Lessons

Lesson Info

High End Branding

so why don't we get into business to make money are we all making the money that we want to be making doing this we're not why what do you think's happened tar industry why aren't we making good money it's not valued but who's the the first person that should value your art yourself exactly because what happens if you don't value your work nobody else will how many would you say how many of you would say that video's becoming more relevant nowadays pretty much right everything's evolved all this great new technologies out we've got it video is becoming more of a priority would you say to brides this was ah recent wedding survey asking brides toe list in order of priority their wedding vendors and guess where wedding video order for yes dead last are we becoming much more of a priority to the brights are we becoming much more of a priority to the bride's now we're dead last seven percent unfortunately we think it is you know why because the videographers that our online the ones that go...

to these groups there in forums they're trying to evolve they're trying to get better unfortunately that only represents less than one percent of all the wedding videographers that are out there in the world it seems like there's a lot of us but we all know each other from online the community is very small and if you spread if you spread that out all across planet earth it's less than one percent that are trying to evolve so that means ninety nine percent of wedding videographers are not trying to evolve and get better and make more money so what is what happens the standard is very low and we're battling that so let's talk about branding and marketing because we've got the work right we've gone out we've shot the footage we have good camera skills were being creative we're thinking outside the box were being efficient we're getting all this footage we have teamwork our second foot in our second shooter is just as good as a primary shooter that type of thing so what do we do now now we have we've edited this stuff right live editing we put this very compelling film together we have the work now what do we have to do we have to brand it right who are you what do you want to be known for producing have you ever thought about that what do you want to be known for definitely a clean type of style something that doesn't need a lot of fluff to look good just very clean his kind of what I want to be known for my films yeah tyler well right now with my photography have been going with you know just the mantra of keeping it fun southern and simple the kind of marketing toe what is inherently authentic within my own self okay perfect okay so let's why don't we brand ourselves well way market who are we marking torch hui marketing for brides and grooms sometimes brides moms but really when you boil it down is the bride exactly and what sold to my goal we want to enter this high end arena correct because what's in the high end arena high end money that's that should always be the ultimate goal is to reach that market the problem is that market is very small it's very small what's the popular market the middle the low to mid range that is the popular market because eighty percent of the brides are on a semi right tight budget right or they're on a moderate to low to moderate average budget then you have about ten to fifteen percent that our mid to high and then you have about maybe five percent that are really spending some nice money on these events it's very small the market's very small the load of mid range is saturated right it's saturated with vendors so what do we do we have the brand herself what do you want your branding to be at this point while you're still learning you're still growing your business do you want to be known for what you're producing right now so what's gonna happen when you reach the point where you say I've learned enough and my works where it should be this is what I want to be known for but the problem is you've been known for producing maybe some lackluster films over the past couple two three years what happens then because maybe people are remembering you by what you were producing two three years ago when you hear your company name it could present a little problem now when I first started my business I wasn't ready roman films does anybody know what I was neil's got something a little bit just right yeah roman empire was a roman empire productions and this name was brought about about by fellow policemen that I worked with and when I started my business when I incorporated I says you know what I need a company name to incorporate so you know the police buddies ever says I should name a roman empire you know it's kind of catchy or whatever and at that point I never even dream to running like a wedding video out of free business I just wanted incorporate so I could write some of the equipment off bought for this hobby of mine which was videography so I had the roman empire and I kind of stuck with roman empire and I says you know what I just kind of make all my mistakes under the roman empire and once I've kind of reached the point where I had the work that I want to be known for maybe I'll make the switch then now one of things that I did was I sat back and I looked around myron not to videographers but two photographers because photographers in my opinion they do very well at branding themselves marketing themselves and things like that so I was looking to a lot a lot of local photographers are very well known at the time and one of the things that I noticed was that the really popular ones they're really successful ones their branding was all about their name they had basically branded their name and I and I thought and I wondered why they did that and after thinking about it a while I figured out what they were doing they were basically selling exclusivity because it's them and it's not a company it's them and it's not subcontracted employees it's not a big company where you don't know who you're going to get so I thought that was kind of interesting so when my work got to the point where it was what I wanted to be known for producing I said you know what I want to do a complete re brown I want to change the company name and I want to try this out I want to try this whole um exclusivity thing out but before I did I wanted to try it out to see that actually worked so one of the things that I did was while I was still roman empire productions I had packages and we'll get into packages and customizing and things like that later on but while I still had packages what did was I entered one line that's part ofthe my my existing packages and I basically had package and package being there were identical the only difference was packaged be now said ray roman as your exclusive cinematographer and I charged two thousand dollars more for that package and I sold that package now ninety percent of the time so I knew selling exclusivity was goingto work what the bride's didn't know was if they didn't get package b and they got package a ray romano was still going to be the exclusive cinematographer for the wedding but I wanted to try it out to sea will work and it actually did work and these brides were actually became very concerned is ray roman going teo still shoot my wedding if I don't get package b and things like that and we would just say you know if he's available will still shoot the wedding or at least he'll try to shoot the wedding but if you have a package b it kind of guaranteed that ray romano was going to be the exclusive cinematographer for the wedding so I said you know what this is gonna work and this is when I made the decision to rebrand myself as ray roman films because it just kind of exuded this exclusivity that I now knew I could sell for more money so what about branding you want to be high and right so you got to do what you gotta look high and you want to be high and you gotta look high end you got to do what you can to try to look high and let's talk about websites because this is the first thing hopefully that you know start working on it's the first thing they see when they're at work in their surfing the net what's the first thing that they go to they goto they go to your website and what we're going to see when they go to your website are they going to see something that's very cluttered that's just packed with information that's confusing right are they going to judge your work by what they're seeing on your website are they gonna kind of relate one thing to another if they end up on a cheesy website could they assume that your work is also cheesy without ever having seen your work so this is very this is very very important because if you have if you have a website that you haven't put a lot I invested a lot of time in designing right they may kind of relate that to your work without ever having seen your work web surfers have a very short attention span remember this especially in your portfolio page or like if you have a block page and things like that I always try to have my best work either front page or close to the top of the front page now some people they have outdated work so what happens now you're you've evolved you've got new fresh work it looks amazing but you don't have any your website you have kind of like some outdated work so always keep the most current stuff on your website keep the best stuff visible because a lot of times the brights may only look at one video and that's the video that's up at the top or the video that's representing your your website they may only look at one clip and what happens if that's not your best work what if your best work is actually buried in your archives think about that because they're not going to go through your entire library off films for the most part unless they're just completely obsessed with your work like susan right avoid too much information don't make it confusing what do you want them to see when they go to your website your your top piece maximum probably top three pieces your work you want them to see your work do you need a two three page bio I don't want them spending all that time on my bio page I just want them to go to my theater page learn a little bit about me maybe my personality personality personality a little bit I got it out but I don't want them to spend too much time on anyone page besides my portfolio page my theater page that's where I want them to be I want come see the work enjoy the work figure out if it's their stall or not and then hopefully navigate to the contact page and contact us things like that so we talked about people associating your work with your website this is a biggie let's talk about your website try and keep your site active you know you can develop I used to come when I had a blogger called blood stalkers they were constantly going back to your block to try and see if you had new weddings up these people are great because these people are going to be at work and they're actually when they're sitting in from their computer and you have this new wedding up there actually calling their friends over like oh my god you've got to see this or they're sending the links to that wedding to their friends or maybe somebody that they know that getting married so basically these people almost become part of your team your marketing team they're actually marketing your product without you having to pay a dime which is great so you want teo keep your side active if you don't have a blogger portfolio page you might want to consider getting one keep your best work way talked about that avoid out data work and put tags on your work is anybody familiar with tags what do we use tags for to categorize and essentially it can make suggestions about what they're going to find inside the video wants the click play as well that but what does it do with in the search engines doesn't help you out in the search engines currently I think yes although google's always changing google's always changing but for the most part and I'll show you some samples here this is an old block that I had this is um I think they call this blogger this this is old blogger so you should use this the problem with this type of blawg was that the play window for the video I was very small and it's just it wasn't that impressive when you clicked on the videos and and I wanted the presentation to be very cinematic very like larger than life type deal so when I got my my custom website you can see the play window here is probably four times the size of the blogger play window for the video and this is exactly what I wanted now if you notice over here on the on the right hand side I've tagged most of the vendors that were involved with the wedding and I've highlighted one here just as an example and it's the powerhouse band and its band that I work with quite a few times down in palm beach florida I tagged powerhouse so what happens when I tak powerhouse now when somebody searching for maybe the powerhouse band in the search engine you might see the top two results come back to my site and they weren't even searching for a roman but I've come up because they were searching for powerhouse band which was tagged on my site it works vice versa if they're looking for ray roman they come to my site they see powerhouse band there maybe they were looking for a band and now they click on powerhouse bands link because I have a direct link to powerhouses website so it's kind of it works back and forth you know you're you're using them to try to maybe get suggested for their clients and you're also benefiting them because you have the wreck links back to their website for clients that might not have even been looking for powerhouse ban in particular but now they found this great band through my sight so if you have the opportunity uh place tags definitely placed tags on there viewing films we talked about this keep it simple and keep it big there's also a comment feed on here these air great because a lot of times you're gonna have so many people that are watching your films commenting on there and sometimes you have the family of the bride the groom or the bride and groom themselves and this is really like a testimonial feed correct instead of having like a testimonial page when people go to see your films they're reading some of these comments when they when they when they read comments from say like a bridegroom and their parents and things like that and they make comments like we didn't even know the video people were there how did they capture all of this so now that might show like a prospective bride like oh my god that must really be unintrusive because nobody even knew they were there and they were getting all this spectacular footage so these these comment feeds and make the comment feeds simple to use don't make them have to sign up to become a member of say like blogger where you know the process that was one of things I didn't like about the blogger was that it was this whole process here to sign up then they'd email you you know a code to get in and then you could go back by that time they're not even going to leave a common anymore you know when these people watch this films if they're going to leave a comment there in the mood to leave a comment right then as soon as anything's an inconvenience or they got a sign up for something they're probably going to get out of the mood to leave a comment and they're just going to navigate away and then you lost the comment so I love comments on the site because it is like a like a live testimonial feet perception is key do you think there's a lot of perception in this industry and even though photography industry right are there any artist in the photography field that are almost built up on this perception of being like a rock star right being like a like a gerry g onus without even ever seeing his work just based on the perception itself do you not think this guy's just larger than life your bond with your von exactly say you're volunteers like oh my god you haven't seen is working you're you're ready to like sign off on a check all right you haven't you've seen his work we just just the name the the um just a reputation that he has right is bigger than life it's it's really perception there may be somebody like that who's perceived to be this this rock star of their industry but maybe there's somebody that's maybe flying under the radar that's got work that's even better than this person um I found that a lot of the stuff and this industry and even in the photography industry is built upon this perception because you're trying to make people believe that you are this larger than life pursed artist you're this larger than life artists who kicks but your complete rock star and in reality who are we I'm an ex cop I'm an ex cop turned wedding videographer but some of my bride's think I am just like this guy you know and it's really it's really just a perception you know I'm just a guy just like you guys that's working hard trying to learn he's trying to evolve trying to get better and I'm a perfectionist on I'm very competitive but I'm certainly not this larger than life guy that um not just like any of you guys are not just like any of the people that are watching here and creative life but it's a perception thing you know they just think this guy's just larger than life you know but we're all just ordinary people but it's a perception thing and this perception stuff it works trust me it works you can really make people believe especially these people that are looking to hire cinematographers that they must have you at their wedding or it's just not going to be done properly so you need them to believe in you in your product high profile clients they want the best they want the best of the best why because they can afford it they can afford it do you think they boast a little bit like hey we got a thirty thousand a week we're wearing vera wang right we got louboutin shoes we have a sylvia weinstock cake have you guys heard of sylvia weinstock her cakes range about twenty to forty thousand dollars she's out of new york it's unbelievable have you tried one yes delicious um but my gosh what a brand she has and she's this little sweet old lady with these big with these big glasses look like goggles and what brand this lady has created and soon as you say ah sylvia weinstock cake it in south florida especially in new york you just know you're at a high end event and they've spent a lot of money on a cake imagine on a cake and you guys you're shaking your head like we're producing a film right and we can't even get a fraction of what sylvia's getting for a cake so what does that tell us the standards very low on video but she's got such a strong brand sylvia weinstock they want the best they won't be able to say hey you know what we're wearing vera wang we've got sylvia weinstock we have one of the top photographers in the world we have one of the top videographers in the world we have one of the best venues in the world they love to be able to boast to their friends buzz marketing what happens when you first start out do you want to become proper how do you become popular word of mouth building it up it's the buzz what's the word of mouth it's the buzz right the buzz that's going around town hey who's this tyler guy have you seen his work he was a photographer how's he like taken over video now in our area this is crazy okay and it's word of mouth people start to talk about you and this is when this whole perception thing starts going on right like this guy's like he's really kicking but he must be special he must be this he must be that and over time you build this brand this this buzz just becomes larger than life and people just really think like wow this guy's just amazing you know he's like a rock star whatever the case may be let me ask you this how many people work out of their homes you have office you have a studio okay and that's great I don't have a studio I work from home but what happens when I'm dealing with high end clients right that's about to sign a cheque for ten fifteen twenty thousand dollars do you think that I can have them give me that kind of money in my living room not on a good day I need perception I need them to feel a cz though I'm running this larger than life operation one of things that I recommend and probably some of us use ah lot of people meet it's starbucks something talk a lot of photographers meeting like a starbucks or a restaurant or some like that and they just show their albums I've gone a step further where I run a studio space it's a it's an executive office building it's got large conference rooms with leather chairs I've got a receptionist here that greets the guests when they come in the receptionist calls me says hey your clients are here to meet you I come in we flood into ah conference room that's got to drop down screen not nice big hd projector and I do my presentation it's not my office it's just something that I rent it's about twenty dollars an hour right to rent this thing how do I look to these clients when they come to meet me there what's the perception this guy's the real deal I mean he's got all these expenses he's gotta pay for this big executive office suite right with these big conference rooms and all this and it's not it's really it's really just a perception but I can't I can't afford to meet lose these clients because I I'm working out of my house and I want to meet them in my living room and things like that so we need to get away from doing things that are like uncle bob the uncle bob techniques they're not going to work with a high profile clients they're just not going toe dropped this kind of money on your lap in a living room or maybe even at a starbucks and things like that they want to see a professional set up factor fish fiction people in my market can only afford two thousand dollars for video factor fiction can they afford more how much more what would you say the number of you don't know three thousand I'd say probably if you if you're targeting the high end market um not targeting I'm I'm talking about just just to the conversation amongst videographers about how much brides can afford to pay for a wedding video oh so the perception of yeah just if you talk to guys in your market then yeah they totally agree with that probably yeah exactly this is not even talking about high end oh yeah this is just talking in average two thousand dollars sylvia's making twenty to forty thousand dollars for a cake can you imagine all the work that we do all the gear that we've invested in all the time there were going to spend in the edit all the backlog we have all the second and third shooter's that we have to pay and at the end of the day we're going to make two thousand dollars we're not going to be two thousand dollars we're not going to profit two thousand dollars how much we're gonna profit out of that how much and what you're charging less than two thousand fifteen hundred twelve hundred it's not a good situation my market is flooded with talent how many of you guys think that anybody can anybody hear name in their particular market ten great wedding cinematographers not at all can you name five they're still shaking their heads know what does that tell you there's a huge opportunity because where I'm from at least in south florida there's hundreds of videographers how many video for sharing your market at least maybe hundred one hundred at least and there's not five that you can name that our great cinematographers so what does that tell you mean it means great opportunity for the people who want to work and brand themselves exactly you could become easily one of the top wedding cinematographers in your market if you're sitting here telling me right now that you can't name five great wedding cinematographers in your market the opportunities huge the opportunity is huge for you because even if there's just one hundred in your market that article it automatically means you could be in the top three easily of your market thirty to forty percent of bride skipped video altogether factor fiction it's a fact can you imagine a live event live event on ly gonna happen one time and they don't have it on video it happens you know how many times I'm talking to a photographer friend of mine and he's like oh you should see this wedding I did they spent three million dollars and they had this and they had that they had this and it was the most unbelievable wedding I've ever seen in my life and I'm jealous and I'm thinking like oh my god who got to do the video and as I said who did the video I said all that get a video and I'm just completely floored I'm completely floor that they don't get a video but it happens and that's the thing and why don't they get a video general because they don't know what's possible they their perception of wedding video is the uh very long full ceremony full speeches boring nobody watches it you hit her on the head we've done this to ourselves they're judging us based on the traditional long boring videos off ten years ago they don't know that we're out there you know and in creative live learning and involving and creating these you know stunning masterpieces of films they think we're going to give them what uncle bob gives them and we're not uncle bup they think we're going to give them what ninety nine percent of the industry would give them but we're the one percent and we're suffering because of the ninety nine percent never question a question came up from adam alex talking about the perception of value a cross cultural across cultures do you is it do you think it's pretty much the same across cultures or do some cultures appreciate the video much more I think they appreciate it more maybe in some cultures but they're always looking to get the best price on video and the problem with video is that no matter the culture no matter the country there's always videographers that are willing to give away ah ah lot more than the next guy just to book the job but the problem with that system is that it brings everything down it brings the standard of everything down that's the problem that we have and I have been in certain markets where they appreciate video a lot more even in brazil they appreciate video a lot more the average of a wet the average cost of a wedding video in brazil it's higher than it is in the u s because they value it more we still have a problem even in brazil where you have some studios where they're just given away too much just too booked the job and then what happens is it just brings down everything across the board here's a big one and I want to ask you guys this because if people in your market I can only afford say two thousand dollars or even three thousand dollars who put the price on the product we did has a bride and groom ever told us how much to charge never and we complain we complain that we don't make enough money but we're the ones putting the price on the product isn't that kind of funny we complain about the price we put on our product the bride and groom's have never determined that price we have based on what based on what the next guy's charging right so you're gonna base everything that you do in your business based on what the next studios were doing is that how it should be done but I'm gonna tell you what happened in south florida when I started to get a really good wedding video the perception was that you had to spend at least two thousand five hundred dollars twenty four ninety nine that was the magic number if you want a good wedding video the planners all knew it if you want a good wedding video you're gonna have to charge they would tell the bride you're gonna have to budget twenty five hundred dollars for a good wedding video and that was the deal so we knew when we put the price on the product hey we got a good product will market at twenty for ninety nine a dollar less than twenty five hundred hopefully we get the job when we tell the planners how much our product costs they're basically are messengers they're they're making contact with the brides and they're basically forming the bride's say hey listen if you want a good wedding video you gotta pay twenty five hundred bucks you're gonna have to basically allocate twenty five hundred dollars from the budget to video what would happen if the top videographers in a certain market all charged four thousand dollars for a good video what would become the new standard four thousand dollars and now when the wedding planner make contact with the bride's guess what she's gonna tell them say listen if you want a really good wedding video you're gonna have to allocate four thousand dollars from your budget for good wedding video but what happens is we're gonna have to all string together now let me tell you something happen in south for that's a true story I eventually ended up raising my price because I got a little popular the bus marketing was working the whole perception exclusivity thing was working I was getting really busy and I said you know what I got shot raising my price because I'm just booking too many jobs so I raised the price to four thousand dollars do you know that somebody in town another videographer that was doing really good work come to see his name here julie india's he's with merche studios this guy raised his price to four thousand dollars and at that time it was kind of only me and this guy studio in town and guess what two guys in south florida which is a gigantic market we changed the standard for wedding video now if you wanted a good wedding video the standard was four thousand dollars two guys change an entire market but the problem is that you have to band together and not budge on the price you can't budge on the price you can't say I'm going to start charging four thousand dollars and then budge and then go back down to maybe three thousand dollars because then maybe three thousand dollars becomes the standard because they know you a bunch any questions from you goes yeah I just had a couple quick questions because a lot of this just incredible information uh just one of my real quick ones is did you notice the drop in any of your bookings when you doubled your prices I mean did you see your bookings go down no not one bit I ended up raising my price that fifty five hundred and this was probably four five years ago and then it slow down and you don't do you want to book a hundred percent of the jobs not at all what percentage do you wantto much not that low right now that low that's really gambling you probably want to be in the air of about fifteen I want I want to be right around fifteen percent maybe ten maybe fifteen percent of the bookings what happens when you raise your price this is another this is another thing to consider when you're raising your price and trying to get into that high and arena we're gambling are we not because we could have taken this sure money but we're holding out for the bigger money but what's happening we're turning away jobs because they don't want to pay four thousand dollars or they don't want to pay fifty five hundred dollars whatever it is and now we're saying no sorry this is my price and I'm sticking to it done and then they're gone now seventy percent of the bride enquiries that air coming in they're leaving and just like oh my god I gotta pay my I gotta pay my bills I have a family now your people to feed what do I do do I budge and just lower my price again do I go into panic mode or do I stick to my guns because I know I'm in at least get that ten to fifteen percent of brides they're going to pay me fifty five hundred or four thousand or eight thousand or ten thousand or whatever you're aiming for it's a gamble because I'm gonna tell you right now last month I don't work I think I worked one time and that's it so most weekends guess where I was I was at home but you can bet your bottom dollar that this once I have three next month next month I have three and those air out really really good prices okay and they make up for the weekends that I didn't work because I don't want to work every weekend I don't want to do fifty sixty jobs a year we're just looking to do two jobs a month that's it so there's months there's weeks they're gonna be sitting at home when you could have booked the job but what's gonna happen is as soon as you take that job and you budge and you say you know what I'll do this one for three thousand you're going to be known as a three thousand dollar guy and that you budge okay you cannot drop the standard obviously you have to be smart enough to know your work is it worth that much everything's relative you can't just take you no work that needs some work and say you know what I'm gonna charge top dollar because it's not top dollar work so everything's kind of relative you know before I was increasing my prices I wish keeping everything relative to my work you know I was thinking like you know what we're still making some mistakes we still have some issues that we need to address I'm just not there yet I'm not at that point where I'm going to start at seven eight nine ten thousand dollars I'm just not there yet I need I need to do more work before I kind of reached that point is you never want to rush the process don't rush the process with your marketing especially in your networking networking is now when you start presenting your work too wedding venues wedding planners you going to network with other vendors maybe high end vendors what do you want them to know you for the work that still needs some work or this finished polished piece that you're proud of and that you want to be known for so just be careful don't try to rush the process everybody wants to make more money but you have to be patient there was a time where I was probably ready to kind of compete with the best of the best in my market and I still waited I said no I want to wait till I'm ruli even better than that and then I'll present my product to a b and c of the top top elite vendors and that's how I did it how many of you guys have ah ah facebook business page everybody what's the greatest thing about facebook comments the views how much is facebook cost zero it's free it's free how much traffic could you possibly get with facebook once they start sharing your work it's never ending it's it's like a giant web because once one person shares it and they've got a thousand friends now it's exposed to like a thousand people another person shares it maybe may have three thousand friends or six hundred friends whatever it's just like it a continuous web of traffic to your work you think some of those people might be getting married or know somebody that's getting married this is very easy this is very easy and it's free here's a clip that we posted look at the shares you know I mean this is free advertisement this is people that have gone out shared this and how many friends did they have that have now seen this club you don't you don't know how many enquiries we get where and we have on their on the inquiry how did you hear about us and it says facebook free youtube free video free google free you know search engines it's all stuff that I haven't paid for we don't advertise we haven't advertised for years I advertised on the knot when we first started I advertised on google with adwords when we first started but we haven't advertising years in years we just rely on word of mouth the buzz marketing and social media and social media's great because it's free