How Much Does it Cost to Craft a 5-Minute Video?

When it comes to video production, the cost is often a mysterious topic for businesses venturing into video marketing. I frequently liken it to purchasing a vehicle: a Toyota will get you to your destination, but the experience will vastly differ from a BMW. The same principle applies to video creation; costs can range from a modest $500 to an eye-popping $50,000, depending on numerous variables. Let's delve into the pivotal cost factors to give you a better understanding on how to budget for creating a five-minute marketing video.

Pre-production

Setting the groundwork for your budget starts with the often-underappreciated pre-production phase. While anyone with a camera can produce a video, only a select few can develop a concept that deeply resonates with the intended audience. In earlier times, the success of a video was heavily dependent on the expertise of cameramen and editors. Today, however, the saturated video content landscape has shifted the balance, making pre-production—the creative planning stage—crucial. Investing more time in pre-production planning is essential in an environment flooded with content. With countless videos vying for audience attention, careful planning ensures that content stands out through clarity, engagement, and quality. A well-structured pre-production phase allows creators to refine their messaging and storyboard visuals and identify target audiences effectively. This strategic approach maximizes resources and enhances the likelihood of the video achieving its intended impact.

Writing

At its core, video production is about storytelling, not merely creating an ad or a presentation. Writers, in particular, play an indispensable role in shaping a video's structure, tone, and ultimate success by understanding both the message and the audience. Despite its significance, many business marketers neglect this stage and often fall short because customers favor stories over straightforward presentations. A well-constructed narrative weaves a sense of intrigue and momentum, keeping the audience engaged. Instead of using the full five minutes to labor over a product’s features, storytelling allows you to show how the product improves real-life situations.

Hiring a professional writer typically costs between $60 and $250 per hour. Choose one who comprehends narrative architecture and the nuances of your target audience. Alternatively, if someone within your team takes on the scriptwriting task, ensure they are well-versed in storytelling principles. The Hero’s Journey, for example, is a popular storytelling template used in films like Star Wars and The Lion King.

Talent

The question of talent boils down to a choice between using your employees or hiring professionals. While employees may come at no extra cost, they must have a commanding presence and articulate well on camera. Professional actors, on the other hand, charge anywhere between $50 and $100 per hour, depending on their experience and reputation.

When hiring actors for a marketing video, producers must set clear expectations to ensure a smooth production process and a successful final product. First, define the actor's role within the video's context. Provide specifics about the character's personality, appearance, and required skills or attributes. This can help actors better understand how to embody the character.

Second, clarify the scope of work, including rehearsal schedules, shooting days, and any potential overtime. Actors should know the timeline and expectations surrounding their engagement. Communication about compensation, including payment structure and any potential bonuses, should also be transparent from the outset.

Additionally, communicate the project's overall goals and messaging. Actors should know the brand's values and the intended audience to deliver a performance aligned with the marketing objectives. By setting these clear expectations, producers can foster a productive environment that encourages creativity and professionalism, ultimately leading to a more impactful marketing video.

Videographer

Although modern smartphones offer remarkable video quality, professional-grade cameras can elevate your production to the next level. Employing a professional videographer, with rates spanning from $25 to $400 per hour, might be a worthwhile investment. When engaging a videographer for your marketing video, you invest in expertise that simplifies the entire production process, bringing a wealth of knowledge about both the technical and creative aspects of video production, ensuring your vision is effectively translated into a compelling final product.

Videographers possess the skills to operate advanced equipment, including cameras, lighting, and sound gear. Their understanding of the latest technology means you won’t need to worry about the technical details, allowing you to focus on your message and how you want to deliver it. They can suggest innovative ideas for shots, transitions, and pacing, elevating the quality of the content and making it more engaging for your audience.

On the day of filming, a videographer will manage the logistics, including time management and equipment setup, and ensure that all aspects of the shoot run smoothly. Their experience enables them to adapt quickly to unforeseen challenges, minimizing disruptions and keeping the production timeline on track.

Working with an experienced videographer streamlines the production of a marketing video by providing expertise in planning, shooting, and editing. This partnership lets you focus on your core message while ensuring that your video is produced to the highest standards. Ultimately, this helps your brand establish trust and inspire action within your audience.

Editor

With footage in hand, the next step is editing, which can be done by almost anyone, even on a smartphone. However, selecting the best shots to convey your message effectively requires a keen eye. A professional editor, whose rates vary from $60 to $175 per hour, will transform your raw footage by stitching together footage, enhancing audio, and incorporating graphics or animations. Their editing software proficiency means you can expect a polished final product that meets professional standards. This also includes color correction and sound design, essential for creating a visually appealing and cohesive video.

Distribution

Once the video is complete, distributing it is straightforward, but choosing the right platform to reach your audience is key. While YouTube reigns as the second-largest search engine globally, it may not always be the best fit for your target demographic. Depending on your audience’s habits, platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly Twitter) may yield better engagement.

Boosting a video on social media can significantly enhance its visibility and reach, allowing brands to connect with a broader audience. By investing in promotion, businesses can target specific demographics, ensuring that the content reaches individuals most likely to engage with it. This targeted approach increases the likelihood of views and interactions but also aids in building brand trust and credibility. Moreover, boosted videos often benefit from improved placement within users' feeds, leading to higher engagement rates and the potential for viral sharing. Promoting a video is a strategic move that can amplify a brand's message and drive desired actions, such as website visits or conversions.

When crafted strategically, video marketing can be a powerful tool to extend your brand's reach and foster deeper engagement. By understanding the intricate cost components, you’ll be better equipped to make informed decisions and allocate your budget effectively. Consider scheduling a free consultation to explore how a 5-minute marketing video can be tailored to your business’s unique needs and objectives.

How Do You Create A Video Marketing Strategy?

Research shows that people spend a third of their time-consuming video content, so it’s safe to say that video should be an essential component of a good marketing strategy. Using video in your marketing mix can potentially reach a large number of people in a short amount of time. But keep in mind there is more to video marketing than just posting a video on YouTube. It’s about creating helpful video marketing tools that will not only catch people’s attention but keep it.

Set Your Marketing Goals

Video is an effective way to achieve many marketing goals, but the key is to get focused. Before you start, you should be clear about your marketing goals. Are you trying to build awareness for your brand? Increase engagement with your viewers to get more feedback on your products? Once you are honed in on a specific purpose, you can begin to build a robust video content production schedule instead of creating videos just for the sake of having videos.

Identify Your Target Audience

Your products or services are probably not for everyone. If you’re not keenly aware of this, you’ll end up trying to create videos for everyone, which will end up being watched by no one. Make it easy on yourself; only create videos for your specific customer. It’s also a good idea to know where your audience hangs out on the internet. Is it Instagram, TikTok, or just YouTube? It makes a huge difference, as their heads will be in different places depending on where they are when they come in contact with your video content. Keep in mind there are various reasons people go to Snapchat vs. Facebook, and your videos should respect the context of the platform.

Create a Video Budget

In relation to sales revenue, a marketing budget on average can run as low as 2% or as high as 12%. If your budget is tight, it can be stressful to decide how much of that is appropriate for video creation, but it doesn’t have to be. It is possible to maintain a realistic budget while also getting the video (or videos) you need. My recommendation if you are getting into video for the first time is to work backward. Take a look at the products or services you make the most profit on and start there. Suppose you can increase the sales of those bread and butter items via a successful video marketing campaign. In that case, it’s possible to scale your video production to cover the products or services that are not yet big sellers. 

Optimize Your Videos 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is when a website is optimized for visibility on search engines like Google. It’s the same principle with YouTube. The information you list on your videos’ description is indexed and sorted via an algorithm that determines what order your videos appear in a user's search. Properly optimizing your video’s description using the tools available in YouTube Studio can help your video content become more accessible for visitors to find.

Measure Performance and Adjust

This is a step that is easy for creators to overlook when first getting started with video. It’s exciting to finally upload your new video project, but the truth is once you post a video, you’re not done. In fact, you’re just getting started. It’s crucial to look at your videos’ performance to determine what’s working and what isn’t. Of course, the view count is important, but there are other metrics to keep in mind when measuring your videos’ success. Your video’s click-through rate (CTR) will tell you if your title or thumbnail is enticing enough to get viewers to engage with your video. Audience retention shows you if people are watching to the end, skipping through, or exactly when they are losing interest in your content.

Navigating the complexities of creating a video can be a challenge, but working with an experienced video creator and strategist can help you get the most out of your video production investment. If you have questions about getting started with video or are already producing videos and are not satisfied with the results, contact us and schedule a free no-obligation consultation about your video goals.

First Steps Of A Good YouTube Strategy

If you're an entrepreneur, you probably want more people to know about your business. Marketing can be pretty expensive, with many moving parts to track. Believe it or not, YouTube is an excellent way to bring awareness to products and services. With the right content and strategy, you can reach a ton of people on YouTube and build a loyal audience in the process.

Success on YouTube is about identifying and building your network while you pursue your dreams. But before you start uploading on your channel, you need good video content and a strategy to create an audience.

Creating A YouTube Strategy

With over 500 hours of video posted every minute, there's a lot of competition waiting for you on YouTube, so you'll need a solid strategy.

Below you'll find the first steps towards building a YouTube marketing strategy to help you optimize your channel, increase subscriptions, and expand your reach.

Identify Your Niche

First, determine who your target audience is. Take some time to study YouTube demographics if you're just getting started on YouTube.

If you're a small business owner, you already know that your video content should focus on your product or service. You'll need to plan out the video content related to your business. For example, suppose you own a coffee shop. In that case, you could create a series of videos educating your customers about beans from various regions and how the growing location affects the taste of a cup of coffee.

Keep in mind that if your targeted audience is young, you'll need to adjust your edits accordingly. Studies show that Gen Z viewers are more prone to seek out short-form content.

Name Your Channel

Your YouTube channel's name can be anything from a person's first and last name (Casey Neistat) to descriptive names representing a channel's general topic (Khan Academy).

Of course, as you are creating that channel to promote your business, you can simply use its name. But you can always start the channel with your name or any other name and then promote your business later on. But, if the sole purpose of the channel is to promote the brand over personality, using your brand's name would be ideal.

Optimize Your Videos

At its core, just like Google, YouTube is a search engine for videos. Videos are ranked by titles, keywords, descriptions, and other characteristics. You need everything set up in your favor to take advantage of their algorithm, so you show up in their recommended videos which account for 70% of what consumers view on the platform.

Optimize your videos for the best chance of appearing in search results and receiving more views. Here are some SEO must-haves to get you started:

Write A Compelling Title

The title is one of the most critical factors in YouTube's algorithm, which viewers consider when clicking on your video.

In YouTube Analytics, you can go to Traffic Sources and see what words people use to reach your channel. It would help if you also took advantage of Google Trends and the Keyword Planner tool in Google Ads. Check to see if you can include any of these prominent search terms in your title.

Create Unique Thumbnails

When it comes to thumbnails, 90% of the best-performing videos on YouTube have one thing in common: they're all customized. Thumbnails are the first thing people see even before reading the title.

Your thumbnail is more likely to stand out if it has unique and creative. Always make sure that the image and title are in sync, don't try to game the system with a clickbait image. Tease enough of the subject of your video to create curiosity. The goal is to entice viewers to click through to your video over the competition. 

Write A Keyword Rich Description

Take advantage of your 5,000-character limit, but provide a quick summary of your video topic in the first few lines of your description. Write in a natural-sounding manner, and be sure to add links to your website and social media accounts.  

If you create a "table of contents" with timestamps, viewers will be able to skip to specific areas of your video.

Create Quality Content

This should be an obvious one, but I have seen some businesses create videos for the sake of making videos. In the long run, they'd have been better off having no videos rather than having the wrong videos. The better your content is, the more people will click through and watch till the end. They may even share your content or subscribe to your channel. 

You'll eventually want to invest in some decent equipment, but don't get bogged down by the gear. The fact is the phone in your pocket can probably shoot some really good-looking video. If you can, though, invest in some audio tech, like a decent microphone. Audio is 50% of video, and poor audio can significantly lower the quality of video content.

Remind Viewers 

There's a reason why most YouTube videos end with "like, share, and subscribe." It's effective and doesn't hurt to ask your viewers to support your growth. People occasionally require a gentle reminder.

Final Words

I realize that all of this could be overwhelming for someone who has never attempted video content creation. But take heart; it is possible. YouTube is full of people just like you who have figured it out. However, if you need guidance around content creation or hands-on assistance creating and maintaining a successful YouTube channel, I'm here to help.

I have been active in marketing for years with extensive experience creating video content for businesses, and I look forward to helping you create a successful YouTube channel. Schedule a free consultation today so we can get started.

How To Use Video For Business

What does it mean to use video for business? You’ve heard that your business needs to invest in video, and on the surface, you can’t disagree. Most business owners and marketers who have yet to take the plunge into video struggle with the same issue. Getting started.

It can be overwhelming when you Google certain terms around creating video, from the initial range of cameras and other video equipment available on the market today to the different production companies trying to convince you that it’s just too hard to get started and you should just pay them to do it for you. It’s understandable how year after year, those who said this is the year for video find a way to put it off once again. 

Types Of Videos For Business

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but can hopefully serve as a practical springboard for the types of videos your organization should be creating. 

Demo Videos - This type of video showcases your product’s features or the service benefits that set you apart from your competition. 

Brand Videos - Speaks to the character and tone of your business and highlights the culture surrounding your product or service and mission statement.

Event Videos - Promote or feature a company-sponsored event or outreach, one that benefits your community and, when distributed on social channels correctly, can increase engagement. 

Expert Interview Video - Show off the human capital at your organization and let their expertise educate your future customers. 

Educational or How-To Videos - This can be a great asset for your service teams or could potentially serve as an introduction to your products. 

Explainer Videos - Important as part of driving awareness of your product or service, can be a great first step in the customer buying journey.

Case Study and Customer Testimonial Videos - Let your customers tell the world how awesome you are. An awesome customer support experience told from their perspective can do wonders in fostering trust in your organization. This can also be a great tool for salespeople.  

Use Video For Your Business’ Existing Marketing  

When planning out your video projects, keep in mind that your audience could be anywhere in the sales journey spectrum. The video content your business uses should complement your traditional marketing, meaning these goals should serve as guidelines when developing your video strategy. 

Video Creates Awareness: Here, a challenge or opportunity is defined and the viewer realizes they have a problem. Videos in this stage should attract users and introduce your brand to a new audience.

Video Fuels Consideration: The viewer is now considering how he or she will solve the problem they’re faced with. They’re researching, asking for recommendations, watching product reviews, and trying to find cost-effective solutions.

Video Drives Decision: The solution has almost been found and you want to remain top of mind. Present your prospect with proof of customer satisfaction and prove why your product or service should be chosen over your competition.

Video can be a powerful marketing tool when executed correctly, and it doesn’t have to be overly complicated. However as with any business endeavor, be mindful of your budget, timeline, production process, and the metrics you’ll be looking at to make decisions about your video marketing efforts. Need help getting started? Contact me today and let’s talk about your video content goals and how they fit into your current business strategy.

Developing A Video Marketing Strategy

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, many businesses that had already invested in video had a much easier time adjusting to the new realities. They were able to make adjustments to their video marketing strategy and create content where it was needed most. Video is the perfect medium for educating, updating communities, and keeping customers engaged. Now more than ever, many activities that were once done in person are now done online.

As a marketer or a business owner of any size, whether it was the global impact of a pandemic or it was marketing goal that had been put on the back burner, you probably came to the realization that a video is no longer an option but rather a requirement. However, it is just as important to realize without a video marketing strategy behind this medium, a video in and of itself can fall flat.

A Video Marketing Strategy Sells

Now, it’s no secret that video is a proven seller; that’s why should take center stage in your overall marketing plan. Landing pages with a video increase conversion rates by over 80%, and the word video in the subject line of an email drive click-through rates up by 65%. In fact, according to real estate studies, home listing with a video gets viewed four times more than homes without and therefore sells much quicker.

Of course, the nuts and bolts of a video marketing strategy will vary depending on the organization. Budget restrictions may limit a marketer from creating the content in-house with limited resources. That’s ok, don’t let that stop you from starting the journey and experimenting with the creation process. I’ve seen marketing videos shot on an iPhone that was many times more engaging than videos shot on the latest and greatest gear. Remember, you are supposed to be the expert in your field. If you are able to convey the information you need to in a video, it doesn’t matter if the video was shot with a budget of $5 or $50,000. Once you decide to create content regularly and with purpose, you’ve already won half of the battle.

Marketing Strategy Research

If you’ve made that decision, here’s where the research begins. Who is your product or service for, and where do they hang out? Is it an older demographic that hangs out on Facebook or a younger mobile viewer who’s glued to TikTok? Your intended audience will not only affect the tone of your projects but there are nuances within the platforms you should be aware of that are tied to the video optimization processes as well.

Once you’ve determined your audience and where they spend time, what should the purpose of your video be? Are you bringing awareness to someone who has never heard of your brand? Are your nurturing consideration through education and engagement? Is the goal to drive customers to make a decision? If so, do you know where they are in your sales funnel? What I have just mentioned could realistically be 3 to 5 separate video series focused on just one product or service.

Find A Video Strategy Partner

A key is to identify someone in your organization who believes in the power of a video marketing strategy as much as you do. I was very fortunate early in my career to work with a who was willing to take risks. We shot no-budget videos for the company we worked for when YouTube was in its very early days. Those videos were fun creating and we learned A LOT from our mistakes. Two of the videos we made were directly responsible for winning some of the largest clients the company ever had and resulted in open doors for us to replicate our efforts with other businesses. Those no/low budget experiences shaped both my video career and my belief in the medium.

When video is working in concert with traditional marketing it can be a powerful combination. If you need a video partner or just a fresh set of eyes on your current efforts please reach out. I’d love to discuss your video marketing goals and see how I may be of help to you.