How do I start and market my video training business?

A question we recently received was from someone with “35 years experience in media including photography, Photoshop creation, editing, video editing (education-based projects)”. They’ve been a social media manager for last few years and said they “need to finalise their website, themes and workflow to maximise and market to creative clients who are willing to pay for quality media projects that will evolve with time”.

Firstly, you’ve got a solid base of experience and it sounds like you’re a jack of all trades (in a good, multipotentialite way) who is looking to set up your website and branding before launching a marketing strategy to reach a target audience.

Some tips are:

• As you’ve got tech experience, you might want to look into setting up a WordPress website, using a popular theme (like the Corporate 2 demo on Salient) on low-cost hosting. If you’d rather spend time building your business than building your website, you could look to use Squarespace, Weebly or even Carrd to launch as quickly as possible.
• As for brand-building, I’d recommend any of the books by Bernadette Jiwa for developing a business that connects to people through story.
• As for workflow, I’d recommend that you read a book called Traction to build out your outbound marketing channels. For software to track this and systemise the process, if you’re looking for a simple project management marketing solution, you could look at Milanote, Trello or Asana. If you’re looking for a more automated marketing project management software setup, have a look at Podio with their Globiflow add-on.
• As for quality clients, these will come through doing targeted work in a narrow niche and setting up a strong referral process where you complete work and then ask for referrals from existing clients. You could also team this strategy with a partnership strategy where you work with existing freelancers, businesses and creators to provide complementary services to their clients.