How To Start An Online Video Production Business
Being a videographer is a cool profession, and if you have decided to turn your video production freelancing gig into a full-blown and thriving business, we welcome you on this entrepreneurial journey.
It’s not going to be easy, but it’s going to be lots of fun.
So buckle up as we list down the steps you’ll need to take to set your video production business successfully. The great thing about your decision is you are planning to do this online. Meaning: no worries about maintaining an office space, a lease, or the bills. It’s all going to be online so you’ll be saving a ton on these costs. Plus, thanks to Zoom and other services of the sort, you can manage a large team completely online with substantial success.
But worrying about staff management is for another day. Let’s first tackle what goes on when you start setting up your online video production business.
Register Your Business
First things first: register your company/brand name with your relevant local and state authorities. Fill up the necessary paperwork and file your registration.
This step also requires that you buy business insurance, set your business bank account, and register with IRS.
While as a video production business, there aren’t any special licenses or permits that you need to apply for. However, if you decide to shoot in a location that’s not owned by the public, you may require going to the City Hall and filing the appropriate paperwork.
Design a Brand Logo
After you register your business, it’s time to give it a face – and that’s going to be your brand’s perfect logo design. A great logo helps communicate all the essential information about the brand at a single glance. The shape, the colors, the icon, and the fonts – all these details come together to create a coherent visual message that the audience immediately understands.
To pull off such a design, understand your brand message and personality. Determine your aesthetic. Explore your tone, style, and language.
If you are a wedding videographer, for example, the popular color palette is pastel, the fonts are cursive, and the overall aesthetic is pleasant and soft. For someone who specializes in commercial videos, your brand logo needs to be sharper and sleeker. Go for minimalistic composition and polished fonts. Swirls and cursives may not be a natural fit here.
But don’t feel boxed-in. Explore your unique brand and represent it as authentically as you can. Customers gravitate towards brands that keep it real.
Set Up Your Website
For a business that exists solely online, a website acts as your main shop. People come here to check you out: see your previous work, look around what’s going on, and feel the vibe.
Set up your business website by registering its domain and buying a hosting package. If your website setup is a DIY project, there are tons of unique website templates that you can take advantage of, depending on the site-building platform you are using. The most popular of those are WordPress, Wix, and Shopify, among others.
Your website aesthetics need to match those of your videography style and your logo design. Keep the color palette the same, and only introduce one or more colors but with a clear strategy behind it. For example, if your brand color palette is black and green, you can use white on your website just for CTAs, and the whole thing will look natural.
When it comes to themes and templates, choose responsive ones so your clients can enjoy your website as it is intended no matter their screen sizes.
Create Your Social Media Accounts
The next step is to set up your social media profiles as a business account. This includes:
The important thing to keep in mind when setting up your social media accounts is to prioritize your time between them. Each social media platform mentioned above is preferred by a certain kind of audience. Instagram is more popular with the visually-inclined demographic that prefers aesthetics over other factors.
Facebook is popular for conversations and engagements. When you really want to connect with your audience, be it through Facebook Live or by managing a group, you go to Facebook. LinkedIn is to create networks with other businesses and probably get more commercial work coming your way.
So, set up your business goals – is it engagement, creating an appeal, networking, or something else – and prioritize your social media based on that.
Marketing & Advertisement
Now that you are done with all the setups, it’s time to get the word out.
There are multiple ways you can market your video production business. Depending on your budget, start with being active on your social media. Get your friends, family, and existing customers to join you online. Set up an email list and let people know that you are open for business, with more pizzaz. Tell them about anything new that you are offering.
As a video production business, it would be cool if you create a short video telling people why you thought to start the business, how you arrived here, and what you plan to do. We all love stories, and brands that are good at storytelling always enjoy a warm spot in people’s hearts. So, create that story and run it as a paid ad on your social media.
Lastly, always test and review your marketing campaigns. Whether it’s a short tutorial series you’ve done to attract new clients or are running a discount campaign, always set goals before you start and keep testing to see how each campaign is working.
Test, revise, and repeat. That’s the only way to do it.
Final Thoughts
Starting something new is always scary and always empowering. Why should a video production business be any different? But if you’ve got experience on your side and you’re willing to work a little bit harder to create solid foundations for your new business, things can take off in seemingly no time. As people get hungrier and hungrier for original video content on social media and elsewhere, video production will continue to see a rise.
Author Bio:
Michael Davis
Michael Davis is a freelance marketer and writer. Businesses reach out to him for marketing strategies, industry insights, and planning for the way forward. Apart from that, he loves gaming, scrolling Twitter, and sitting in coffee shops completing the first draft of his upcoming book.
