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Award-winning videographer, Victor Rook, discusses his experience in making, promoting, and selling his Telly Award winning nature video, "Beyond the Garden Gate." Order this top-selling video at www.gatevideo.com.

Part III: Promotion and Devotion

After 800 hours of production and editing on my video "Beyond the Garden Gate," I decided to make Year 2000 the promotion year. That meant stepping out of the jungle in which I filmed the video, and into the jungle of retail and wholesale. That also meant switching hats from producer, director, cameraman, and editor, to full-time promoter. I hope to share with you in this final installment the tips and lessons I learned that helped make my video, and hopefully yours, a successful seller.

Make the Video Opening a Killer
First off, you must be happy and confident that you did a good job with your video. I spent many hours tweaking parts of the video until I was satisfied, but made December 31, 1999 the cut off date for any further editing. I also thought ahead in the editing stages to what would be most important when I was to present this to potential customers and stores. Here is Tip Number One: Make the Video Opening a Killer.

First impressions count a lot, and you must capture the viewer's attention right away. The unfortunate problem inherent in selling a video is that it takes time to review the product. It's not like a tangible piece of art that you can look at and make a decision right away, or even music where snippets of songs can be played easily. A video requires time, time for reviewers and buyers to watch, and most of them simply will not spend the time to do so. But for those who do, hit them hard in the beginning with your best stuff. After sending out the full 40-minute tape, I finally got wise and now only send out a 10-minute demo of "Scenes from Beyond the Garden Gate" to expedite the review process. To sell direct to customers at trade shows, I created a two-minute teaser that loops on a TV/VCR setup.

Have a Great Video Cover
As they say, presentation is everything, so don't skimp out on the video sleeve—especially if you spent a lot of time producing what goes into it. If you have design tools in which you can create the look on your own, that is a very good thing. For me, I searched the Internet to find companies that supplied an outline template file for the type of sleeve that I wanted. During the filming of "Beyond the Garden Gate," I took lots of digital stills with the same Sony-TRV900 camera that I used to shoot the video. Because they were only 640 x 480 pixels each, I decided to create a colorful montage of many images that would wrap around the video sleeve. I then sent that montage image to several video sleeve printing companies along with a mock text layout so they could show me a digital proof of how it might look. Most printing companies now can get a digital proof to you for under $50, rather than making expensive plates from the start. I evaluated three companies before I found one that would do a good job.

One more thing to add about the sleeve. I knew ahead of time that I wanted the video to be sold on Amazon.com, and like many large stores, a bar code was required on the sleeve. The cost to get your company registered with the Uniform Code Council, the company that issues UPC codes, is $500. This will give you a number prefix and the ability to have up to 10,000 different products with UPC codes. Unfortunately, all I needed was one. But when I added that cost into the total cost to make the first batch of 2,500 video sleeves, the price per sleeve was just $.45. If a bar code is required to sell your video, it's worth it. Again, presentation is everything.

Who? What? How?
These questions I kept in my head throughout the making of my video, and I continue to ask them today when determining new marketing strategies: Who will buy my video? What ways can I get it to them? How shall I promote it? You need to know your audience when making a video for sale. I anticipated that my audience for a nature video shot in a garden would be gardeners and nature-lovers. I did not anticipate that it would also be enjoyed by children and adults, by people who are looking for something to relax to, and other aspiring videographers like you and me. Luckily, nature and the outdoors have universal appeal which is important if you want to reach a large audience.

Lesson Learned
At the same time that I was producing my video, I also created a website with sample images and an online "tour" of the garden in which I filmed it. I made visitors aware that a video was in the making, and then devised a contest to give out three free copies of the video when it was completed. By the end of the two years of production, I had gathered over 1,000 emails of interested candidates. And so on January 15, 2000, I randomly picked three winners, and sent emails to the rest to direct them back to the site to see if they were listed as winners. If not, they could order the video right there. Was I flooded with orders? No. Lesson Learned: People who want free things, want free things. But, it was a start in letting people know that the video was out there to be purchased. Which leads me into Promotion.

Skin Made of Aluminum Alloy
There are so many ways to get the word out about your video, and I suggest trying as many as you can. But before I get deeper into those, I must say that you have to develop a tough skin, I'd say skin as tough and resilient as the aluminum alloy that your camera is made of. If you are going to promote your own work, you have to work hard to separate yourself as an artist from the business aspect of selling it. This is next to impossible. But for every three rejections that you may get, there will be a door that will open. Here I thought on my first contact with a retail store that they'd love to feature a local artist that produced a good video that others enjoyed. Without even watching the video, the response I got was, "If we have to make room for it, it's a waste of our time." Once it appeared in the papers though, it made a difference and that store quickly sold out of them. Another tip: People can't hear you swear once the phone is hung up. Primal screams in solitude or with a loved one are acceptable stress relievers when marketing your own work.

Make it Newsworthy
Probably the two most important accomplishments that helped me promote "Beyond the Garden Gate" was winning the 2000 Telly Award for Best Nature/Wildlife video, and getting it in the papers. I highly recommend entering your video into contests. When I saw the ad for the Telly's, I remember thinking to myself, 'yeah, sure, it's going to win a big award.' I still remember parting with my entry at the post office with a "good-luck" kiss. Little did I know that two months later it would be selected as a winner.

From there, I went to the local newspaper and told them about the making of the video, and if they'd like to cover the story. Winning the award expedited the story, and so now I had an award-winning video that was in the news. Armed with that, it was much easier to approach local retail stores directly. I'd walk in with my 10-minute demo and nice cover, peak their curiosity with a copy of the news article, and it made it much easier to get them to try it. Early on I would accept consignment deals with a few stores, but as the video became more newsworthy and I had proof it was selling at other stores, I only accepted wholesale quantity purchases. I also recommend direct visit and contact with storeowners as opposed to direct mail.

On the Internet
While approaching the retail stores, I also continued to work on promoting and selling the video via the Internet. I revamped my website to include information about the award and reprints of the newspaper articles, and added a secure credit card purchase option. Then I looked to other sites that might market it too.

Amazon.com has a program called the Advantage program that lets independent artists promote and sell their products online just like the big studios and publishers. If your video passes a review, they request a small start-up quantity (in my case four copies of my video), and then send you wholesale purchase orders as the video sells. The drawback to this is that unless your video is well known, or you direct people to the page it is on, no one will see it there. Amazon.com only allows customers to search for products by title or artist, not keyword. If you browse genres, you will only see the Top 80 Best Selling videos in that category. So my next step was to get my video featured in a bigger paper with Amazon.com mentioned as a place of purchase.

On July 20, 2000, the Washington Post printed a nice write up on the video, and within ten hours it was in the Top 100 Best Selling videos on Amazon.com. Now others outside of the readership area could see that my video existed, and it soon made it into the Best Selling Nature/Wildlife and Home & Gardening categories. So you can see how one thing leads to another when promoting your work. You just have to be very patient. The article for the Post, for example, took two months to appear after it was written.

It's Never Over
I continue to work on other ways to promote and generate interest for my video masterpiece, including speaking at clubs and tradeshows, and contacting distributors. The key is to make people aware of its existence, and to never give up if you truly believe in your product. There is also a lot to be said for just being content that you created a work of art that you are proud of, no matter how many people get to see it or buy it. Creation is the joy of life, so continue to look forward to your next project no matter how big or small, and have a lot of fun with it. Ì

Order this top-selling video at www.gatevideo.com.