Real Client Workshop: How To Reinvent Your Brand

This is a live client workshop where we solve real problems, with real businesses, in 60 minutes or less.

In this episode, we work with MediaXchange - a television & entertainment education leader - to help them reinvent their brand after more than 30 years in the industry.

Host: Kaine Levy
Guests: Katrina Wood and Przemek Wojs of MediaXchange

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:55 Overview of Media Xchange
• 3:22 Business Revenue and Flagship Program
• 4:14 Goal of Brand Refresh and Customer Feedback
• 5:41 Challenges in Reinventing the Brand
• 6:43 Adapting to Industry Changes and Retrofitting Programs
• 7:35 SWOT Analysis and Competitor Analysis
• 11:13 Marketing Strategy and Target Audience
• 13:10 Weaknesses: Gender Diversity and Niche Market
• 15:10 Strengths: Quality of Programs and Personalised Experience
• 18:11 Threats: Industry Changes and Shift to Virtual Platforms
• 24:02 Adapting to Virtual Platforms and Maintaining Connection
• 24:50 Competition and Recruitment
• 26:42 Industry Attrition and New Entertainment Platforms
• 27:28 Targeting Professionals and Students
• 29:35 Partnerships with Film Schools
• 33:36 Improving Messaging and Value Proposition
• 35:20 Understanding the Customer Journey
• 35:50 Analysing the Brand Sales Marketing Funnel
• 40:51 Exploring Partnerships and Lower Commitment Offers
• 48:32 Next Steps and Client Feedback
• 49:35 Outro

Transcript

Kaine Levy (00:00)
What you're about to hear is a live client workshop where we solve real problems for real companies in 60 minutes or less. I hope you

Kaine Levy (00:08)
So what you guys sent to me when you reached out was what would be the most helpful for us to solve is how do you move on to a freshening of the brand? We have a good brand, but we do need to reinvent ourselves to be appealing to new generations. And at the same time, we need to appeal to clients across the globe, not just Brits. so something you guys also said to me before I started the recording was who is the audience?

that we sell to these days. Who is it that needs what we have? And you also mentioned that you have a database, both of past clients and potential prospects, cold prospects that you cold email to. And you're just kind of interested in exploring what channels you can use outside of website and social media to generate more business basically. So let's start with you again, Peter. If you could just give us a quick rundown on what is Media Exchange does and then we'll pass it over to Katrina.

Sure, no problem. So I think in the simplest term, we build bridges between the creators in the entertainment industry with particular focus on TV drama. So we have been in business for more than 30 years now. So during this time, we really witnessed all the changes that happened in this.

in this market, I think it's fair to say at the beginning of the 90s, TV drama was a kind of lower tier of television entertainment, let's say, but then over the years. And I think it would be fair to say that we also have our brick in it. We can talk about this golden age of television when TV drama really advanced to this almost

high form of entertainment in many cases. And what we do at Media Exchange is we try to connect the right people so they can do amazing things. And we have various programs that support different professionals in their field of the industry. These are creative programs, business programs.

We also have our flagship program, Showrunner TV Drama Exchange, which is a week long program where people from all over the world go to Los Angeles and they can talk and observe the practices of creators there. And it's probably fair to say that the US set certain standards in the industry. So it's important to know what's going on there.

And that's probably it. Katrina, what would you add to it? I would add that the two most used strands of what we do are training, storytelling, finance, virtual production type strands, and consultancy, which is more tailored to the individual

company or television channel. and so, yeah, those two areas are where we focus. Okay. So if I understood correctly, there's kind of two stems. There's the people looking to maybe enter or enter the industry or, or, progress their career if they're already in the industry. And those are people who you teach essentially. So it's kind of an educational side of the business. And then there's the other side where you go maybe more of a B2B.

style thing where you go directly to production companies and you match them with people who maybe have come through your program or something like that. that that we give them say, a whole schedule, you know, they come to America with a project, and we set up a whole schedule of meetings for them. So they understand the market, and they meet the most likely partners within that market. Okay, amazing. Perfect. That makes sense. So where

at the moment is most of your revenue coming from? Like what's the flagship? I know you said you have a flagship program. Is that the thing that brings in most of the business at the moment? It would be sort of a balance between the showrunner program that Peter just described and the various different things we do on storytelling. Okay. Okay. And those are kind of like educational workshops. Yes. Got it.

Okay. And the ultimate goal with all of this is revenue, I'm guessing, Katrina. Yes. Perfect. And you think that freshening up the brand might be the route to that, but there could be a few different potential routes. Yeah. I mean, I think it would, it will, it will help us see blue sky. because, know, when you're working hard, you have your head down and you don't really look for, novelty. look for the tried and true and get on with it.

Yeah, I call that the brand echo chamber. I've been trying to get that to catch on since I said it and it's not happened yet. Yeah, exactly. Okay, that makes sense. And do you ever get feedback from your customers about the brand? Or is it kind of a hunch? No, I think it's a bit of both. I think the way people respond to things that we're trying to sell indicates like, we're missing the mark here.

And what people ask of us, you know, is different. To what you offer? Yeah, it's, it's, it's sort of moved on. Well, we would like to bring in this one with with with that one to do X, which is sort of shifting things around the board and reflecting a different need. So is it in your mind that you're

you're aware that there's an ask for a change. Have you tried it and it's just not worked? Or are you just not sure how to do it because you've been doing things a certain way for 30 years? Well, it's a sort of

complex issue because we're contracted to do the old stuff. So we still have to deliver that. Okay. And it's difficult when you're flat out delivering things to reinvent yourself. You know, you just don't have the time and you know, to reinvent yourself, you need some head space.

There's certain things that happen completely, what the word would be, spontaneously, that sort of force you to change. I'm just trying to think. Well, for instance, the flagship program, the showrunner exchange, was really badly hit by the strikes in the States.

When everything came to a grinding halt. And coming to a grinding halt, it also changed everything so that the showrunners who would be sitting there like the fat cats, getting three to $5 million a year as a salary, which most of us could survive on, it's now very different. There's not so much being commissioned.

you know, some of the big studios are falling apart. And so we thought like, you know what, we've been doing this. In fact, it's the 25th year we've been doing this showrunner program. Why don't we just retrofit it and start taking the Americans to Europe. So that's what that's what we are in the middle of doing now. Okay. And is that something you validated or you kind of put feelers out for or yes, a bit of both? Yeah. Amazing.

So it sounds to me that I've just got a couple of things here that is worth, you know, that I thought would be worth looking at based on what you told me on your email beforehand. And there's, There's kind of a few ways we could go. The one that seems to make the most sense to me would be to do an updated SWOT analysis. If that's something you've not done recently. think that's a good idea. You talk about, you know, when you're talking about industry changes and

market changes that you can't control. It'll be really good to see where you guys are strong. And maybe if we can kind of tailor that to some of the changes that are going on at the moment. So instead of it being a complete reinvention, maybe we can just pivot with the skillsets that you already have. was going to ask as well is for the people that you do the programs for that you take over to the States and vice versa, are film schools

indirect competitors in that niche? Or is it kind of a slightly different? we're for professionals, not students. So there's quite a big gap. Okay, that's good to know. And also because what we do is relatively expensive. You have to fly to Los Angeles, you have to stay in a hotel, you have to pay us. It's not for

people whose companies are not yet ready to pay for them to do these things? Yeah. And how many individuals come to you? Did you get more companies coming to you saying, we've got these three people that we want to put through your program or do you get a lot of individuals who are, you know, I don't know, supervising? Interestingly, it's sort of in the middle at the moment. It used to be companies sending their staff. Now it's a mix between

people who are doing recently on the spectrum and therefore need to get out there and so individually want the information rather than sending staff. Okay. And they currently find you through your emails or do you also do you get inbound traffic as well through any channels?

Well, I suppose because we have a good reputation, we have a lot of referrals, know, word of mouth, which is great. And so we, you know, some of the people we've known since the first time we've, we, did these exchanges. first exchange we did in 1991 was all women. And it was like four from the BBC, two from ITV and the rest of them were

independence. I remember you telling me about this one. was excitement. was indefinite excitement. And then it was all men with equal excitement. And so we decided after that only to do mixed sex groups. Okay. So and your your kind of customer base is about equal, would you say male, female?

terms of people? Well, one of the problems is has been a transition which we've been through, which is our experts are all men. The people who deliver the... Yes. So we've been we've been trying to pull that back to using women as, you know, trainers as well. The issue being credibility.

If you were somebody paying, it costs, say to come to America with us, it costs $10 ,000. So if you're spending that sort of money, you want to speak to the best. so unfortunately at the moment, the best are either men who've been in these jobs for a long time and have fantastic series behind them, or they are

women who are on their first show, they are showrunners, but they're, you know, they're not tried and true. So even though we, I think we, we have a pretty good mix now, it still has a little bit of a, you know, leaning towards men. cool. Awesome. Let me, let me share my screen with you guys and we'll, we'll dive into the SWOT analysis. think it will be most useful. I've just written down one thing that you said about having a good reputation.

Amazingly, as human beings, we have a natural proclivity for negativity. We're very good at saying all the things we're rubbish at. So let's start with the don't think of anything we're rubbish at. Even if it's your, you like you said, your marketing strategy, for example, might be one. Yes, I think we are in marketing and hitting the target. I think we are.

Bear with me when we say marketing. What are you doing at the moment other than, you know, your website and your your cold outreach? We do we do our mailers. Yeah, and we do. And this is your existing lead list, right? The mailers. Say that again. Sorry. That's that's your existing list of either past clients or prospect, you know, perspective leads that you've Yes.

through various channels. Social media, we probably use LinkedIn the most. Yeah. And as as you know, I was saying, you know, is using email a weakness? You know, is it do we need to move on to something else? Because obviously, the messaging has to be changed if you're going to be doing it via text.

or you or Instagram or, know, you know, other, Yeah. The buying kind of, mean, the short answer, normally I'd say it depends on your industry and what you sell and what's working and looking at data, what the data has said, but there is always a value in, in email for businesses, because if any of these platforms go down tomorrow, you've lost your audience. and it's, and it's,

It's also a consensual platform, right? You're not hammering people in the middle of scrolling, they've given you permission to speak. Yes, exactly. And they do it in their own time. Exactly. So if those emails, you know, if we were to look into those emails and we kind of look at open rates and click through rates and things like that, and we noticed that there was an issue there, then we know that it's either a value issue or a messaging issue. So it might just be a case of tweaking what's going out as opposed to how it's going out. But yeah, sorry, please continue. Okay, good.

Other weaknesses, as I just mentioned, you know, not having the pool of experts that are either diverse or women, gender problems and diversity problems.

And is that just because you don't have those contacts? No, it's because what we sell is...

you know, the top of the line. And the top of the line has not entirely been infiltrated by by women or diverse, diverse people. What and those showrunners and commissioning editors, I'm guessing. Yes, and experts, know, experts on anything, the financing, law, business affairs, you know, lots of men.

Okay. Anything else? Peter, any thoughts? I would probably add that we offer a very specialized service in a way that our customer group, they are not a huge number of people in a way. So I think it's fair to say that we talked to quite a few

marketing people, agencies, and we had trainings in how to filter people through LinkedIn to get our offer seen by our potential customers. But it's a bit hard sometimes to position ourselves properly in the marketing sphere because our target group is relatively small. It's not that we sell

I don't know what some sort of juice that, you know, everybody can buy it. And we just have to focus on advertising ourselves everywhere because our customers are everywhere. We are rather specialized, I would say. I'd love to challenge you on that and say that that's definitely a superpower because the fact that your niche means that you can basically with some research, we can find exactly where the best place to spend your budget is. If you've got a juice.

you have to be everywhere. And that's really expensive to do. You know, when you think about these big brands, the apples and the Samsungs of the world, they can afford to be everywhere because why not?

think Katrina's frozen. Yes, it's the same on my end. Okay, okay. Do I keep talking? Should I wait for her? I think we should wait maybe just a second. Maybe I will let her know that her screen has frozen on our end.

is frozen in deep thought.

She's gone. Definitely internet. Yeah, yeah, I think so. So I think she will join us shortly. Peter, how do I say your, your proper your Polish name? that's Przemek. So just imagine that instead of RZ after P, you have SH and that would be the way probably. Okay, hang on. Wait, I need to pull up your your spelling from the from Katrina's email so I can actually visualize that.

Sure, no problem

So what am I swapping? I'm swapping RZ with SHEMEC. That's right. Yeah. Got it. Got it. Got it.

She's here. You're muted, Katrina, if you can hear us.

There you are. We're back. We're back online. Was that my problem? What did I do? I think your internet just dropped. Okay, good. Sorry about that. No, I think you were about to say something. We were talking about niching. I can finish my thought. Maybe it will come back to you. Yeah. Why don't you? Yeah. I was just saying it's a real superpower to have a really niche audience because you can really focus your budget in the areas that make the most sense instead of

sort of spraying and praying across multiple different mediums? Yes, no, I think we're, we may be, you know, we were talking a bit before we spoke to you about, you know, our ideal client. Yes. I think we're not focusing in on that, that particular group sufficiently. Instead of sending stuff out to 8 ,000, you know, contacts, we should be spending the time on,

identifying, you know, the top 20 people to approach individually, to get them to sign up. Yeah, totally. And two things that come up for me when you said, you know, your ideal client, there's, there's two facets to that. There's one having that kind of ICP, you know, your persona, do you know, do you have any personas? And B, if you do, do you have different customer journeys, depending on

where each of those personas are in the buying journey, know, of those 8 ,000, maybe 20 % of them are further along the buying journey than others. And so they do, they will require different messaging. Yeah, I would say we have not done that analysis. Okay. Cool. That's something we can make a note of. Okay.

because that's really important, right? That they're going to have different objections at the top of the funnel as opposed to bottom of the funnel. So you might have people who are teetering on the edge of making a buying decision, but you're just not saying that thing that they need to hear. But on the topic of the target group being really small, is it big enough still to sustain all going well?

Well, no, I think we are are definitely under threat. And we sort of vacillate between feast or famine. And it's fat famine at the moment. And and which is aggravated by the summer, you know, because of the cycles in the in the industry. Everybody goes away during the summer. Yeah, no productions happen for like, so it's grim.

Is that not a good time for you to have a product that's designed for those in between periods where they can kind of be ready for the production period again? Or is the value you provide primarily in getting them on active productions? No, no, you're right. is there is, you know, lot of what we do, they could sit back in their summer house, drinking a glass of wine and looking at it, you know, definitely.

And potentially, I don't know how one would set it up. But with that in mind saying, you know, if you're going to Corsica in the summer, why not do this between this and that? Yeah, you know, because I would do that. I would do things that that that I would enjoy to do, because I have the time to do it. Yeah, exactly. If you're in, know, if you're in that space, you probably enjoy spending your free time doing it as well. That's just

Yeah, it's how we are on the positioning thing is something you mentioned, Peter is, is there anything that comes to mind in terms of how you think people see you or, you know, especially how they see you versus other options out there? Is there anything you know about that from what people have said to you? Well, so usually after, after we have, we have done a program, we do a survey for our participants.

And I think that they appreciate the quality of the programs that we do. And they feel like it's up to date, so to speak, with all these most recent developments. However, maybe partly because we are not exactly sure how

our competitors do their programs, I'm not exactly sure what's the comparison. Like we do get a lot of positive feedback, but I'm not sure if it means that we are simply the best or it means that we are good among others who are also good. Got it. Got it. Okay. So another thing I'm just sort of dumping ideas over here when they come to me. Another thing you

that could be done afterwards is either a SWOT analysis like this on competitors, or what I can do is send you guys a template that we use basically to review competitors. And it kind of looks at, you know, the key differentiator, what their main benefits are, and then basically a how we win section. So what we need to do better than them to win. And what's really helpful with this is

Also, if you reflect on media exchange is if you take away the logo and the 30 years experience, do people know it's you or would they still know that it's I even were delivering somebody something and they were thinking like, who is this? Yeah. So yeah, there's nothing, no indicators as to who we are. Yeah. I mean, you know, there are certain things where you could take the logo away and you're like, that's this brand. Like you can just tell. Yes. Does, does media exchange

that and if not, is it something that maybe we could look at implementing? I think we have some of it, but it would be a good thing to build more. Yeah. Competitor analysis is going to be important. A couple of things that I just threw in while you were talking there. So potential, maybe opportunity for a new offering for the summertime when productions aren't happening. And then on the strengths, the quality of the program is being up to date. Solistic with strengths then, what else do you think you'd

do well. It doesn't have to just be about the product itself. It's basically who we know. Our connections are admirable. And are they always updating, Katrina? Are you constantly... Yes. You've got your I would say they are. Perhaps not at the rate that it should be. But yes, I think they are.

So yeah, who we know. think the way we deliver things also has a sort of glue effect because people definitely enjoy the experience. They meet people that become friends for life, the group that, know, the people that they're in. So it's a very...

Cozy is not the right word, but it's sort of the feeling, the experience. It's not taking a coach to Edinburgh and being stuffed in a hotel there to do something. It is more personal and a lot of care is taken of the individual participant. Okay, amazing.

Peter, any other strengths that you'd add? It doesn't just have to be about the product. It can be about something operational, anything else that you think you do well. I think perhaps we can add our flexibility in a way because we are a relatively small business. What can potentially also be a weakness, but then at the same time

just thinking about our recent example, we were approached to organize a program for a group and it was very easy for us to just prepare a draft in a couple of days basically. So we can quickly respond to new customers and kind of get them into this buying journey very quickly, which I think is a

quite a strength. Yeah, absolutely. That's a really good one. The agility of small businesses is underrated, I think. Okay, so let's look at some of the threats. So, Katrina, you touched on some earlier in terms of industry changes. Could you maybe expand on that for me a little bit?

People no longer want to travel or pay for hotels. They want to do everything on Zoom. And it's a very different experience. Okay. You know, we used to sort of make hay from the connection between people. And that that was the glue that they needed to be able to do projects was to have met each other, you know, face to face.

So I think that that is definitely, you the working from home business has its pluses, but it also has its, you know, definite minuses. Yeah. And is that, is your program adaptable to deal with that?

Well, you know, most of what we can what we do can be done online. But I don't think it has the loyalty factor that is generated by meeting people face to face. Okay.

The other threat is, you know, now that everybody's out of a job, they decide they're going to teach. And I would claim that they're not anything like as good as the teachers we have who have written books and taught this and that and done work with us for a long time. Nevertheless, they're there as competition. Where do they end up teaching with competitors? Which sorry? Where do they end up?

becoming teachers online for one thing as so individual so independence? Yes. Or they Yeah, so they would set themselves up as the sort of the pivot around which they would go and find other experts to support them. So there's that. try and recruit them?

Is there any sort of recruitment program in place for people like that where maybe you could keep them within the family, so to speak, and use them as your... Yes, we might have a look at that. But on the whole, you don't want to be competing with the people who you, you know, hold up as the as the experts. You can have other people, you know, surround them in some ways. But I don't know how you would replace our top

for, you know, experts, there's no way you could say, well, and David will be joining us for this. know, first people don't want to pay for it. David doesn't have, know, teaching is a real skill. You can know a bunch of stuff, but you still can't teach. you know, so it's, the other thing is people steal from us.

they go and see what we're doing and then they go and do a competitive thing to it. Yeah, well, that's what we were talking about here with the competitor analysis. And like I said, if you had that stamp of media exchange on it, it would only help you. would be an honor to you in a way because people know that you're the original. definitely. Okay.

Are the threats the attrition of the industry?

And that's specifically the TV industry. Yeah. And the film industry. So it's just a natural decline that's happening. I'm not sure how natural, but it's still happening. We'll take out natural decline. I mean, I suppose it's where people go for their entertainment now, you know, it's YouTube, games, things like that, you know,

traditional entertainment is perhaps under competition.

Okay. Earlier you said you focus mainly on professionals, not on students. Yeah. Is there scope for that? Is that a second market you could look at? Well, we're sort of doing a soft version of that with the London film school. Yeah. Because they're doing a whole new...

focus on business and they've got a beautiful new building and this and that. So we've been cozying up to them to see what we can do jointly. I think that's good because I mean, you said that the film and TV industry is declining, but my understanding is from revenue, you know, from a revenue standpoint and also from the amount of students still going to university to study film and TV, it's still very, very, very popular.

I think what's shifted is production companies are buying independent stuff as opposed to commissioning everything themselves, right? Yeah, I think that's probably true. Yeah, so and also the other good thing about the London Film School is that their students are largely foreign. So we would have trailed through a lot of the student type level of things here with our storytelling stuff. So it

could be a good thing for us to make that relationship work. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So maybe partnering with other film schools as well, right? Yeah. I could potentially give you an introduction to Met where I went. great. That's it. It's like it's a bit like the London Film School. Yeah, I remember I looked at I looked at London Film School and I forget the other one that's in Stratford.

Bournemouth? No, Central Film School is the one in... Okay, okay. Yeah. In London. Yeah, yeah, yeah, East London. Yeah, partnering with film schools could be really interesting. Yeah, no, I think we could do more of that. I'm just thinking it's, so we have another client who we launched like an audio course for and they're kind of similar to you guys in that they're indirectly competing with universities. Right. But...

It's a completely different price bracket and a different offering. You know, you're not going for one or two years like you, you're kind of fast tracking it. Although with theirs, it's still three to six months. With you guys, it's mostly done in a week, right? Yeah. Okay. So what I'm thinking is, well, a few things come to mind. Firstly, if we can adjust to testing a virtual model of it, of the program,

seeing what that means for the cost of deliverability, because obviously you can reduce the costs. And then maybe working out on the backend how you retain clients and customers as opposed to worrying about it coming from the camaraderie that happens on the program. could be something, you know, with that buying journey, you keep offering tiers of value to them. Right, right, right. So that's the first thing that I was thinking. The second thing is with higher ticket staff,

know, cert products and services, you know, maybe talking in the low full figures and art, which even a virtual version of it would still be within that realm, I'd imagine. The sales cycle just is longer. So you might consider doing webinars or various other forms of lead magnets to provide upfront value to people to get them in the door.

as opposed to going straight for the big arse. think that's - are doing that a bit because we should explain that we call them open days, where we put our guys in somewhere for an hour to talk about why they do what they do, why they teach what they teach and why it's useful to you as the person who's come for free to listen to them. But that's still, that's

an in -person thing, right? No. Okay, fine. And how do you, how do you tend to find the show up rate for that? it, it normally quite, quite good in terms of say 100? Massively annoying because you know, 90 people register and 35 show up. Okay. That's, that's quite normal. That's very normal. That's not, that's nothing you've done. People just, yeah. Just don't show. Actually a 30 % is, is decent. Really?

Yeah, 30 % show up is actually decent. I good to know. Yeah. mean, 50 % is kind of what I'd say you'd normally look to get or hope to get. Okay. And then of that, maybe 10 % book some form of next call with you. And then of those 10%, maybe, I don't know, maybe another two or 3 % actually. Actually sign up. Yeah. But is that, is it?

cold to open day to big sell? that currently what the cycle looks like? Pretty much. Okay. And you and people are dropping off after the open day, right? Because 90 is pretty good. 90 is a lot of interest. It's a lot of registered interest. But I imagine the amount of people that's turning into in terms of sales is compared to Peter. Yes. How many do we have on this? John York open day at the moment?

That's probably a question for InSharp, but just approximately.

Round 50, that would be my guess, 50 -60. Okay. All right. And that's with, with J -Y -S, which is combined list. I mean, these are all the people that registered on our site. So I'm not sure maybe they have separate registration. I think so. Then, then if they do, then yeah, of course the number is higher. Okay. I'm guessing it costs you money.

to run these when you have to pay the experts and whatnot for their time. No, we don't. You don't? No. There are no costs other than time. Okay, well, that's brilliant then. Yeah. That's brilliant. Okay. Is there anything else in these four categories that you think I've missed before I jump onto the next thing? Talked about your reputation being good, the quality of what you offer, the experts, and the people actually...

people enjoying it, that you have a good product, right? The witness is that we're not getting it in front of the right people. Or if we are, something about the messaging is off or the value proposition is off. And also that no one has money at the moment. Okay. That's, that's fairly accepted, I think. Okay. So that's actually again, lends us into the opportunities thing, which is having some other offerings, certainly some low commitment offers. Yeah.

which could maybe be smaller stuff that keeps the revenue ticking over, is, you know, gets them through the door, allows you to provide value to them. And then obviously you can upsell the open data, bigger stuff later on. And the best way, by the way, to do all of this will be these two things, because the ICP and the buying journey that we talked about and the competitive analysis. So the way that this would in theory work is,

Number one, when you build the ICP, you understand exactly kind of what the needs and challenges are of the people that you're selling to. And then with the buying journey, like we've just kind of talked about, we can see whereabouts people are dropping off. And generally it means we need to change something at that point, or we need to add something, which I think is adding something in your case. yeah, I think it's adding something in your case, because like I said, it is a high ticket product. So.

Normally people are just slower to make that decision. And then on the competitor analysis side of things, the two main things you're looking for are A, what are competitors doing really well that you're not doing? And that's something that you just pluck and integrate into your operations and your products in a way that you would obviously it's not stealing. It's you're adapting. And then the other thing is what consistent patterns of negative feedback are showing up. And there's loads of ways you can do this on review sites. You can use Google, can use TrustPilot, you can go on even social media.

comments and do some observational studying that way. And when you start to spot those patterns, those are things that your shared customer base are constantly crying out for. That if you can solve, you give them more reasons to come to you. So actually I would probably do in your case, this first into the ICP. So when you kind of know what people are saying and you can build that persona. And like I said, I'll give you templates for these. And then the last thing was the threats, obviously mostly industry related.

What we know for sure, like I said, is that as a course, film and TV is still popular and financially as an industry, although it's had its interesting times with the strikes and whatnot, it's still thriving. It's just a case of where do you slot into that production process? So that's something that maybe is worth looking into. The last thing I want to pull over, I'm just going to stop my screen share really quick while I find this.

just to see if you guys agree.

Here we go.

It's a shame we don't have three or four hours to do this,

Here it is.

share my screen again. So how familiar you guys with this? I don't want to talk down to you if it's something you know quite well.

I wouldn't say we know it that well. Okay. This is kind of a brand sales marketing funnel. So basically the top being people maybe aren't even aware that they have a problem yet, or if they are aware, they maybe just don't know that you have the solution. The consideration stage being right. They know they have a problem. They know that media exchange and X, Y, and Z are options. And this is where they want to know which one is the best for them. They do all their research. The purchase stage would be.

Right, they've decided that media exchange is a good fit for them. They're going to book on one of these open days or discovery calls or however it is that you close prospects. Do you actually make the sale? And then what you talked about earlier, Katrina, is loyalty being, do they buy from you again? And advocacy being, do they tell other people about you? Now you're obviously doing this one quite well at the moment. You're doing the advocacy part quite well. I think by the sounds of it, most of the business is built on referral, which is great.

loyalty is a tricky one when you sell a high ticket program, because once they've kind of splurged that big cash investment on you, it's very hard to sell something else. Exactly. But the way we kind of look at it is these, these top two awareness and consideration would be under marketing, purchase would be under sales and loyalty and advocacy would be under branding.

And it's fine. And the reason I say this, cause when you reached out, said, you know, we think we need to freshen up the brand and there may be some truth to that, but I actually think you're doing this part pretty well at the moment. So I'd love to hear from you guys where you think your biggest sticking point is at the moment. it making people aware of it? Is it once you've made them aware of it, actually convincing them, you know, that you're the right option, you know, what is it in your mind?

Hmm.

this star is gonna go over whichever one you choose. Well, I'll challenge you. I won't just let you get away with it. What do you think, Peter? Well, I wanted to avoid going first, but I would probably say consideration in my view, because I think that our potential customers are quite aware of

our brand. But I think especially these days, as Katrina mentioned, that there is general lack of money. probably we can say that either companies or individuals, they just try to go on low scale, so to speak. So just trying to stay afloat.

but without going extravagant with anything. I think this consideration part is important and that's something that we probably should work on because that's really the moment where people who are aware of us, they realize that our product is actually what can push them further. So yeah, I would say consideration. And is that...

Do you think people are dropping off here because of the messaging and the way that you've positioned the service? Because I agree with you about the money thing, but the fact is if people see value in something, they'll find the money. So do you think it's a communication issue or something else?

Well, I don't have a quick answer to it, I would say. I really think that it's a combination of factors. It definitely might be the case that our messaging is not convincing enough to kind of assure people that actually the program that we offer will bring them something.

good, that it's a form of investment that, okay, I spend money now, but afterwards I have these skills and knowledge to progress further with my career. I know that we can do little about the outside factors because we cannot control the industry and what's going on, but in terms of the things that we can change,

Yes, probably I would say messaging and something what we mentioned at the very beginning. kind of in this almost new world of marketing and how we should get our customers how to use these channels to really pass on our message in the best possible way.

I was going to add something that turned out to be a weakness. Back in the day, we would have contact with people by phone. So we would send out a mailer and we would follow it up saying, you get it? And talk to them on the phone and make the relationship there, warm them up. Now you can't find people's phone numbers.

If you do find their phone numbers, they've got some testy receptionist who says they're not available at the moment and you can never get through to them. So you're very much stuck in the text world. And these are people that you have their email addresses though, right? Yes. Okay. I mean, it sounds like it's just a case of including phone number as a field in your various signup forms, your open days and newsletter. Right, right, right. True.

That's an easy fix. What? That's an easy fix. It's an easy fit. They can avoid filling in fields, of course. Well, you can make them required. Required. That's true. On our registration forms, is it required, Peter? Yes, yeah, it is. Okay, good.

Yeah. Yeah, so I think I was going to say purchase maybe my comment that we don't follow up closely enough with everything we do because we're so busy. There isn't the time. I don't know what you think, Peter. Yeah, I can also definitely see this point. Yeah.

So of those, you know, 30 that attend from the 90, basically, if they don't sign up, there aren't processes in place to kind of nurture them over the next however long? Not not good ones. Because we're on to the next thing to try and, you know, try and bring money in that the next way, because it's in the diary, and it's got to happen. So sensible follow up is really not in place. Okay.

Yeah. And again, that comes back to the, the customer journey thing that we talked about. Okay. Whereabouts in that journey are they, what do we need to send them in the form of, you know, another call an ebook or just asking them why, you know, asking them. okay. So that that's interesting. cause there could be a lot of money on the table sitting here that isn't being converted. you say, what do what do you think about people getting too much from you? Because I don't really believe in that.

I don't really believe that that's a thing. I mean, on our website, we have a near 40 page ebook, which pretty much tells you everything we do and how to do it. And even after this call, I will send you a lot of our own like proprietary templates that we use just because I believe in the law of reciprocity. So either you won't do anything with it and then it's of no consequence to me, or you will, it will work.

and then you'll come back later. That's kind of how things work. I don't believe that you can give away too much because ultimately only you can deliver things the way you do it. Okay, so maybe we're not giving away enough. We've got these open days, but there isn't pretty much anything else that we're giving away. Yeah, and when you do those customer personas and you kind of look at what those fears and challenges are, let's say, I'm pulling something out of a hat here, but let's say one of them is,

know, they've done one, one show, they've been on one show, but they don't know how to nurture contact with the person who brought them on to it to get them on to next one. Suddenly you release this ebook, you know, five tips for maintaining or nurturing relationships in the industry to get your next gig. example, I'm just a bit boring here, but that's kind of how that would work. And again, the ideal world, you'd

you'd segment those 8 ,000 contacts into where appellants on that list they are. And I you would, would you? Yes, okay. I would, yeah, I would. The way that we do it for our prospects is they, depending on where they sign up and what they sign up for, they will get a different tag. And then that tag helps us to know kind of what they were interested in and what we need to say later. But I think both of these are valid.

consideration stage, I think that Peter's talking about is, okay, so we've got those 90 registrations, A, why aren't they all showing up? And B, of the 30 that do show up, why aren't they buying? And then what you're saying, Katrina, is those 30 might buy, we just aren't following up with them. Sufficiently. Yeah, I think that's true. I think I'd probably say yours is still possibly under the consideration stage.

Yeah, can see that edging towards consideration. When they actually decide they want to buy. How does that work? Do they have to call you and say, yeah, I'm interested you send them a contract or what does that look like? They buy on Stripe. it's a checkout thing. Yeah. And then we follow up from there and register them. And there's a whole sort of thing about the information they get to show up to something. you have you had any

feedback on that. I'm just curious because whenever you are investing that level of money online in like a checkout sort of format, it's probably for some sort of tech or maybe a vehicle, but even that you'd probably do in person. Okay, so you're sticking with the one highest ticket item that we do. Yeah, we do a lot in the 250 500 category. Okay.

So it's not all like in the thousands. Okay. And so those are the lower commitment? Yes. Okay, that's good to know. But the 10k stuff still goes through this? No, the 10k stuff doesn't go through Stripe. The 10k stuff is much more personal. Okay, perfect. Perfect. I'm sorry, just to disturb here, Katrina, you're absolutely right that, you know, there is more

care that goes there, but recently we also started to do the 10k stuff through Stripe as a final kind of stage and confirmation of registration and payment.

you there, Katrina? I am. Okay, I didn't know if you had any. No, no, I think that's that's a good point. Yeah, it's, it's a it's a psychological thing, like reduce as much friction as possible. Yeah, when investing and stuff like that. For me, I would probably be considering

you do contracts with them at all? Or not really? Like once they made the payment, it's fine, you kind of just deliver on? Well, there is sort of terms and conditions to their registration, which is like a contract. Okay. You know, if you sign this, you're agreeing to that. Okay. So we don't do contracts as such, but we do have terms on which they are signing up, you know, to purchase this item. Okay, makes sense. It'll be interesting, Peter, to see

If you get more or less signups on the, on the high ticket stuff with Stripe, that's an interesting behavioral thing that I'm always curious to see how people react to this sort of stuff. I do think consideration makes a lot of sense. And the reason I wanted to do this is, initially when you came to me, you said it was kind of a brand issue, which I don't know that it is there. There are things within branding, like messaging and value propositions and stuff that you can definitely work on, but it's

sounds to me like you've got a decent pipeline of people. It's just a case of, of making it obvious to them that you're a solution that they need. So what I will do, unless there's anything else you guys want to explore is go and digest this into just a little report of what we've covered and what my suggestions would be going forward. as well as some of those templates that I, that I talked about. Great.

that right? Yeah, yeah, Not not too bad. I think it's it's brought into into perspective some of the other things that, you know, weren't weren't clear before we knew were an issue, but weren't quite so well articulated. Yeah, so it's what you said, sometimes you just need a third party who doesn't know anything about the business to come and ask the stupid questions that you're too experienced to think of. Shows everything up. Well, they weren't stupid questions. They were very apt. Well, this was only an hour. I'm curious to know

how you guys found it for the first one of these that we've done? I thought very constructive. I really did. It touched all the... The architecture of the process was good in that it followed on, it highlighted things that weren't being taken care of, etc. I thought it was very good.