March 2019 - Oregon Web Solutions

How To Get Consistent Video Production Clients For Filmmakers

While pictures and video have been used to commemorate moments, and as an advertising mechanism for years, it is undeniable that the last decade has brought a huge surge of the want and need for quality digital content. Take a look at Instagram, or Facebook for example – the most popular content is generally high-quality photos or videos. With huge advancements in technology and the mass number of skilled photographers, and videographers, quality content is no longer as hard to come by as it once was. As an aspiring videographer you likely know that there are dozens, if not more, people in your area just like you and simply being good at what you do isn’t always enough to get clients. With that being said, if you’ve got the skill and passion to pursue video production, you are in a market full of work to be done as clients for video work will never run out – there is almost always be a need for quality video content. Whether it is for marketing purposes, weddings, businesses, etc. you can guarantee there is someone out there looking for your services. But, how do you find your clients? Keep reading for our best tips on how to secure your next video production client, and continue to grow your video production business for years to come.

1. Identify Your Ideal Video Production Clients

While there is no shortage of people needing video production, it does not hurt to visualize your ideal client. What is your preferred style of shooting? What would you consider your area of expertise? What is your past experience, and how does that play a role in your future as a videographer? These are all good questions when trying to identify your ideal client to work with. If you would consider yourself good at what you are most interested in (for example, shooting aerial shots with a drone) consider niching down and pursuing clients specifically interested in that type of videography.

2. Make Yourself a Digital Portfolio

While it is a given that a photographer would have photos available to showcase their skill set, it’s not as simple for videographers. Make yourself a digital portfolio, or consider creating a highlight reel of your past work to help attract new clients, or showcase your work to potential clients. With that being said, you don’t need to have full versions of every job you’ve ever done available, but you should have something to represent yourself and the type of work that you do. Consider posting this (or clips of/from it) on your website, and social profiles so it is readily available to those just browsing – you never know who may need a job done.

3. How To Get Clients Using Organic Outreach Methods

An organic reach out method is when you are personally working towards reaching out to prospective clients. While these require you to seek out people without the chance to break the ice before trying to grab their attention, it is a good way to secure potential new clients and bring awareness to your business/brand. Some examples of organic outreach methods are Email – Sending a personalized email to people you believe are potential clients Cold Calling – Making an unsolicited call to a person or business Direct Mail – Physically mailing a brochure or something else to draw attention to your business) Reaching out to people via social networks – Posting on social networks and willing people to engage with your content and mutually engaging with theirs.

4. Learn How To Network Like a Marketer

Networking is one of the best ways to establish relationships and get high-ticket video production clients. Networking is an opportunity to meet new people and, especially in smaller communities or niches of videography, can be a game changer for building your business. Network with prominent people and businesses within your community and, once you make a connection, it’s almost like a free way to market your video production within a new group of people. Network with other local videographers, or photographers and consider teaming up to make content together. Networking isn’t about going out and approaching random people to tell them about your service. It is about making connections within your community that can help you find, or attract more leads. Also consider attending local networking events, speaking at local events, or even host your own event. A quick way to network and put yourself out there is to join online groups. Consider joining a local small business group on Facebook, or engage in posts relevant to videography. Check out Reddit, Quora, or other social networking sites to find people to connect with and gain instant access to people similar to you, or people looking for services like yours.

5. Create High-Value Content & Promote It On YouTube

This may be the most obvious of our tips on how to get video production clients. Market yourself on as many social media platforms as possible, and consider engaging with others on those platforms to help draw attention to your content. While the most obvious forms of content marketing are to post on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn also consider creating free content to distribute. A good example would be to create a cheat sheet titled something like “10 Things To Consider When Hiring Your Wedding Photographer” or writing a blog post relevant to videography/photography and posting it online, or on your website. Alternatively, create some kind of content and incorporate it into a lead magnet. Offer your Wedding Photographer Cheat Sheet for free in exchange for someone’s email. This way, you not only caught someone’s attention (and hopefully willed them to check out your stuff) but you have also collected some contacts for future endeavors. Content Marketing for a video business is essential as it is a great way to get your content in front of others without having to reach out first.

Bonus: Create “Click-Bait” Posts That Encourage Sharing

Remember – when content marketing via social networks like Facebook and Instagram simply posting good content isn’t enough to make your posts visible. In order to beat the algorithm and create organic reach, you will need to post with the intent to engage with your followers. Accompany your picture with a caption willing viewers to comment by leaving a reply, or tagging someone else. Also make sure you are engaging with those that engage on your posts, like their comments, reply back to them and give their page a look. Consider following and liking/commenting on other content that is similar to yours. Build a network of online “friends” and mutually use your engagements with each other to help boost your posts and help it show up on people’s news feeds. While there is a multitude of ways you can attract new video production clients, we would suggest starting out with these few easy tips. Being a successful videographer in today’s market is harder than ever, but is by no means impossible. Put in the work, and produce quality content and you are already on your way to success and more clients. Good luck, and happy filming!

The world has never been the same since the Internet was introduced. With the advent of the digital revolution, amazing things that we once thought were impossible were made available to us. It made the world a smaller but a better place especially for selling your products, services, brand, and business as a whole.

With the development in the business world comes the evolution of marketing terms, jargons, and acronyms. Almost all marketers are guilty of using different kinds of terms that at times confuse the clients. The truth is even marketers are sometimes confused about the terms and acronyms that they use.

One perfect example is the acronyms, SEO and SEM. In the online marketing world, these terms are most often used interchangeably. Some even pull the terms from thin air without clearly knowing the distinction between the two terms.

If you are nodding your head in agreement while reading this, then you are not alone. The terms search engine optimization and search engine marketing can be very confusing. While they are related, they are individually different.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) vs. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Let’s take a look at both terms deeper and expand on each one as we go along. SEO is increasing the number of website visitors by enabling the site to show high on the results when you search a particular term or sentence using a search engine. SEM, on the other hand, is an internet marketing process that increases the visibility of the site through advertising and organic search engine results. SEO is just a part of one of the strategies of SEM.

So What is SEO?

SEO or search engine optimization is a strategy of turning a website into a user-friendly site for search engines to pick up. It involves several technical components like utilizing clean code, fast load times, and high-quality content. This could be in the form of visitor statistics, content, backlinks, multimedia, as well as social media sharing.

The search engine giant Google is believed to be using more than 200 criteria before finally deciding which site tops Google’s search results for any given keyword. SEO is just one of the numerous components that make up SEM. Its major function is to enhance the exposure of the site in the search engine results page. As a result, it aids in raking in free and organic traffic to the website.

The focus of search engine optimization is to make high-quality and valuable contents that relate to the business itself. Additionally, the content is deemed relevant to the searchers by the search engine. It is important to note that the search algorithm of the search engine giant is incessantly modifying and altering.

It is very important that you understand and track these changes. In addition, SEO strategies do not work overnight or give you results immediately. The normal SEO campaign typically takes anywhere from 6 month to 12 months for good results. When executed properly, it could pull in heavy traffic to your website that will set off a positive domino effect on the business as a whole. Normally it’s important to have a good strategy which involves link building too. Find more info on this kind of SEO strategy on OutreachMama blog.

Pillars Of SEO

Search engine optimization is composed of two unique pillars. These are the on-site and off-site pillars. The term on-site refers to everything within your own website. Some basic tasks in on-site or on-page SEO include the following:

Adding proper keywords into meta descriptions, title tags, alt text, and heading tags, to name a few
Written and optimized quality page content and blog posts
Formatting and cleaning up page URLS
Enhanced load speed of the page
Incorporating Google authorship
Integration of social sharing within your content

Off-Page or off-site SEO includes the following:

Making a natural but high-quality backlink profile. This is also known as link building from high-quality and authoritative websites through guest posts or outreach.
Signs of social sharing
Bookmarking in social sites
Content sharing with other sites in your niche.

What Is search Engine Marketing (SEM)?

Search Engine Marketing is a type of Internet marketing that promotes websites by making them very visible in various SERPs because of advertising and optimization. SEM uses advertisements and paid search listings. Unlike its components SEO, SEM delivers quick results by providing fast and substantial exposure to a particular site or the page.

Aside from search engine optimization, SEM involves using a paid search like pay per click listings as well as advertisements. Most often search engine marketing includes pay per click activities and campaigns. However, if you utilize paid search and SEO, then it should be recognized as an effort under SEM.

There is a list of prevalent practices for optimizing your money within a paid search campaign. This includes the following:

PPC or Pay-Per-Click Campaigns

PPC campaigns are highly focused. You should finish thorough keyword research before consider this option or buying. When you have finally selected the keywords that are most pertinent to your brand or business, you can buy the ads on the SERPs where those keywords will be found. In this type of campaign, advertisers pay every time an ad is clicked or its link is opened. Some of the examples of this kind of campaign include Google AdsWords, Yahoo Search Ads, and Bing Ads.

Geo-Targeting

This strategy includes providing exact ads or content to a site user depending on their geographical location. This process is designed to focus on local customers making it a perfect strategy for small businesses.

Keyword Research for SEO and SEM

This is the primary component of search engine marketing since these are what users key in on the search box of the search engines to learn about something. Before you invest your money in this method, it is important that you do some research about the keyword. This way, you will determine what the users would like to know about your brand, business, product, or service. If you are not sure where to begin, you can find various keyword tools online.

Which Marketing Strategy Is Better SEO or SEM?

Until now, there is a debate among advocates of either side regarding which strategy is better than the other. For an inbound marketer, the best approach would be the organic search engine optimization. However, if you look at the big picture, you will realize that genuine search engine marketing will not and could not succeed without the help of organic search engine optimization.

In addition, there are a number of instances where pay per click campaigns are more useful than search engine optimization. For instance, if you want to achieve immediate visibility when you launch your site, the best approach is to create a pay per click campaign since it works faster than SEO and gives instant results.

However, it is foolish and impractical to work solely on PPC without touching on SEO. While it is true that organic search engine optimization takes time to yield results, in the long run, organic SEO becomes less expensive and sticks around. In addition, your site will create a search reputation or credibility that you will not achieve using pay per click campaigns.

The debate about which strategy is better than the other is not going to end. However, it is more constructive if we put an end to the battle for supremacy between the two. Instead, change your perspective and treat high-quality search engine optimization as a requirement for a highly-effective and high-quality search engine marketing.

Search engine optimization is the crucial stepping stone for highly-optimized content that customers and prospects of the search engine marketing find useful. Without blog content, landing pages and web pages that are optimized for search, your efforts in search engine marketing will be in vain because of low quality. As a result, there is little to zero chance that your page will be visible to the SERPs.

In the long run, organic search engine optimization will establish your website’s credibility given that you maintain the quality of your content as well as your social media usage. Organic SEO then becomes less expensive. So, going back to the question, which is the best tactic, the answer is it depends on your specific needs and what you would like to achieve. The key here is fully knowing the difference between the two and maintaining the consistency of your efforts.

At Oregon Web Solutions, we also offer the following services:

Website Designing
Social Media Management
PPC Advertising
Mobile Marketing

Video Marketing
Niche Market Research
And Facebook Paid Ad Campaigns

SEO and SEM Conclusion

We hope you enjoyed our article on SEO vs SEM. If you are considering looking into SEM and SEO or any of our other services and would like a free consultation, simply fill out the form below and we will get back to you right away:

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SEO vs SEM

How To Get Video Production Clients