Video companies: cost, types, pros and cons

When the moment of choosing arrives, and the video you have in mind is ready to be shaped by expert hands, who do you turn to? There are six different kinds of video production providers, each with their own strengths and biases. Let's compare them and review their various costs, pros and cons.

Choose a supplier right for you

1. The Video Production Company

Video agencies are companies dedicated to creating and producing videos with an emphasis on creativity and filming. Some agencies specialise in animation, others in live action. Some of the bigger agencies will cover both of these and will be capable of producing dramas, as well as micro documentaries and promotional videos. If you're looking for creativity more than results, video production is a good way to go.

Pros of using a production company for business video

• Skills and talent: These tend to be built into one company. You'll have no shortage of capability in creative and production areas
• Experience speeds up your project: The 'they've done it many times before' mode of practice is often reassuring
• Breadth of experience: Often covering many different industrial sectors
• Messaging and creative techniques: Developed for one sector, these techniques can be fruitful in fertilising ideas for another sector, such as yours
• Technology: Usually more advanced than other suppliers, the technical quality of the films you'll get will likely be impressive
• Storytelling and story forming: Especially helpful when you don't know what you're trying to say, a video agency can devise the right format to correctly tell the story in a way which is best suited to your audience.

Cons of using a production company for business video

• Lack of marketing skill: production houses are rarely marketers - and you'll be lucky to find production people with serious digital marketing skills
• Range of services: They can vary considerably in their costs, and their true capabilities. Smaller agencies are frequently camera-led and founded by one visual person who may lack marketing or audience skill
• Lack of storytelling empathy: Although that may look affordable and appealing, you may not get the storytelling and audience empathy skills that you're really looking for
• Ulterior motives: The larger agencies can be very expensive and not only run a high bill, but will have a preference for making portfolio pieces which suit their needs as much as yours
• Lack of deployment, or placement skills: Many video agencies focus purely on production and will not be able to help you achieve the SEO, social, and search benefits that every video needs in order to sing.

2. Digital Marketing Agencies

Generalist digital agencies offer a broad range of capabilities, including search engine optimisation (SEO), pay-per-click, email marketing, web design and social marketing services. They're brilliant for multi-channel marketing and larger scale campaigns where you need to meet your audience across a range of varied and differing communication media.

These days, many digital agencies have become content marketers or content production specialists, meaning that their principal delivery is high value text, imagery and videos, which are visible on your social channels. Other digital agencies have specialisms in contemporary advertising: pay-per-click, video overlays and video interstitials in YouTube, and other video platforms. These are, perhaps, the more televisual end of the spectrum, and have a tendency towards highly emotional storytelling.

Pros of using a digital agency for business video

• Breadth and capability: Experience across a broad spectrum of media
• Innovation: Big thinking and creative ideas
• Analysis: Multi-platform tracking and detailed conversion information
• Experimental approach: A trial-and-error approach to marketing, including split testing, which is a vital function of any serious large scale campaigns across your industry sectors.

Cons of using a digital agency for business video

• Cost, and media cost: It can be high - unless you're thinking large scale, a digital agency might not be suitable
• Skill-set: Multi-disciplinary skills often can underperform compared to specialist skills
• In-house bias: A bias towards in-house strengths might pull your campaign away from what would be lean, or what would work best, towards the channels and technologies that the agency most understands and prefers best
• Trial-and-error bias: Digital agencies are set up to retain clients over years, and tend to avoid the lean ethos of projects or focused campaigns. As a result, they can sometimes drift towards a trial-and-error ethos, which is not wrong in itself, but can be expensive.

3. Videographers

A videographer is usually a single person outfit with low costs, good capabilities, flexibility where you might want it, and is more likely than big agencies to follow orders. A videographer tends to be an individual who has a love of filming as opposed to a love of helping you connect directly in the most responsive way with your audience. If you're after look and image more than results, or perhaps you're on a super-low budget, a videographer could be your ideal pick.

Pros of using a videographer for business video

• Cost: Super low compared to agencies
• Creativity: If you find a good videographer, you may find that you're able to get exactly what you want, assuming you know what you want and it is appropriate
• Speed: They will be faster on smaller projects as most single camera operators will allocate their full time to working on your project, and will turn around material more quickly than most big agencies.

Cons of using a videographer for business video

• Lack of marketing skill: As with production houses, you'll find almost zero experience in video proposition and brand understanding and deployment and placement skills
• Lack of audience skill: You'll also find inexperience in audience research, behaviours and the kinds of capabilities likely to drive sales or enquiry growth
• Lack of storytelling skill: Although it may look affordable and appealing, you may not get the storytelling or narrative skills that you're really looking for
• Lack of deployment, or placement skills: Many video agencies focus purely on production and will not be able to help you achieve the SEO, social, and search benefits that every video needs in order to sing.

4. Media Trainers

Many media trainers have ex-broadcast backgrounds, with rich experience in PR interviews and on-camera behaviour and psychographics. If your intended video campaigns need to focus heavily around interviews, media training may well appeal to you, and you can ask for well-edited interview footage back from these firms after your training is complete.

Pros of using a Media Trainer for video marketing

• Phenomenal interview experience and training: Passing skills on to your staff and senior figures and spokes-people is a valuable asset
• Quality: Technology is likely to be broadcast quality with this particular type of supplier, so if that's a look you seek, you're in the right place
• Storytelling: With a good media trainer, you'll have a very clear understanding of how to tell your story in under two minutes, or five minutes, depending on the situation required. This is not trivial.

Cons of using a Media Trainer for business video

• Lack of marketing know-how: Media trainers are not marketers - so don't expect help with proposition, audience know-how, budget management or competitive oomph.
• Lack of visual creativity: Media trainers are rarely creatives - if you're looking for any kind of visual creativity, a media trainer isn't really going to cut it for you
• Lack of research/search skills: Unlikely to receive market research audience expertise, or good skills in the areas of search social or advertising
• Cost: Expect charging for consultancy and training fees primarily, and production services secondarily, so you're going to have a little bit of an overhead, or a sizable one, at least.

5. PR Agency

PR agencies produce and manage written and video messaging to your audiences through both mainstream and trade media, and increasingly through social and knowledge media. Their natural bias towards news means you're more likely to find former journalists there. If you're a news-seeking firm, or if your industry demands it, then PR firms can be a good way to go.

Pros of using a PR agency for business video

• Results orientation: They're going to focus on outcomes first, and you'll have confidence in their ability to bring about change
• Storytelling: one thing you can rely on with PR agencies is their story-telling expertise - though you should watch out for a tendency towards creating a long narrative and lots of shorter expressions of it, because budget can easily creep up
• Big audiences: PR firms are familiar with larger audiences, and they'll help you to think big.

Cons of using a PR agency for business video

• Cost: Although cheaper than many marketing and digital agencies, you're likely to pay more here to get more. Expect monthly charges for ongoing campaigns, and one-off costs for professional SEO.
• Media-orientation: PR firms do like their large and familiar audiences and have learned over many decades to trust their know media. They may be less willing to try new channels, and they feel out of their comfort zones in building long campaigns in new channels, or in leaving media entirely.
• Noise: your story, your content is always going to compete with other similar stories in the same channels as PR agencies use. The agency is always going to use narrative to crack that nut, as opposed to other more visual, competitive or propositional methods.

6. Video Marketing Agencies

Video marketing firms not only make your videos but they get them seen too. They range from 'video-first' marketers to comprehensive marketing communications teams. Their natural bias towards marketing provides a results-oriented approach usually. If that's what counts for you, video marketers are a good choice.

Pros of using a video agency

• Results orientation: They're going to focus on outcomes first, and you'll have confidence in their ability to bring about change
• Blended skills: Video editors who are used to collaborating with marketers just see differently - they bring punch and clarity where it's needed with reliability
• Speed: The natural understanding of commerce and campaign planning that marketers use in their daily work helps to shorten timescales and boost synchronisation
• Analytics: video marketers tend to analyse not just audience behaviours but also story flows, topic relevance, media channels, moments in the buying cycle and CTA techniques - these result in better videos and a higher chance of marketing bite
• Technology: of all the 6 types of supplier, you're likely to find the highest tech here - in production and in digital deployment and automation.
• Story forming: Like video production agencies, a video agency will create the right story flow to best suit your audience.
• Deployment and placement skills: Video marketers help you achieve the SEO, social, and search benefits that every video needs in order to sing.

Cons of using a video agency

• Cost: Although cheaper than many marketing and digital agencies, you're likely to pay more here to get more. Expect monthly charges for ongoing campaigns, and one-off costs for professional SEO.
• Skill-set: Single-disciplinary can prefer a single-path solution - if every tool in the box is video, then every problem can take on a video-shaped look
• Trial-and-error bias: Video marketing agencies are set up to trial campaigns, and then create revisions over time, which can be expensive. You can overcome this problem with video marketers who can run real-time A/B split testing with advanced players and content plans.

Already got this covered?

If you already have business videos and they're not generating response, there's much above that will help you improve their performance. But what would be even better than your current business videos?

One-minute Improvers

• Cross-check all your business videos largely follow the above suggestions, or deviate for good reasons
• Ensure you've used on-site CTAs which match your buyer journey moments
• Ensure your social videos, articles and posts have off-site CTA's that match your buyer journey
• Check your business videos match the messaging your audience needs to hear
• Check viewing behaviours - if audiences aren't watching to the end, revise your video


What's at Risk here? A one-minute test

The risk of doing something wrong always hinders us as decision makers. And equally, the risk of doing nothing lurks behind that too. Both carry the risk of failure. So why not delay - deferring looks safer. Like a Whitehall mandarin. Is that the kind of decision maker you want to be? Thought not. So here's a helpful checklist for wise decision maker inside you that's aching to be heard.

The One-minute Decision Checklist

1. Do buyers want to know what you're like?
2. Do buyers want proof of your success?
3. Should you provide buyers with the information they want?
4. Do buyers want a sense of what will happen to them if they buy from you?
5. Do buyers need to find you easily via search and social media?
6. Do you need to be seen as relevant and modern?

If the answer to any three of these is yes, you should almost certainly proceed with this. Or at least be questioning why you have so many no's.



Conclusion

Comparing video production costs, types, pro and cons prior to deciding on a video company gives a better, more informed understanding of the core messaging and goals you wish to achieve:

• Experience: choose an agency that can offer a skill-set to achieve your goals
• Storytelling: choose an agency that can breathe life into videos, not merely make them
• Research: choose an agency that can analyse and optimise conversion
• Media training: choose an agency that has interviewers capable of nurturing the good you do
• Costs: think of a budget that balances speed and quality

So, now you've weighed up video firms, you've moved towards your goal. Time for a chat about success with video?

Book a Video Marketing Demo