Marketing Strategies for Locally Owned Businesses (ft. Moji Cinema)

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Dario00:01Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Creatives Grab Coffee. Today we got Paul from Moji Studios. Sorry, I screwed that up. Let me start the overtime. Hey guys, welcome to another episode. Today we got Paul from Moji Cinema with us here today. How's it going, Paul?

Paul00:08No, that's fine.

Paul00:17going well. Thanks for inviting me.

Dario00:19Thank you for coming on. So for those that don't know, Paul is from Albuquerque, New Mexico. So we got a new state with us today. And Paul, before we get into why don't you just tell us a little bit about you and your company.

Paul00:32Sure. Well, I spent most of my career in the professional photography business. My brother is a professional photographer and I was his business manager for many years. And we one of the things we expanded to was doing a lot of school photography for high school yearbooks and things of that nature. And my brother didn't really enjoy doing school photography. So he asked me to form my own company. So I did. So I formed Moji Studios in the early 2000s.

Kyrill02:08It's very interesting to hear someone go from the photo part of the industry and then go into video. Usually people jump into video very directly in our space. Not so often, like a lot of photographers think maybe we'll try video, maybe we'll dabble in it. This is what I hear from photographers all the time, but it's not so often you see someone who makes the complete full 180 switch essentially. So how is that kind of, how was that in the beginning in terms of like,

Paul02:42Yeah, so basically, you know, we were in startup mode when we went to video. But one of the things that I really enjoyed about video as opposed to photography was I enjoy telling stories. I enjoy being able to find out what someone's story is and be able to encapsulate it in a few minutes and hopefully have it resonate with an audience. So.

Kyrill03:23Yeah.

Paul03:40you know, hopefully help them advance their likability factor, so to speak, with their clients or their prospects. So that's the reason why I enjoyed video so much more. And plus, I think it made better use of my business skills that I had acquired over the years by doing video production versus just taking yearbook photos of kids.

Dario04:05Did you ever think about expanding into maybe like the corporate side of photography?

Paul04:10Well, you know, that's that's kind of a in Albuquerque. There's not much of a market for that. It's just that there are a few good commercial photographers in town that that had a pretty good foothold in that. And I didn't think we would necessarily do a better job with that than than than what they were doing. So so so no, it wasn't really something that we really actively pursued was commercial photography.

Kyrill04:36So you felt like it was a bit of a monopoly in terms of the photo market back then. What years was this in like the mid 2000s or like early 2010s you mentioned?

Paul04:46Yeah, so in the early 2000s is when I formed my photo business that in the primary market was school photography and then closed the photo business down in 2018. At the end of 2018 is when I closed the photo business down. Yeah.

Kyrill05:03Okay. I mean, like since you've been in the photo industry for so long, did you not see that there was like a huge shift? I mean, obviously in the industry in Albuquerque, New Mexico, we don't know. Cause obviously Dario and I, we know the industries and some of like the much more bigger cities where there's so much work to go around. And I guess for you as a, from a business standpoint, you felt that video had more opportunity than photo in 2018 even, right?

Paul05:31Yeah, I think that in the photo business, the industry had become very much commoditized because of people's smartphones. You know, a lot of we were just noticing in the photo business that buy rates for parents for their school photography pictures were just going down and down and down and down and down. They were just steadily declining. And that's because I think that people just think that.

Kyrill06:38Oh, for sure.

Dario06:38What would you say are some of the changes you notice in your business once you transition from photo to video?

Paul06:45Yeah, so, yeah, it's a very different process, of course. So, you know, I'm still I'm not really the creative part of the business. So when we transitioned to video, one of my guys, like my photographer who we sent to Portland, he just became a student of video and how to do filmmaking and things of that nature. And then as we grew,

Kyrill07:45Right. And.

Dario07:46No, but I mean like in terms of like you being the business guy was it different from running like a photography studio once you transition to video or was it kind of you were kind of used to the same processes that you had for photos you kind of just applied to video.

Paul08:04Yeah, well, well, in in the photo business, I was selling primarily to schools. So the decision makers were typically principals or high school yearbook coordinators or PTA presidents or people like that video. We've been more of a B2B type of sales process. So I had to, you know, had to learn a little bit more about.

Kyrill09:02You mentioned also that you were, when you moved into video, you started bringing in and hiring people from the local universities, from the film programs who know a lot of that technical aspect. Was that a big shift for you from the photo side? Because like a lot of the time photographers work as sole photographers and maybe with assistants, but video is a completely different piece where you have to hire a lot of people. So do you hire?

Paul09:39Actually, yeah, we hired them as employees from the very beginning. And many of them were like fresh out of college. And kind of the guy that I had, Maxwell, who was the one who apprenticed, he was kind of in charge of how to train them and bring them into the fold. But we all kind of learned together. It was, you know, we're…

Kyrill10:48Yeah.

Kyrill10:59I was gonna say like jumping right into hiring employees in our industry is not something that's very easy to do unless you have other systems in place, which you basically already answered. You have other revenue streams that were able to kind of help you get set up early on. And then from there, you were able to continue to grow and develop the business since then, right?

Paul11:18Right, right.

Dario11:20How's the market over there?

Kyrill11:21So… Yeah.

Paul11:23How's the market in Albuquerque? I think it's fairly good. It's not probably as strong as other markets, but there is a wide variety of different privately owned businesses. Those are the typical types of clients that we serve right now are people that privately own their own business. And some of them are…

Kyrill11:54But what are the industries necessarily in Albuquerque, New Mexico that you find really need video? Because every different state or different regions of certain countries have certain industries that are very prevalent in the video production space. So what is it like in terms of that in Albuquerque?

Paul12:15Yeah, I think that for us, it's been a variety of different industries. There's not really one dominant industry in our city and state that we can just say, well, we're just going to focus in on this particular industry. So some of our clients, so one of the things that we actually started a few years ago was we had the opportunity to

Dario13:12Oh well.

Paul13:36that dawned on me after we completed that video was this this story that they have is very valuable, would be very valuable not to just their employees, but to any business person because of the principles that they acquired over the years in terms of how do you how do you service your employee? How do you service your customers? How do you treat your employees? How do you maintain a certain culture and maintain a

Paul15:53And then we landed some contracts with several different companies where we were able to tell their story and start sharing that with the community. So what ended up happening was, for instance, we told the story of this company called the Frontier Restaurant and Golden Pride Restaurant. They've been around for over 50 years and they're like the place to go to if they're located right across our local university. And it's been…

Kyrill18:02I mean, you focused, you started to focus more on the community aspect, businesses that have a presence within the community itself, which is not something that is very common in a lot of bigger towns, states, or cities. And I guess that's the one unique differentiating factor for where you are in Albuquerque is that you've been able to kind of identify that there's a huge value for people wanting to see the stories of all these different community.

Paul18:48Yeah, I think that you expressed it well, that it has become our niche, so to speak. That our niche is locally owned, but businesses that have a reputation of doing things well. And one of the things we talk about with when we created Albuquerque is most iconic, some of the things we said,

Kyrill19:39You know, the one amazing thing you did there is you actually kind of did some of the market research even for those businesses, which made that content so successful. A lot of the time businesses, they create content without really thinking so much about the end viewer and the audience. Like what are people wanting to see? What do they want to witness from a business? And you kind of did that already. Like inadvertently by making that poll.

Paul20:30Yeah, and it's been a joy for us too, because I, you know, like I'm a business guy. So I love being able to dig in and find out what the details were for how they were able to build their business. And, you know, nobody that I've ever talked to who's ever started a business said, oh yeah, we just opened it up and it just took off. And we were, you know, it was always, there was always these, these moments of, of darkness and despair and all of these big types of hurdles and.

Dario21:20Because you guys are kind of like in a smaller market. I'm just wondering how was it? How what was it like trying to break into? Video because I'm assuming that there were already other video production companies there and I'm sure they already had their established list of clients and because It's a smaller community. Like they probably got a good chunk of the bigger size fish, right? So how did you deal with that?

Paul21:43Yeah, so kind of the good thing is that, you know, I think that there's room for everybody. If you're good, you can find a niche. And so, you know, that's how we kind of got the ball rolling was being able to tell these stories of some of the most successful companies in our market. And then what ended up happening is that, you know, we…

Paul24:11be more effective and more profitable with what they're doing.

Kyrill24:16You know, a lot of business owners, they're dealing with, especially smaller businesses, they're wearing so many different hats that it's hard for them to sometimes see a simple solution or idea right in front of them. I can't even count how many times Dario and I have discovered something that was like almost like a no brainer for us. It's like, oh, like how can, how have we not been doing this or why have we not been doing things like this for so long? But you mentioned that a lot of…

Paul25:04Yeah, so we've actually have ads right now on Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. We have some different ads going out right now. And then also we have this email marketing campaign as well, too. So what's kind of cool is that a couple of clients that we've landed recently,

Kyrill26:40Why do you think it's been so successful for you as well in terms of the marketing side? Like what specific kind of approaches have you gone about in promoting your business? Like, as you say, email marketing, social media, but like, what are some of the, some of the bits of content or messages that you're putting out?

Paul26:59Yeah, so there are actually two big influences that we've had in terms of what we've where we've learned most of our digital marketing materials from. One is this guy by the name of Tim Jarvis. I was talking to Dario briefly about him. He's he's based in England and he built one of England's largest video production companies. But then.

Dario29:03Okay.

Paul29:25and we've been using them for the past month.

Kyrill29:26So it identifies the target market for businesses based on like some of the questions that it's asking. Is that what it does?

Paul29:34Well, basically you have to come up with the target market is already identified, but you try and describe them in as much detail as you can. So you have to, for instance, you put in the company's name, who they're trying to reach, where they're located at, and the kinds of products and services that your client offers and how they, you know,

Dario30:17So how do you use that for your benefit? Like what do you use that information for after you get it?

Paul30:22Yeah, so for instance, for our clients right now, when we do a discovery meeting, we find out who they're trying to reach. And then we put that into our into that tool. And we have this 13 page report that we can give to our clients and says, OK, you know, this is this is this is this is your target markets.

Kyrill31:22Wow.

Dario31:24Very good.

Paul31:50five or six suggestions on decision stage content. So it's just this amazing little tool that he's come up with, basically using artificial intelligence. And he set this up with Typeform and other types of things. Well, it's something that I think he only provides to his clients. It's Tim Jarvis. So yeah, Tim Jarvis. Yeah.

Dario32:06What's the name? What's the name of it?

Dario32:15Oh, okay. Okay.

Kyrill32:15Tim Jarvis, right, so you have to probably go through his course.

Paul32:18Yeah, or hire him as a coach or something like that. So he makes this available to all of his clients. And because we've been a client of his. What's that?

Dario32:27We should have him on the podcast, eh?

Kyrill32:29Yeah, Dario, let's reach out to him and have him on the podcast. That could be, yeah, have that episode sponsored by him. Because that tool just sounds incredible because you're immediately within the first call with the lead. You give them so much value that, I mean, obviously since you're using…

Paul32:32Hahaha.

Dario32:46Are you doing that during the first call or are you doing that maybe later on?

Paul32:49Yeah, so the way we do things is we have a discovery call with people. And then I tell them, I'll get back to them in about a week and come up with a proposal for them. And that's when I'll present the audience persona data to them is at the time of giving them a proposal.

Kyrill32:50Yeah

Dario33:06I see.

Kyrill33:06Okay, so yeah.

Dario33:08So you get all the information you need for that app in the discovery call.

Paul33:13Correct, correct.

Kyrill33:14Yeah, you're giving them a strategy approach almost with this AI tool because it's basically not only giving you the audience persona, it gives good suggestions for what content that clients are looking for, especially if they're coming to you with like what they're asking, like say they wanna do like a two minute profile video, but what kind of profile video or like is that even needed right now based on what stage of career you are on? So I'm very curious as to like what questions it asks you to provide.

Paul34:01Well, you know, we basically this tool has only been available for a little over a month. So it's still in the early stages, but I've gotten great feedback from prospects and people that I pitched to after they just they just start kind of blown away with how much information is in this report. So it's very much in its infancy.

Kyrill34:09Okay.

Paul34:30right now, but I do believe that, yeah, it's going to definitely improve our conversion rate.

Kyrill34:39If that becomes a mainstream standard, that's gonna make huge shifts in the industry because a lot of production companies don't do that. A lot of the time when a lead comes to you, you're giving them a pretty general proposal. You provide some case studies, some suggestions based on the details that they have provided you and things like that. And then rough estimates based on your discussion with them, right? But then creating such a huge report.

Paul35:28Yeah, well, I know that, yeah, he's pretty much taught us how to write proposals as well, too. When we signed up with him, he put together a proposal template for us, and it's very comprehensive. So, you know, it's not unusual for us to have an over 20 page proposal when we meet with a client.

Kyrill35:57What would you say is the most important, a very key aspect of a proposal that a lot of people don't maybe talk too much about including in their proposals?

Paul36:07Yeah, I think that the thing with with Tim Jarvis is it's very much about teaching you how to set up a metrics plan. And for us, it's about showing a business owner the type of return that's possible with the proposal that we put together. So, for instance, one of the things that

Dario38:04Mm -hmm.

Paul38:04You know, when you're when you put together a $20 ,000 video proposal for somebody, but if they can just get one client, that's $50 ,000, you know, type of just just for landing one client. So I always try and put things in terms of perspective of of not, you know, the dollars and cents so much of what the video costs, but how much it can if we get this to work, you know, of course, it's.

Kyrill38:37Yeah.

Dario38:47Ha ha ha.

Paul39:07Yeah, this is all actually relatively new to. So, you know, you asked me, you know, who my influences were. So another influencer for me was a guy by the name of I don't know if you ever heard of him, Sabri Subi. He started this company. This he has a digital marketing company in Australia called King Kong Marketing. And what what happened was one of my team members sent me this video.

Paul41:34So some of the things that, for instance, one of my newest clients, they market this kit that tests for mold in your home. It's a do -it -yourself mold test kit. And this guy says that so many times people are chronically ill and they don't know it because they have mold growing in their home.

Kyrill42:49You

Paul43:01that I think is making us really reevaluate everything that we're doing is how do we move the needle for our clients and get them the results that they're looking for. And of course, yeah, it puts pressure on us if we don't deliver an ROI, then I don't want to work for free, and I want to pay my people, I have to still pay them. So it's going to be out of my pocket if we don't deliver results. So yeah, it puts pressure on us.

Kyrill43:29Doing it with a fire under your butt.

Dario43:31Yeah.

Paul43:32Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So.

Dario43:37That's interesting.

Kyrill44:04One thing I'm curious about because I've noticed that some production companies are taking more of a dive into the strategy aspect of the whole marketing process as well because a lot of the time video production companies are known for just simply creating the video content. And there's been this kind of evolution of companies moving into more of the strategy aspect of things, which is great.

Paul45:30Yeah, I see a mixture of that. So I think that, yeah, we're kind of like in a little bit of a gray area. We're not like, you know, we don't promote ourselves as being a marketing agency or an advertising agency per se. But we you know, this is just kind of evolved out of my frustration of when we produce this great video and then we looked on their YouTube channel, they had 29 views and we go, OK.

Kyrill45:39Mm -hmm.

Paul45:59What was the point of all of that work that we put in for them, you know, to get 29 views? So so it's just something that's kind of evolved. And and then, you know, it's evolved through what we've been and we're still in process of learning is through what we learned from Tim Jarvis of of. You know, what he has taught us about about how to market your your video production company, that.

Kyrill46:01Yeah.

Paul46:26that if you add these things to your tool belt on how to help them distribute it and measure it and measure results and show them that you're getting them a return on investment. Yeah, that's something that I think the last two contracts that I've landed have been because we've been able to tell people, yeah, these are how we're going to get you the results that you're looking for.

Kyrill46:56I mean, and the value also is that you're actually doing it at a cheaper approach for them as well, and a much more simplified approach, because a lot of the time people go to a lot of ad agencies and marketing companies because they want a one -stop shop. They don't want to be going to five different vendors to handle all those aspects. Like you just handle that, take care of it, but maybe there's not as many marketing companies or maybe they're too expensive within your market.

Paul47:35Yeah, yeah, and some of our clients already have marketing agencies, so we we coordinate with them for certain things. So, you know, we're not we don't do the marketing for all of our clients and things of that nature. But we yeah, we just, for instance, this one client that I have, they had somebody that has, you know, somebody that built their website for them. So we're coordinating with them to put the Google tag on so that.

Kyrill47:40Okay.

Kyrill47:46Bumping heads.

Paul48:04The main thing that we want to make sure of is that we get credit. If one of our videos gets them to a page on their website, I want to get credit for it. So we need to have that set up so that the Google tag is attached in the UTM link from our content. And it gives us the right amount of credit for getting somebody to a landing page, even if one of our clients is using a different ad agency or…

Kyrill48:36What do you mean by credit specifically? Like in terms of like tagging your business on that video as well? Because that's not a very common thing that I, like Daria, do you hear too much of that here or no?

Paul48:44Yes.

Dario48:50We don't do marketing.

Kyrill48:52Well, yeah, I know, I know we don't, but I'm like wondering if that's if that's an aspect with other companies.

Dario48:55I mean, if you're a marketing agency for sure, you're definitely keeping tags on metrics like that, right? Because then you got to show it in your reports that this, yeah, they clicked on that and that's, yeah.

Kyrill49:03Yeah.

Paul49:10Yeah, so basically the way it works is that every website, they can say, every website should have Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager installed on a website. And they should be able to say, okay, how many people visited this website? And then they should also be able to say with a Google Tag Manager,

Kyrill50:05Right, right.

Paul50:08and the YouTube ad that I helped them create with my video was what got them to that page on their website or landing page.

Dario50:17I'm just wondering a lot of the times with your leads or clients, are you dealing with the marketing departments or do they not have like a marketing team? Because a lot of things you mentioned, like the conversations about, you know, how much is your client lifetime, whatever that term was, that's something that usually the marketing people wouldn't know or stuff like that. So I'm just wondering, like, maybe it might be easier to.

Paul50:54Yeah, so so we we market to some larger companies. They have a marketing director or VP of marketing or so. So we market to people with.

Dario52:58Another thing I'm wondering about is you mentioned you were trying to pitch your videos is kind of like, you know, it'll, it'll be evergreen. They'll last a while. Uh, I'm just wondering though, how do you convince them to create content where you on a more consistent basis? Like, so let's say you already did that, uh, onboarding video for that one client. How do you then keep in touch with them and say, Hey, like we need, you should do this or you should do that.

Paul53:26Yeah, I think we're still a work in progress in that area. It's like I said, I just kind of learned a lot of the… I think last year was a year where we did a lot of learning. We did a lot of learning from the SabiSubi course and we're still learning from the Tim Jarvis types of things. So we still need to remarket to the people that we've done videos for in the past and go, here are the new things that we're doing right now that we didn't have in our tool belt a few years ago.

Kyrill54:05Yeah, as you mentioned, you're just starting to implement a lot of these things. It's just funny, because you talk about it like you've been using it for this method for so many years at this point. We're like, oh, like how was that yielded? It's like, oh yeah, we just started last week or last month. It's like, oh, okay. But yeah, no, definitely we got to follow up within a few months and see like kind of how things have progressed for you. Because we're definitely curious about some of these new.

Paul54:21Yeah. Yeah.

Kyrill54:34strategies you've been kind of implementing.

Paul54:36Yeah, and I think the early results have been encouraging. Like I just said, we've landed, probably the last four contracts we've landed have been retainer contracts where it's not just a one video thing, it's a series of videos that we're creating for them with an overall game plan type of thing.

Kyrill55:33Oh yeah, like it definitely sounds like it's already been very useful at that point to get a, even one retainer client has already made that strategy worth it at this point, but four in what, like a month or two months? That's pretty impressive.

Paul55:48Yeah, so yeah, we're cautiously optimistic that we're on the right track. And, you know, I do believe, yeah, it's much better if you can have somebody sign you to retainer for six months to a year as opposed to just being a one and done type of transaction.

Kyrill56:12Oh, absolutely. We're we're kind of like hitting the one hour mark now with the episode. Are there any questions that you might have for us or anything like that or Dario, anything else on your end as well?

Dario56:24No, no, no, I'm good. I think he's got a meeting though in like 10 minutes. We gotta kind of cut it.

Kyrill56:27Yeah, that's why I'm kind of leaving it at the last point. So yeah, if you have any questions, let us know.

Paul56:33All right, well, I appreciate the invitation and enjoy talking to you.

Dario56:38Likewise. All right. Thank you, Paul. So if you guys want to reach out to Paul, his website is Moji Cinema and how you spell that is, let me just pull it up here, mojicinema .com and then just reach out to Paul. Thank you again, Paul.

Kyrill56:48M -O -J -I.