Marketing professionals routinely face challenges with how to allocate their precious marketing dollars and spread them between numerous mediums to maximize return on investment. Even once a budget is set for video marketing, a further question arises: Should you create one larger budget video with all of the bells and whistles, or create a series of videos? The answer depends largely on your marketing goals and distribution strategy for videos in general. Both paths have benefits, but choosing which one makes the most sense depends on your desired outcome for corporate video production or Web video production in general.
As an example of how each path would look, let’s take a hypothetical $6,000 budget and see where each path leads for two different companies with two sets of goals. Company A owns and manages a chain of 25 successful restaurants in a three-state region and has decided to add video production to their marketing strategy. Company B creates a variety of technology products for different applications and customers. For Company A, the goal of restaurant management is to make each location feel similar and provide comparable menus, customer experiences, and quality. For Company B, the goal is to satisfy a variety of needs that businesses and consumers may have for an array of products.
COMPANY A: BUDGET USAGE
If Company A chooses to make one high-end $6,000 corporate video, they can incorporate B-roll shots from several of their best restaurant locations, but focus on filming the majority of the B-roll at a single location, perhaps closest to the corporate headquarters. Interviews could accompany the B-roll and explain the restaurant chain’s story, values and goals, hiring practices, and menu options. Time can be allocated to capture great food shots, cooking shots, cocktail glamour shots, and maybe drone footage of a particularly great location on a lake or river or otherwise visually interesting location.
If Company A chooses to make four $1,500 videos instead, the focus could center on either their top four locations by revenue or the four locations most in need of a marketing push. Each video would have a 3-4 hour production component either encompassing several interviews or using voiceover and text combined with B-roll.
For Company A, creating four videos would support a local focus on four restaurants that could be targeted to each local market, but it would limit the value of the videos on a corporate Facebook page or homepage. Potential advantages arise from aggressively marketing and sharing the video to local food and restaurant bloggers, targeted Google ads, local Facebook video ads, and other avenues to reach diners. The major disadvantage is the many restaurants left without a video to promote their locations.
The alternate option is for Company A to create one high-end video incorporating motion graphics, high-end video footage from a top videographer, excellent interview footage, and a more in-depth focus on the restaurant philosophy and offerings as a whole. Such an overview video is a great starting point that can be promoted heavily across all regions where the business operates, placed prominently on the home page, Facebook page, YouTube channel, and other areas of interest. Because of the higher production values, the restaurant attains a greater online presence and stature among potential diners and gains the ability to showcase their offerings in a more complete fashion. For Company A’s marketing goals, a higher-end video arguably has more advantages than several smaller budget videos.
COMPANY B: BUDGET USAGE
Company B faces different challenges and has different marketing goals, though arguably could make either path work depending on its needs at the time. A higher-end video could focus on the company’s philosophy of product creation in general, its pedigree in the industry and innovative design and engineering experts, and its wide array of product offerings. Incorporating slick motion graphics and careful editing, an overview video could have numerous uses and be a great tool in promoting the business as a whole. A high-end corporate overview video is also a great first video project for a company that plans to include an annual video production budget. In subsequent years, Company B could expand to creating individual product videos for each new offering.
If Company B decides to create four $1,500 product videos, each video would have sufficient production time to make a nice, informative video. The products could be filmed either all in one day to save costs, allowing for additional motion graphics and editing time, or split over two days with plenty of time for capturing the perfect shots. Each video would look nice and professional, incorporating kinetic text and voiceover or featuring a spokesperson talking about the products. The multi-video option has a few clear advantages for Company B, especially if each product targets a different market segment. If two of the videos are for business use and two for consumer use, Company B now has marketing materials for two entirely separate groups of people. If Company B only had one overview video, the video may be trying to appeal to both groups simultaneously and succeed with neither.
With four different product offerings featured on videos, Company B could target different types of buyers, feature the product videos on landing pages on Amazon or other tech sites, and share the videos across blogs, review sites, and industry sites relevant specifically to each product. Having four videos instead of one may also have various SEO benefits to the company, including allowing for four e-mail blasts through the company’s newsletter, for instance. Though many other factors come into play, Company B has much stronger reasons than Company A for creating a series of videos rather than just one.