Creating an Identity

In the Beginning

I had the luxury of being a photographer before I was a videographer, which means that I had connections in the wedding industry before I began the videography business. I began videotaping weddings in the early '90's, but even with a good referral network I wasn't able to go full time until '96. Building a networking base of other wedding vendors and a referral network of past clients takes time. Fortunately (and unfortunately in some ways) the internet has leveled the playing field and not only made reaching potential customers easier but also has allowed relatively unskilled videographers to get up to speed on technology and techniques a lot faster than when I started. What follows are three things you can do to promote yourself with a minimum of expense.

Create an Identity

Make your company easy to remember in the way that people will refer to you and contact you. Ideally your company name should be your website URL. I'll use my situation as an example. I started out as Peregrine Productions, Photo and Video Enterprises. (Looking back I realize what what a mouthful that is but at the time I was pretty proud of what I'd put together.) I then changed to Peregrine Productions, Video Enterprises when I dropped the photography services. Still it was too long and too vague. Then I needed a website. www.PeregrineProductions.com was taken, which turned out to be a very good coincidence in the long run. A friend, Darrell Boeck from www.CIVideo.com, suggested that I use a tag line I'd been using in my brochure as the address for my company, thus www.RememberTheFeeling.com was created. At that point I was Peregrine Video Production at RememberTheFeeling.com. It wasn't until I started getting calls asking, "is this Remember The Feeling Video?" or, "is this Peregrine Video?" and "is this the Joel guy that does wedding videos?" that I realized that I needed to streamline my image if people were going to be able to refer me with ease. I needed to develop a brand. Along with that brand needed to be a cohesive 'look' that extended from the materials I mailed to the content on the DVD right up to what most importantly became my online presence. I needed an all-encompassing, catchy and relevant name that could be the one thing people thought of when they thought of me. I'm a film major and have always strived for the ubiquitous 'film-look', so Wedding Films was an obvious choice. I purchased WeddingFilms.com, which happened to be available just at the right time, and made an overnight switch to the new name, complete with a new web site, brochure design and demo, all of which had the same color scheme and general stylistic feel. I confused a lot of people for six months and my internet search rankings plummeted, but eventually I got back to where I was plus moved up a lot farther. The transition isn't easy, especially if you even remotely established, but if this is something you want to do for a while its well worth the effort and short-lived transitional issues.

Optimize your Website

Optimize your website for wedding and event videography searches in the areas you want to market to. That means boning up on keywords and learning as much as you can about SEO, or search engine optimization. You can also get a head start by using pay-per-click services like Google's Adwords and Yahoo's Overture.

Get The Work Out There

I carry a bunch of demo DVD's with me everywhere I go. I give them to friends, relatives and every single wedding vendor I run into at every event. I offer the caterer a disc, the photographer, the limo driver, the hall manager, the hall receptionist, the guests I'm sitting with at the reception, the DJs, the wait-staff, the bartenders - they all get a disc. A business cards gets thrown away, but a DVD will most likely get watched. If you're doing captivating work, the phone will ring, especially if when the subject of event videography comes up your company’s name and website sits comfortably on the tip of the tongue.

So, what does all that mean to you?

Look at your company name. Ask yourself, if you were shopping for your service would your name be easy to remember? If so, are you easy to contact? Does your web page relate to, if not ideally mirror, your company name? Is your website in the same style as your business cards, brochure and demonstration DVD graphics? Do you 'feel' like a professional when viewed from the consumers standpoint? Go deeper and look at your web site. Do you appear near the top of the search results for 'wedding videography' in your market area? Is your website appealing, with a minimum of home-page text and limited scrolling required? What is the first image a potential customer will see when your site appears? Do you have short, dynamic samples? Are your prices, if listed, varied enough and the descriptions of the services and packages easily interpreted?

It took me 10 years to get all this sorted out. A professional adept at creating an identity can do it for you in a week. Or you can use the creative instincts that drew you wedding videography, along with a little research, to design a brand for yourself that is not only memorable but also marketable.