St. Louis Missouri – November 2021 - It is important to know exactly what it will cost to tell your story using video. It is the first question most clients have when deciding whether to invest in professional video production.

A friend recently shared a blog post from a production company about setting a video budget. The article does a good job summarizing the costs of traditional video production. Most of you will have sticker shock.

Most professional video productions (a.k.a not StorySMART) range from a low of $10,000 to as much as a $150,000 . That is consistent with what I’ve seen over the years in my home market of St. Louis. I expect it might be more in other markets like LA, New York, San Francisco or Miami.

A typical testimonial video will cost between $15,000 to $20,000, a product video $12,000 to $25,000, a motion graphic animation could run $10,000 to $40,000 and a commercial anywhere from $30,000 to $150,000.

That is a lot of money for a single video. Only you can determine if that is a good investment for your business.

Even though those numbers are many multiples of what StorySMART charge our clients, I will admit it might make sense to spend $150,000 if it will generate even more than that in return.

Star Wars cost $11 million to make. It grossed over $775 million at the box office and became a cultural phenomenon.

You can’t determine return on investment without knowing the investment cost first. That same dynamic is true with telling a story. How much is telling your story with video worth to your business? How much will it cost to produce it? How will you use it to build your brand or sell your services or product?

Video drives organic traffic to your website better than anything else. According to Forbes, you are 53 times more likely to have a front-page Google search result for your website if you include a video. Video content performs better on social media than any other content. Those are factual realities in 2021.

At StorySMART, we don’t spend much time trying to convince you of the general value of video. Most people see it for themselves. We figure if you don’t realize that by now, you are not a right fit for StorySMART. And the world will soon pass you by. We hope to still be here when you figure it out.

The fact is that every business needs video. And not just one video. Many videos.

That bears repeating as this is where StorySMART parts ways with virtually every video production company in America. We won’t try to convince a business to invest a ton of money in just one video. We would rather use those resources to do more videos over time.

It is a marathon, not a sprint. You need to be using video consistently in your business communications and marketing. Video is here to stay.

We also know what makes us unique. If you have a $150,000 to spend on one video, you are likely not coming to StorySMART. While we would love your business, we are not set up to do the next Super Bowl Budweiser Clydesdale spot.

While I love those ads, advertising isn’t our niche. We don’t do advertising videos. Instead, we specialize in using experienced television reporters to tell your story using brand journalism. The name of our game is telling, not selling.

StorySMART is here to help you tell story in an honest and authentic way that connects credibly with your target audience. We believe that if you want to be remembered, you need to tell a good story. It is that simple.

Our cost-certain service is a real value not because of the affordable price that is a fraction of most professional productions, but because of the high-integrity approach of journalism delivered from a brand point of view using experienced TV reporters working for you.

So how can StorySMART offer a price that is a fraction of what other companies will charge you to tell your story?

The short answer is we use an MMJ. A multimedia journalist. We assign a single storyteller to tell your story. They do it all. Interview you and your folks. They shoot and edit the video. And they write the 350+ word blog post so you can simply share the video. It is a turnkey service designed to help you connect credibly and authentically with your target audience.

And you can afford to rinse and repeat that process, building online traffic to your business one story at a time.

This is one of the ways we are different than most production companies that are built more around the film or advertising agency model. They bring a full crew to tell a story. They place a greater emphasis on production quality than our model does. While we demand high quality professional results from our reporters, we are not out to create a budget breaking cinematic masterpiece.

Most production companies follow a bigger budget scripted storytelling model that is ideal for creating a single beautiful video but doesn’t lend itself well to telling multiple stories over the long-haul. Also, the scripted model isn’t easy on non-actors. It hard to read a teleprompter and come across as authentic.

We want to help you build and grow your online audience through consistent honest authentic storytelling that is relevant to your audience. Your cost per video is very relevant in that model.

What can you sustain over the long term?

If your business needs to be sharing videos consistently over time forever, what model works best for you?

While most scripted video storytelling and other professional production has a place with businesses, I need to call out one thing I see far too often. Vanity video.

StorySMART doesn’t produce those self-serving corporate vanity videos whose only audience is the c-suite. Good storytelling isn’t about you, it is about your audience. The same goes with good communication or marketing. You measure the success of communication not on the intent of the communicator, but on how it connects with the audience.

If you are a business or non-profit organization, we don’t think you should be spending your entire marketing budget on a single slick video. We believe that is a waste of good money for most organizations. We believe you are better off taking that same money and spending it on several videos.

You should be building, maintaining and growing an online audience with your customers and prospective customers. Look around you. Everyone is on the internet all the time. Search drives our economy. Search can be used to drive customers to you if you use a telling, not selling approach to video.

You should be blogging and connecting with your customers digitally. At a minimum, every business should have an email newsletter and an online blog. You should also be on social media. Consistently. Not just one and done.

Your goal should be to serve that audience relevant stories from your area of expertise. When you do that consistently with video, Google will recognize your website as a subject matter expert. But more important than that, you are giving your customer relevant information that is responsive to their search. You are building a relationship built on trust through honest storytelling.

While you might accomplish some of that with one video that costs $30,000, we think you are better served doing a dozen videos for that money. With that approach, you are getting your cost per story down to $2,500 per story.

While most production companies will sell you on doing one video, we want you to do consistent storytelling. One and done won’t cut it. We think you should be blogging with some consistency. One a month. If you can’t afford that, six a year. If that doesn’t work, once a quarter.

While that professional production company wants you to spend a minimum of $12,000 on one video, we think you are better off doing four stories for that investment. I will tell you that a $12,000 video will likely look prettier. It will have higher production value, but it may not come across as authentic if your people are reading a script. You could save money by doing it yourself. You could shoot your own videos with your cell phone for a lot less than we will charge you.

If your choice is not doing something or doing it yourself, I’d say do it yourself. If you prefer a professional do it for you, then we would like the chance to earn your business. We can’t say anything negative about production companies that charge a lot more than StorySMART. Many companies do top notch work that is beautiful. It might be exactly what you need and might be well worth the investment. Only you can answer that question.

The bottom line is you should know what your cost per story will be and design a program that you can sustain year after year. You should make sure you own the copyright on everything you have done. Don’t make the mistake of spending tens of thousands of dollars and not owning the work production. You should know your cost per story and you should #OwnYourStory