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Marketing to High Profile Clients

let's talk about marketing toa high profile clients timing is everything like I told you before timing is going to be credible because you've done what you've you've branded yourself right and you want to be very very careful because as soon as you show up on the doorsteps off a high end venue how many other wedding vendors do you think these people deal with weekend week out that want to be on their exclusive list how many people every week I would love to work here I want to be on your list how many people do they have on the list generally at a high end venue maybe three or four per per category at a high end venue three or four how many video guys do you think work at these venues hundreds but only three or four are kind of exclusive or five or six harm however many they have uh are on the list what does that tell you those were kind of like the cream of the crop vendors in each category you don't want to blow that away because if you show up and you still need some work to do and ...

maybe you're not better than those three or four guys or five or six guys they were like it was nice meeting you thanks for coming by cia and then what's gonna happen six months later when you're better and you call them back for meeting say hey I want to show you my work maybe not because they already know your work they've already seen your work that gave you a meeting they gave you the opportunity to come in and show your best stuff and it just didn't it didn't cut it so just be careful you may only get one opportunity there's a venue arm from I knew I was only gonna get one chance to show up and show my stuff and even then it was difficult but I finally got in so just don't rush the process networking and making friends it's what we all do do we make friends in the wedding industry photographers florist wedding planners djs all these people right we're all good buddies all right how many true friends you have in life very small right so are they really friends or they're just acquaintances because close friends how many do you have in life you could probably count on one hand are a couple hands if you're good you just have to be careful there's nothing wrong with making friends and having um you know piers and people in industry that you know and you relate with one of one of the not mistakes that I made but one of the situations that I found myself in was that I found myself stuck in this low to mid range circle of vendors I found myself kind of stuck I said and you know the low to mid range circle of enters its the fun market right it's it's the fun group because you're talking like eighty percent of the vendors are in that group low to mid range vendors are in that group because it's the popular market remember load a mid range and all these vendors air catering to those eighty percent of the bright star and the low to mid range but what happens here what happens if I am close buddies with a photographer that's in the low to mid range and that photographer charges thirty five hundred dollars for photography and we're referring each other and it's cool because we're hanging out and this is great right but how much money am I going to be making it the photographer's making thirty five hundred dollars or four thousand generally speaking how much of my making generally a little less than that a little lesson that right I'm probably making fifteen hundred two thousand maybe twenty five hundred things like that so and I'm gonna be booking those jobs all the time because I'm in the low to mid range and we're just booking we're booking we're booking we're working together we're working together and you enter this comfort zone you enter the comfort zone because the money's coming easy it's easy money we could just book up every weekend this is great we're working together on the camaraderie is great but at the end of the day you end up with fifty sixty jobs at fifteen hundred dollars to twenty five hundred dollars when in reality you're looking to make a lot more doing this job so you just have to be careful not to get stuck in this low to mid range market because what you're looking for is the mid to high and the mid to high is a different network altogether this is the high high profile is a completely different network and it's very small everybody knows each other so you have to be careful before even enter that zone before you enter that that that high end arena you got you have to be ready I mean you really really have to be ready to go and your work it almost needs to be flawless to get it you know and your reputation by that point you got to be strong you work definitely has to be strong the perception of who you are it definitely has to be great just learn to separate business from friendships if these people are true friends no matter what market urine low medium or high they're always going to be there if they're only there for your business they're not really your friends period everything is relative be patient don't out price yourself look at your situation you know that you can have the greatest work in the world and not have good contacts that are bringing you the types of clients that can spend the type of money you're looking for and you're kind of just spinning your wheels so it's a lot of things that you have to put together not just the work not just the branding not just the marketing what's that last final piece that's going to get you there is your contacts word of mouth if you don't have the word of mouth if you don't have the advertisement you need you need the types of contacts that are bringing you those types of clientele that have that type of money that you're looking for if not you just you're going to go nowhere with a great product so remember that so v necks media wanted to know how do you how did you get your first high end market wedding how do you break in or if you don't have the context where do you go I don't think he just break in now here's the difference here is the difference you could break into a high end wedding but are you making high and money a lot of guys they do hyeon weddings but what kind of money are they making it's easy just so yeah I'll do the high and waiting for a thousand dollars for two thousand dollars that's not what we're looking for if you're doing a high end wedding you should be making high and money or you're not the real deal you're just somebody that's giving it away it's just like doing a uh destination wedding just to say that you have a destination wedding in your portfolio but you really don't even charge any money for right it's not riel until you're making real money that's the point here you could do hyeon weddings all day long but if you're not making high end money everybody else got paid except you it was a high end wedding for everybody else wasn't high and waiting for you look pretty you know you had a great experience but you didn't make high end money the florist did but the floor is definitely makes on almost want to become a first or food or food and beverage cater you know yeah question question here so now when a bride comes to a concert very rarely if never would they say exes my budget but generally now that you've been in the industry for awhile what's your impression off the grand scheme of the wedding budget versus your percentage out of because in that survey had said about seven percent is what that hotel was finding is do you have any any range for where you would lie if if if you estimate a wedding is fifteen thousand whereas you know you know how how it all goes into the equation it just it just depends what the priority is I've had weddings where I probably should have been hired because I got hired and there was no centerpieces and the guests reading like pork chops you know and they're just they just put their money in different areas that were more of a priority to them than others and just like photographers you see this a lot where they will the higher high and photographer and a low and video are for just so they still have the video but their priority was the photography in my case it's the opposite they'll invest in cinema and a lot of times I'll work with photographer that's charging a lot less just because their priority was the video sometimes the priority is the entertainment so they're goingto invest heavily in entertainment or invest heavily in flowers and maybe not so much in video or a photo or food things like that so it really just depends what's the priority because I don't think I don't think I could tell you what the percentage of the budget is as an average that I take up because it's always it's always different because I do I do regular people's weddings most of the time they just have a big priority for video and they're making this sacrifice you know so these air these air regular people that are just sacrificing tohave us there yes so I just have a question more specific to my city where I live little more than half a million people and I can only really think of two other videographers in the whole city that air we're on all about similar part should I be charging about what they're charging should I be pricing them out how should I approach that knowing that there's very little competition we're at this point all similar skill level and I know right time right now they out price me where should I be in the mist of in the mix of that where do you want to say do you want to be similar no but I don't uh doing this full time I don't want to price myself out like you said you know not be able to put food on the table but I definitely don't want to give that perception ofthe that I'm a low end video album because for my city I'm not there's on ly just a couple of us that are on that level what level are yet for the spokane market I would be in the top five percent so you should be charging the top five percent money in that market right but if you sit there and you say this is the mistake you say hey there's there's five of us right and we're all producing similar work this is the worst position to be in because what happens the bride's you're gonna pick you based on what out of those five the best money so you're having a compete with the lowest price who's going to give it to this bride at the best price because we're all producing similar type of work that's why I tell you you have to do the little things so now you separate yourself give yourself some breathing room from the other four guys you have to do that because now they're not picking you based on the best price or picking you based on the best work because your works better than going to your student they've seen the other four guys there come into your studio and they're like oh my god I've never seen anything like this in my life I'm willing to invest a little bit more into you than these other four guys because you're you're doing something totally different than what I saw the other four guys they were just produced in the same predictable type of stuff but when I came to you it looks special it looks outside the box it's very compelling it's very compelling were connected to your films so that's what I would do if I was in your situation I never want to be in a situation where I'm being compared to four five other guys I want them coming to me because they know we want the best we just want the best and we're willing to invest in the best period I don't want to be in that conversation where well ray I mean your work is just the same as the other four guys why are you charging us two thousand dollars more I wouldn't be able to do that because I know I'm at the same level as these four other guys he just don't fall into that trap never settle for being in that zone you just always have to separate yourself from the competition and then you could charge more money and justify it that's where I would tell you and ask a quick question to um this is from stiffly who would like to know does your price and change if you know a couple of high end as opposed to a regular couple that is spending a huge portion of the budget on video now listen we're going to get into pricing coming up but I will tell you this if the person's got more money to spend they can spend it with us if they don't have more money to spend they just get the normal packages that we give them so there's always up there's always an opportunity to spend money with us uh whether or not they have it I don't know I'll find out later on but we don't we don't price one just because their celebrity their high profile person and you never really want to get caught in that game where you're kind of you're marking things up because you know the person has money you could end up losing the job in developing a very very battery is that reputation give it away it's what we're known for is it not it's what we do is wedding videographers we give it away it doesn't matter it doesn't matter what comes blue ray came what do we do we included it as part of the package what was the greatest thing that ever put in our hands the greatest thing the greatest piece of technology they have ever put in the hands of a wedding videographer the internet besides that okay d s l r cameras is it not for the first time in our history we had a camera that produced this film like image that we've been chasing for years with third party plug ins and all these filters and all this stuff now we had a right onto the camera could we have easily justified raising our price with this new commercial look that were providing to the clients we could have easily justified it and what did we do give it away and why don't we give it away because it's easier to compete like that oh they don't include us or we do it for free the price doesn't even change how much we're price is five years ago for wedding videos before the s lars six years ago has anything changed it was two thousand dollars then it's two thousand dollars now and what do we have now we have interchangeable lenses we have diesel ours we have glide camp steadicam sliders zoom recorders are forty four's deedle lights you name it we'll buy it we even have drones now way even have drones now we have camera chibs you name it we are we are the nicest most giving people on planet earth way we really are I'm here to save you guys I'm here to save you because we have killed ourself we've killed herself we took the one opportunity that we had to raise our price to finally raise the standard of wedding video and we threw it away one's going to be the next time that some piece of technology is going to give us the difference between dslr and old video cameras that we had like that noticeable difference in image quality three d yeah that already came and went videographers couldn't even shoot too deep properly and here they are trying to shoot three d it just didn't make sense it's I'm telling you it's comical for may when's it gonna happen again I think we missed the boat this was a one time where they just gave us this opportunity to make more money and we just tucked it in our price we're not going to charge any more for this we're going to include it with the blue ray with the us bees with the sliders with a steadicam with glide cans with a full day unlimited coverage with a storytelling with a time shifting with creating these really compelling time consuming films were not even we're not even producing the same films that were ten years ago there were sixty minutes there wasn't that much stop put into it now we're like all the stop process goes into it and we're storytellers were master storytellers right we're going include that for free too we do time shifting we do that for free to we have to purchase all this new music from the music we'll include that too how many of you guys send an invoice to your clients for the music bed music that you have to buy anybody send an invoice ideally you should be building it into the cost ahead of time ideal way should be building a lot of things into our price but ideally we don't as wedding videographers here's the key what's the craziest thing that we do is wedding videographers and I've done it myself giveaway raw footage hall we'll get to that we'll get to that thanks because people in the chat rooms are asking about the raw footage raw footage yeah even rock yeah okay perfect we're going to get to that and they're gonna love it cool let me ask you guys a question how many people here work for free we got one yeah everybody else you don't work for free right how many weddings have you done uh I think next year off my fortieth so about thirty five now how much is your top package uh right off the right off the page without adding anything that thomas look I'm a bride a very ugly bride I want your top package how much you gonna pay I don't want to say is I don't even have time for a meeting just give me your top package six thousand five hundred six thousand five hundred perfect what do I get for six thousand five hundred that's the feature at it which is the seven to fifteen minute ling long film and the full ceremony coverage and speeches coverage and then there's a surprise in there but I'm not going to tell you about it because you know it's a surprise is it like a branding thing or is it just ah ah it is it is it a surprise for the bride yeah yetis or something I don't want to reveal because it's like exclusive help it's okay it's fine there's there's a little preview film so a little snippet of the film gets released ahead of time online so like a trailer similar but smaller how much smaller uh it's about one minute one minute yeah okay how long does it take you to do it is part of the process of doing the rest of it but it adds a couple hours so for the most part it's it's just so you know about that right literature you two a minute trailer with researched music and storyboard and time shifting and like color grading and all that stuff in two hours or do you spent you know uh as I'm editing the feature yeah to pull one minute out of that ah gotcha okay doesn't take very much time okay all right how many hours do I get coverage that's what I give away the whole farm uh now are you working for free it's ok yes I know you are working for free because I I say that ah time isn't the issue the stories the issue and so we'll be there as long as we need to get the whole story but general but that is often ten to twelve hours ten it'll are okay perfect so you have two brides that have come to your studio the first bride is having a twenty minute beach ceremony with about sixty yes and she wants your top package which is six thousand five hundred the second bride that came to you today is an indian bride who wants to get the same package as her friend top package for six thousand five hundred dollars we're good as it is now honestly hits in one day then it qualifies soul in one day all in that ten to twelve hours yeah adding a day of shooting would be off the other carte menu but but as is and b ah lot of work for the same money are you working for free you could say it that way okay yeah now here's the difference they both booked you and you're doing pretty good money wass here is this you the indian bride is having a three hour ceremony the bride is just having a twenty minute service on the beach sixty guests not having much of a reception the indian brides also having a bunch of performances and speeches at the wedding reception how much more footage are you going to be left with at the indian wedding verse the twenty minute beach ceremony wedding well times three or four cameras ah whole lot more exactly so let me ask you this question you're gonna have to add it through a lot more footage for this indian wedding yeah definitely you have to spend a lot more time yep are you sending the indian bride and invoice for all of this additional time that you're gonna have to spend in the edit no I'm not you're not are you working for free yes okay just checking I just wanted you to want to make my point across yeah thank you sorry to put you on the spot no thanks do we all pretty much do the same thing we all do the same thing and trust me just like me you're working for free I had a wedding one time and uh it was a jewish wedding and they said not too much stuff going on just gonna be your average wedding now every jewish wedding so I said okay and I charge pretty good for it and it was a package deal and I just said I'll be there full day I'll give you the fooling feature same thing and we showed up to the wedding and they had the entire hotel shut down just for the wedding and expensive hotel just imagine like like a rich carlton just completely shut down just for this wedding every ballroom in this hotel had something to do with the wedding it was we left that wedding with about three times the amount of footage off a regular wedding and we couldn't believe it were just driving home like oh my god we just didn't get paid enough for all the amount of work that we're gonna have to do now for this wedding how many of us have felt that way leaving a wedding like you didn't get paid enough you didn't get paid what fairly because we just want to be compensated fairly for the amount of work that we have to do for these weddings so I've left that wedding and one thing about me if you burn me once you're not going to get me again or at least I'm gonna try to do some things so you don't get me again so I got back from that wedding and we were just we worked like animals at this wedding and really we just weren't compensated enough so I said what can we do what's the craziest thing that we do with the weddings and our pricing too much eggs in one basket we put too many things including just one point that of course you're definitely we're including too many things in the package but here's the craziest thing that we do is wedding videographers the craziest thing we give the client a price before we even know what's gonna happen at the wedding before we even know how much work's gonna be involved we say hey six thousand five hundred dollars I will cover it all doesn't matter how much work's involved right doesn't matter what happens doesn't matter of a headliner comes in doesn't matter if they've got you know cirque de soleil comes in and performs doesn't matter they have a mariachi band or crazy hour or it doesn't matter we're going to edit it all for six thousand five hundred dollars and we're going to cut a trailer and we're going to give you the full ceremony and the full speeches and the main feature for six thousand five hundred dollars it's the craziest thing that we do so what do we do first we want to learn about the wedding so when they come to us and they said taller how much do you charge tyler's going to say well it depends depends on what says first thing I need to learn a little bit about your wedding before I could quote a price for my services does that make sense to you doesn't make it a lot of sense guess what it makes a lot of sense to the client they're like well that makes sense how can you give us a price if he doesn t know the amount of work oh that's involved in the wedding first things first make sense to the clients how long is the film going to be how can I make the prediction I don't even have the footage it I don't even know what's gonna happen at your wedding and you're asking me to predict the length now I can tell you on average the films were about eighteen to twenty minutes but beyond that I can't guarantee you a certain length of time because I haven't even filled the wedding I don't even know if anybody's gonna dance at the wedding are nobody's anybody's going to speak at the wedding I don't know till I film the wedding then I could tell you more or less hey we got a lot of footage you know maybe eighteen to twenty minutes and like I said we recently had an indian wedding that was thirty seven minutes long because had so much content we do the same with a pricing you have tto learn aboutthe wedding before you can quote a price was there any questions here you talked a lot about perception can you tell us physically a little bit how you how you present yourself when you're meeting with clients do you dress in certain outfits when you go to your weddings and your branding could you talk talk to that a little bit please yes and I said if you want to be high and you gotta look I am right and listen you have to think about you have to think about the perception that you're giving off even with your appearance with your presence how are you dealing with bright are you showing up looking like a slob trying to book a job and expecting them to pay you a lot of money it's probably not gonna work out too well you show up you look professional look a little bit high end now they know that they're dealing with a professional so perception is key here maybe I'm maybe in real life I'm a slob but at least when I'm meeting with the clients I'm well dressed I'm well mannered I can speak well my presence is strong I can assert myself on dh hopefully I can get them to invest some money in may well speaking of investing money in you I know that we talked a lot about how your work it speaks for itself wilson philo had asked if you could talk more about um basically how do you educate the bride's about wedding videographer you like how do you do that actually that question was from b perkin so when they're sitting there how do you educate them with that beyond is showing them examples I'm gonna go back to the last question about perception and client's perceptions of may when you've done a good job with the whole perception and building this whole image in their minds and you end up in a situation like this you know you've done a good job wait international are you excited I am so excited for your capture every moment both the perception in this bride's mine I just want to show like a kind of comical well she's definitely been educated she's been educated thiss bride has definitely been educated and she was definitely excited to have us there documenting this day and she felt as though we were just going to give her this amazing film which would have yeah I'll go back to that question though okay yeah what was again the question is how do you educate them when they come into you when they come and talk to you and obviously they're interested because they've watched her work and that brings them in but when they're kind of bulking on price which a lot of people have asked about um how are you educating them verbally what what are you saying so that they understand how important videography is I mean I know we all believe it you know what they tell me you know what they asked me they said ray come on this guy that we once saw his history is maybe not at your level but it's similar you know because one of the clients always trying to do they're trying to lowball they're always trying to get you to come down on the price and I tell them I tell the clients this I said listen I can't even begin to tell you about the other person's work is I've never seen it what I can tell you is this with us you're gonna have peace of mind that the job's going to be done professionally what have I just done with that statement because it's psychological it's psychological if you think about it I haven't bashed the other videographer I haven't said anything about his work but here's what I've said with us you're gonna have peace of mind that the job's being done professionally so now that client is thinking like oh my god if I don't pay ray this money maybe I'm not going to have peace of mind on my wedding day and it's not going to be done there's a chance that it might not be done professionally so I've already planted to seat with that one statement psychological without one statement and guess what nine times out of ten when they don't want to pay my price a few days later checks in the mail because if they have the money to pay for peace of mind and for a job to be done professionally trust me they're not gonna hesitate that's priceless to have peace of mind right its prices that peace of mind and you want peace of mind on a wedding day you don't want to be sitting there on your wedding day worrying about oh my god are they doing this professional my gonna have peace of mind are they doing it right because my wedding so beautiful and I want to document it professionally so sometimes just little little things that you can plant in their mind worked better than you know sitting there trying to bash somebody and things like that and you know honest truth is I've never seen most people's works I can't sit there and say well he's no good and I'm better and things like that and it just doesn't sound professional so it's better for me just to say hey you know what and it is the truth and I believe this so listen you're gonna have peace of mind knowing that it's going to be done professionally ongoing give you and I tell my clients I'm gonna give you the best coverage possible period and either they can afford me they can that's what it comes down to do you give your enquiries starting price so if they just email you saying hey ray what's your prices are you is your normally response why can't tell you have to learn more about your day or do you try to least filter some of those by saying our price starts at one hundred dollars just to help filter some of those out no because like you said I have to learn about the wedding first once I know about the wedding and we're going to get into the questionnaire after the break once I've learned about the wedding I can comfortably send up formal proposal with my price with my starting price it's not my top package because I don't have a top package why don't I have a top package this is key this is key why don't I have a top package you already said it there's always an opportunity to spend more money exactly and what's the biggest mistake that we make as wedding videographers by having packages and a top package we are putting a limit on the amount of money that they can spend what of the indian bright had thirteen thousand dollars in her budget for video how much money did you just lose six thousand five hundred dollars you just lost but who's counting you never limit the bride spending period but you were listening before like that any other questions absolutely so we have a question from infinity films how do you get the bride's the bride's family the bride's the bridal party to encourage them to write comments on your block most times they just writing comments they've just seen a beautiful film and they're so compelled and they're so emotional there just writing comments cool you know how don't email but I don't email them or call them or anything like that so I'm just relying on the beauty of the film and then I want to do a follow up if that's okay um as faras using the this work that you do in your own marketing is that something you negotiated the contract which work uh you're all you're all your work do you negotiate how you're going to use the wedding videos in your marketing with your clients well we have exclusive rights to everything okay to use them how we want unless we're under on india okay a nondisclosure for like a really high profile event but other than that we have free reign to full reign to you all are work for our marketing okay and one more question this from banks awful how do you handle if there's any bad reviews on the internet are negative comments related to you or your brand I know a lot of people that we talk about this a lot do we delete them do we let them stay there like what is your take on on bad press bad marketing are you gonna be able to please everybody all the time of course not is there gonna be one two percent that never happy what I've learned is time kind of heals things right are you going to be doing everything perfectly from the beginning when you're first starting your business maybe not right but over time hopefully going to make some adjustments you're gonna be doing things right again and maybe now you're just going to be getting nothing but solid good reviews so I believe in time just kind of healing itself and letting things flow but I don't get too concerned with especially comments and you know the knots and the wedding wires and things like that ah lot of vendors pay for these services you you'll notice they'll have cleaned up reviews and things like that so that your high profile clients they're not on those websites you're high profile clients are coming to you by way of either the venue's exclusive list or planners or word of mouth like I kind of tend just to rely on those types of contacts