Do You Want to Save Money On Corporate Video Production?

So you want to produce a corporate video? Great idea! Corporate video is the most powerful marketing and communications tool available to any business and is far too often underutilised and discarded due to businesses mistakenly thinking it is expensive and overpriced. With video increasing some businesses sales such as stacksandstacks.com by 64% from using video promotion it’s a wonder everyone is not using video!

Chances are your reading this because you still think that corporate video is expensive.

Well you’re not wrong.

You are also probably reading this because you don’t have a huge marketing budget to spend all on one 90 second video. Well I can tell you a little more about how corporate video does not have to be expensive, as well as help you save some money. All it takes is 5 minutes to read the rest of this article and a few hours of your own time.

Now first things first; corporate video is not ‘cheap’ and never ever will be. Sure, budget videos exist and you can spend as little as a few hundred pounds on a corporate video. But trust me – that is not a smart move. Instead of thinking of video as expensive you instead need to look at the return on investment you are gaining. You may spend £2,500 on a 90 second professionally produced promotional video for example. A well thought out story and the right production techniques could easily see an extra £5,000 worth of sales that month just from people viewing your video, resulting in the video paying for itself.

You might be thinking; but what about a £700 video? Surely that will still work but just not as well?

Wrong!

A £700 video is more likely to appear low quality and badly produced meaning that if anything it is more likely to reduce sales due to damaging your brand reputation and putting potential customers off. So £2500 may seem like a lot out of context, but just think of the return on investment it could provide – it’s cheap when you think about it.

So, to summarise; going for a budget corporate video is NOT the way to save money or bring success to your business. Good quality video production pays for itself!

Right, so how do I save money then?

It’s so simple. All you need to do is preparation. Chances are you are not a skilled cameraman and editor with a career worth of experience, so we both know this is best left to a professional video producer, you are after all hiring them for a reason.

However, there is something which you can do; Pre-Production. As part of any video production project a video producer will be required do some form of pre-production. This pre-production process decides on a script, which is then broken down into a storyboard with each individual scene illustrated. From here, cameramen, video editors and directors are also organised as well as props and other assets.

Pre-production takes time and will be something you will paying for in your video production budget. But, it is something that you can do yourself. With a little creative influence and some extensive research you can easily come up with a selection of scripts and a storyboard to help convey your message to your desired target audience.

Now I am not suggesting you discard your video producer from the process completely. At the end of the day they are still likely to have more experience than you in creating compelling and effective content. However by working together you can gain a small amount of their input and then create a script and storyboard of your video which the video producer can then work with you on and add and remove parts where necessary. This makes the video producers life easier, puts you in control and cuts your costs.

Want to see an example?

We asked one of our London based video producers Matt Haley Films to comment on how he has worked together with a client through Video My Business to help them save money on their corporate video.

We recently created a explainer video for a mobile App Company called Shoutwave. 

To cut costs the client created the storyboards. We took the storyboards and refined them and worked out the best plan of attack from there.

Storyboards are a great way of making sure everyone is on the same page. There is no right or wrong way of creating them. So anyone can get creative and get involved. They can be sketched or made in photoshop what ever works for you.

Another way the client can help to cut costs, is providing a location to shoot.

Hiring studios can be pricey. If the production can manoeuvre around easily and set up lights without any issues within the location, Its definitely a good way of saving some cash.

Hopefully this has helped you see how you can save money on your next piece of corporate video production. Do you have any other tips on how to save money? Let us know in the comments below and we may well include them.