Jeff HiltyEvery video your company produces is an opportunity for you to strengthen your brand and build trust with your company. Partnering with a branded video content agency that can cater to all your different video needs will help you optimize your investment in video marketing, and ensure your brand is always conveyed in the best possible way.
When you want to increase brand recognition and customer loyalty, branded video content is an essential tool in your marketing toolbox. Branded videos are valuable for businesses of all sizes and can help you attract and engage your target audience in a way that is hard to achieve with text or images.
Branded video content comes in different formats and for different channels and platforms. From TV and social media to cinema, there are many ways videos can help you strengthen your brand. Branded video content can help you achieve many great things, such as:
- Increasing demand for your products
- Growing your audience
- Boosting your social media presence and increasing engagement
- Increasing traffic to your website
- Driving conversions and increasing sales
- Building trust in your brand and products
- Improving your employer brand and attracting top talent
Related reading: Corporate Branding Video Production – A Complete Guide
Benefits of Branded Video Content
- Engaging: We live in the age of information overload, and most of us have grown good at filtering out ads and marketing messages. But, when you create the kind of brand video content your target audience actually appreciates, they stand a better chance of catching the viewers’ attention.
- Non-disruptive: By offering engaging stories, rather than salesy messages, brand videos are less likely to annoy viewers. Instead, they can contribute to the conversation and add value while helping build interest and brand affinity.
- Story-driven: The best brand videos are driven by strong story-telling. They entertain, inform, and communicate, to build authentic and emotional connections with the audience.
- Authentic: Brand video content can convey a high level of authenticity, and offers companies a way to show that they are knowledgeable and trustworthy to be listened to.
- Shareable: Engaging branded video content gives your audience a reason to share your brand’s content with friends and colleagues.
Related reading: Build Brand Loyalty With Organic Youtube Video Promotion
What Is A Branded Video Content Agency?
A branded video content agency specializes in branded content, corporate video, and marketing videos. This is important to understand because there are many types of video production agencies out there. Some of them have a generalist approach and take on all kinds of video assignments. Others focus on and specialize in specific niches or particular industries.
Since experience is a key component in successful video production, it’s usually a good idea to partner with an agency specializing in the type of content you’re looking to produce. In other words, if you’re looking to create video content for B2B marketing, a B2B video agency is better than an agency focusing on music videos.
Related reading: What To Include In Your Brand Video – and What to Leave Out
Different Types Of Branded Video Content
- Corporate videos
- Tutorial videos
- Testimonial videos
- Case study videos
- Customer interview videos
- Commercial videos
- TV advertising videos
- Social media marketing videos
- Explainer videos
- Product demo videos
Coherency Is Key In Video Marketing
As your business grows and your video marketing strategy matures, new needs for videos will emerge. Perhaps the first video you create is an explainer video to communicate the essence of what you do. The next one may be a series of customer interviews to showcase the impact you bring. And then, you may want to create tutorials helping your customers use your product and taking some of the pressure off of your customer support team.
Before you know it, you have a lot of videos. Now, in marketing and brand building, consistency and coherency are critical. You want all these different videos to have a consistent style and tone of voice so that the experience is coherent across all different touchpoints. Whether someone is consuming your videos on social media, your website, or inside your app, the content should always be unmistakably yours. This is how prospects and customers learn to recognize, remember and trust your brand.
A One-Stop Shop For all Your Video Needs
Ideally, if you find the right video agency for your branded content, that agency will become a one-stop shop for all your video needs. This allows the agency to use a consistent style for everything, thus keeping your brand communication clear and coherent.
If you work with different agencies for different videos, you’ll always risk a less coherent and efficient portfolio of marketing material. This can negatively impact the overall efficiency of your marketing campaigns and reduce the ROI on your videos.
How Much Does It Cost?
Once you know you want branded video, the next question is often, “what’s the price?” Of
course, there’s not a straightforward answer to that question; it depends. The cost of branded video production depends on many things, and we’ll look at some of them below.
How long will your video shoot last?
A full day of shooting is 10 hours (or more). A half-day is typically 4-7 hours. Note that half days are not half of the cost. Contractors will bill through a ¾-day rate to factor in opting out of a full work day with another job. Planning is also done for each shoot day, which includes planning gear for recording, lighting, and sound.
How big of a crew will you need?
The crew’s size will depend on your project’s scope and nature. Some projects require a 20+ person crew, while others only require a smaller team. The number of members in the crew will affect the total cost.
Will you need transportation and accommodation?
Some productions require people to travel to the location; others don’t. If you work with a video production company that is not local, they could potentially subcontract parts of the shoot to a local film and keep the costs down that way.
Related reading: Budgeting for Video Production – How To Decide On The Size Of Your Production
To help you wrap your head around the different costs involved and to help you plan your project, we’ve created this Video Production Budget Template. It’s intended to help you with the financial planning process of your video project and ensure you don’t forget essential aspects and costs.
Related reading: The Definitive Video Production Pricing Sheet For 2022
Qualities To Look For In a Branded Video Content Agency
A High Level of Creativity and Extensive Experience
The number one thing that sets successful marketing videos apart from the more “meh” ones is creativity. A unique and creative take on a familiar topic can make all the difference. It will help your branded video stand out and get noticed in the saturated digital marketing landscape. Therefore, aim to team up with a video production agency that is not only good at the technical aspects of video production but can also add creativity to your project. If you don’t, you risk ending up with just a slick mainstream video production that, in the end, nobody even notices.
Related reading: Invest In Creative to Optimize Your Video Production Budget
Business Acumen and a Strong Marketing Mindset
While creativity is critical in video marketing, so is a solid business understanding. Don’t make the mistake of hiring a video production agency where all the focus is on winning prestigious design awards and no focus is on your business goals. Combining creative skills and a strong marketing mindset is the magic formula for video marketing success.
Strong References and A Portfolio of Successful Projects
Make sure you choose an agency that can prove its worth in advance. Pick an agency that can showcase numerous successful projects comparable to yours and has plenty of happy customers willing to give testimonials. Don’t settle for a flashy reel, but make sure you get to see complete projects and campaigns that the agency has recently produced. This is the best and most reliable way to predict what level of quality you can expect.
Authentic Storytelling Will Strengthen Your Brand
Nothing is more attractive to people than stories about other people. As human beings, we make sense of the world through stories. And for something to feel relevant to us, we need to be able to place it in a larger narrative. Not all video production agencies remeber this fundamental marketing truth, and so they end up creating videos about things and products instead of people. This is almost always a mistake.
At Covalent, we’re well-known for putting stories and people at the center of every project. Because ultimately, your prospects are not interested in you or your products; they’re interested in themselves and how you can help them improve their lives.
Docu-Style Videos Build Trust
One of our specialties is creating docu-style videos for our corporate clients. The storytelling element of a good docu-style video is super potent. This is why people still sit through hour-long documentaries on highly complex topics in a world where people’s attention spans keep shrinking. The reason for this boils down to one thing: authenticity. No other medium feels as authentic as documentaries, which is why this genre is great for building interest and trust in your brand. And trust, as we all know, is what turn visitors into leads, and leads into paying customers.
Example: Rosetta Stone – French Louisiana
This French language learning campaign that we produced for Rosetta Stone was created to be distributed on various digital channels. Some stories were made exclusively for social media videos, while others were published on blogs and pre-roll ads. To capture the authentic French experience and produce high-quality educational videos for Rosetta Stone’s Audience, filming this project in a docu-style approach made the most sense.
Related reading: Creating a Story Arch For Corporate Storytelling
Partner With An Award-Winning Video Production Agency
Covalent is a branded video content agency based in Pittsburgh. We produce branded marketing videos for B2B, B2C, and D2C companies of all sizes and industries and are known for combining creativity with a strong marketing mindset. We’re happy to help you plan and produce everything from case study videos and TV commercials to explainer videos and docu-style shoots.
We produce branded videos at various price points, always with a focus on helping you reach your business goals. We’re with you all the way from ideation through every step of execution. Combining many years of experience with cutting-edge creativity, our productions have received numerous awards and accolades over the years.
Get in touch to discuss how we can help your brand get started with video marketing production and build a more exciting and engaging corporate communication!