Affordable Video Production: Expanding Your Video Content Pool While Staying on Budget

Did you know that currently, videos make up about 80% of all traffic on the Internet?

That's quite astonishing! But video production can also be a significant investment, consuming an average 24% of a video marketer’s budget. 

These figures might seem unnerving, especially for those just beginning their journey in video creation.

In this guide, we will explore cost-effective strategies for video production, including: 

• The average cost of video production (professional vs DIY) 
• Different types of affordable videos 
• Tested tips to minimize your production budget 
• How affordable video production benefits your business 
• Case studies of affordable UGC production

P.S. Looking for top-performing video content creators for your next UGC campaign? Showcase can assist you! Our platform connects you with high-quality content creators at affordable rates.

How Much Does Video Production Cost on Average?

Let’s review the costs associated with different types of video productions across various channels:

1. Social Media Channels 

Understanding the investment required for different platforms can help you allocate your budget more effectively.

Here’s a breakdown of what you might expect to spend on professional versus DIY video productions across various social media channels:

‍2. Marketing Channels 

Different marketing channels require unique types of videos, each with its own cost structure.

Let’s explore the financial implications of professional and DIY video productions for your marketing needs:

‍5 Types of Affordable Videos 

So, you’ve seen the current costs.

Now, let’s analyze 5 types of videos that you can create to engage your audience effectively without incurring high production costs:

• User-generated content videos: UGC videos leverage content created by customers or influencers, which cuts down on production costs. Platforms like Showcase connect brands with content creators to generate authentic UGCs.
• Testimonial videos: These are simple, interview-style videos featuring customers sharing positive experiences. Besides being cost-effective, they also help build trust and credibility. 
• Behind-the-scenes (BTS) videos: These encompass informal footage showing the inner workings of a brand, such as product creation or office life, filmed without professional crews.
• Explainer videos: Made with simple graphics and voiceovers, they are designed to break down complex ideas or demonstrate how to use a product with minimal production costs.
• Live videos: These videos enable real-time engagement with audiences without the need for post-production efforts. Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram are commonly used for this purpose.

7 Tips to Minimize Video Production Budget 

Let’s discuss some tips and tricks to help you cut costs while maintaining quality in your video production process: 

1. Plan Thoroughly in Advance 

Efficient planning enables you to anticipate potential challenges, allocate resources effectively, and maintain a clear vision for your video project. 

Some factors that you must decide beforehand include: 

• Define your objectives and audiences: Clearly outline the purpose of your video, whether it's to educate, entertain, or inspire. Also, understand your target audience's preferences, interests, and behaviors when crafting the script. 
• Prepare the script and storyboard: Develop a detailed script and storyboard to visualize the flow of your video. It keeps production organized and also minimizes revisions later on.
• Arrange wardrobe and props: Gather any props, dresses, and accessories required for your video shoot. Having these items ready saves time and avoids delays during filming.
• Create a shot list: Make a comprehensive shot list detailing every scene and shot required for your video. This list serves as a roadmap for the filming process and ensures you capture all necessary footage efficiently.

Pro Tip: We adhere to a professional technique of obtaining signed release forms from individuals appearing in our videos. This step serves multiple benefits, including legal compliance and risk mitigation.

2. Opt For Cost-Effective Location and Talent 

When aiming to minimize the production budget, strategic decisions regarding location and talent can significantly reduce overall expenses without compromising quality. 

Let’s explore a few tips that go a long way: 

• Shoot at public spaces: Consider shooting at local parks, libraries, or community centers as free or low-cost filming locations. These spaces offer diverse settings and can add authenticity to your videos.
• Make DIY sets: Build simple sets or backgrounds using affordable materials like cardboard, fabric, or recycled items. With this, you can achieve professional-looking results without the expense of renting elaborate sets.
• Tap into local talent: Explore local talent pools, such as community theaters, universities, or online platforms, to find skilled individuals willing to collaborate at lower rates for exposure or portfolio building.
• Collaborate with emerging artists: Form partnerships with emerging musicians or performers who are seeking opportunities and mediums to display their talents. 

Pro Tip: We recommend our creators at Showcase to use natural lighting as it elevates the visual quality of the video content and reduces reliance on costly lighting equipment.

Here’s a solid example from our creators who worked on the Aura campaign:

3. Rent Equipment 

When equipping your video production process, renting high-end cameras and lighting gear is a flexible and cost-effective solution.

Some exclusive tips to streamline this process are: 

• Explore multiple rental sources: Check out places to rent equipment at affordable rates. Some common options include local camera shops, online marketplaces like ShareGrid, photography and film schools, peer-to-peer rental platforms such as Fat Llama, and production studios.
• Compare rental rates: Shop around and compare rental rates from different suppliers to ensure you're getting the best deal. Pay attention to package deals that may offer discounts for bundling multiple items or renting for extended periods.
• Consider insurance options: Evaluate insurance options offered by rental companies to protect yourself against potential damages during the rental period. While this may incur an additional cost, it safeguards your investment in case of unforeseen circumstances.

Pro Tip: We advise our creators to prioritize careful equipment inspections before any rental agreement is finalized. We want them to get top-quality gear that performs flawlessly during production. 

4. Use Repurposed Content and Free Resources 

When making videos for your brand, it's smart to use stuff that's already there and doesn't cost anything extra.

Moreover, you can also leverage materials and assets that don't require royalties. 

Let's dig deeper into some ways you can use to make your videos stand out without breaking the bank. 

• Repurpose existing footage: Review previously created content and identify segments that can be repurposed and incorporated into new videos. This could include unused footage, behind-the-scenes clips, or b-roll material that aligns with your current project.
• Stock footage libraries: Explore free or affordable stock footage libraries that offer a wide range of high-quality media covering various topics and themes. A few examples include Pexels, Unsplash, and Pixabay. 
• Public domain resources: Tap into resources that consist of content not protected by copyright. Platforms like the Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg offer many such materials, including books, films, and audio recordings.
• Creative Commons music: Access a diverse selection of music tracks licensed under Creative Commons. Plus websites like YouTube Audio Library also offer a wide range of royalty-free music options so you can freely add a soundtrack to your videos.

Pro Tip: We highly recommend taking advantage of open-source video editing software such as Blender, Shotcut, or OpenShot. These free tools offer powerful features and capabilities for editing and enhancing UGC videos.

5. Monitor and Adjust Your Budget Regularly

You can identify any potential overspending or areas where cost-saving measures can be implemented by closely monitoring your expenses and revenue.

This proactive approach enables you to maintain financial stability.

Let’s talk about some tools that you can use for this purpose: 

• Spreadsheets: We genuinely love spreadsheet software like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. Use these as well to track spending and compare actual costs against budgeted amounts. This approach will help you identify inconsistencies and, as a result, any areas for adjustment.
• Budgeting Apps: Use budgeting apps such as Mint, YNAB (You Need A Budget), or PocketGuard. Some of these apps have features for tracking expenses, setting financial goals, and receiving real-time budget updates. So, pick the ones that fit your needs best.
• Accounting Software: Consider using accounting software like QuickBooks or FreshBooks to categorize expenses, generate financial reports, and analyze spending patterns. These features will help you or your accountant optimize your budgeting process.
• Project Management Tools: Incorporate project management tools like Trello, Asana, or Monday.com into your workflow to closely monitor budget-related tasks and milestones.

Pro Tip: Our experts advise setting aside a portion of your budget as a contingency fund, typically 10-15% of your total budget. This reserve helps manage unforeseen expenses without compromising the project's financial stability.

6. Go For DIY Post-Production

Incorporating DIY post-production techniques into your videos has a slew of benefits, including cost savings, creative control, and flexibility.

Here are some actionable steps we’re also using to implement this:

• Invest in editing software: Leverage software like Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, or DaVinci Resolve. Our teams love these tools because they offer tons of features for editing, color grading, and visual effects.
  • Pro tip: Explore all the built-in effects and filters within your editing software to add visual interest and style to your videos.
• Learn editing basics: Familiarize yourself with the fundamentals of video editing through online tutorials, courses, or instructional resources. Develop essential skills such as cutting and trimming footage, applying transitions, and adding text overlays. It sounds hard, but once you’ve mastered all this, it will become second nature. A very addictive second nature as our Showcase experts say.
• Create templates and presets: Develop reusable templates and presets for common editing tasks, such as intro sequences, lower thirds, and transitions. These standardized elements save time and help maintain consistency across your video content.

Pro Tip: Our content creators value audio excellence. You can do that too through advanced editing techniques such as noise reduction, equalization, and audio enhancement during the post-production stage.

7. Produce Ever-Green Content 

Evergreen content remains valuable to your audience and continues to attract traffic and engagement months or even years after its initial publication.

You can save your budget and resources by following these tips: 

• Choose timeless topics: Select topics that address fundamental questions, challenges, or interests within your niche. You should avoid trends or topics with a short lifespan.
• Update regularly: Keep your evergreen content fresh by periodically reviewing and updating it with new information. The key is to ensure its continued relevance and value to your audience.
• Optimize for SEO: Implement SEO best practices to make your evergreen content more discoverable and accessible to your target audience and maximize its long-term impact.

Pro Tip: We advise our creators to address the queries and challenges frequently encountered by the audience. That’s because it’s essential to create valuable content beyond mere surface-level explanations. This proactive approach also ensures your content remains relevant over time.

5 Ways Affordable Video Production Can Help Your Business

Wondering how cutting down costs on video production can help your business in the long term? Let’s have a look at some exceptional benefits accompanied by this strategy: 

1. Cost-Cutting 

You can reduce the costs associated with traditional content creation, such as hiring professional videographers or actors and staging elaborate shoots.

The solution is simple: leverage affordable UGC.

UGC allows for scalable content solutions that can grow with your business without proportionately increasing costs. 

Take, for example, Prose. Prose is a beauty brand that retails personalized haircare solutions to customers after they fill in a questionnaire on the website.

However, Prose can’t compete with larger brands budget-wise. That’s why they partnered with inBeat Agency to get 50 high-performing pieces of UGC on a monthly basis:

Insider Tip: Instead of cutting costs randomly, you can use a platform like Showcase.

This platform streamlines content curation and moderation to reduce overheads while maintaining content quality because we only work with the top 2% of creators. 

2. Broader Reach and Accessibility 

Budget-friendly videos naturally come from a diverse pool of creators, each with their own unique networks and audiences.

When these individuals create and share content relevant to your brand, it increases its accessibility. As potential customers see real people engaging with your product or service, they find it more relatable and appealing.

Beauty brand Native offers another great example:

To promote its collection releases, Native partners with very diverse UGC creators.

From Sparring Taekwondo World Champion Leticia Esparza to sustainability-lover and personal stylist Prashant Yay, Native is a solid example of creator diversity. 

Diversity should be implemented correctly according to your goals.

For example, all of Native’s creators have one thing in common: they produce posh content.

Insider Tip: At Showcase, we leverage the diverse backgrounds of UGC contributors to tap into previously unreached niche markets and demographic segments. 

3. Versatile Marketing 

Affordable videos can be adapted and reused across various platforms and marketing channels that provide a cost-effective way to maintain a relevant presence of your brand.

Think social media, your company’s website, or email newsletters.

Basically, the authentic and dynamic nature of such content can keep your content strategy vibrant and engaging.

Insider Tip: We believe in using UGC videos across multiple platforms, and we also prefer repurposing the same content in different contexts to maximize your investment.

4. Increased Engagement 

UGC or other affordable videos promote a more interactive relationship between your brand and customers. It encourages ongoing participation and dialogue, which builds community and loyalty.

Moreover, engaged customers buy again and spread more trusted word-of-mouth recommendations than traditional advertising.

Here’s a neat example from Grammarly:

‍Insider Tip: We have noticed that engaging directly with users who submit videos by commenting on their posts or featuring them prominently in your campaigns is quite fruitful. This increases engagement and also encourages others to participate.

5. Improved SEO Performance 

Affordable videos like UGC can improve your SEO by increasing the amount and diversity of content associated with your brand.

Also, they offer the opportunity to enhance keyword integration and generate natural backlinks as users share and discuss your content online. 

Insider Tip: Our experts encourage the use of specific hashtags or keywords in the UGC campaigns.

This practice enhances SEO through natural language. 

Affordable Video Production - Case Studies

inBeat, in collaboration with Showcase creators, has worked with multiple brands to produce UGC videos at affordable rates.

The results prove that your video campaigns can still succeed even if you don’t have a hefty budget.

Let’s have a look at them:

1. Genomelink 

Genomelink, in collaboration with inBeat, effectively tackled rising customer acquisition costs and creative fatigue on platforms like TikTok by adopting affordable video production strategies. 

The brand, in response, implemented a comprehensive creative strategy, central to which was the creation of a pipeline that ensured a constant supply of 5-10 performance-based UGC videos.

Results: 

Consequently, there was a threefold decrease in average customer acquisition costs within just 3 months.

This enabled Genomelink to scale its advertising budget to 6 figures monthly. Moreover, this approach significantly increased their chances of getting viral.

2. Native 

We mentioned this brand above.

Basically, Native collaborated with inBeat to address their need for a cost-effective method to generate a large volume of diverse content rapidly. inBeat chose highly diverse micro-creators from Showcase to achieve this. 

This approach allowed the brand to capture authentic, genuine content that effectively highlighted their products' features and appeal.

Results: 

The outcome was successful, as it yielded over 200 unique content assets from just 10 creators.

This allowed Native to rapidly generate a diverse content portfolio to support their collection releases, which met their goals for volume and variety.

3. Hopper

Hopper, in partnership with inBeat, handled the challenge of ad fatigue on TikTok, which was leading to increased CPAs.

To eliminate this, the brand followed a scalable content creation process that focused on engaging top creators to produce UGCs specifically for TikTok ads. 

This strategic method allowed it to continually refresh its ad creatives with genuine and high-performing content. 

Results: 

The results of this initiative have been ongoing, with Hopper maintaining effective and engaging ads on TikTok.

As a result, they have successfully driven down CPAs while avoiding the pitfalls of ad fatigue. 

Want to Stay on Your Budget While Producing Promotional Videos For Your Business? Showcase Can Help

Creating high-impact video content doesn’t require a Hollywood budget if you follow the tips outlined above and embrace a resourceful mindset.

With a little planning and creativity, you can join the ranks of brands with successful video marketing tactics and achieve impressive results without sacrificing your financial goals.

Key Takeaways: 

• Create affordable, high-quality videos by following a strategic approach that uses cost-effective resources.
• Define your target audience, craft a script, and create a shot list to streamline the production process. 
• Use free stock footage, repurpose existing content, and leverage DIY post-production techniques to reduce expenses.
• Reduced production costs, broader reach, and improved SEO are just some of the advantages of this approach.

Not sure how to run your next UGC campaign without going over budget due to high-demanding influencers? Connect with Showcase, as it features a diverse network of creators who consistently deliver low CPAs. Moreover, there’s no compromise on the content quality as well. ‍