4 Cost-Effective Hacks for Finding Video Gigs

Video production is a fancy industry. It’s a ton of fun to make video content, and the overall sexiness of the space attracts a lot of people into the industry. These days, the ability to make quality video content is becoming more and more commoditized. So making it in the video production industry really comes down to your ability to get leads and opportunities to be hired.

So how do you do this? While there are the tried and true tactics of networking and referrals, sometimes you don’t have time to sit around and wait for the business to come to you. Here are four cost-effective and often overlooked hacks that can quickly bring you leads.

1. Cold Calling Small Marketing Agencies

Marketing agencies often hire freelance video producers or video production companies as subcontractors or partners for serving their clients. Big agencies that serve enterprise clients and produce large commercials are often the standard bullseye for video freelancers as they want that big work. However, there are hundreds of small agencies popping up everyday that have no prior contacts in the video space but also have clients who really need video.

Calling these consultants and smaller agencies is a great way to find gigs in an overlooked market. Do a Google search in your area and make a list of agencies that have one to five people. If you’re in a big city, you should probably be able to find 100 to 300 of these companies within 100 miles of you.

Call them all and ask for the owner. Tell them that you’re a video producer and ask them if they’d be willing to have a brief meeting where you can share how you can help them offer video to their clients.

Making a call instead of an email shows that you’re bold and that you believe in your product. And because these companies are very small, typically the number on the website is the owner’s cell phone, so you’ll have a very high rate of actually connecting with the decision maker on the phone.

If you have to, leave a message, and call back in a few days. If you do this consistently and follow up three to four times, you’re very likely to get at least two or three leads right off the bat as long as you have good work and business sense.

2. Targeted Local SEO

What does someone do when they need to create a video, but don’t know anyone to do it? They go to Google.

In most industries, SEO can be a very slow and long term way to develop leads. However, in video production — if you’re handy with the web and can spend a month or two working — you might just be in luck.

Searches for “video production” or “video production services” are usually localized for the searcher. Many video production companies have very poor websites and aren’t really optimizing at all for local search terms.

There are tons of local SEO resources out there that if you take a month or so to dive into and learn, you’ll be able to come away with enough basic knowledge to compete in your local area. Even if you don’t rank number one, you’ll probably be able to get to the first page of results, which could be enough for many people who are looking for multiple companies to get quotes.

In general you’ll want to build your localized SEO strategy to target the following terms:

• [your area] video production
• Video production [your area]
• [your area] corporate video
• Video production company in [your area]

The following SEO tools can also help you:

• SEM Rush: While more technical in nature, this site can give you great information on your site’s performance and give you actionable tips for improving your rankings.
• My Site Auditor: My Site Auditor is a free tool that can audit your website side by side with a competitor and tell you exactly what needs done and improved to rank higher.
• SEOptimer: Similar to My Site Auditor, SEOptimer can give you step-by-step tools to improve your rankings.

3. Google Local Reviews

In addition to optimizing your actual website, another simple hack to get in front of hiring clients is optimizing your Google Local. Unlike most local directories, Google Local actually plays an important role in your ability to get seen.

Here’s why: Whenever someone is searching for video production services, they see a variety of ads and then they see a variety of organic websites ranking. However, right in-between that is a small block of three companies that appear in what is called Google’s local search results. See an example here below:

These results are based on how close a company is to you. All you have to do to rank well is make and fill out your Google Local listing, and then get a fair amount of positive reviews from your clients. This takes less than 30 minutes, and can pay off overtime.

4. Chamber of Commerce Meetings

Chambers of Commerce are groups of local businesses that meet monthly to network and share ideas and discuss certain topics. Joining and offering a pro-bono presentation is a good way to pick up a quick handful of leads from the members inside.

Most members will be business owners and decision makers who will typically understand the value of corporate video. These members are also very loyal to other members and often go out of their way to find ways to do business together.

In your presentation, share some best practices as it relates to corporate video marketing and how their businesses can utilize video. If you aren’t super savvy as it relates to these things, you can do some Google searching and find many articles that can help support your presentation. Bring some business cards and share your story with everyone there. You will likely get three to four people coming up to you afterwards, expressing interest in your services.

Even if you opt to not give a presentation and just go to the group, you’ll still likely get a few people who are interested in getting a video created or know someone else who does.

While these hacks won’t work for everyone in every area of production, you should try all of the above tips if you’re in need of some work. Between these, and using Storyhunter consistently, you’ll have a solid groundwork for getting your video gig pipeline filled up.

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By Mike Clum, Storyhunter Contributor