Working up the annual video budget usually involves numbers related to marketing campaigns, product introductions, and sometimes sales training. But shouldn’t the coming year’s video budget reflect 2020’s urgent shift to digital selling in response to the pandemic? Organizations have discovered that sales teams and buying teams can both be very effective working from home.
With fewer in-person interactions, keeping up engagement after online meetings is tough. Who has the bandwidth to join more meetings than you’re already committed to? So, support for “asynchronous” online engagement is critical. And what type of digital sales support content works better than video?
Cost components of new video content
These costs are common to all B2B sales/marketing videos:
- Time spent identifying what you want the viewer to take away
- Time and talent writing, visualizing, and editing the story
- Time and talent creating, capturing, and editing visuals and sound.
There may also be out-of-pocket expenses like travel, on-screen talent, and production crews, but very effective videos can be made without them.
Imaginative repurposing
Did you notice that the cost elements listed above are all editorial? You simply can’t make an effective video without editorial skill and imagination. If you’re looking for a steady stream of videos for sales support, you should take a look at your existing video library. It probably contains a wealth of relevant visuals that can be edited, and added to, in order to clarify common misconceptions, address customer objections, and reinforce sales messages. It just takes a professional video writing/editing team working with your sales team. You’ll be surprised how many professional-quality videos can be speedily produced with this common-sense approach.
How much do visuals cost?
Of course, there are lots of situations where talking heads and repurposed visuals can’t get the job done. Sometimes you need to shoot on location, which costs what it costs. Sometimes you want to use animation to make unfamiliar ideas look simple and unthreatening. You can get an idea of the relative cost of different animation styles here. The most expensive style costs about four times as much as the least expensive one.
ICYMI
Speaking of animation, here’s a historical take on The 100 Sequences That Shaped Animation
That’s it for now. Stay well.
Bruce McKenzie & Lorna Pautzke
