What is The Value of Corporate Video

What is the value of creating a corporate video or even thinking about spending a piece of your budget on a professional video company to make a video for you?

There is no better way to intro your company or its products or services than with video. Imagine having a salesperson working 24 hours a day for you, giving your perfect pitch every time someone asked! Video has that potential, you just have to harness it.

With the convenience of high quality video cameras (i.e. smartphones), why would anyone spend money with a video production company to “just shoot a video”? Can’t we just hire the cheapest company and it will be good enough?

I’ll answer your question with a question:  Do you choose your sushi restaurant by the cheapest one, even with bad reviews?  Do you buy the cheapest car even if the tires are falling off?  Do you buy the cheapest clothes…?  No, of course not.

Now, there is nothing wrong with making smart money decisions whether it is in choosing a restaurant or a business partner, but in the end, you get what you pay for. 

What’s the Goal of Your Video?

When considering how much money you should spend or even if there is any value at all on a video, you should first determine what the end goal of your corporate video will be.  Are you posting this video to your business’s website?  Posting it to social media?  Using it in your email signature or even just uploading it straight to Youtube for people to find?  No matter what your end goal, you should keep your audience in mind.  Depending on where your video is going live determines, in no small part, how the video should be made and delivered.

How to Choose the Right Video Company for YOUR Needs

A BAD video shot of your companies main products or services and showed to the world may just be bad for your company’s reputation.  As business owners/operators it is your job to promote your company in the best light possible.  Tossing up a sub par video that has shaky video and is hard to understand will say a lot about your company, whether it is true or not.

Most video production companies focus their services on the QUALITY of their videos, not necessarily the messaging.  It is a lot easier for them to position themselves as a company that creates beautiful moving pictures rather than be a video company that is focused on messaging and getting results. 

I battled this a lot, especially in my early years of creating videos, as there is two parts to crafting any great video 1.Pretty Pictures. 2.Great Messaging.  It is hard to be a one man videographer and be expected to be knowledgable in all areas video and all areas brand awareness and messaging.  And that is where having a company that specializes in corporate video is really where the win comes in for businesses.

Most video companies create pretty AVERAGE videos.  They almost always are run by creatives who have an intense focus on “how the video looks” and not enough knowledge on how to create a business-oriented story that achieves a business’s goal and gets them a return on their investment.  After all, spending thousands of dollars on a video that looks amazing, but doesn’t make any money back for the company is a complete waste.

“https://wemakevideos.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Return-on-investment-for-video-production.jpg” alt=”a video that does not make money is a complete waste” title_text=”Get a return on your video production investment”

I don’t want to say that top notch video pros are not worthy of the business world, but there is a time and place. 

For example: If you want to show off your product or have a luxury item that is appropriate to look great, then hiring a company that will specialize in making your product or people look amazing is totally appropriate.  But do you need a whole video crew to roll in and charge you thousands of dollars to create a 60 second video update for your small mailing list that has no chance of making you any more money? I think not. Do you need that complete crew to come in and produce an amazing homepage video that impresses and sells to the hundreds of potential people that visit your site each day? I think so. 

“https://wemakevideos.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/What-is-the-Goal-of-Your-Video.gif” alt=”what is the goal of your video” title_text=”what is the goal of your video”

So, what is the goal of your video?

Determining the goal of your video before you call your video team is of upmost importance.  Video pros get many many calls with people that “just want a video” and so they usually “just make a video”.  Its messaging is almost always off and the return on your investment can not be measured. 

This is one of the main differences when determining the value of your corporate video and also what video company you will use when it comes time to film.  If you can decide what the goal of your video is before you even discuss it with someone outside of your company, you will reap the rewards of taking that one step past 90% of businesses that create videos for their company.

Just ask yourself some simple questions.

1. What is the goal of my video?
2. Where will this video be posted and how does that affect my message?
3. How can I measure the return on my video once it is uploaded and live?

In the end you need your video to do all the heavy lifting for you every time someone watches it.   You are paying money for it, so you should be able to see a return.  There is nothing wrong with creating a video just for awareness and sending off to youtube with your fingers crossed, but there are much better ways to spend your money if you are trying to make money in return.

The perfect example is from one of our clients. They sell grills. We made a series of videos showing the features and quality of each grill in their line. A few months after we made those, they called us and said that the videos were a big hit. The videos pulled people into the trade show booth so they could have sales conversations. Their sales for the year had already doubled! They attributed some of that success to the videos that we made them. Those types of stories from our clients prove the potential return on investment as long as you have a goal and track the results.

“https://vimeo.com/119054944”

Louisiana Grills Corporate Video

Not every video needs to look amazing, but there are videos that can be a worthy investment if you spend some time upfront asking the right questions.