Field Guides / Marketing

Feast or famine: why your video business swings, and the fix

Feast or famine isn't bad luck, it's the shape of your marketing: owners market when the diary is empty, stop when it fills, and the pipeline is empty again three months later. The fix is a fixed weekly marketing slot that doesn't move when the work lands. Over time, add lead sources one at a time, so the business isn't standing on networking and referrals alone.

Why does the work come in waves, flat out one quarter and quiet the next?

The work comes in waves because the marketing does. Most owners market hard when work is slow, get busy, stop, and then wonder why the pipeline is empty three months later.

If you only do outreach for three months of the year, you get a peak of interest and then it drops off. The pattern is the same in almost every video business we see. A quiet quarter, a burst of LinkedIn posts and coffee meetings, the work lands, the owner disappears into delivery, and marketing stops because there's no time to think about it. Then the cycle repeats. Even owners coming off their best year carry a constant low fear that next month won't look like the last twelve.

The usual conclusion is that marketing doesn't work. Most owners who say that tried it once, saw no results, and gave up.

Two things to accept about marketing a video business

Two things hold for every video business: under a million dollars a year it's a marketing business, whatever it thinks it is, and while you can control the message and you can control the audience, the timing is up to them.

There's a widely used sales rule of thumb for this, one I've used in my workshops: for every hundred people you make contact with, sixty aren't interested, thirty are interested but not right now, seven are open to buying, and three are ready to buy today. Someone you spoke to three years ago can buy tomorrow. That only happens if you're still showing up.

It works like surfing. If you go out every day, there's a good chance you'll catch at least one wave in a week. If you stand on the shore deciding it doesn't look worth it today, you catch nothing and learn nothing.

How to make the work steady: the weekly marketing hour, step by step

The weekly marketing hour is one fixed slot in your diary that belongs to marketing, kept whether you're quiet or flat out.

1. Book the hour as a recurring appointment. Same day, same time, no end date. It doesn't move because a job came in, any more than a client shoot would. For a daily routine on top, use the seven-day outreach test in Content or outreach.
2. Start with last week's numbers. Marketing, like money, needs structure. You track your finances, so track your marketing the same way: conversations started, enquiries in, follow-ups due. What gets measured gets managed. Done looks like three numbers written in the same place every week, so you can see the trend.
3. Follow up before you look for anyone new. The people who were interested but not right now are the names most owners forget. Send two or three of them the message in the next section.
4. Show up in one channel. Comment in the rooms where your clients already talk, or send a short personal message to someone on your list.
5. Put your offer in front of the right people. That means people already in conversation with you, or your content. It takes a lot of offers to get one yes, so the offer goes out every week.
6. Plan next week before you close the diary. Work seven days ahead: schedule next week's content and pick the people you'll contact. Done looks like next week's hour with names already in it.

What to send the people you spoke to months ago

A message to someone you spoke to months ago should remind them of the conversation, give them something useful, and make it easy to pick up again. It shouldn't ask why they went quiet.

For a full follow-up sequence after a quote or a call, use How to write a follow-up email that gets a reply.

Why two lead sources aren't enough: the marketing Parthenon

The marketing Parthenon is the idea that a business stands on its lead sources the way a temple stands on its pillars. With one or two pillars it's unstable, and five or six are solid foundations.

Most video production companies have a couple of channels: networking and referrals, maybe a bit of dabbling in something else. Both are good pillars, and referral clients are usually great clients. But as the business grows, its weight sits on those two, and if your referrals drop off or you can't get out and network, the business feels very vulnerable.

The pillars to choose from are email, referrals, video, podcast, networking, direct mail, PR, social and advertising.

In the course I put the target like this: "somewhere between 25 and 40 clients is a sweet spot whereby you don't need to go so hard on the outbound marketing for new clients", because enough of them come back to you through the year that you're always busy, and then they start referring people. Those are 25 to 40 clients who are really in your wheelhouse. The sweet spot eases the outbound work. It doesn't change the Parthenon: the bigger the business gets, the more weight sits on whatever pillars are holding it up.

How to add a lead source one at a time

Add lead sources one at a time: take one channel to mastery, then add a second. The man who chases two rabbits catches neither.

The Parthenon is built over years, one pillar at a time. It doesn't mean starting five channels on Monday, and it sits with the rule in Content or outreach: pick one channel and execute. Start by asking what brings in most of your revenue now, and how you can do more of it. When you choose the next pillar, choose it for your market. As I put it in the course: "suspend any bias today around what you like or what you think, because that's not actually that relevant. What's relevant is, can it work for your market if done correctly?"

A worked example

Here's the pillar audit filled in, in round numbers, for an illustrative owner. It isn't a real member.

Two pillars and repeat work carry the whole business, and referrals alone brought in half the year's clients.

The owner likes the idea of starting a podcast. The audit points at email instead, because the people who buy from them are contacts they've met networking and clients they've worked with, and those people are already in their inbox. So email becomes the one channel the weekly hour runs on. The podcast waits until the owner has mastered email.

The mistakes that undo it

Feast or famine comes back in four predictable ways.

• Starting three channels at once. Finding out what works for your audience takes testing, and chasing two or more channels triples or quadruples that workload.
• Giving up after one or two contacts. Most people reach out once, a few follow up, and most give up and chase new opportunities. You have to be determined to follow up again and again.
• Starting with ads. Get an offer working organically first, then use ads to amplify it.
• Sending everyone the same message. It's worth doing follow-up by hand, one person at a time, with something of value in it rather than a sales pitch. The personal connection can come back to you many times over.

The rule of thumb for steady work

Market every week, and add lead sources one at a time.

The benchmark: one marketing slot in the diary every week, and a business standing on more than networking and referrals.

Hold yourself accountable

Which of these have you taken on or put in place recently?

• You did some marketing every week this month, including the busy weeks.
• You put an offer in front of the right people in the last seven days.
• You followed up with someone you spoke to months ago, because the timing is up to them.
• Any ads you run are amplifying an offer that already works without them.
• You've filled in the pillar audit and know which pillar you're adding next.

Your one move this week

What's the one thing you can commit to implementing this week? If you're not sure, start here.

Pick one fixed slot in your diary each week that belongs to marketing, and paste the weekly marketing hour into the invite. This week, use it to put your offer in front of the people who should be hearing from you.

One thing executed every week creates 50 strategic moves a year.

Related tools and guides. Content or outreach: where to spend your marketing time, The marketing asset you already have and keep ignoring, How to write a follow-up email that gets a reply, How to get more from referrals and networking, When one big client owns your video business, How to move from one-off video projects to recurring revenue.