5 Ways to Save Money on Your Video Marketing

Any type of marketing can be quite expensive, but video marketing can really add up. When you factor the cost to run your business, pay employees and other expenses, marketing is usually left with the least amount of funds.

I’ve talked about how video marketing is very effective and the diverse types of marketing videos in other posts. In this post, I am going to discuss how you can save money on video marketing with these 5 important strategies. So, before you write off video marketing as too expensive, or you to your local Wal-Mart to buy a cheap camera and lights to do it yourself, remember that hiring a professional will always yield better results.

Know Your Business and Customers

The above may sound silly, of course, you should know your business and your customers! I have seen many companies and not just startups that don’t have their business clearly defined. Even worse is having too broad of a market that leaves them throwing anything they can in the hopes something will stick. Your business may change or add services or products and your demographic may change or grow, but it’s very important to know where you currently stand.

The added benefit to sitting down and figuring out your business and your customers is beyond just how to market your business. You may find that there are tweaks you need in your service or products. Knowing your business in a clear, easy to understand way is crucial to marketing. And knowing who you need to market to makes your success with any campaign much higher.

Here are some questions to ask yourself about your business and customers.

What is unique about your product or service?
How are you different from your competitors?
How do you sum up your business to people you meet?
Who do you picture buying your product or service?
What are their likes and dislikes?

The way that this helps save money on your video marketing is twofold. First, the video professional you hire isn’t going to know your business nearly as well as you do. Providing them the details will help the preproduction portion move much quicker. Secondly knowing your customers will already give you an idea on how to market to them. And this goes into the number 2 way to save money on video marketing…

Have a Plan

You don’t need to be a marketing genius or a video professional to have a promising idea for a video. Once you know your business and customers ideas will naturally start to form on how to market to them!

Write these ideas down and keep a few things in mind:

Make sure each idea is a single message. Videos work better when they are singular and clear
Don’t worry about the visuals or cost right now.
If you’re struggling with video ideas, you can list your business messages, demographic and even their interests.

When you look to hire a videographer to create your video you will be armed with ideas that they can either create “as is” or use as a starting point. This again saves you money because the videographer doesn’t have to learn every aspect of your business and create campaigns to run by you. And most of the time this process requires a lot of back and forth, which can get very expensive! Just think, you haven’t even captured any footage yet!

Have a Budget In Mind

I want it for free! Of course! We would all like to get great services for free, but the old saying “you get what you pay for” is very true when it comes to video. Video production can be very expensive and there many factors including locations, the number of crew members needed and length of editing time. Having a clearly defined budget range to at least start with helps.

This number will most likely change, most likely it will become higher but, a good video professional can create a video that fits your budget. You must be willing to make sacrifices though. If your idea is to recreate the film ‘Titanic” and you only have $500 to spend, that just won’t happen..

Once you begin to reach out to various video professionals in your area and you provide the details of your business, your ideas, and budget, this will immediately create a clear path.

Just like any type of marketing, set aside something that makes sense, but isn’t too much or too little. If this is your first time working with a video professional and are wary about video marketing, it’s a good idea to start with a small and inexpensive video.

Lastly, don’t let the professionals use a bunch of tech jargon to make you raise your budget far beyond your comfort level. Make sure and contact at least 4-5 professionals to get quotes. When you see more than one that has similar bids, those are the ones you should continue with.

Keep Your Videos Short and Simple

Not only does having short videos make sense from a marketing standpoint but also a financial one. If your aim is a 15-30 second spot about business, the chances are the cost is going to be much lower. A great videographer will be able to create amazing videos that aren’t too hard on the wallet when the video is short. Usually, this is because longer videos tend to be more complicated or require much more time to capture and edit.

We talked about keeping your ideas a bit above, but now its time to make sure you keep that focus. A simple message about your business that is 15 seconds long will not only connect much better with your audience but will also as you probably already guessed, cost less! If you visit YouTube and watch some of the most effective commercials ever, you will see there is a single clear message. They way the message is presented may change, but not how clear it is.

Think About Creating Multiple Videos

As anyone who shops at Costco will tell you, buying in bulk saves you money. After getting to know your business and customers better you most likely had quite a few ideas. If there is a theme, you can create a video series.

These videos may be linked in style, or perhaps they are almost identical but have a different message or feature a different product or service you offer. This allows you to create multiple videos and have content you can roll out over time. Of course, your video is going to be a hit and you’ll want to do more, so why have too much time in between them?

Here are a few examples from my experience and how it saved my client money on my services.

A client of mine was looking to do a monthly blog. Basically, it was just them talking in front of a white screen about current market trends ands other useful information to their customers. These types of videos aren’t expensive but coming out once a month doesn’t make a lot of sense for me or the client. What we decided on was to shoot one long video and cut it into 12 parts. This gave the client all the content they needed for a year at a cheaper cost and I got paid well in one lump sum.

Another client I worked for wanted to do a series of videos featuring various aspects of their product. Their initial idea was to create styles for each video, but their available budget didn’t allow for this. I suggested we come up with a theme that all the videos would follow. This will allow for quick set up, execution and delivery, while remaining in their budget.

Did these tips help you? Let us know in the comments below!