Starting a business or taking a new step forward in your established business is always a risk. There’s a limited market share of clients out there with needs to be fulfilled who will seek out services like yours. So how can you be sure you’re going to get those clients in the future? You can try starting with a Beta Client. A Beta Client is a representative of a client in the industry. They aren’t paying you, and you aren’t paying them. You give them your ideas, your systems, and processes, and they tell you if it’s good for a potential client. They’ll give you a hard perspective on how real clients will receive your work and give feedback that you can immediately implement to upgrade your business. 

It’s a good way to move forward with your business - provided the feedback is productive. How do you know if your Beta Client is giving you the right answers or solving your problems on behalf of the real paying clients out there? This is a step of improvement for you, don’t let it go to waste. 

Make Sure they’re Niche Specific.

Everyone needs video services, but not all of them need the same kind. You need to pick your niche, where you specialize with the skills and knowledge you have pre-established, and find a Beta Client who will represent the best demographic. They’ll give you advice on what your niche wants, but the wrong client will give you advice on what a different niche is looking for - which means wasting time relearning, redoing, and remastering completely different skills.

Get Your Worth

You’re not working for “free”, and your client isn’t just getting a sample of your work for nothing. This is a two-way street that you’re driving. You deliver your product, and they deliver feedback with merit, not an off-cuff opinion. They are providing expert insight into a market that you are poised to enter and you want to get the best advice you can. Ask for details, ask for numbers, before and after steps, and ask for all the factors that go along with making improvements. 

Perfect Your Practice

Beta Clients will give you work just like any normal client and pay back in advice. They may give you something complicated, something specific or something challenging, and that’s all good to practice - but you’re not doing this for practice. Self-improvement is good, but you’re looking for real results. What you’re “practicing” is solving their problems to create a product that fits their needs exceptionally so that next time, when pay is on the line, you can do it without getting sent back to the start.

Work With the Right Person

A Beta Client is supposed to be an “early customer”, someone who might spin right around and give you a working relationship because they have the power to do so. It’s not an intern or an agent or a low-level employee at a firm. Your client should be someone who knows what they want, a decision maker, a person with a company-wide problem for you to solve. That’s the best client to learn from. Anyone else - they can’t give you the in you’re looking for.