At Storyboard Media, we’re staunch believers that you can’t have a New Year’s Eve party without three things: champagne, finger foods, and your completed 2023 B2B video marketing budget.
Without a completed and accurate budget, it’ll be harder to drive impact with your marketing budgets, including those centered on video. And when you derive your budget from your strategy, it also becomes easier to get buy-in from essential stakeholders.
So, to ensure your party is just as festive and data-driven as ours, we present our guide on how to budget for video in 2023. We’ll walk you through how to develop your budget, what you should include, and ways you can make things easier for yourself.
How Do You Create a B2B Video Marketing Budget?
Generally, there are two different ways to develop your video budget. The first method is to view video as just something you want to try to see if it works.
There’s no real strategy involved here. Instead, you’re essentially throwing a dart at a dartboard and letting fate decide how much you spend on video marketing next year.
There are varieties within this method. You may pick a fun, whole number, or a wacky percentage. Then you use that money on video projects you don’t fully commit to. It might work, though the odds are not great.
Another variety within this method is to look at what your competitor is doing and copy that. This method is safe and defensible, allowing you to point at the competing brands are doing and blame them for your video marketing not working.
Of course, we don’t recommend any of the above methods. Instead, it’s better to view video as a tool that will help you achieve a specific business goal. Your goal could be boosting brand awareness, converting leads to prospects, or moving prospects through your sales funnel.
With this method, it doesn’t so much matter what your business goal is as long as you have one and it’s specific and measurable.
Once you have your goal in hand, you can work strategically to solve for remaining variables. You’ll be able to determine what type of video content you need, where you’ll distribute your video, and the action you want your audience to take. You’ll have a springboard from which to launch your video marketing strategy.
So, don’t let your competitors or the hands of fate decide what your budget looks like. Instead, start with a bedrock of strategy based on your specific business goals.
What Should Be Included In Your Video Budget?
Video is an investment. That means it’s not an inexpensive endeavor, but it also means that you should expect a positive return. When you start with strategy, you can help boost your return and cut costs. You’ll be able to produce video at scale and prevent duplicate or unnecessary content, for example.
Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, though, let’s consider what your investment will pay for.
In terms of people, your video production may require budgeting for the following:
- Producer
- Scriptwriter
- Director
- Director of photography
- Digital imaging technician
- Camera operator
- Gaffer
- Audio technician
- Production assistant
- Hair, makeup, and wardrobe crew
- On-screen talent
- Audio editor
- Video editor
- Effects artists
- Colorist
If you’re keeping video production in-house, you’ll fill most of these positions with freelancers and contractors. Also, if your video is on the small side of the production scale, you can hire one person to fill several roles. For example, some editors have the skills and experience to serve as audio engineers, effects artists, and colorists. The key word being “some.”
You may be tempted to keep costs down by using people within your company as cast and crew. But unless they have professional experience in their role, you may end up cutting corners and lowering the quality of the production. Copywriting and scriptwriting, for instance, are two different skill sets. And, as much as the CEO’s nephew brags about their Blu-ray collection and prefers to call movies “films,” they may not be the best choice to supervise a production that will ultimately serve as a reflection of your company.
Outside of people, producing video marketing content also calls for a few tools:
- Audio equipment
- Cameras and camera-related equipment
- Lighting rigs
- Props
- Studio or on-location fees
- Video editing software
Finally, you’ll also need somewhere to host your produced content. Some video hosting platforms, like YouTube or Vimeo, offer this for free. Others, like Vidyard and Wista, tend to require a subscription to fully employ all their tools and analytical insights.
Should You Keep Your Video Production In-House or Outsource It?
When creating a video marketing budget for 2023, your best bet is to partner with a video marketing agency that will work with you to understand your goals, develop a strategy, and create a timeline and budget for video production and distribution. Are we biased? Of course. But that doesn’t mean we’re wrong.
It’s an all-in-one package that centers your responsibilities around being a good client instead of engaging in work your business isn’t quite equipped to handle itself.
A video marketing agency can also help if you prefer a hybrid approach. For example, maybe you need an audit of your current content to ensure it’s helping you reach your goals. Or, maybe, you need some one-off support as you work through a new strategy or type of production.
And if you’re confident in your marketing capabilities and want to outsource the production, you can work with video studios. Video studios tend not to work on the strategic portion of your marketing but instead focus on producing a high-quality video that matches your vision.
They’ll book the studios, hire cast and crew, and do all the post-production work. Still, they won’t take a deep dive into your analytics to uncover missed video marketing opportunities or where you can differentiate yourself from the competition.
If you know your distribution and promotion budget, a video studio can provide upfront pricing, helping you develop the production portion of your budget.
How Much Should I Budget for Video in 2023?
The short answer is… it depends. But as economic conditions remain uncertain, the total share of marketing budget you have to allocated towards video may change. We advise you to consider this: video is a rich medium. A high-quality video production can result in, not only quality video content, but still photos and images, clips, reels, and memes, animated thumbnails, transcripts to convert into blog posts, and captured audio to use as sound bites.
A $100,000 spend on a video production may seem like a heavy lift for many marketing teams — but with a proper strategy in place, that $100,000 is getting you multiple videos and countless deliverables that could potentially fill your marketing funnel for the better part of the year.
Where Can You Find a B2B Video Marketing Partner?
Developing an accurate budget is one of the best ways to get buy-in and drive impact. Fortunately, you don’t have to do it alone.
Reach out today to start a conversation about your video marketing needs. We can be your partner in supporting your business goals, and you may get an invite to our New Year’s party/analytical bacchanal!