Wednesday, September 26, 2012

How to stretch your communication budget during budget cuts tip

Are you suffering from budget cuts? If you are like most you have been through some cuts. You cannot stop communicating with your audience or you will put the organization at risks for more cuts due to the lack of interest and support.

Here is a tip to help save yet still produce a quality marketing campaign.

You may be aware of the marketing funnel. When it comes to buget one of the most important parts of this funnel often gets overlooked. Repeat is the last thing in the funnel steps and is extremely critical to your success.

A one-off promotion just doesn't typically work. Research shows that 80% of sales are made after the fifth contact.

What is shocking to me in the research was that 10% of sales is made by the fourth contact.

Too many marketing campaigns I see are spending a lot of money on the first impression contact with a potential customer.

One of the most expensive communication tools is video. It is very effective in telling stories. Many 2 - 3 minute videos start in the price range of $15,000+. How would you like to cut this by half or more?

Due to how one gathers video clips it takes time to produce a video. Take a moment sometime this week and watch one of your videos. As you watch it look for all the content in the video that you can use in another medium.

Now take a look at this package I did for a client and see how many images that can be used for other mediums.



Videos that I am doing for clients that use stills as the b-roll are starting at $3,000 for my clients. The savings do not just stop at the video. Now all those images shot for the video are now usable for the web, print, billboards and more mediums.

When you shoot video you are most of the time on sticks (tripod) and letting the action happen around the camera. With still photography the photographer floats around the action. They are looking for a moment and not a segment. Due to the difference in how the images are aquired, a still shooter can move around the room more and get many different angles while the video must wait for the moment to develop.

Next week I am speaking to the Grady School of Journalism's photojournalism class. I will speak on the topic of business practices for photographers. One of the metaphors I use to help drive home this concept of marketing is to act like a freshman and not a senior. Here is a blog (Click Here) I wrote on the topic last year after speaking to the class.

Remember when doing your video projects to always get the still images of those projects. This is especially true when you are creating a new video of a major initiative for your organization. If it is that important using stills later in power points, PDFs, on websites, blogs and in printed material will be needed.

Give me a call or write if you would like me to help you stretch that budget with a multimedia project or if you just need some photography of your organization.

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