Video content is one of the most effective ways to engage with your internal staff, keep your brand in front of mind for current customers, and reach out to new customers. It’s easy to access — particularly in the era of smartphones — and easy to share via sources like social media, helping bring even more attention to your products.
Having the right video content can definitely unlock greater success for your brand. But not everyone is equally equipped to produce video content. Even if you have an in-house team, it can be difficult to manage the workflow and keep pace with all of the content that you need. Pre-planning can help solve the issue to a degree, but video in the contemporary landscape is also a reactive medium — you need to have the necessary video production solutions at hand to be able to create new content in the moment too.
While the default decision for many businesses looking for a video content production solution is to opt for agencies, this isn’t always ideal. Keeping them on retainer can be expensive, and they’re also not necessarily working to your preferred schedule or prioritising you in the way you might prefer. You want to have content ready to go as soon as possible, and a three-month production pipeline from an agency isn’t going to deliver that.
So what are the other alternatives available? If you want to effectively create video content but you don’t want to hire an agency, there are two primary options — bringing your videos in-house or working with a partner.
Bringing your videos in-house
One of the most obvious solutions is to simply bring production in-house and expand your team. However, there are both pros and cons to this approach. If you opt to bring everything in-house, the obvious benefit is that you can exercise far greater control over the process. But it’s also contingent on you having a deep bench of talent across multiple skill sets and also being able to effectively manage time constraints. Let’s take a closer look at some of the advantages and disadvantages.
Pros
- Greater creative control, rather than making concessions to outside agencies.
- Access to direct brand knowledge from employees.
- Cost savings from not needing to hire external contractors and agency retainers.
- You know that you’re the priority job and won’t have to constantly chase external suppliers.
Cons
- Additional investment in expensive corporate video production technology is required, both for hardware and software.
- Smaller/rapid turnaround projects can still get sidelined or overlooked.
- There’s a potential for projects to feel DIY — but not in the marketing-ready, polished way that you might be hoping for.
The pros are obvious from an in-house perspective, but how can the cons be addressed? If money and finding talent are no object, that’s great! But we know that this is rarely the case when it comes to sourcing corporate video production technology and staff.
The good news is that this is a situation where a partner can be an effective video content production solution — providing a perfect balance between a total DIY option versus delegating everything to an agency. Even if you already have an established team in-house it can be cost-effective and efficient to bring in outside help to assist with the scale of work or rapid production.
Working with a video production partner
Here at Shootsta, we don’t believe that you need agencies or expensive freelancers to get your best possible video content delivered from you to the public. Instead, we offer a partner subscription service, which acts as an effective addition to your internal team and assists your wider organisation in the process.
One of the main benefits of utilising Shootsta is that we can work closely with your internal production team. After all, who knows your brand better than your employees?
We’re not here to replace them. Rather, we’re here to empower your marketing department and work alongside professionals who are keen to both expand their output and skill set. With the right video production solutions, you can relieve strain on overloaded marketing departments.
In turn, this creates better outcomes for your company’s marketing on the timelines that you require it. Additionally, it helps you to create consistent branding across all of your content channels.
Having a partner work alongside you also allows a better separation of tasks. The processes of ideation, filming, editing and post-production are all separate tasks that require distinct skill sets. Not everyone is an auteur — and accordingly, not everyone is equally equipped to tackle every part of the content production process.
It also removes the need to purchase expensive new equipment to cater for additional staff, as the subscription nature of working with a partner allows you to easily scale if you require regular content or are increasing your overall production.
Importantly, the overall quality of your projects can be improved. A good partner is able to show you how to pre-plan and film more effectively, helping your team develop skills that can be carried forward on future projects. Here at Shootsta, we want to be able to help you achieve all of your video content goals.