Most 21st century businesses need to have at least a little media DNA to market their products/services and connect with customers. If you have a website or social media presence, these are in fact important channels for distributing media to an audience, which may consist of current customers, prospective customers, partners, and peers.
Many small business owners will therefore find that they need to create media assets. It could be a report on a website, a YouTube video, or photographs of people, products, or store/office locations.
There’s often a temptation to make these assets in secret, either on your own or with a professional partner, such as a videographer or marketing agency. The typical path involves discussing and designing the media in secret, and then releasing it to marketing channels (website, social media, YouTube, direct mail, etc.) and hoping that it works.
Avoiding chubby media
Lean Media tries to steer people away from secretive design and production processes. Bring test audiences into the picture, perhaps as early as the ideation of the asset. Let’s say you want to create a YouTube video that shows off the snazzy interior of your shop. Why not ask a few existing customers what they think are the coolest features or best places to sit? Their feedback can help determine some of shots used by the video team (or yourself, if you are good with a camera).
When you have some rough cuts, you can show it to an expanded group of customers or prospective customers, and continue to refine the video until it’s ready to release. Because you have paid attention to audience feedback during the production stage, the finished video will have a much higher chance of resonating with audiences once it’s uploaded to YouTube or posted on the shop’s social media page.