You will get more clients with these 4 essential tips

Are you having difficulties landing clients? With the video industry so competitive, you have to set yourself apart from the pack. Here’s how to do that.

Before establishing himself, Chrystopher Rhodes, the talent behind YouTube channel YCImaging, had trouble getting clients. “I need to pay my rent. I just could not get a client to save my life,” Rhodes says. Rhodes has learned a lot over the years though and he’s learned the art of landing clients. “ … now I’m at a point where I’m turning down projects because I’m too busy. I just don’t have time to shoot them,” he says.

He’s amassed four essential tips for getting video productions clients in his years of experience. Each one is majorly helpful and will get you closer to being overly busy like Rhodes.

Create a reel

First and foremost, you need to have a portfolio of your work, essentially a reel. You are not going to get clients if you can’t show them what you can do. “I feel like a lot of directors and people who just get into video production they want to charge too early on or they want to charge too much early on,” Rhodes claims. Before you can start charging, you have to build up your body of work so you can pitch your ability to clients.

Fill your reel with the best works that you have. A reel is an opportunity for you to showcase the good parts of your videos, regardless if the entire video is good or not. Rhodes recommends making your reel “short and sweet” filled with only the best moments of every video you’ve created.

Create a website

Next, you need to create a portfolio-based website. It should be a one-stop shop for clients to go to to get an idea who you are and what your style is. It can be a turn off for clients to have to go to numerous sites to see your body of work, having to jump from Instagram to YouTube to see your photos and videos.

That’s the biggest benefit of having a website. Everything you want to showcase is in one place. Plus, websites make you look more professional. You put the time and effort to make it. It shows you are serious about your business and working professionally.

Personal branding

“This is huge,” says Rhodes. “Look at it like this: as a freelance creator, your job is to make somebody’s personal business look as best as it can possibly be. Why would they come to you to make their business look better if your business doesn’t look good?”

Without strong personal branding, it lowers the overall feeling of legitimacy around the job you are doing. “Always use yourself and your work as a portfolio as well,” Rhodes says. Clients want to see what you have done for your business and branding. They want to see how good it looks. Everything about your business needs to be top quality.

Networking

Clients aren’t going to come to you out of the blue. You have to make connections with those in the business to get connected with clients needing work done. Don’t get us wrong; word-of-mouth does exist. However, you have to establish yourself first and work extremely hard to get to the status where clients are seeking you out.

Chrystopher Rhodes next to one of his clients
You need to network if you want to keep getting new clients

Do as much networking as you can to get connected. For Rhodes, being the music video shooter that he his, he found going to musician showcases got him connections with a lot of potential clients.

You also don’t always have to network with clients. You can network with other creatives. They can help you get other jobs.

So, if you are having difficulties landing clients, or you want to get more work, practice all four of these tips. You are guaranteed to get more clients if you do.

Sean Berry
Sean Berry
Sean Berry is Videomaker's Managing Editor.

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