Creatives Grab Coffee - Marketing Strategies for Locally Owned Businesses | Creatives Grab Coffee 60

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

Paul from Moji Cinema shares his journey from professional photography to video production. He started Moji Studios in the early 2000s and transitioned to video production about 10 years ago. Paul found a passion for storytelling and enjoyed the process of creating videos for companies and nonprofits. He focused on locally owned businesses in Albuquerque and started an initiative called ABQ Iconic to tell their stories. Paul's marketing efforts include ads on Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube, as well as email marketing campaigns. He also uses an artificial intelligence tool to create audience personas for his clients. In this conversation, Paul discusses his experience with using AI tools to improve his video production company's marketing strategies. He shares how these tools have helped him create audience personas, generate comprehensive reports, and increase conversion rates. Paul also talks about the importance of attention in the digital age and how his company is working on creating content that hijacks attention. He mentions the challenges of convincing clients to create consistent content and the need to educate them about the value of ongoing marketing efforts. Overall, Paul's approach focuses on delivering results and ROI for his clients.SPONSORS: Canada Film Equipment: www.CanadaFilmEquipment.com Audio Process: www.Audioprocess.ca 🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vHd8BdbkMQITFZmDJ0bo9 🍏 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/creatives-grab-coffee/id1530864140 🎞️ Produced by LAPSE PRODUCTIONS – https://www.lapseproductions.com To learn more about the show, visit: https://www.creativesgrabcoffee.com/ #videographer #videoproduction #podcast

Welcome to Creative Scrap Coffee, the podcast on the business of video production. Creative Scrap Coffee is hosted by Dario Nuri and Kirill Lazerov from Labs Productions. Our goal is to share knowledge and experiences from video production professionals around the world. Whether you're a freelancer looking to start your own business or a seasoned business owner aiming to scale your company, this is the show for you. Join us as we develop a community of like-minded creatives looking to learn and help each other grow. Welcome to the business of video production. Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee. Before we get started with the show, let's go over today's sponsors. Do you have a shoot in Toronto?

Do you need crew or a strong production partner to help you with your project? Lapse Productions is one of the top production companies in Toronto and your go-to video partner. With our strong creative skills and extensive network, we can help you achieve your goal. Lapse Productions is able to offer you production services, white label services, or finder fees for project handoffs.

Reach out to us on our website at LAPSProductions.com to learn more. My name is Mehran, welcome to Canada Film Equipment. We are a boutique rental house based in Toronto. We are here to help you guys out with all production sizes. Feel free to contact us to get a quote if you're a production house and you're looking for lighting, camera packages or lighting and group plan packages. You can see our contact information in the link below. We are more than happy to help you guys out.

Make sure you follow and subscribe to creativescrapcoffee.com. Thank you. Hey, what's up everybody? I'm Matt. Welcome to Audio Process. We are a boutique audio company doing location sound, sound design, post sound, ADR, Foley. We service equipment. We do all your audio needs here in Toronto. We got you covered.

Come on down. AudioProcess.ca. Don't forget to like, follow, subscribe, and all of the other internet things to creativesgrabcoffee.com. They'll be waiting for you, I'll be waiting for you, and we're all going to have a real good time. And now, let's begin the show. Hey guys, welcome to another episode. Today we got Paul from Moji Cinema with us here today.

How's it going, Paul? It's going well. Thanks for inviting me. Thank you for coming on. So for those that don't know, Paul is from Albuquerque, New Mexico. So we got a new state with us today. And Paul, before we get into it, why don't you just tell us a little bit about you and your company?

Sure. Well, I spent most of my career in the professional photography business. My brother is a professional photographer and I was his business manager for many years. And we, one of the things we expanded to was doing a lot of school photography for high school yearbooks and things of that nature. And my brother didn't really enjoy doing school photography, so he asked me to form my own company. So I did. So I formed Moji Studios in the early 2000s and then about ten years ago I was attending a photo marketing convention in Las Vegas, Nevada and there was this workshop that caught my attention was

called micro budget filmmaking and they were talking about how a lot of photographers were using their digital cameras and providing video content for clients and diversifying into video. And this company that conducted this workshop was out of Portland Oregon called Muse Storytelling and I was so captivated with what they were doing that I ended up sending one of my photographers to Portland to apprentice under them for a few months and then when he came back we started a video production division of my photo studio and and then a few years ago I closed my photo studio down because I enjoyed

doing stories and video production much much more so we've been in the video production business since about 2015, but full time since about 2018, 2019 is when we closed our photo studio down. It's very interesting to hear someone go from the photo part of the industry and then go into video. Usually people jump into video very directly in our space. Not so often, like a lot of photographers think, maybe we'll try video, maybe we'll dabble in it. This is what I hear from photographers all the time, but it's not so often you see someone

who makes the complete full 180 switch essentially. So how is that kind of, how was that in the beginning in terms of like the learning curve going from photo to video? Like what do you do you have to change in your in your practice? Yeah, so so basically, you know It's we were in startup mode when when we went to video so but one of the things that I really enjoyed about video as opposed to photography was was I Enjoy telling stories. I enjoy being able to find out what someone's story is and be able to encapsulate it in a few

minutes and hopefully have it resonate with an audience. So I just enjoyed that entire process of storytelling. So that's what hooked me. Plus I was getting burnt out in the photo business to be honest with you. It's not easy dealing with high school yearbook directors and parents about their yearbook photos and things of that nature. So I was ready to make the change and then I just enjoyed being able to create videos for companies and for nonprofits and people like that that you know hopefully help them advance their their likeability factor so to speak with with with their clients or their prospects so that's

that's reason why I enjoyed video so much more and plus it I think it made better use of my business skills that I had acquired over the years by doing video production versus just taking yearbook photos of kids. Did you ever think about expanding into maybe like the corporate side of photography? Well, you know, that's kind of a... In Albuquerque, there's not much of a market for that. It's just that there are a few good commercial photographers in town that had a pretty good foothold in that. And I didn't think we would necessarily do a better job with that than what they were

doing. So, no, it wasn't really something that we really actively pursued, was commercial photography. So you felt like it was a bit of a monopoly in terms of the photo market back then. What years was this in like the mid 2000s or like early 2010s you mentioned? Yeah so in the early 2000s is when I formed my photo business. Right. And the primary market was school photography. And then closed the photo business down in 2018,

at the end of 2018, is when I closed the photo business down. Yeah. I mean, like since you've been in the photo industry for so long, did you not see that there was like a huge shift? I mean, obviously in the industry in Albuquerque, New Mexico, we don't know,

because obviously Dario and I, we know the industries in some of the much more bigger cities where there's so much work to go around. And I guess for you, from a business standpoint, you felt that video had more opportunity than photo in 2018 even, right? Yeah. I think that in the photo business, the industry had become very much commoditized because of people's smartphones. You know a lot of we were just noticing in the photo

business that buy rates for parents for their school photography pictures were just going down and down and down and down and down. They were just steadily declining and that's because I think that people just think that a lot of a photo is being a commodity because it's so easy to take a picture with your phone. Whereas with video, I felt that there was more of an opportunity for us to be able to add value for people because it's not as easy to take a really great video to take a really great video of or create a story in with video than it is with, in photography, like I said, people just look at it as being something I can do.

Whereas with a very well-crafted video, I don't think most people don't think, oh, I can do that, if it's very well done Well, what would you say sure, but would you say are some of the changes, you know? This is in your business once you transition from photo to video Yeah, so so Yeah, it was it's a very different process, of course, so, you know, I'm still I'm not really the the creative part of the business. So when we transitioned to video,

one of my guys, like my photographer who we sent to Portland, he just became a student of video and how to do filmmaking and things of that nature. And then as we grew, I hired people that were film majors at the local university. So my team is comprised primarily of people who've just studied that in college and things of that nature. So all of my crew are people that studied at the local university on how to film, light, sound, editing, those types of things.

So I don't really dabble in that very much. They can do that much better than I am. More still the business guy of the business. Right. No, but I mean, like in terms of like you being the business guy, was it different from running like a photography studio once you transition to video or was it kind of you were kind of used to The same processes that you had for photos you kind of just applied to

video yeah, well well in In the photo business I was selling primarily to schools so the decision makers were typically So, the decision makers were typically principals or high school yearbook coordinators or PTA presidents or people like that. Video, we've been more of a B2B type of sales process. So, I had to learn a little bit more about how to sell B2B as opposed to, you know, how to you, you know, I knew how to do a good job selling to PTA moms and yearbook coordinators and principals. I knew what their needs were and you know how we could fulfill those needs. But in the B2B business, you know, it became a little bit of a different dynamic in terms

of what their needs were and how we could serve their needs and create products and services that would be relevant for them. You mentioned also that you were, when you moved into video, you started bringing in and hiring people from the local universities, from the film programs who know a lot of that technical aspect.

Was that a big shift for you from the photo side? Because like a lot of that technical aspect, was that a big shift for you from the photo side because a lot of the time photographers work as sole photographers and maybe with assistants, but video is a completely different piece where you have to hire a lot of people. So do you hire, did you find that you needed to hire on a freelance basis or did you find it was more valuable to bring people in more on a full-time basis

while doing video actually, yeah, we we We hired them as employee as employees from the very beginning and many of them were like fresh out of college and you know kind of the the guy that I had Maxwell who was the the one who apprenticed, he was kind of in charge of how to train them and bring them into the fold. But we all kind of learned together. We kind of built this business together. It wasn't like this thing where I had this really well-established system for a big bank

of clients and things of that nature. We have been making up as we go along since we brought them in. But the good thing was that I already had a business already in place. So we had systems for how to hire people and how to bring them into our benefits plan and things of that nature. And we had the benefit of having other revenue streams to not just depend entirely upon the video business to sustain us. So we brought them in as employees. But when it became clear that I wanted

to get out of the photo business, we were ready to make the move. I was going to say like jumping right into hiring employees in our industry is not something that's very easy to do unless you have other systems in place, which you basically already answered. You have other revenue streams that were able to kind of help you get set up early on. And then from there, you were able to continue to grow and develop the business since then, right? Right, right.

How's the market over there? Yeah. How's the market in Albuquerque? I think it's fairly good. It's not probably as strong as other markets, but there is a wide variety of different privately owned businesses. Those are the typical types of clients that we serve right now are people that privately own their own business.

And some of them have grown to be fairly successful. So- But what are the industries necessarily in Albuquerque, New Mexico that you find really need video? Because every different state or different regions of certain countries have certain industries that are very prevalent in the video production space. So what is it like in terms of that in Albuquerque?

Yeah, I think that for us, it's been a variety of different industries. There's not really one dominant industry in our city and state that we can just say, well, we're just going to focus in on this particular industry. So some of our clients... So one of the things that we actually started

a few years ago was we had the opportunity to do a video for this company called French Funerals and Cremations and they are the market leader in Albuquerque. They kind of dominate our market in the funeral industry and they wanted us to create a video and we got that job because I'm a personal friend with the founder of the company. And he wanted us to create a video that they could use to onboard new employees

and to tell their story. And they've been around since 1907, I believe. So they've been around for over 100 years to have this really rich legacy. And we really loved telling that story about their history and how they got started and how they've progressed and evolved over the years and how they've adapted to the new changes that have happened

in their industry over the years. And one of the things that dawned on me after we completed that video was this story that they have would be very valuable not to just their employees but to any business person because of the principles that they acquired over the years in terms of how do you service your employees, how do you service your customers, how do you service your employees? How do you service your customers? How do you treat your employees? How do you maintain a certain culture and maintain a stellar reputation

that has been built over a 100 year period of time? And one of the things that dawned on me was that because I believe that their story could benefit other business people, we had this idea. It would be a wonderful thing if we could tell the stories of all of Albuquerque's most iconic companies. So we created this initiative called ABQIconic.com where I basically went out and started approaching businesses that pretty much everybody in the city regarded as Albuquerque's most iconic companies.

And I showed them the video that we did for French Junals and Cremations and said, we'd love to tell your story. We want to create this platform where we can share the stories of Albuquerque's most successful businesses with one another in the business community so that we can all learn what are the most important business principles that we can take to improve the running of our companies. So what ended up happening is that we, first know, we, first of all, we did a little online poll and we just asked the community, who do you believe are Albuquerque's most iconic

companies? And we got lots of different names of different businesses. And I would just approach some of these business owners and said, you know, we did this online poll and we're doing this initiative where we want to tell the stories of Albert Kirke's most iconic companies. And you were nominated. And would you be interested in finding out a little bit more about what we're doing? And I showed them the French Funerals. And then we landed some contracts with several different companies where we were able to tell their story and start sharing that with the community.

So what ended up happening was we, for instance, we told the story of this company called the Frontier Restaurant and Golden Pride Restaurant. They've been around for over 50 years and they're like the place to go to if they're located right across our local university. They're just jam-packed all the time with students and the whole community. So we were able to tell their story. And then another story that we told was for this hot air balloon company called Rainbow Riders.

And that was a fun story to tell. We got to use our drone to get some really great footage of hot air ballooning. And then this other company called TLC Plumbing and Utility, which is a local plumbing and construction company that employs over 600 people in the market area. So we've been able to tell stories from people of different industries. I wouldn't say that we're necessarily focused on one industry or another, but we've told some things in the medical field. We just finished a story for this company called Retina Consultants. And he's like this one of the world's best retina surgeons in the country.

He's located here in Albuquerque and we were able to tell his story. And a local law firm that employs over a hundred people in their law practice. So it's been varied. I wouldn't say that we focused on one industry, but typically the common denominators are people that are businesses that are privately owned and private ownership, locally owned, they have kind of a local flair to them and those are the kinds of businesses we'd like to focus on. I mean you focus, you started to focus more on the community aspect, businesses that have a presence

within the community itself, which is not something that is very common in a lot of bigger towns, states or cities. And I guess that's the one unique differentiating factor for where you are in Albuquerque is that you've been able to kind of identify that there's a huge value for people wanting to see the stories of all these different community centered businesses. And like, because of that, you find that that's become

almost like not necessarily a niche, but kind of like a huge focus for you. And then just you kind of see where that goes as an aspect rather than just being a general jack of all trades kind of video production company, right? Yeah. I think that, yeah, I think you expressed it well that it has become our niche, so to speak. That our niche is locally owned, but businesses that have a reputation of doing things well.

And one of the things we talk about when we created, Albuquerque is most iconic, some of the things we said when we were doing the poll was we want people that some of your favorite businesses that you believe do things right in terms of the products and services that they create, the way they treat their employees, the way they treat their customers, and the way they give back to their community. So. You know, the one amazing thing you did there

is you actually kind of did some of the market research even for those businesses, which made that content so successful. A lot of the time, businesses, they create content without really thinking so much about the end viewer and the audience. Like, what are people wanting to see? What do they want to witness from a business?

And you kind of did that already, inadvertently by making that poll. It's like which companies do you want to hear from? Which companies do you think have a good story to tell? And you're basically reaching out to those audiences directly beforehand and you're kind of making the sale very easy for yourself when you're pitching to these businesses in a way.

It's like, listen, these people, they wanna hear your story. Tell it, it's a no brainer at that point, right? So the kudos to you for discovering that, that's great. Yeah, and it's been a joy for us too, because I, you know, like I'm a business guy. So I love being able to dig in and find out what the details were for how they were able to build their business. And you know, nobody that I've ever talked to who's ever started a business said, oh

yeah, we just opened it up and it just took off. And we were, you know, it was always, there was always these, these moments of, of darkness and despair, all of these big types of hurdles and challenges that they had to overcome in order to get to where they were. So that's what I enjoy, is being able to delve into people's stories and find out what it was that made the difference in terms of some of the breakthroughs that they've had over the years and some of the milestones that they've been able to achieve. Because you guys are kind of like in a smaller market, I'm just wondering how was it, how, what was it like trying to break into video? Because I'm assuming that there were already other video production companies there and I'm

sure they already had their established list of clients and because it's a smaller community like they got a good chunk of the bigger size fish right so how did you deal with that? Yeah so kind of the good thing is is that you know I think that there's room for everybody if you if you're good you can find a niche and so you know And so that's how we kind of got the ball rolling was being able to tell these stories of some of the most successful companies in our market. And then what ended up happening is that we were able to create other videos for these companies too.

So for instance, one of the things that is a big need with many of our companies is not just sales, but sometimes they have enough sales, but they're having a hard time recruiting talent and enough employees, good employees to their company. So then we've been able to create employee recruiting videos for them and help tell the story from an employee's point of view of why a company is a great place to go to work for.

Why it's such a positive culture, they get treated well, it's not just about the money, but the respect that they get from ownership and things of that nature. Just one thing leads to another. If you start building some momentum, you get referrals from your clients and then you can also start focusing in on, hey, what other needs do you have? What are some other business goals and objectives do you have? With some companies, it's been, well, one of the things that we get tired of is having

to train people over and over and over again. So you say, well, why don't you create a really good training video? And all they have to do is hit play, just film it once done right. And then all they have to do is hit play to make sure that they get exposed to the right way of doing something over and over again. And they, it's like sometimes business owners don't even think of those little things of how we can help improve their business in their bottom line through video. So that's kind of the way my mind works. I think like a business owner. I try and be strategic in

the way I think in terms of how can we help them be more effective and more profitable with what they're doing. Yeah, a lot of business owners, they're dealing with, especially smaller businesses, they're wearing so many different hats that it's hard for them to sometimes see a simple solution or idea right in front of them. I can't even count how many times Dario and I have discovered something that was like almost like a no-brainer for us. It's like, oh, how have we not been doing this? Or why have we not been doing things like this for so long? But you mentioned that a lot of like the momentum

that you might've gotten was through a lot of word of mouth or referral based lead generation, right? Have you kind of stuck to that as like your main source of leads? Or have you been exploring? different avenues of generating leads within out in that market Yeah, so

We've we've actually we actually have ads right now on Facebook LinkedIn and YouTube we have some different ads going out right now. And then also we have this email marketing campaign as well too. So what's kind of cool is that a couple of clients that we've landed recently have come through our marketing efforts and not through just word of mouth. And so we're starting to see that to bear fruit, you know, some of these things that we've been putting together. And the reason why we've been doing that is that a few years ago, we created a really nice video for one of our clients, but then they had no clue what to do with it after we created it for them. So it kind of made us students in terms of, okay, how can we

help them get their video seen? So we started doing some learning on digital marketing and media and how to create different types of ads so that we could advise our clients on how to get their video seen once we created it for them. And then we started doing that for ourselves as well too. So it's really been more within the last five, six months when we've been doing more experimentation with marketing on these social media platforms for marketing our business. Why do you think it's been so successful for you as well in terms of the marketing side? Like what specific kind of approaches have you gone about in promoting your business?

Like as you say, you know, marketing, social media, but like what are some of the some of the bits of content or messages that you're putting out there with it? Yeah. So there are actually two big influences that we've had in terms of where we've learned most of our digital marketing materials from. One is this guy by the name of Tim Jarvis. I was talking to Dario briefly about him. He's based in England and he built one of England's largest video production

companies. But then it all kind of fell apart on him and then he repivoted and now he is acting as a consultant to many video production companies. So a few years ago, I bought his online course, and it's probably about 50, 60 hours worth of instruction on how he does things. And I was so impressed with him that he offered this done for you program. He called it a done for you program where he actually coaches you on how to do things and he helps set things up, all the things that you've learned. So there was a ton of things we've learned about digital marketing through him in terms of things like how to set up Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, this thing called UTM links, how to, another big part of the learning that we got from him was the buyer's journey that everybody goes

through either the awareness stage, the consideration stage, or the decision stage when they purchase a product or service, and you should have different types of content for the different stages of the buyer's journey. So one of the things that, one of the cool tools that he has come up with recently has been this tool that uses artificial intelligence to come up with audience personas for your client.

And you basically answer a few questions and within 10 minutes you get this 10 to 15 page report on the audience persona for that particular client you have in mind. And it's been a really awesome type of tool that we're starting to use. So it identifies the target market for businesses based on some of the questions that it's asking? Is that what it does? Well, basically you have to come up with the target market is already identified, but you try and describe them in as much detail as you can. So you have to, for instance, you put in the company's name, who they're trying to reach,

where they're located at, and the kinds of products and services that your client offers and how they, you know, and what I found is the more detailed answer that you give into that artificial intelligence tool, the better report that comes out of it. So how do you use that for your benefit? Like what do you use that information for after you get it? Yeah, so for instance, for our clients right now, when we do a discovery meeting, we find out who they're trying to reach. And then we put that into that tool tool and we have this 13 page report

that we can give to our clients and says okay you know this is this is this is this is your target markets what what their paying points are what their biggest problems that they want to have solved are, what type of content is going to resonate with them. So some of the things that come out in the report would be those types of things, their goals, aspirations, their pain points, their needs, and then the social media channels that they are most likely to get their information from, the types of influencers that are out there that might be impactful for them. And then it even gives you this little draft of an elevator pitch of how you would pitch to them as well too. And then

it gives you about maybe 10 suggestions on awareness stage content and then maybe five or six suggestions on consideration stage content and five or six suggestions on decision stage content. So it's just this amazing little tool that he's come up with, basically using artificial intelligence. And he set this up with Typeform and other types of things. And what's the name? What's the name of it? Well, it's something that I think he only provides to his clients. It's Tim Jarvis. So he has to probably go through his course. Yeah, yeah.

Or hire him as a coach or something like that. So he makes this available to all of his clients. And- We should have him on the podcast, eh? What's that? Yeah, Dario, let's reach out to him and have him on the podcast. That could be, yeah, have that episode sponsored by him.

Cause that tool just sounds incredible because you're immediately within the first call with the lead you give them so much value that I mean obviously so are you doing that during the first call or are you doing that maybe later on? Yeah so yeah the way we do things is we have a discovery call with people and then I tell them I'll get back to them in about a week and come up with a proposal for them. And that's when I'll present the audience persona data to them. Is it that time of giving them a proposal?

So you get all the information you need for that app in the discovery call? Correct. Correct. You're giving them a strategy approach almost with this AI tool because it's basically not only giving you the audience persona, it gives good suggestions for what content that clients are looking for, especially if they're coming to you

with like what they're asking, like say they wanna do like a two minute profile video, but what kind of profile video or like, is that even needed right now based on what stage of career you are on. So I'm very curious as to like what questions it asks you to provide that would be able to kind of like generate this report. Because 13 pages is not a small report.

That's, there's a lot of value that's probably being jam packed into that. So you think that that tool has been able to drastically increase your conversion rates from leads to clients? You know, basically this tool has only been available for a little over a month. So it's still in the early stages. But I've gotten great feedback from prospects and people that I pitched to after they just start kind

of blown away with how much information is in this report. So it's very much in its infancy right now, but I do believe that yeah, it's going to definitely improve our conversion rate. If that becomes a mainstream standard, that's going to make huge shifts in the industry because a lot of a lot of production companies don't do that. A lot of the time when a lead comes to you, you're giving them a pretty general proposal. You know, you provide like some case studies, some suggestions based on the details that they have provided you and

things like that. And then rough estimates based on your discussion with them, right. But then like, creating such a huge report, it sounds like it's a lot of work that will go into it. But because it's an AI tool, it's doing a lot of the legwork for you. So it's going to become an easy thing to also provide almost like a standard thing. I don't know. I don't know if this could become that.

It depends if Tim Dreyfus likes to put that tool out there. But I mean, if every video production company starts signing up with him, who knows? Yeah, well, I know that, yeah, he's pretty much taught us how to write proposals as well too. He, when we signed up with him, he put together a proposal template for us, and it's very comprehensive.

So, you know, it's not unusual for us to have an over 20 page proposal when we meet with a client. What would you say is the most important, a very key aspect of a proposal that a lot of people don't maybe talk too much about including in their proposals? Yeah, I think that the thing with Tim Jarvis is it's very much about teaching you how to set up a metrics plan. And for us, it's about showing a business owner the type of return that's possible with the proposal that we put together. So for instance, one of the things that I ask our client is, is what is the lifetime value of a client? And a lot of times they may not have a clue

what that is. So I'll sit down with them and I'll go, okay, so what type of revenue does an average client spend with you in a year's time? For some people, it's fairly substantial numbers. It could be like $20,000. I recently pitched to this company that powder coats metal parts for manufacturers. When they get a client, it's not unusual for them to spend $20,000 a year with him on coating their metal parts. And I said, okay, and how long can you expect to keep that client? How many years do you think? He says, well, at least five years. Okay, so then that's $100,000 of

revenue that that client could give them over the course of a lifetime. And I said, so then I'll ask him, how much of that is profit margin? What's your gross profit margin for that? And let's say it's 50%. So then it's $50,000 is what the lifetime value of a client is. So if we can lend you one client, how much would you be willing to spend for video? Kind of puts things in perspective, right?

When you put together a $20,000 video proposal for somebody, but if they can just get one client, that's $50,000, you know, type of, just for landing one client. So I always try and put things in terms of perspective of not the dollars and cents so much of what the video costs, but how much it can, if we get this to work, of course it's probably going to be more than one client we can land for you with a really good plan type of thing.

It's good to say you have that guarantee on your website as well. If they don't see an ROI within six months, we're working for free. I'm like, any time, it's rare that you see that from any video production company. I'm like, this must work if he is willing to put this on his website

and shout it right on the homepage. So is that kind of like become a bit of an incentive that you've used to entice more customers to sign? Yeah. And this is all actually relatively new too. So you know, you asked me, you know, who my influences were. So another influencer for me was a guy by the name of I don't know if you ever heard of him Sabri Subi. He started this

company this he has a digital marketing company in Australia called King Kong Marketing and what what happened was one of my team members sent me this video and it was his, his, uh, promotional video, Sabri Subi's promotional video. And what he offered in his promotional video was, um, you could, um, you could get a free copy of his book. Uh, I think the, the copy, the, the book's title is called sell like crazy. So if you can look it up, you sell Like Crazy on YouTube by Sabri Subi. So I end up, you know, just had to pay for shipping and I got this book.

It's this, I don't know, 250, 300 page book, read it cover to cover and I said, this guy really knows what he's talking about. He really knows what he's talking about. He really knows what he's doing. So what ended up happening is I became a victim of his sales funnel and ended up buying his online course. Spent a ton of money. But again, another course that's probably about 60 hours of instruction and really detailed stuff on how to market.

And kind of the big thing that I believe, that I learned from him is that since we're living in this era of the internet, there is so much competition for attention these days. So attention has become the currency of the internet. If you don't attract attention, no matter how well a video is done, if you don't attract attention, it just is worthless. So those are some of the things that we've learned from him.

So we've been starting to put together types of concepts for our clients. And this is all, I just finished the course probably last December. So it's just been a few months since I finished the course. I'm still learning and still learning how to apply it. But I'm, but it's making us, it's challenging us to be, how do we hijack attention for our clients? You know, so some of the things that, for instance, one of my newest clients, they market

this kit that tests for mold in your home. It's a do-it-yourself mold test kit. And this guy, you know, says that so many times people are chronically ill and they don't know it because they have mold growing in their home. And that's what's making them chronically ill. So then we started to think, okay, how do we market this product, this do-it-yourself mold kit? And so I challenged my team, we're going to be filming this next

month. And one of my team members came up with this concept of this guy going door to door selling mold, you know, door to door. And he has this case and he's, and it's like this obnoxious, nerdy looking door to door salesman. And he comes to your door and then he talks about the latest in home decor and then he opens up this case and there's these Petri dishes full of mold things of that nature you know so yes something like that just what can we do to hijack it how is we how can we as video content producers create content that's going to hijack attention?

That's kind of the big challenge that I think is making us really re-evaluate everything that we're doing, is how do we move the needle for our clients and get them the results that they're looking for? Of course, yeah, it puts pressure on us. If we don't deliver an ROI, then I don't want to work for free. And I want to pay my people. I have to still pay them. So it's going to be out of my pocket if we don't deliver results.

So yeah, it puts pressure on us. You can do it with a fire under your butt. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, that's something that we've been doing recently is just trying to incorporate how do we hijack attention as a content producer. And so I think that there's going to be more narrative types of pieces that we put together with scripting and storytelling and what is going to be a hook that just gets people to say, yeah, I want to watch this.

One thing I'm curious about because I've noticed that some production companies are taking more of a dive into the strategy aspect of the whole marketing process as well. Because a lot of the time video production companies are known for just simply creating the video content. And there's been this kind of evolution of companies moving into more of the strategy aspect of things, which is great. I'm noticing, based on some people that we've talked to,

that that's more of a popular aspect in smaller markets in different parts of either Canada or the US. I don't hear too much of that in some of the bigger cities. And because a lot of the time, I believe it's because when people need strategy, a lot of the time go to bigger agencies, especially bigger companies. They go to big agencies who handle the strategy, a lot of the time go to bigger agencies, especially bigger companies. They go to big agencies who handle the strategy, the overall marketing aspects, and then video

is just a small component that you hire certain vendors for to kind of bring in. And that is what our market is like here in Toronto a lot of the time. So do you think it's because it's the same aspect in Albuquerque where there's not so many like big agencies that are kind of handling this for smaller companies but smaller companies still need strategy so they're kind of looking more to video companies to kind of provide that or do you see them also looking at smaller marketing agencies kind of helping in that aspect? Yeah I see a mixture of that so I think that yeah we're kind of like in a little bit of a gray area. We're

not like, we don't promote ourselves as being a marketing agency or an advertising agency per se. But this has just kind of evolved out of my frustration of when we produced this great video and then we looked on their YouTube channel, it had 29 views, and we go, okay, what was the point of all of that work that we put in for them, you know, to get 29 views? So it's just something that's kind of evolved. And then, you know, it's evolved through what we've been,

and we're still in the process of learning, is through what we learn from Tim Jarvis of you know, what he has taught us about, about how to market your video production company that, that yeah, if you add these things to your tool belt on help, how to help them distribute it and measure it and measure results and show them that you're getting them a return on investment. Yeah, that's something that, yeah, I think the last two contracts that I've led it have been because we've been able to tell people, yeah, these are how we're gonna get you the results that you're looking

for. I mean, and the value also is that you're actually doing it at a cheaper approach for them as well and a much more simplified approach. Because a lot of the time people go to a lot of bad agencies and marketing companies because they want a one-stop shop. They don't wanna be going to five different vendors to handle all those aspects like you just handle that, take care of it.

But maybe there's not as many marketing companies or maybe they're too expensive within your market. So coming to you for video and then you having an element of strategy that is very targeted with just the video aspect alone ends up being cheaper for them in the end, probably. I think that's what I'm guessing. Yeah, and some of our clients already have marketing agencies, so we coordinate with

them for certain things. So we don't do the marketing for all of our clients and things of that nature. But yeah, we just, for instance, this one client that I have they had somebody that has You know somebody that built their website for them So we're coordinating with them to put the Google tag on so that The main thing that we want to make sure of is is that we get credit if one of our videos gets them to A page on their website. I want to get credit for it, you know So we need to have that set up so that the Google tag is attached in the UTM link from our content and it gives us the right amount

of credit for getting somebody to a landing page even if one of our clients is using a different ad agency or marketing agency for their things. What do you mean by credit specifically, like in terms of like tagging your business on that video as well? Cause that's not a very common thing that I, like Daria, do you hear too much of that here or no?

But we don't do marketing. Well, yeah, I know we don't, but I'm like wondering if that's an aspect of other companies. If you're a marketing agency for sure, you're definitely keeping tabs on metrics like that, right? Because then you gotta show it in your reports that... It's from you.

Yeah, they clicked on that. Right. So, yeah, basically the way it works is that every website, they can say that every website should have Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager installed on a website and they should be able to say okay how many people visited this website and then they should also be able to say with a Google Tag Manager is how many people came to this page on your website because a specific ad that you ran on YouTube for instance or a specific ad that you ran on Facebook. Where that traffic that came to that page came from.

So that's what basically that's what Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics does. So that's what I mean by I want credit. I want to know that the video that I created and the YouTube ad that I helped them create with my video was what got them to that page on their website. How it worked on their website. How it worked landing page. I'm just wondering a lot of the times with your leads or clients, are you dealing with the marketing departments or do they not have like a

marketing team? Cause a lot of things you mentioned, like the conversations about, you know, how much is, uh, your client lifetime, whatever that term was. Uh, that's something that usually the marketing people wouldn't know or stuff like that. So I'm just wondering, like, maybe it might be easier to pitch yourself as that kind of solution when that department isn't there

or isn't as strong. Yeah, so we market to, to some, some larger companies, they have a marketing director or a VP of marketing or so. So, so we market to people with, um, like that level, but then we also market to the business owners because sometimes business owners don't have a marketing director. Like you said, they're wearing all the hats in their company, and they make all the decisions for their company, things of that nature. So it's kind of a mixture of who we market to.

Sometimes for the larger companies, we're trying to message to the marketing directors, but for privately owned smaller companies, it's the owner of the business or the founder that we're trying to reach, who's the decision maker. And they may not have a marketing person in staff, but sometimes they make marketing decisions, they'll still buy marketing services from different places and things of that nature, so it's a mixture for us. And kind of the audience persona, we did audience personas for both of these,

and they have different types of pain points and hot buttons, a business owner versus a marketing director. So a marketing director. You know, so a marketing director, they're asked, what they want to do is they're an employee, so they want to get promoted. So they want to be able to do something where it's going to increase business so that they can get that next promotion that they're looking for. So that's kind of their motivation type of thing. A business owner, they're just trying to survive and bring cash flow in, you know, usually. So it's a little different type of motivation depending. So we're trying to

create different messages appealing to those different audiences of what's going to appeal to them. different to those different audiences of what's going to appeal to them. Another thing I'm wondering about is you mentioned you were trying to pitch your videos is kind of like, you know, they'll be evergreen in the wild. I'm just wondering, though, how do you convince them to create content with you on a more consistent basis? Like, so let's say you already did that onboarding video for that one client. How do you then keep in touch with them and say, hey, like we need, you should do this or you should do that?

Yeah, I think we're still a work in progress in that area. It's like I said, I just kind of learned a lot of the, I think last year was a year where we did a lot of learning. We did a lot of learning from the SabiSubi course and was still learning from the Tim Jarvis types of things. So we still need to remark it to the people that we've done videos for in the past and go, here are the new things that we're doing right now

that we didn't have in our tool belt a few years ago. So yeah, I still need to catch up with some of my old clients with what we're doing with that. And so we're still a work in progress. Yeah, as you mentioned, you're just starting to implement a lot of these things. It's just funny, because you talk about it, like you've been using it for this method

for so many years at this point. We're like, oh, like how was that yielded? It's like, oh yeah, we just started last week or last month. You know, it's like, oh, okay. But yeah, no, definitely we gotta follow up within a few months and see like kind of how how things have progressed for you. Cause we're definitely curious about some of these new

strategies you've been kind of implementing. Yeah. And I think the early results have been encouraging. Like I just said, probably the last four contracts we've landed have been retainer contracts where it's not just a one video thing, it's a series of videos that we're creating for them with an overall game plan type of thing. So, you know, like we were creating awareness stage stuff, consideration stage content, decision stage content.

So that's kind of the direction we wanna go more towards is being able to get more clients. Like we've landed, the last four clients we've landed, they've signed up with retainer type of contracts with us as opposed to just a one-off type of deal. Oh yeah, it definitely sounds like it's already been very useful at that point to get even one retainer client has already made that strategy worth it at this point, but four in what, like a month or two months? That's pretty impressive. Yeah. So yeah, we're cautiously optimistic that we're on the right track. And you know, I do believe, yeah, it's much better if you

can have somebody sign you to retainer for six months to a year as opposed to just being a one and done type of transaction. Oh, absolutely. We're kind of like hitting the one hour mark now with the episode. Are there any questions that you might have for us or anything like that? Or Dario, anything else on your end as well? No, no, no, I'm good. I think he's got a meeting though in like 10 minutes. We got to kind of. That's why I'm kind of leaving it at the at the last point. So, yeah, if you have any questions, let us know.

All right. Well, I appreciate the invitation and enjoy talking to you. Likewise. All right. Thank you Paul. So if you guys want to reach out to Paul his website is Moji cinema and how you spell that is Let me just pull it up here. M. O. J. I cinema.com and then just reach out to paul. Thank you again paul All right. Thank you Okay, let me cut it. OK, hold on. Don't leave. OK. Don't leave yet. YouTube, and your favourite podcast app. Creatives Grab Coffee is created by Laps Productions,

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