While video is undeniably effective when done right, a great video may cost quite a bit. However, thanks to recent advancements in video technology, it is now a lot easier for companies and creators to create great professional videos even with just a limited budget. This article will be your guide to how you can create great professional videos on a budget.
What is great when you use these resources is that they work well enough to make your videos look just as polished and professional as videos that are made with a significantly higher budget.
Table of contents
5 Reasons Why You Need to Create Great Videos For Your Business
1. You will be able to convert and sell more when you create great video content.
Because of all of the reasons that were mentioned above, it is evident that videos are entertaining, engaging, and most importantly, effective.
When you include a video on your landing page, it can boost your conversion rates by up to 80%. (Unbounce)
Videos provide information, entertainment, and value that consumers are searching for from brands. You should not just make videos just because they are popular, you should make them because it actually benefits audiences and helps you obtain business goals as well.
2. Videos allow you to explain your product or service in an engaging way.
Videos can be a useful tool when it comes to helping consumers learn more about a certain product or service. Some products or services can be complex so it is important that you can help consumers understand what you are offering so that they can eventually make a purchase.
Customers will only purchase from you once they have a good understanding of what your product does and how it can help them.
This is why videos can be effective to use as it can provide a visual element that customers will need to see before buying something.
3. You can tell compelling stories through videos.
When you want to tell a compelling story to your audiences, you can effectively do it through a great video. While you can easily create videos that tell your story, something that can be more engaging is telling the story of your customers.
You can create entertaining and informative video content by making testimonial videos that put a spotlight on the stories and experiences of your customers with your brand.
This can help push potential customers to eventually buy your products because they get to see real people talking about how they love your product and brand.
4. Having a lot of videos will strengthen your social media presence.
When you create more videos, this also means that you are creating more pieces of content that you can post on all of your social media accounts and platforms.
Social media feeds like on Facebook and Instagram do a great job of displaying content that a specific person would want to see based on algorithms and their previous activity.
Nowadays, the type of content that social media feeds are prioritising the most is video content. This means that people are more likely to stop scrolling when they see entertaining and engaging videos.
Creating great videos allows you to reach more people online which will strengthen your social media presence.
5. Videos help you showcase the authenticity of your brand.
The most effective way for you to showcase your authenticity as a brand is by creating effective video content for your audiences.
Video does what text and photos cannot do, which is build an instant and authentic interaction with your audiences. These audiences can further react or provide feedback which leads to more communication and a stronger connection.
There are certain video concepts and ideas that are more effective in showcasing this authenticity like testimonial videos and live videos which you can focus on if you are on a budget.
9 Tips to Create Great Professional Videos on a Budget
1. Think about tasks that you or your team can do yourselves
When you are working on creating a video on a limited budget, you will have to make the most out of your available resources. As long as you and your team have a creative and DIY attitude, you can save a lot of money and maximise your budget.
For example, if someone on your team is a talented writer or has had a background in writing, they can be in charge of writing the script for the video. You may also have a team member who has experience with doing voice overs, so you can just use them instead of hiring a voice actor.
You and your team have to be open to the idea of teaching and learning new skills that will be beneficial to the success of your video. When you maximise all your talents together, it will help you keep more of your video creation in-house.
2. Carefully go over the details you will need if you want to create live action videos
When you are thinking about what type of professional video you would want to create based on your budget, live action videos will probably be your first option.
Live action videos offer a lot of creative freedom but they can also be difficult to make if it is not done well and it is not planned properly.
If your team does not have any prior experience working on a live action video production, you need to be prepared to spend some time carefully going over the whole process of creating live action videos.
When you create live action videos, you will usually need a lot of takes, plenty of footage, and in-depth editing. You will also need to think about who will appear in your videos. You can save money by featuring you and your team instead of hiring professional actors.
3. Create a script and craft a storyboard
When you have finalised the concept of your story, you should be able to nail down the specifics of your video by creating a script and crafting a storyboard for it as well.
The script of your video is a written summary of all of the dialogue, scenes, actions, and transitions that will happen in your video.
On the other hand, your storyboard will be a visual aid and summary that lays out all of the actions in your video, one frame at a time.
Both of these tools together will help you and your team visualise and fully flesh out what your video will be before filming it. This gives you enough time to make any necessary changes before you start production.
4. Be strategic with your hiring
If your budget allows you to spend a suitable amount on your professional video, you should not hesitate to bring in external help when you really need it.
You just have to make sure that it falls within the budget, it addresses a task or a need that your team cannot fully address, and that you will get the most out of what you are paying for.
For example, if none of your team members are experienced with editing, you can just shoot your own footage and then hire a professional video editor to put everything together.
Another thing you can do is if you have editors in your team but not a lot of people are comfortable in front of the camera, you can hire actors or acting students and just edit the video after.
5. Invest in the basic video equipment you may need
If your company is planning to shoot a lot of different videos for your video marketing campaigns, then it is important that you use a portion of your budget to invest in basic video equipment.
There are many pieces of equipment you can buy, but these four will be the most essential and what you should prioritise:
- Digital Camera – to ensure your videos will be filmed with the highest quality
- Microphone – so that all of your audio will be clear and pleasant to the ears of your viewers
- Tripod – to stabilize your camera and footage while you are filming
- Lighting kit – to ensure that the lighting in your videos look great and make your videos look more professional
While all of this equipment may seem pricey, you should look at them as a long-term investment and one that you will only need to make if you are planning on filming completely in-house.
6. Use your smartphone
If you really want to save up on creating a video, you can definitely use the smartphone that you are currently using right now.
Nowadays, smartphones are capable of taking great videos that are definitely good enough to share on social media. They have high-quality cameras that are able to meet all of your video needs.
Apart from being able to produce great video outputs, smartphones can also make your video content look more authentic and relatable to your audiences.
If you want to create real and down-to-earth videos that your target audience can relate to, then you can use a smartphone to record casual and short videos that do not require a lot of editing.
7. Focus on having good lighting in the video
Good lighting can elevate your video from looking amateur and subpar to polished and professional. What is great is that this can be done for free.
Using natural sunlight by filming in front of a window or outside can create a lighting effect that would be similar to what studio lighting can offer. It’s all about learning where to shoot and what angles and reflectors to use to make the most out of it.
8. Commit to a schedule
You must stick to a plan and commit to a schedule if you want to make the most out of the time and energy you spend on making your video.
This can be easy even if you are not working with a big video budget because you can just come up with concepts that can adjust every week but still be consistent.
This allows you to provide consistent content every week while still keeping it fresh and entertaining for all of your viewers.
9. Keep your videos short and concise
Most users on social media have limited patience and attention spans in terms of watching and engaging with content that they see on their feeds.
When creating the scripts of your videos, it is important to keep this in mind and keep your videos short and concise for your audiences. If you will include people that will be talking in your video, then it is appropriate to keep your script at around 300 words in total.
Aside from keeping your audience engaged all throughout, shorter videos can also mean less production costs to worry about.
What You Need to Prepare Before You Start Filming Professional Videos on a Budget
Creating a great professional video on a budget is now completely within your grasp if you know what you will need to achieve this. Here are some of the things you need to prepare before you start filming:
Plan out what you can realistically accomplish with the budget of your video.
To create the best professional video for your company, you should first start out with planning out what you can realistically accomplish with the allocated budget for your video.
You have to be realistic with your budget and not think of a video concept that will need a lot of money. However, even with a small or limited budget, there are still a lot of great video options and concepts that you can create for your company.
The main video concepts you should consider are live action videos, animation videos, and webinar style videos. All of these can be done on even the smallest of budgets because of the many affordable and accessible websites and tools online.
Live Action Videos
If you have filmed your own live action footage and want to edit it you can use programs editing programs like iMovie or Movavi. If you want to add stock footage to your videos, websites like VideoHive sell royalty-free footage that you can use.
However, depending on your budget, you can still try and check out video production companies like fewStones who can work with the budget that you have and make the most out of it with great live action videos.
Animation Videos
While these videos may be trickier for those that lack previous experience, it is still possible to create great and successful animated videos.
For beginners or amateurs, you can consider looking at programs like Animaker or Animatron Studio to aid you in making an animated video for your company.
While these programs will have a learning curve to understand how all the features and elements work, you can eventually work everything out especially if you are focused on finding out how to use it properly.
If your budget can allow you to hire a company for animation services, fewStones can also provide you with 2D animation videos and 3D animation videos.
Webinar style Videos
If you want to create simple videos that will be primarily used for webinars, you can turn your educational PowerPoint slides into a free video.
When you export your slides, there will be an option to use pre-recorded narration or to record the narration yourself.
When you add a voiceover, it makes your presentation more authentic and professional as it transforms from a deck into an educational video.
Whatever video you eventually make, you need to make sure that it is feasible to create on a consistent basis so that you can constantly provide audiences with great video content.
Decide on the purpose of your professional video.
While you may want to jump straight into recording or creating your video because of the abundance of tools available to you, you will first need to plan out all of the important factors of your video.
Your video will come together in an easier and faster way if you spend a lot of time developing and finalizing everything during the planning stage.
A good first step when planning is deciding on the purpose of your professional video. Your video will need a reason to exist and it should be the first thing you decide upon. Think about whether you want to educate, inspire, inform, or reach more audiences on social media.
This is also where you pick out who your target audience is, what actions you want them to perform after watching your video, and how you will measure the success of your video.
Come up with an effective video strategy.
When you are making videos on a budget, there is even more importance placed on coming up with an effective and organised video strategy.
This will guide you throughout the whole process and reduce potential overspending by keeping you focused on your timelines and goals. Along with this, having a video marketing strategy can also help you create more professional looking videos.
Some of the important elements of an effective video strategy include the available budget you will have to create the video, your target audience, the objectives for sharing these videos online, how frequent these videos should be shared, and the types of videos you will create based on your objectives.
As long as you can prepare properly, stick to your strategy and follow all of these tips, you will be able to create great professional videos even when you are on a budget.
Related articles:
