How to successfully run a video production business
Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash
Video production has gotten a big boost as an industry ever since videos became the preferred content type for digital media. In the past, video production was restricted to movies and commercial TV. With social media, everyone can produce videos. It is a lot cheaper now and gives people wider reach through the billions of internet users. In such times, running a video production business is a great choice. Here is what you need to know to run a successful video production business.
Finding your niche
There are many different kinds of videos. For instance, live videos, animated videos, explainer videos, and video content is created from premade samples. All of these styles require very different resources. Everything you do will depend on the kind of videos you want to make. For instance, the kind of hardware you need, the professionals you hire, the kind of clients, and even the way you market yourself. Some video producers have a passion for a certain kind of video, for instance, wildlife videography, and in other cases, the decision is based purely on business. First, decide which niche you want to pursue.
Clients
The main challenge people have is in finding work. This is mostly because they haven’t identified a specific niche they want to work in, so they continuously go after clients of all kinds. If you were to spend some time checking a good resource on growing a video business, you would discover that having a niche helps you optimize your operations at all levels. It also makes it easier to find clients because you are only looking for specific jobs, and when you perform well with those roles, it is easier for them to refer you to more people who need similar work. Over time, you develop a reputation for being a specialist at a certain kind of work, and eventually, clients are coming trying to find you rather than having to hunt for jobs.
Team
Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash
In the beginning, you might be able to do everything on your own when you only have a single project to work on. As you scale up, you get more clients and you need to deliver higher quality, you need to get specialists to help share the burden and improve your video production quality. Gradually you should aim to grow into a full team consisting of specialists for each role. This way, you will be able to take on much larger projects and you will be closer to being a full production house rather than an individual videographer.
How you are able to grow and scale your operations will depend a lot on how you tackle these initial few steps. There are some professionals who, to this day, are still individual videographers while others have gone on to build entire production companies. Naturally, there is a huge difference in the kind of work they do, the scale of that work, and how much money they are able to manage. If your focus is just on producing videos, then being an individual service provider is not a bad option. If you want to upscale your hobby or passion into a proper business, then you will need both horizontal and vertical growth. Any kind of business takes time, but this is the best time to get into video production.
