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“How much do you charge for a video?”
After 6.5 years of being a video production house, we still come back and say - it depends.
And we wish it was any simpler than that.
Video production involves a lot of steps -
Plus, video budgeting requires multiple considerations at your end too -
Complicating matters for you is the fact that every studio/agency has their own pricing “logic” and that's why you can get wildly different price points for the same video brief.
In the absence of any “universal” pricing logic, in this emailer, i will share our pricing logic, so sit tight and go til the very end.
These are the most expensive of the lot and for good reason. Every second of this video needs to be attention grabbing and strategic to the “T”. And to achieve that, we need “time” and lots of iterations - all of which translates into higher per sec budget. A typical Social media ad is roughly 30 secs long, mobile friendly and laser focused on one message.
Explainers come in various shapes and sizes, however, the ones that seem to be the most effective weave pain points and product benefits in a tight story built around the buyer persona. To achieve this however takes multiple rounds of iterations at every stage from scripting to music - with no stage being any less crucial.
For this reason, you’ll find the range of USD 200 to 8000 for explainers in the market. The lesser priced ones are of course a lot more generic ( Remember, “Hi, this is Bob!” ) and use stock graphics and music, and while they don’t necessarily “look” bad, they won’t have any stickiness.
On the other hand, the super expensive explainers will wow the audience but will burn a big hole in your marketing budget. The trick ( as is always the case) is to find the perfect balance of marketing sharpness and visual quality.
Thought leadership videos have the same workflow as many e learning videos. The quality expectation with thought leadership video is not the same as the first two video types mentioned above, however, they still need to adhere to your brands guidelines and should remain engaging. The responsibility of the visuals here is to provide continuity and clarity and not necessarily, to impress the audience with its visuals. The cost is generally lower, also because the script usually comes from the client.
Testimonials involve shooting with real people, typically your customers and your senior management. The process here is slightly different, with scripting done post the shoot. So there are two big areas where money is spent - on production and then on post production, because that's where the story is made.
As you must have already observed, animated videos are priced per sec and Live action shoots are charged per day. That's because in animated videos, every single frame is created from scratch and the length of the video is a good estimation of the total effort involved ( though not accurate).
How to bargain for the right price with agencies?
How to get the MOST out of the video asset?
