marketing vs spamming

[Steve Laramie]

I have been emailing allot of production companies in my area asking if they need any help. Not sure about marketing rules, its very possible they have been passing me off as spam. A few have gotten back to me. But hav'nt gotten responses from the majority.

 

[puredrifting]

Steve:

Pick up the phone and sell yourself. Better yet, go knock on some doors and meet some people.

I, for one, would never even consider hiring anyone from an unsolicited e-mail. Spam, spam, spam.

People hate spam and if you are spamming, not only are you wasting your time, but you are pissing off potential people who could hire you if they knew you.

Besides calling and knocking on doors, work your network. You do have a network of production colleagues, don't you? 95% of my work is from people who have already hired me (regular clients) and through friends who I have hired and they have hired me. You need to make friends with cinematographers, editors, grips, gaffers, producers, animators, designers, the whole shmear. You will get them work and they will get you work. That's how it all works.

Dan

 

[Steve Laramie]

Yeah. I chose email mainly because it was after business hours and I wanted to get more info written down for them. Like sending my resume and website. Theirs not allot of DP's grips ect. around philly. Most of them I am friends with. Just trying to branch out more.

 

[JonathanLB]

Hmm...

I don't know, I mean for me, I think e-mail is the best way to communicate and sell myself. I'm not going to call them on the phone, I'll kill myself with that, I cannot speak well on the phone if I'm nervous and I'm nervous calling someone cold like that. I'm not a telemarketer. Much better to e-mail someone with information and see what happens.

The best is from connections, though, that really is ideal.

 

[Chamber005]

Hm. Are you asking them specifically if you can work for FREE? I think that's important. Header your e-mail with, "I'D LIKE TO WORK WITH YOUR COMPANY FOR FREE!!!!"

If you're looking for a paying job, though, absolutely no way in hizzy is anyone ever going to hire you via e-mail. You go to that office and you buy that office lunch (pizza, whatever!) Tell them that you want to be a part of THIS company. You e-mail someone? That in NO WAY shows that you give one single crapola about THEIR company. Figure out reasons why you want to work for THAT company, every company you visit. We used to have account executives come into our firms all the time. They'd buy us lunch, we'd send business to their banks.

Everything in business is about relationships. E-mail can create social relationships, but I've never heard of it creating a business relationship.

MO

 

[JonathanLB]

lol.

That's kind of harsh. I mean, I hire lots of people by e-mail, and have made a lot of connections that way, it just depends what I'm looking for and what they are offering. I can't go into people's offices, because there's no way I'd confine myself to regional work or work in my city. L.A. has too many filmmakers for that nonsense.

I think e-mailing enough companies will definitely result in hits and work, but I suspect that my indirect connections will be more helpful, like people I know who are putting me in touch with potential clients who I know are already interested in what I am offering. We'll see. Then I'm hitting up a conference in early May, so that after that point if I e-mail someone I spoke to there, it won't be the first we've talked. But that's in general how I'd prefer to operate, where I make a first connection through another means, then e-mail can iron out more details.

 

[robstar1]

Just mix it up with emails, postcards, phone calls every 4-6 weeks. If you can't afford to send postcards and make phone calls then your list is too big and you have not done your homework to "QUALIFY" your potential client list. Until you've personally qualified someone that they use your services / talents; even if they are already using someone else, then you are spamming them whether it is email, snail mail or other.

It has taken me years... sometimes 6, 8, 10 years to crack open a potential client before they finally call or hire me. Consistency and persistence is the key to marketing. If you know they use services or talents like yours and you want them as a client, never give up until they literally tell you not to contact them anymore.

Robert Starling, SOC

 

[loselectro]

I personally think you're wasting your time sending emails, I would personally never hire someone from a unsolicited email, but I guess everyone is different.

In my opinion, the way to do it is to make friends meet people. Editors, DPs, Producers all like to drink, like to hang out. In my experience, at least in LA, a lot of jobs are based on nepotism..and if you have the skills to back it up you'll be unbeatable.

 

[Chamber005]

lol.

That's kind of harsh. I mean, I hire lots of people by e-mail, and have made a lot of connections that way, it just depends what I'm looking for and what they are offering. I can't go into people's offices, because there's no way I'd confine myself to regional work or work in my city. L.A. has too many filmmakers for that nonsense.

I think e-mailing enough companies will definitely result in hits and work, but I suspect that my indirect connections will be more helpful, like people I know who are putting me in touch with potential clients who I know are already interested in what I am offering. We'll see. Then I'm hitting up a conference in early May, so that after that point if I e-mail someone I spoke to there, it won't be the first we've talked. But that's in general how I'd prefer to operate, where I make a first connection through another means, then e-mail can iron out more details.

I work in banking, so I totally work e-mails and mailers for business (heck, that's pretty much ALL I do). But the original post, to me, deserved the old advice of grabbing your toolbelt and just walking up to construction sites to see if they have work (which, by the way, is outdated advice as people typically can't hire workers this way anymore because of immigration and insurance laws).

For this type of networking position (someone with little or no connections), I think e-mail is fine, but that they should expect little or nothing from it. In your case, e-mailing is a fine tool because you're maintaining already established connections. I think creating new prospects requires a little more face-to-face action.

In banking, I've met 95% of all of my clients the first time we've done business together. For repeat business, the number drops to about 20%.

If this guy is just starting out, I would simply advise him to spend as much time and money as he can developing a striking, high-traffic website with demos, etc., and then visit as many companies as he can physically get to without depleting all gas and funds; get a contact to stay in touch with at each of those companies; follow up each month with an e-mail and the occasional postcard.

In business you have to always attack on all fronts available to you. No single route will achieve the highest levels of success.

 

[JonathanLB]

I work in banking, so I totally work e-mails and mailers for business (heck, that's pretty much ALL I do). But the original post, to me, deserved the old advice of grabbing your toolbelt and just walking up to construction sites to see if they have work (which, by the way, is outdated advice as people typically can't hire workers this way anymore because of immigration and insurance laws).

For this type of networking position (someone with little or no connections), I think e-mail is fine, but that they should expect little or nothing from it. In your case, e-mailing is a fine tool because you're maintaining already established connections. I think creating new prospects requires a little more face-to-face action.

In banking, I've met 95% of all of my clients the first time we've done business together. For repeat business, the number drops to about 20%.

If this guy is just starting out, I would simply advise him to spend as much time and money as he can developing a striking, high-traffic website with demos, etc., and then visit as many companies as he can physically get to without depleting all gas and funds; get a contact to stay in touch with at each of those companies; follow up each month with an e-mail and the occasional postcard.

In business you have to always attack on all fronts available to you. No single route will achieve the highest levels of success.

So true.

Well, for me, the industry I'm targeting, I have insider sources who can help me get these first introductions, without just spamming them, I mean by the time that I e-mail them they will be expecting my e-mail, or we will have talked on the phone first, or they will e-mail ME first. Also I'm going to an industry conference in May, and am considering placing ads in a trade magazine too, so that basically if you are in this business you will see my company name and my name many times over, not just once, and that way if I e-mailed companies "out of the blue" a year or two from now, it's likely they would already know who I was, have seen my work, and at least thought about my services, and I may have worked with people they know already, competitors, albeit, but still.

That's one reason why I'm targeting my skills for one specific market, one I know and have experience working in, because I'm a bit afraid to send e-mails out randomly to a bunch of companies I have no clue about, it seems like the success rate would be terrible.

As for the other comment, about hanging out with DPs, producers, directors, etc. None of that helps me. I'm not looking for work from other film industry people, I'm mainly looking for corporate work. I AM a director-producer, so I don't have use to meet others really, except as friends and for advice, because they're not going to be able to give me work at this point, most likely. I need to build up more narrative work or shoot my own feature before I start to have the cache to do that. We'll see, but for now corporate is my focus, with my hobby being more fun productions on the side, and I am trying to break into music video production with record labels. That will probably be my first success, but it's still fringe stuff, that's not as much "the film industry" as related industries, corporate video work and music videos are like on these outer rings, with corporate way out there, music videos much closer.

 

[Chamber005]

So true.

Well, for me, the industry I'm targeting, I have insider sources who can help me get these first introductions, without just spamming them, I mean by the time that I e-mail them they will be expecting my e-mail, or we will have talked on the phone first, or they will e-mail ME first. Also I'm going to an industry conference in May, and am considering placing ads in a trade magazine too, so that basically if you are in this business you will see my company name and my name many times over, not just once, and that way if I e-mailed companies "out of the blue" a year or two from now, it's likely they would already know who I was, have seen my work, and at least thought about my services, and I may have worked with people they know already, competitors, albeit, but still.

That's one reason why I'm targeting my skills for one specific market, one I know and have experience working in, because I'm a bit afraid to send e-mails out randomly to a bunch of companies I have no clue about, it seems like the success rate would be terrible.

As for the other comment, about hanging out with DPs, producers, directors, etc. None of that helps me. I'm not looking for work from other film industry people, I'm mainly looking for corporate work. I AM a director-producer, so I don't have use to meet others really, except as friends and for advice, because they're not going to be able to give me work at this point, most likely. I need to build up more narrative work or shoot my own feature before I start to have the cache to do that. We'll see, but for now corporate is my focus, with my hobby being more fun productions on the side, and I am trying to break into music video production with record labels. That will probably be my first success, but it's still fringe stuff, that's not as much "the film industry" as related industries, corporate video work and music videos are like on these outer rings, with corporate way out there, music videos much closer.

I'd be interested to see how your artistic process continues as you move away from a corporate-structured kind of filmmaking (which, in my opinion, is wholly business and not artistry), into making actual films.

From your other posts I've noticed these clenched-fists, business-minded practices being applied to your artistry, but here I see more of a division. It seems that you do have separate asperations for the business of filmmaking and the artistry of filmmaking. I think attempting to do both simultaneously must be incredibly difficult and is something I would personally never attempt. I can't imagine ever drawing a company's logo or filming a commercial or acting in a project that I did not wholly believe in. I avoid all this because I think money and fame can be a kind of poison.

But, realistically, I use my talents in acting and writing when I'm doing business. Client interaction very much requires a certain level of performance. So in that, I can't say that we're so different. I do believe, though, that an artist must separate the two aspects of themselves. I think a desire for monetary gain and social gain as an everyman is a completely healthy endevour. I think a desire for monetary gain and social gain as an artist is a completely UNhealthy (and unsavory) endevour.

So, again, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts and progressions in this matter. Though you, and many others, may not see fit to divide the two endevours so completely as I have.

 

[JonathanLB]

I'd be interested to see how your artistic process continues as you move away from a corporate-structured kind of filmmaking (which, in my opinion, is wholly business and not artistry), into making actual films.

From your other posts I've noticed these clenched-fists, business-minded practices being applied to your artistry, but here I see more of a division. It seems that you do have separate asperations for the business of filmmaking and the artistry of filmmaking. I think attempting to do both simultaneously must be incredibly difficult and is something I would personally never attempt. I can't imagine ever drawing a company's logo or filming a commercial or acting in a project that I did not wholly believe in. I avoid all this because I think money and fame can be a kind of poison.

But, realistically, I use my talents in acting and writing when I'm doing business. Client interaction very much requires a certain level of performance. So in that, I can't say that we're so different. I do believe, though, that an artist must separate the two aspects of themselves. I think a desire for monetary gain and social gain as an everyman is a completely healthy endevour. I think a desire for monetary gain and social gain as an artist is a completely UNhealthy (and unsavory) endevour.

So, again, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts and progressions in this matter. Though you, and many others, may not see fit to divide the two endevours so completely as I have.

I started doing corporate work after I had already done other film work... and I've only done enough corporate work to make some cash, not enough yet, and it in no way effects any other work you do. Lots of other people do corporate work, it's a cake walk, it requires very little in the way of knowledge besides the basics, you just need to understand what looks good, who to hire, how to work with a client, etc.

I've done way more artistic film work than corporate work, on a time basis, just shot a short a few weeks ago and will have it finished up in a few days. I don't see what the big deal is, I'd much rather be doing corporate work than doing something out of the industry. Film is what I love to do and it's still fun to make good work for a company that needs it. And to say that commercials are not artistic, well, that I disagree with entirely. Commercials would be tons of fun to get into, I'd love doing national TV commercials one day. Sure, local stuff would probably suck most of the time, but you could bring a fun edge to it and bring your own voice to it. When I did a training video I had a really good time, because I was able to rewrite some of the script and introduce humor into it, really make it my own, so it wasn't just a random training video but had my stamp on it, my style. I enjoyed the project thoroughly.

I guess if all you want to do is make art then go off in a cave somewhere, this is a business man. This is a MULTI, MULTI-billion-dollar business, and that has to be taken into consideration when you're a filmmaker. It's not all about your art. It's about making money or helping other companies make money. I need to make money so I can finance my greater goals, which is feature filmmaking ultimately, and corporate work facilitates that. It's not a tough division whatsoever, it's basically like ok now I'm going to do something really difficult, make a quality short film, then after that I'm going to yawn my way through easy corporate work that's a slam dunk paycheck, then I can go do something else more fulfilling. It's not like it's difficult to do different types of work, I've done training videos, virtual tours, interviews, short films, music videos, etc. and it's all the same principal for 90% of the time, the only differences are in style and form, I mean on a short I have to consider sound and music, whereas on a music video those elements don't need to be dealt with, or on a corporate project I need to think of the company's image and whatnot, worry about keeping things politically correct, and on a short I may not worry as much. I don't see how any filmmaking work is overly difficult to switch between if you know what you're doing...