How long should my showreel be?

Introduction

Every video production professional has a showreel. It's the most important part of your marketing, right?

Well, it turns out it's not. But I'll come on to that.

Today's Q&A is: How long should my showreel be?

Links

• Watch: The Buyer's Journey: The most important marketing concept for video production professionals to understand >>>
• Purchase: The Lead Generation Machine for just $7 >>>

Transcript

00:00:00:02 - 00:00:24:19
Every video production professional has a showreel. It's the most important part of your marketing, right? Well, it turns out it's not. But I'll come on to that. Today's Q&A is: How long should my showreel be? So let's cover that first. So, every video production professional has a showreel. You spend days, if not weeks, compiling your best shots, name dropping your best clients,

00:00:24:19 - 00:00:45:12
and finally working on a project that you have complete control over. So I understand today's question. It’s a question that we've probably all asked ourselves. Our showreel is the most important part of our marketing. It’s what our clients want to see. It’s what stands us out in a crowded marketplace. Well, no. I'll come on to that in a minute.

00:00:45:12 - 00:01:07:09
But it's natural to wonder how long our showreel should be. We want it to be perfect, right? Is there a perfect amount of time? Is there a golden ticket? What is right? Short and sharp? Or let it breathe? Now, as you may know, I work with production professionals to build powerful marketing, sales and retention strategies. But that's only half of my day to day work.

00:01:07:16 - 00:01:33:10
The other half is putting in place video content strategies with many of the world's leading brands. I'm lucky enough to work with thousands of marketing professionals over the years, and I have a database of over 10,000 marketing leaders. My weekly emails to the marketing database are not only used to deepen relationships to feed my consulting business, but it's also to conduct research on all the questions that we, as an industry, have.

00:01:34:01 - 00:02:06:15
I recently sent out a short questionnaire about the use of showrooms. What do our client base want to see? And I'm talking about marketing and communications professionals, business owners and advertising professionals. So for those of you that want the answer straight away, the perfect length of a showroom is 74 seconds. Quite precise, right? Well, yeah, but that's the figure that came back from that research piece. It’s the average answer that came from 1,407 marketing and communication professionals, business owners and advertising folks and it couples up nicely with industry research.

00:02:06:15 - 00:02:27:14
It's not too long. Everybody's got 101 things to do and it's not too short. Enough time for your prospect to see that you are indeed capable of delivering high production values. But here's the thing, and I've already mentioned it already, everyone has a showreel. Have you ever seen a videographer, an editor, a production company without a showreel?

00:02:27:15 - 00:02:54:12
No, it doesn't happen! So why do we have showreels? To show-off how creative we are, right? To show the standard of our edits? To show-off the level of our productions? To namedrop clients that we're proud to have worked with? To excite potential clients? Well, yes, and that is the purpose of a showreel. But as I've said already, as video creators, we believe that our showreel is the most important weapon in our marketing arsenal.

00:02:54:17 - 00:03:20:08
It's easy to think that a killer showreel will win new work, win you clients, win you projects. But let's think about this subjectively for a moment. How do we use our showreel? When do we use it? Well, typically we slap it on the home page of our website. We put it on our Vimeo channel, maybe YouTube. Sometimes we may even give it a little boost on social media and promote to people that we think will want to work with us or look like our perfect clients.

00:03:20:08 - 00:03:46:15
Now, I talk about this a lot in my training, but there's a concept in the marketing world that is vital for us to understand as video production professionals. It's called The Buyer's Journey, and I have a video that's dedicated to this very subject, which you can watch after this. But The Buyer’s Journey is very simple. Whenever anyone is looking to buy something, they go through the three stages of The Buyer's Journey - The Awareness Stage, The Consideration Stage and The Decision Stage.

00:03:46:23 - 00:04:11:15
In The Awareness Stage, the buyer becomes aware of an issue that they need to fix or an opportunity that they can take. For a marketing professional, this could be that they're not hitting their targets, or there's a new competitor in town, or they've got a new product to launch. Once they become aware of an issue or an opportunity, they move into The Consideration Stage, where they look for ways in which they can fix their issue or take hold of that opportunity.

00:04:11:22 - 00:04:34:23
Again, for a marketing professional, this could be pay per click advertising, out-of-home advertising, radio advertising, influencer marketing, or perhaps video. And finally, once they have decided upon the way in which they're going to fix their issue or achieve their opportunity, they move into The Decision Stage, which is where they decide who is going to help them do just that.

00:04:35:08 - 00:04:54:10
If they've decided that video is going to be the route that they are going to take, that's where they then start looking for video production companies or video freelancers. And that's where your showreel comes into play. So, yes, your showreel is important, and I suppose it's good to know how long it should be. But why have I hijacked this video to talk about The Buyer's Journey?

00:04:54:20 - 00:05:15:19
Well, it's because it's important. Your showreel, the piece of video that you spend so much time on, is only ever going to be effective when someone has made their way to The Decision Stage of The Buyer's Journey. It's only going to work on someone that is looking for the person or team to create their content. But here's the thing ...

00:05:16:05 - 00:05:40:20
Only about 1% of your ideal target audience is going to be in The Decision Stage at any given moment in time. Hmm. Okay. That's just business, right? Well, no, because here's the other thing. Your competition, other video creators, other videographers, other production companies, are all doing the exact same thing. So everyone is fighting it out for that 1%.

00:05:41:03 - 00:06:03:06
And because of the way that our industry has developed, thousands of people rolling out of film school each year, the cost of equipment coming down year after year, the barriers to entry into our industry have dropped significantly in recent times. So within any city there are hundreds, if not thousands, of supremely talented production professionals, all with beautiful showreels -

00:06:03:06 - 00:06:29:09
maybe they're even 74 seconds long - doing exactly what you do. And they're all fighting it out for the 1%. And ultimately, that puts the client, or the prospect, in a very strong position. They know that there are thousands of incredibly talented video creators out there. So it all comes down to price. And that's not a good place to be in. Massive effort, massive competition, low conversion rates, low profit.

00:06:29:22 - 00:06:51:21
So that's the 1%. What about the other 99%? Where are they? What are they doing? They're still your target audience, right? They still have marketing, advertising and business goals. They still need to achieve the same things as the 1%, but they just aren't yet in The Decision Stage. And this creates a huge opportunity because these people just need a nudge.

00:06:52:02 - 00:07:16:05
They just need to know how powerful video can be for them. It's the video production professionals, the freelancers, the production company owners, who understand this key concept, who are the ones that are smashing it, because they aren't competing on price. They aren't fighting it out for the scraps. They're attracting a constant flow of their perfect prospects into their Buyer’s Journey, and there's nobody bothering ,or able, to compete with them.

00:07:16:05 - 00:07:44:10
So yes, a showreel is important and it's of course vital in The Decision Stage. But the lesson here, I guess, is that you have to get your prospects to The Decision Stage first for them to be minutely interested in your 72 second showreel. So, how do you do that? Well, and without making this video a massive sales pitch, you can learn the 10-step framework that has helped over 3,000 video production professionals drive a constant stream of opportunities (that are perfect for them) into their video business

00:07:44:14 - 00:08:10:05
in my book, The Lead Generation Machine, which you can pick up for just $7 via the link below. You can also watch my Deep Dive into The Buyer's Journey and why it's so important to us as video professionals. And finally, you can subscribe to my weekly emails where I send out regular insights, tips, training and step by steps, specifically focusing on marketing, sales and retention strategies for video production professionals.

00:08:10:13 - 00:08:22:23
All the links that you need are either below this video, or potentially popping up on screen now. I hope that's been helpful, but if you have any questions about this or any other topic, feel free to pop them in the comments below. Have a great day!