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Should you create marketing videos in-house or outsource them?

There are various reasons to invest in video marketing: mainly that it reaches more people and has a greater impact when it does. It’s unsurprising therefore that research from Animoto showed that 96% of marketers had invested in video marketing content, and 91% were satisfied with the return on investment.  

Once you’ve decided that video is a smart idea and add it to your marketing strategy, you need to decide how you’ll go about making it happen. The two routes available to you are engaging an external video production company like Wooshii, or trying to do it in-house, by yourself.  

In-house Video Production

Pros of In-house

The advantages of creating video content in-house are fairly straightforward: it is the cheapest way to dip your toe in the medium, if you set it as a task for your existing marketing team, and you will know that the team making the video ‘gets’ the brand and culture.

Cons of In-house

Unfortunately, the downsides of creating video in-house are manifest. Unless your marketing team happens to include world-class video creatives and producers (frankly unlikely if you’re reading this article) and you’re willing to fork out for the latest video equipment and software, there is a significant risk that the quality will suffer.

Video is a skilled, creative craft, blending art and science, that takes years to perfect. You wouldn’t expect someone who had never picked up a camera to be able to direct an Oscar-winning movie, or someone who knew little about design or engineering to design and engineer a new car – people would notice.

The risk of amateurism also makes the idea of testing in-house videography out somewhat problematic, particularly because your test has a fair chance of producing poor results. This could lead you to draw the misleading conclusion that video doesn’t work for your target consumers when actually the lesson is just that bad quality video content doesn’t work.

Outsourced Video Production

Pros of Outsourcing

Outsourced teams have the ability to see the problem you’re trying to solve with video from a distance, bringing to bear the experience they have with brands in other markets facing similar challenges, and crucially realising where it can all go wrong. 

This could involve using techniques and formats that aren’t available to beginners or non-specialists, like 2D and 3D animation video content for example, which have proven highly effective in certain situations.  

Crucially, an external team will be able to work through the often considerable logistical complexities of video production to deliver results quickly, efficiently and – if they have the necessary global network of skills and experience – in a way that can be rapidly scaled, because that’s what they do. 

Not only will this save busy marketers precious time and bandwidth, from scripting and production through to formatting, scheduling and analytics, it is usually cost effective in the long run, if you compare it to the commitment of hiring your own highly talented, versatile videographers whose skills you may or may not need week in, week out.

Why Not Try Both In-house & Outsourced Video Production?

The good news, if you’re undecided, is that it doesn’t need to be an either/or. A survey by Marketing Dive found for example that while 57% of brands had in-house video creatives, 95% of them still worked with external partners, budgeting it into their marketing efforts.  

The most important thing is that you don’t let the cart lead the horse – so long as you know what you want from your video content, and how it will help you achieve your marketing campaign and business objectives, you can always try out different configurations until you find the best results.

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Wooshii is an innovative video production company with the capacity to create video anywhere in the world, in any format, using a talent network of over 16,000 plus experts. Wooshii works with world-leading organisations across multiple industry sectors to enable consistent and reliable video production at scale, supporting a wide variety of internal and external marketing and communication functions. 

Need help devising your video strategy or perhaps want to discuss your productions needs, give Wooshii a call today.

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