What do video production providers do?
Video production companies handle the end-to-end filming and video production process, aligning client marketing objectives with the final polished video. Production companies have the experience and equipment necessary to handle all aspects of video production, including planning, conceptualization, talent management, shooting and editing, and final post-production.
Video production companies solve a number of business challenges for the clients who contract their services:
-
Affordable video production solution to help small to midsize businesses overcome budget limitations.
-
Provide the resources and skills necessary to create high quality video content.
-
Aligning video content with the client’s SEO and paid marketing goals by incorporating keywords throughout the video and video transcript to help maximize organic traffic and improve paid advertising campaign performance—all necessary for improving lead conversion rates.
When engaged by a client, video production companies create content in four phases:
-
Client consultation to conceptualize the video content based on client’s needs, client’s branding, marketing objective, potential distribution channel, and target audience.
-
Pre-production phase involves video production planning and coordination, taking into account budget, project scope, and timeline. The video production team handles storyboarding, scripting, casting, ensuring equipment availability for the project, and securing the video shoot location.
-
Production includes shooting the video according to the plans and includes lighting and sound production and voice-over recording.
-
Post-production involves editing and polishing recorded video, including the addition of sound effects, music, voice overs, and special effects, and then working with the client for final approval.
What are the different types of video production?
There are different video types businesses tend to contract video production studios to create. Let’s break down the major video types and what business goal they accomplish.
Product and explainer videos
One of the most powerful uses of video marketing content is to demonstrate the features and benefits of a product or service. Explainer videos describe how products or services function and highlight how useful your brand might be in providing a solution that the viewer is seeking. Product and explainer videos help to generate leads and raise brand awareness organically across eCommerce platforms, landing pages, social media posts, and other marketing channels.
Corporate
Businesses leverage corporate videos to promote their brand and increase brand awareness. Corporate videos can be focused on product promotion, user training, product demonstrations, event coverage, customer testimonials, or public relations-focused interviews. Documentaries are also a popular format for corporate videos because they allow the business to depict their brand handling true-life issues or taking part in events that are relevant to the brand’s mission.
Event
A special subset of corporate videos; video production studios are often contracted to produce videos that convey a client’s culture and provide a behind-the-scenes look at how their business operates. Video of social and corporate events can help a brand drive engagement, increase brand trust, and help to promote the business.
Interviews and testimonials
Interviews and third-party testimonials are powerful social proof tools for brands to leverage in the evaluation stage of the sales funnel. These types of videos support brand building and help to instill trust in existing and potential customers. Video production agencies record customers telling their stories about their experience with a brand’s products or services and how it helped solve a problem.
Internal communications
Video content can be produced with the intent to distribute for internal training or announcement videos, to foster internal synergy between departments, and to communicate important initiatives to employees.
Recruitment
Videos can be a powerful method for HR teams to communicate a company’s culture, details about the work environment, how different departments operate, and what a potential applicant can expect in terms of roles and responsibilities.
Business marketing and sales
Business marketing and sales videos are used across the sales funnel to increase brand awareness, impact the consideration of your service or product as a purchase option, and convert leads more effectively. These videos are especially useful in promoting your brand and increasing engagement on digital and social platforms, with the goal of deepening your relationship with prospects and improving overall sales.
Training and skills management
Training and skills management video content is often packaged for clients as supporting materials in compliance training, technology tools (hardware and software) education, eLearning and Learning Management Systems (LMSs), and employee onboarding materials. These videos support in-house training and education by helping to convey skills, provide training, and present information in an accessible way.
Benefits of outsourcing video production
Let’s take a deeper look at the benefits small and midsize businesses experience in contracting with video production service businesses.
Built-in video production experience
Specializing in video production allows production studios to bring years of experience and expertise to the table during every engagement. During their years producing content for clients, video production studios have developed a familiarity with visual storytelling and video marketing tactics that allow them to produce high-quality videos that get results.
Professional equipment means the best video quality
Because studios maintain top-tier equipment, they can shoot videos with better quality shots, zooming, and framing. Further, skilled videographers with technical expertise can properly leverage technically advanced video gear to produce the highest quality raw footage, expediting post-production practices. For example, many video production companies are offering drone videography services. Using drones to capture video footage allows videographers to minimize the use of expensive equipment while increasing the versatility in the type of footage they can capture, resulting in much more powerful storytelling in the video content they create.
Align video concept with business goals
Content marketing teams collaborate with video production studios to conceptualize video content capable of achieving their organization’s marketing objectives. To provide a solid foundation for such collaboration, many video production studios maintain their own in-house creative teams capable of helping clients envision brand messaging and create blueprints for video projects.
Video production studios reduce overall costs
Video production is a highly technical process requiring expensive production equipment and a range of related skills to support production and post-production polishing processes. While small businesses might struggle to maintain an in-house video production team, production studios employ highly skilled professionals and maintain an array of cutting edge hardware. By contracting out to a video production studio, small businesses reduce their financial commitment to video production to a service fee, while the studio absorbs and distributes those costs across their clients.
Additionally, when video production companies employ in-house marketing experts, they are able to provide expert marketing analysis to help clients monitor campaign performance and assist in the creation of video content within established budgets.
Increase customer engagement and improve branding
Video content is a powerful engagement and conversion tool when properly leveraged in marketing campaigns. The high-quality video content created by production studios help clients craft comprehensive marketing campaigns and create brand awareness. Video engagement is driven by the powerful storytelling skilled studios incorporate into the content they create.
Professional post-production services
In the post-production phase, video production companies edit raw footage down to a final product that meets the expectations of the client. Post-production includes the addition of audio and visual content, subtitles and transitions, and special effects, with the goal of delivering video content that aligns with client marketing objectives and helps the client brand stand out from competitors.
How to choose the best video production service provider?
The decision to contract with a video production studio is complex and requires owners and leadership to determine whether a potential partnership aligns with the needs of their organization.
-
Consider your goals and establish your organization’s requirements, budget and priorities before searching for the best video production studio. What does your marketing team expect to accomplish with the video content? What is the scope of the project and how does it align with your marketing needs? What impact do you anticipate video content to have on your bottom line?
-
Does the potential studio’s portfolio of work showcase projects with an industry focus similar to the niche in which you operate? Do they have expertise working with the services you offer, and can they create video to support your needs, in both scope and video type? Does the portfolio reflect a production studio that is skilled and capable of producing high quality content that is visually engaging?
-
Collaborate with the video production studio to determine if the project can be built within the budget previously established. Video production service prices can vary greatly from one production company to another, and their pricing is also often an indicator of the quality you expect to see from the final product.
-
What level of partnership with a video production service provider is required by your existing video production capabilities? Are you looking for a full-service video production studio to handle video projects from conceptualization to final edits or do you need a studio with a specialized team to handle a specific video production element, such as editing or sound design?
-
Does the studio’s video production process align with your expectations in terms of deliverables, milestones, communication, overall timeline, and their approach to marketing and distributing your content? From these questions, businesses can further explore how involved they should expect to be in the process.
-
Dig deeper into the production studio’s approach to marketing pre-release of the final video asset to ensure the marketing and distribution channels chosen for release align with the goals set at the start of the project engagement. If social media channels are part of that approach, make sure the video type and length aligns with the content most often posted to those platforms.
-
Find out if there are options for post-release marketing support to manage and adjust the marketing campaigns using the content to maximize the impact of the video content created.
