When Is The Right Time To Add Video Production To My Marketing Budget?

Of the many different ways that a company can market its brand, product, or service, video marketing is by far one of the most effective. More engaging and shareable than images or text, videos can increase your reach, boost SEO, and drive up conversion rates.

Whether you’re new to video marketing or have been at it a while, it can be difficult to figure out when to add video production to your outreach and budget. To determine your video content marketing strategy​, you must take into account everything from your goals and your target audience to the type of video you’re looking to create.

Importance of Video Marketing

So why video? To put it simply, video is a fantastic marketing strategy because videos, especially on social media platforms, are incredibly popular. The average customer spends 17 hours every week watching digital videos. This means that a video marketing strategy can be a fantastic way to reach your target audience, whoever they are.

Videos enhance customer engagement. They’re more likely to generate an emotional response than images or text, and therefore they’re more likely to be shared on social channels. Audiences are often more responsive to videos, increasing the likelihood that they’ll remember your call to action and convert to paying customers. In fact, including a video on your landing page has the potential to increase your conversion rates by 80% and massively boost your SEO. 

While increased click-through rates and engagement rates are excellent results of video marketing efforts, videos are also the best way to build trust with your target audience. A brand-appropriate video is a great way to form a connection with your audience, which, in turn, will lead to them feeling they can trust what you and your brand have to say.

Identifying Your Video Marketing Goals

When you start out developing your video content marketing strategy, you’ll need to highlight the primary goal of your videos. This will help you make decisions on timing and determine your video content marketing budget per month.

Two of the most common video goals are to raise awareness of your brand and to generate leads for your product or service. Brand awareness videos are a way to introduce yourself to those outside your regular audience. You’ll use these to showcase what you offer and how your product or service is useful to your clients or customers. 

Lead generation videos are what most people think of when they hear “video marketing.” These are your commercials, your influencer collaborations, your standard ads. They’re meant to generate leads, that is, potential customers, whether that's getting people to purchase your product or service or driving clients to visit your website. The idea is that customers who see your lead generation video will take action in some way.

Once you’ve identified the goals for your content marketing strategy video, you’ll be able to create a video marketing strategy around that. You’ll start to develop ideas for content, which in turn will influence your budget and timing.

Understanding Your Target Audience

Understanding your target audience is pivotal for seeing success in your video marketing efforts. Different types of audiences have different preferences for video content. For example, younger audiences typically prefer short-form content, while older audiences prefer longer-form videos. 

You can learn more about your target audience by analyzing their demographics. Once you understand who your audience is, your marketing team can tailor their efforts based on factors like:

• The format your audience prefers
• The type of device they typically use
• Where they find their video content
• How complex the information is

If your audience is younger, you may opt to create shorter, more entertaining content that plays on current video marketing trends and can easily be viewed on a mobile device through social media platforms like TikTok or Instagram Reels. If you’re advertising more to an older crowd, your content may need to be longer and posted to sites like Facebook instead of TikTok. And of course, if your focus is B2B marketing, your content should be more informative and posted to more professional social channels, such as LinkedIn. 

Types of Video Content

There are many different types of videos that marketing teams use to bring awareness to their brand or products. Some of the more common types of videos include:

• Commercials: Commercials are often used to sell products or services or generate leads, but they can also be used to bring awareness to brands. Depending on your audience, you can buy ads on television or radio, or put them up on various social media sites like TikTok and YouTube.
• Explainer videos: Explainer videos are meant to explain how a product or service works. These are useful for both B2C and B2B video marketing and are a great way to showcase the features of whatever you’re selling.
• Testimonials: Testimonials are reviews from real customers that show how their lives were made better by the product or service you’re offering. These types of videos help you build an emotional connection with your audience, as they may see themselves in those who are giving their testimonials, and it helps you build trust in your brand and product.
• Educational content: Educational content is a broad category, but the primary goal of these types of videos is to teach your audience something. Explainer videos can be educational content, but your educational videos can also tell your audience more about your company, product, or even related content.

By identifying your goals and target audience, you can determine which types of video are best for your content marketing video strategy. In turn, with all this information, you can determine the appropriate budget and timing. 

Budget Considerations

When planning a budget for video production, there are many costs to consider. These include things like:

• Cast and crew, including actors, camerapeople, and scriptwriters
• Filming location
• Filming equipment
• Editing
• Promotion

The creative choices you make can significantly impact your budget. For example, if you choose to do an animated video like this Cash Flow ad instead of a live-action one, you won’t need to pay for a filming location or filming equipment. However, you will need to pay for a recording studio and animator.

It can be tempting to try to keep your video production budget as low as possible, but this should never be done at the expense of quality. Viewers can tell when a video is low-quality, and when you prioritize quality, your audience is more likely to engage with and share your marketing videos.

Exploring Cost-Effective Video Production Strategies

There are a few different routes you can take when planning the budget for your video content production strategy. You can do it all yourself, outsource to freelancers, or work with a video production company.

The DIY route may seem like the most cost-effective approach, but there are a lot of hidden costs to consider:

• The time and resources you’re spending
• How long it takes to learn how to produce a video
• Buying or renting, insuring, and maintaining equipment

If your marketing team has never produced a video before, you may end up with a product that’s not as polished and professional-looking as you’d like. Moreover, there’s no guarantee that you’ll actually save any money.

Hiring a freelancer can sometimes be a good option, but it can be risky, too, especially if you hire someone off a site like Upwork or Fiverr. Unless you choose someone who is highly recommended, you could end up paying for work that doesn’t meet your expectations — assuming you receive a video at all.

While video production pricing is often a little higher upfront when working with a professional company, it can pay off in the long run. Not only are you not wasting internal time and resources, but you’ll receive a polished, finished video that appeals to your target audience and meets your marketing needs.

Establishing a Timeline for Video Implementation

Video production is a multi-step process. To ensure your marketing team can release your video when they’re supposed to, you’ll need to create a timeline for each step, including:

• Planning
• Storyboarding and scriptwriting
• Filming or animating and recording
• Editing
• Release

Consult with your team to determine how your video content fits into your overall marketing strategy. The goal is, of course, to schedule your video release for maximum impact. However, the right timing for this will depend on several factors, including your target audience, marketing goals, and the type of video you’ve created.

Discover How Video Production Fits Into Your Marketing Strategy: Contact Us Today!

Video can be a centerpiece of your marketing strategy, but you don’t have to go it alone. A video production company like Charter & Co can guide you every step of the way to create the perfect videos for your goals and target audience. Contact us today to get started!