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You’re a new brand with an unknown reputation and an offering that may shift over time. So how do you create a connection with your audience that will gain their support and convince them to follow you through gaps in service, pivots, and turnover? Make a damn video. And do it on a startup budget.
If you've ever had your pants blown off by what you thought was a prohibitive quote from a production company, don't let it keep you from making a great video. Treat it like a startup—do the most with what you have, take some chances, and be real. So keep your pants on and these 10 things in mind:
1. Startups can take bigger risks: As of yet you don’t have years (or perhaps even months) of goodwill under your belt to worry about destroying. The good news is if your video blows up in your face or offends a key group you don't have much of a brand to restore. Additionally you need to break through the noise to reach your audience and with a low budget taking risks is one of the best ways. Obviously this depends on the market you’re entering, but starting your own business is already a risky endeavor so take it all the way with your video.
2. Make it authentic: While the word ‘authenticity’ is the crown jewel of any bullshit artist’s lexicon, it does carry some weight when people are seeing you in all your glory on screen. Accurately represent your startup’s culture! Don’t act how you believe people expect you to act, show off why your crew is unique and worth paying attention to. At CentUp (one of the companies we’ve invested in) we love the hell out of what we do. We absorb content like a sponge and have spent a ton of time in non-profits so we wanted to illustrate that our knowledge and passion by rerating our own stories. Your true audience can look past a lower production quality video to find your authenticity (although honestly, in our video we looked like a bunch of programmer serial killers at first. We quickly lightened things up by throwing hundreds of pennies up in the air and didn’t worry about the potential gravitational consequences) Also as noted earlier, your offering may evolve over time so ensure the connection you create with your viewer is sincere. This connection may just keep your fans with you as you weather any potential future storm.
3. Track ROI: Don't mistake this as a non-revenue generating marketing exercise, leave that work to the large marketing firms. This is an investment that needs to yield returns so track your effectiveness without getting too granular. Choose two or three metrics and stick with them. During our IndieGoGo campaign we’ve defined our conversions as Campaign donations, email sign ups, and social media follows. After that we’ve tracked which publication’s coverage get the best conversion rates to get a better understanding of where our audience lurks. Keep in mind that you’re not in the math lab business so when you don’t have a critical mass of clients, excessive number crunching is a time vampire. For us, we have a running tally in our head that gets validated with data, pen, and paper every other week for less than an hour. For those of you jonesing for a deep dive on some serious metrics check out this article from Howard Tullman.
4. Be smart about your investment: If you're creative, capable, and going to continue to make videos think through buying vs. renting your equipment. Obviously this decision all comes down to cash-flow, but high quality equipment is getting cheaper and cheaper.
5. Be critical, very critical: Continue to think through how to make it better. Your video (and your business) doesn't have feelings. There are few things worse than someone who thinks their work is fantastic and stops after the first round of ideas. Hurt your concept’s feelings on a daily basis until it’s at an acceptable place and then hurt its feelings some more. Lastly, after production continue to be critical. I promise I can list 100 things that are wrong with our video faster than you can. Use that for motivation to make the next one better.
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6. Only spend where it’s necessary: Bootstrapping is not about not spending money, it's about only spending money where it matters. There is a difference in authenticity between a low-budget video and a video with distractingly poor production value. Poor production and a weak message distracts the viewer’s attention and illustrates the startup does not pay attention to details, and lacks the quality a consumer can trust. So, where do you spend your money? Lighting and sound.
7. Call in some favors: Bring in your friends and fans to support your production and be grateful for their help. Think of the Godfather and remember the value of returning favors. Jump in and help out with your friend's startups and projects in the same fully-assed fashion they helped you. Founders get very obsessed with growing their own company (as they should), but consistently ask too much and you can burn people out. Jump in and support them in the way they support you, otherwise you might end up like Fredo.
8. Keep your clients in mind: As a startup your first clients are really your first investors so don't think of them any differently. Your first clients take a risk by giving you their business so, in addition to killer service, in return provide them a video that won't make their eyes bleed and provides the information they need to make a decision.
9. If you build it, they won’t come: Putting your video out there in an impactful way is like a marathon. Take a page out of Dale Carnegie’s playbook and go out and talk to people as opposed to expecting them to come to you. Don’t make the investment of time and money if you don’t plan on going the distance. Know that you're going to have share your video with thousands of people to give it a CHANCE to become well distributed.
10. Give’um an angle: Throughout the creation process continue to piece together different angles for the press to cover. No outlet worth their salt wants to put out the same take on a story that has already been covered. Assemble different angles and exclusive content to give to press affiliates.
So take some risks and make some connections Chicago startups. Your videos are one of the many things that put our entrepreneurial community on the map. Show your thoughtful, creative, tenacious, and innovative nature.
