had a vision at every point for what I want to do. I think that's really important. That vision and working towards something is, is hugely important in anybody's life. And I've always been lucky that I've had that. So, yeah, probably just have faith. It's all going to be okay for.

Me from this podcast. What I'm going to take away from this is the video content and the production of it and also have passion, have fun in what we do. Pick out them stories and actually put them within your business. And that's actually what makes work, which can be tough at times. It makes it fun, doesn't it? All this stuff. So thank you so much, Jillian, for coming on and sharing your story. Well, thank you so much and thank you too for listening to this on the Boostly podcast. If you want to continue the journey within hospitality and you're not already in the hospitality community on Facebook, you can do so just by searching on Facebook and you can come and chat anything hospitality in there with us. Thank you so much. You've been listening to the Boostly podcast and we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now.

Having a blast Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee. Cause it's so hard and the tea is loose leaf Making up those rhymes don't write it, just do it loosely.