How Setting A Video Production Budget Can Benefit Your Business

Where Do Video Costs Come From?

The first thing that you need to know as an entrepreneur is that quality always overrides quantity when it comes to videos. Anyone can make lots of low-quality, ugly videos with an intern, a smartphone, and some editing software. What will that get you, though?

Producing video content can get pricey, but that shouldn’t lower the bar for creativity or content quality. If the money isn’t there, create fewer videos that are able to achieve what you want them to.

So, what do you need to consider to figure out the cost of your video?

Type of Video

What you’re trying to accomplish will big a big factor in your video cost. A commercial with a few actors is going to incur different expenses than an animated product video with voice over. 

Pre-Production

Are you hiring someone to help you write a script for the video? In a product video, what you say will have a big effect on the ROI. You also need to consider any location scouting, travel expenses, and catering, which all add up over time.

People Involved

How extensive of a crew you have will also determine expenses. When you hire a video production company, they’ll have everything included. The more specialized crew members that you have, the higher the cost of paying their rates will be.

Equipment

Video production equipment is expensive, so that’s always factored into the cost of a production company or a freelancer’s rate. If you’re producing the video on your own and you want it to be good, you’ll have to rent cameras, lights, microphones, grips, and other film gear. 

Post-Production

Having a professional director and editor at the helm of your video is arguably the biggest factor in what the finished product will look like. You’ll go through multiple rounds of story editing, coloring, and grading before you get what you want.

There are dozens of other costs associated with video production and it all depends on what you’re trying to achieve. As we’ll talk about in the next section, keeping a production budget will put stylistic and time constraints on your video, but it’ll also keep you from going overboard financially.

Why You Need a Production Budget

You can have an ongoing budget for video production, but each project will be different, so assigning each one its own budget is often the best way to go. A production budget will force you to consider what’s important about the video.

What are you trying to get across?

This should be the starting point for any marketing video. If you can figure out what you want to accomplish with the video, then you can work within a budget to ensure that it happens in the most economical way possible.

Helps You Narrow Down Crew and Equipment

When you’ve got a firm budget in place, you can decide how many and which crew members are most important. If it’s an animated product video, you’ll put most of the budget into hiring the animator, editing, and the voiceover work.

If you’re hiring a production company, they’ll be able to quickly decide what corners they need to cut to make a good video within your budget. 

Makes It One Facet of Your Marketing Campaigns

Having a budget in place gives you a lot more wiggle room when it comes to digital and offline marketing. What’s a good video if you don’t have a plan for how to use it? 

You need to have followers, blog readers, and consistent site visitors if your video is going to make a difference. Throwing it out into the ether will accomplish nothing, so the video production budget actually helps you put resources into other marketing streams.

Working Within Your Budget

When it comes to video production, you’ve got to think about cost, time, and quality.

If you want a high-quality video that doesn’t cost very much, then you’ve got to allow the production company (or whoever is working on the video) time to complete it. On the other hand, if you need a good video finished quickly, then you’re going to have to raise the budget.

The real key to working within a budget of any size is planning. Sit down with your in-house production team or the production company that you hire and go over the vision for the video. Then, you can decide where costs can be cut and where you’ll have to spend more money.

Communication and Collaboration

To make videos that always come in under your production budget, you’ve got to communicate and collaborate with your production team. To achieve great things with a marketing video, you’ve got to be open to trying out other people’s ideas and never be shy about sharing your own.

If your videos are great, they’ll take your digital marketing campaigns to a whole new level. If they’re overpriced duds, you’ll run the risk of holding back your marketing team in a big way.

To get amazing and affordable marketing videos made for your company, work with us at Viva Media. Contact us with your production budget and we’ll give you a quote for your video.