Stabilize Your Marketing Team With Streamlined Video Production

Where’s the bandwidth? QuickFrame’s Aston Ford, Manager of Maker Operations, joined Advertising Week to answer this question in Balancing the (Work-LIfe) Force: How to Streamline Video Production Without Sacrificing Scale. In this webinar, Aston focused on marketers’ challenges and how streamlining video production processes can ease workloads for your marketing team.  

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What Challenges Are Marketers Facing? 

Increasing Workloads 

Many marketing teams have little to no bandwidth left — and with the holiday season approaching, their workloads will likely increase even more. Like Aston said in the webinar, many marketing professionals are stuck in a cycle that always feels like crunch time. 

Plus, the industry expects marketers to create results-driven content in an instant. In fact, 73% of people surveyed said the speed they’re expected to work is another ongoing challenge. 

A Higher Demand for Video Content

Nearly 60% of marketers are trying to manage a massive and constant need for content. 

Between new video-first platforms, like TikTok and CTV advertising, and previously text- and photo-first platforms promoting video content, marketers have to create more video content to remain relevant in our digital world.

Reduced Budgets 

Economic uncertainty has caused many businesses to reduce their budgets and brace for the worst. From hiring freezes to tech stack reductions, these changes can negatively affect existing employees. Lytho found that 61% of marketers reported having too few creative resources to accomplish their work, leaving them stuck in an endless, ineffective cycle. 

In addition, Gartner reported marketing budgets have hit “their lowest recorded level” at an average of just 6.4% for 2021 company revenue. 

How Can Your Team Streamline the Video Production Process?

1. Plan the Video Production Process

The more you can plan out the video production process, the smoother the entire experience can be. 

• Create a realistic budget. By creating a realistic budget for your team to use, you can make sure you know exactly what you can spend. For example, you won’t have to worry about a small extra cost on filming day by budgeting in a financial buffer.
• Strategically schedule your production timeline. In order to avoid stressful crunch time situations, schedule your production around peak holiday content creation times. For example, you might want to tackle your winter filming in late summer or early fall to avoid the holiday rush.
• Storyboard your concept. Before filming, understand what you want your video to look and feel like. What emotions do you want to convey? What story should your actor(s) tell?

In the webinar, Aston stated the pre-production phase is the most critical, so the more time you spend in this phase can set your team up for success during the rest of the process.

2. Define Your Goals

You need to know what your campaign needs are before you begin production. However, these goals will likely look different for every organization — and likely, every project. 

Even so, it’s still important to understand your KPIs. What goals do you want to reach? Is this content supposed to generate leads, improve your digital engagement, or solidify your branding? Knowing the answer to these questions can help inform certain aspects of your production. 

In addition, you’ll want to know the shots you absolutely need to capture during production. Aston suggests writing down a list of every deliverable you’ll need and the aspect ratio for the content. 

3. Create an Effective Brief

Crafting a creative brief is an early stage in the process where you can get a birds-eye view of your entire campaign to help you see the forest for the trees in your ads.

Among other components, you’ll want to include: 

• Audience
• Business objectives 
• Concept
• Message objectives
• Platforms and deliverables 

Many people feel creative briefs are too time consuming and want to skip the process altogether. However, this process is vital, as it gives customers and makers clear direction on the overall look, feel, and goals of any given ad campaign. 

Plus, the process doesn’t have to take forever. We’ve created a breakdown of how you can create a brief in 30 minutes or less! 

4. Review Previous Costs

Looking at costs from previous productions can help you find areas to cut back in the future. 

This might happen by cutting back on larger, more obvious charges. For example, if your team created a big-ticket, live-action advertisement with expensive talent and extravagant locations but went over budget. In that case, you can easily cut back on your next production. Instead, you can try a user-generated content campaign next time to cut back on all costs. 

But don’t forget the small costs! While these costs might not be the top line of your budget, many smaller charges can add up and cause your project to go over budget as well. Track these from previous productions and see where you can cut back next time. 

5. Utilize External Creative Resources

In addition to each internal step your team can take, many marketing teams use external resources to help create high-quality videos. 

Since your employees have enough on their plates, collaborating with outside creative resources can be an effective way to give your team back some bandwidth while still creating successful video campaigns. The right resources can even help connect your team with leading industry professionals, provide content data to help you optimize your content, and keep your goals in check throughout the entire process.

Give Your Marketing Team Some Much-Needed Bandwidth

Everyone has a lot going on right now, but you can give your marketing team the bandwidth they need. Efficient production and external creative resources can enhance your team’s capabilities and maintain a successful work-life balance without sacrificing scale or reworking a single KPI.

Check out the webinar replay above to hear Aston’s recommendations for streamlining the video production process without sacrificing scale, efficiency, or your budget.