Marketing videos and budgeting
A cold hard truth is that your corporate video or video marketing tends to look as good as its budget. There’s a direct correlation between how much budget you allocate to your marketing videos and the production quality of the final video that you will produce. However the way your final film looks is not always the most important factor when producing promotional video (good video marketing should always be wary of “style over substance”) and there are of course exceptions so here’s a few thoughts that may be useful when budgeting for your next corporate video production.
Find an Agency That Understands
It’s usually true that you very much get what you pay for when it comes to marketing videos. Creativity, knowledge and skill level should be a given from any good quality, experienced production company and many of the associated costs will be pretty much industry standard costs. So finding a video production agency that understands your product and your customers should take priority over finding the cheapest.
Making a huge saving on your video production wont really seem that exciting if your final video marketing doesn’t effectively engage your customers.
Of course there are cost effective options such as sourcing a resourceful self-shooting director/producer (or one man band) for your film but generally if you’re looking for high impact and high quality on screen then you should budget accordingly.
Your video should reflect the values of your product
To identify where you need to be budget wise it’s useful to look at your product or service and its perceived category. If you are selling within a luxury sector or using factors such as “high quality”, “reliability”, or “forefront of technologically” within your sales offering then any marketing videos you produce should directly reflect these values.
Customers’ perception of promotional video and its production quality is a subtle and often subconscious area that should not be overlooked. Viewers will make a firm judgement call on you and your brand within the first few seconds of your video so matching their expectations with your video’s quality is vital.
Consider the Retail Price Point
Equally the retail price point of your product or service should also be considered when developing budgets for marketing videos. If your product or service has a relatively high purchase price, then the value adding factors which make the purchase worthwhile should be clearly visible within your video. The quality of your video should reflect the price paid by your customers for your product or service.
This should also apply to any post purchase video material such as user guides or user training. If you purchase a brand new quality car then you wouldn’t expect the user manual to be supplied as photocopied paper. So if your producing video marketing to add value post sale then it still needs to reflect cost to the customer.
Research Your Competitors
It’s also important to look at your competitors to assess what level of production they have gone for and how effective their marketing videos are. High budgets will certainly give you higher production value but it doesn’t always follow that they deliver the your message in the most powerful way.
Alternatively if the values you trade on are quirkiness, creativity or fun then there’s more scope to present your video marketing using these traits and focus on originality rather than high quality/high cost. In fact sometimes lower production values can offer charm, earthiness and create engaging video marketing that really hits the spot.
Reflect Your Product
Its very much a case of ensuring that your video output accurately reflects not only your product (and its value) but also the value and importance of the purchase to the customer. Your video should match their expectations of not only the product, but also the purchase experience and user experience.
So rather than starting with a figure when planning your video production budget, start with a goal. Let your customers, your product and your brand be the measure of the level of production your marketing videos need and you’ll emerge with a much more suitable and effective asset for your marketing.
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