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This Is Killing Your Video Projects | B2B Podcast - Content Wars EP12
Most video projects go off the rails before the cameras ever roll. Why? Because teams often rush into production without fully aligning on the scope, goals, and budget. In this episode of Content Wars, we break down why so many video quotes vary wildly—and how to build a process that actually leads to success.
💡 Key Takeaways:
➡️ The difference between not having a budget vs. not knowing it
➡️ Why unclear scopes lead to wasted money and mismatched expectations
➡️ How to talk to vendors to get apples-to-apples quotes
➡️ What you need to define before asking for a quote
➡️ When to work with freelancers vs. full production crews
➡️ The difference between not having a budget vs. not knowing it
➡️ Why unclear scopes lead to wasted money and mismatched expectations
➡️ How to talk to vendors to get apples-to-apples quotes
➡️ What you need to define before asking for a quote
➡️ When to work with freelancers vs. full production crews
⏰ Timestamps:
2:20 – Why vague asks break video projects
5:47 – What you're really buying when you hire a production team
9:25 – The hidden costs of unclear scopes
12:12 – Budget talk: how to get honest answers
14:32 – Freelancers vs. production companies
17:45 – “Just shoot it” is not a scope
20:10 – How to scope video projects for success
2:20 – Why vague asks break video projects
5:47 – What you're really buying when you hire a production team
9:25 – The hidden costs of unclear scopes
12:12 – Budget talk: how to get honest answers
14:32 – Freelancers vs. production companies
17:45 – “Just shoot it” is not a scope
20:10 – How to scope video projects for success
Transcript
Adam Marquardt: You hit on a good point talking about when you say, I don't have a budget or we don't know our budget. Those are two very different things because if you don't know your budget, we can work together to figure that out. If you don't have a budget, that's a much different answer because if you say I don't have a budget and we say, all right, it's $100,000 and you say, whoa, whoa, that's too much. Okay, so you do have a budget. You do know what you don't want it to be. So if you have some kind of range, everybody's afraid that if they say the range that that's what they're going to be pigeonholed into. But the reality is that that's what will allow you to accurately create a scope that will then support the outcome of the video you're trying to create.
Nathan Yerian: So recently I've been talking to a number of our current clients and prospective clients about video projects that they want to do. And there's a consistent theme that I keep running into and it's really causing frustration on our end. It causes frustration on the client's end.
And it's really something that I don't think enough people are talking about and it's causing a lack of understanding. I think in the B2B marketing and sales community about what's the right way to approach a video project?
Adam Marquardt: Yeah, I think this is something that comes up all the time. And I think that from seasoned clients that have gone through the process or whether it's somebody's first time to video, I do think that the ambiguity that is kind of shown into the ask, in reality, one of the things that's causing the obstacles in the roadblocks when it comes to producing video in a way that makes sense. Absolutely.
Nathan Yerian: So to put context to it, I mean, I've got a client that's calling right now saying, hey, I have this training. How much does it cost for you guys to just show up and shoot it? Can you just shoot me over a price? Oh, that's exactly what it is.
Shoot me the price. And it's like, oh, okay. Here's two details. Yeah. Give me a price.
Hold on a second. And when I think about that on a more scaled basis, what we're really dealing with is most marketing departments when they get tasked with a video project, what are they doing? They're going out with a classic.
I want to get three proposals, figure out price wise, what makes sense so that I can make an informed decision about who we should go with, right? They spend time vetting kind of on the quality side. They say, hey, it's a good enough quality. So we've reached out to whomever. And then they go and they say something like, we have a training happening. We would like to video that training and turn it into content.
It'll be one day. How much does that cost? And then they're shocked when they get a giant variance of price or when they've made a selection and they actually go with a vendor, maybe the price changes when the scope changes or they get it back and it's not the quality that they expected. And that's, I think from an internal video teams perspective, that's very frustrating because they feel like they're asking the right question. Hey, I took my time and I created this event. I would like it to be whatever it looks like documented on video and I would like that content that seems like an easy request. And in my perspective, if I'm the marketing person, these video people just aren't getting it. I don't understand what's happening here.
Adam Marquardt: Yeah, I think that there's a lot of variables at play here that aren't often taken into consideration when developing a brief or a scope. And it's almost like if you were trying to get a car, right? You could have a Honda or you could have a Ferrari, but there's lots of options. There's lots of different levers that you can pull that will change the price and essentially the output of what you're gonna receive.
Nathan Yerian: That's what the challenge is, right? So from the marketing teams perspective, they think that their ask is clear, but it's truly about as clear as mud. There is so much variable and so much unknown in the ask that I can pretty much quote you anything.
Quite literally when you say, hey, I have a training going on, I would like it documented so we could have video content from that training. It's gonna be one day, what does that cost? I could figure out where it costs $2,000. I could figure out where it costs $200,000.
And there can be that much variance about what are we doing specifically? What do you want it to look like? What equipment might be able to achieve that?
What crew might be needed to support that? On the post-production side, what are we doing? Is it just a single edit? Is it multiple edits? Is it some animated graphics?
Is it 3D animation? What are we actually dealing with? So the piece that we need to be real clear on is what is the end result? Not what all goes into it. And on the marketing team side of it, really being able to rationalize, what are we trying to achieve? What does success look like?
And then what are we willing to do? So on the marketing team side, what you really need is you need a clear scope and the way that you get there. So from the marketing team's perspective, they're going out with this ass that seems reasonable. They're going out with three different companies.
One company comes back with a $5,000 quote, one company comes back with a $15,000 quote, and one company comes back with a $30,000 quote, and they look at it and go, well, my goodness, $30,000 is obviously way too much money because it could be done for five. What you're not realizing is that those aren't the same things. You weren't quoted the same thing.
You weren't quoted the same thing at $5,000, $15,000, $30,000. There was no scope. The scope was made up and it was made up by the production company with the knowledge that you don't know exactly what you're asking for. So what they're doing generally, they'll ask you some clarifying questions to try and figure out where you are. But the biggest question they're gonna ask you that you probably aren't gonna answer is, great, what's your budget?
You're gonna say, I don't know. The classic answer for what's your budget is, I don't know or we don't have one. What they're really trying to figure out is what type of production, what level of production are you trying to assign to this particular event? And in the world of video production, if we're doing a commercial, that's very important.
Are we talking about a $50,000 commercial or are we talking about a $500,000 commercial? Can we get a real director? Can we get high level cinema cameras?
Can we get vintage glass to shoot this to make it look a certain way? Can we get a full crew of 10, 15, 20 people to accomplish what we need to? Or is it that we're working on a five-person crew and maybe a camera a couple levels down and maybe some lenses a couple levels down and a different light kit because we're not gonna have specialized people? These are the things that they're trying to figure out from your answer. And when you have the answer of, I don't know the budget or I don't have a budget, mixed with, we just want you to show up and video something for a day and we want a video out of it. It's not enough information.
It's not enough of a detailed scope to tell any production company this is exactly what needs to happen or this is exactly what you're quoting, which means they're making up the scope a little bit. They're filling in the blanks of what they don't know. And when you say, I don't know what my budget is, I can tell you right now, they're assuming that they need to be the cheapest bidder.
So now they're making decisions behind the scenes about what can we cut? What can we make cheap? What can we cut corners on? In this project to maybe be the winning bidder of this. And that's very common.
Adam Marquardt: Yeah, and I think you hit on a good point talking about when you say, I don't have a budget or we don't know our budget. Those are two very different things because if you don't know your budget, we can work together to figure that out. If you don't have a budget, that's a much different answer because if you say I don't have a budget and we say, all right, it's $100,000 and you say, whoa, whoa, that's too much.
Okay, so you do have a budget. You do know what you don't want it to be. So if you have some kind of range, everybody's afraid that if they say the range that that's what they're going to be pigeonholed into. But the reality is that that's what will allow you to accurately create a scope that will then support the outcome of the video you're trying to create. So we mentioned that there are several different levers that you can pull. Why don't we break down those levers to help people understand what really will go into creating a successful video project quote?
Nathan Yerian: Sure, so first and foremost, we kind of touched on it. If you have an idea of what your budget might be, it's usually best to be forthcoming with that. And it doesn't have to be, hey, we want to spend $20,000. It could be, hey, we have between $10,000 and $20,000.
And I would like to see some options on what would be different within this price range. That's perfectly acceptable because it gives somebody the opportunity to say, this is what you'd get at 10, at 20, you could get this. And if you had that across the board, multiple production companies potentially, you could kind of see where they're at at 10, where they're at at 15, 20, whatever it's gonna be.
So you get at least something that's in the realm of each other. The next piece would be really identifying that indeliverable clearly. So for instance, in the example that I used in the beginning, what we're really talking about is showing up to a full day training that's gonna happen. That was the information that's given. Well, the deliverable is 10 separate sessions of the training. So there's 10 videos somewhere between 30 minutes and 60 minutes each. Okay, well, that's a big difference of, hey, we're just showing up for a day or we're delivering 10 videos that are 30 to 60 minutes, which is a lot of editing to do.
Adam Marquardt: Yeah, that's what I was gonna say on the back end, the post-production work that goes into that is exponential versus just one long form video. 100%. And with...
Nathan Yerian: Probably a thousand percent. 1,000%. And when I was able to talk through that with the client of how they were actually trying to use this, which is it's a training that they're gonna do live, that they would like to compartmentalize into a training series so it doesn't always have to be live. So when they get a new hire, they can actually watch this training series and get the same information that happened at this event. Well, that's all fine and good, but when you're at the event, you're going to have more of a feel of connection with people. You're going to have an introduction. You're gonna know why you're going there. You're gonna understand what you're doing there when you're watching that training, you're not. So what that training is gonna miss is an introduction of what are we doing here? What do we hope to accomplish? And it should probably have some sort of closing statement of, thank you for your time invested in this training.
We hope that you learned X, Y, and Z if you have questions. Go talk to this person, right? So some sort of closing, right? So this particular client, when we were able to talk through it, I was able to identify, we're talking about 10 videos. I was also able to recommend this intro and closing video. So it ended up being 12 videos.
I mean, just talking to them a little bit, the scope starts to materialize, going through the presentation. Do we want it to be animated? Do we not want it to be animated? Those didn't seem like a big deal to this particular marketing team, but on the video side, that's a huge difference. If we're just putting a static slide up, or we are animating that slide, especially when you're talking about 10, 30 plus minute episodes, that's a lot of work, which means a lot of costs. So if we choose without the client directing us that they are going to be animated, well, that's going to dictate why our price is higher, where someone else may choose, no, it's just going to be static.
So that price is just going to be lower. So again, that scope really starts to matter, and a lot of it can be defined more by just talking through, what do we need to happen on that back end? What does it need to look like?
What does it need to feel like? What format and lengths does it need to be in for us to accomplish our, at least our initial marketing goal? And then if you're dealing with a video professional that understands the nature of the goal and has been to the show before, they can come up with more ideas and information of, hey, have you thought about having introduction and a closing? Well, no, I haven't thought about that yet. Well, you should and here's why. You don't have to do it, but at least there's options being presented that is narrowing down that scope even further of, here's what it sounds like will accomplish your goal in the most complete way possible. Do you want to approach it like that or do you have a different idea? Getting that opportunity to talk through it and really everyone getting a concrete idea of what we're talking about before you just send over a price is gonna have a much better end result for not just the video company because they know what they're doing now and really what your expectations are, but at the end of the day, they're gonna have better outcomes for the company that's requesting the work because it truly is geared toward meeting their need, not just somebody guessing and hoping that it hits their budget reigns so that they could be selected.
Adam Marquardt: And that's the thing, when you're trying to plan a video, you might not have all the answers and that's okay. When you're collaborating with the right video partner, they can help you think through those scenarios, help you think through some of those options, help you think through some of those different components that you might not have had at the top of your mind before because maybe you've never done this type of training video or maybe you've never done this type of product overview video or whatever need you may have, asking them to walk through it is actually good for both of you because you can further define your vision and they can further define the project. So then when you come together, the expectations are clear and at the end, the result is exactly what you had hoped for.
Nathan Yerian: That's really what it's about because if there are assumptions being made and they aren't clear and this happens all the time, if the video production team is making assumptions and they aren't aligned with your end goal, it's impossible for you to be happy. It's impossible for that project to go successfully and by the time you've created a partial scope and got some quotes from some people that made assumptions about what you wanted and you get back to the table and it isn't going well because they didn't understand exactly what you wanted or maybe they didn't quote exactly what you wanted and now maybe there's extra costs or extra time or extra anything, it's gonna be a problem for you and your team or if they just say, hey, this is what I thought you wanted and you end up with something that doesn't actually accomplish your goal in the best way possible, it's not the best way to approach it and I understand that marketing teams are not necessarily versed in video sometimes. They don't understand all the variables, they don't understand the choices that have to be made whether they're making them or whether the production company's making them but anytime you're gonna turn on a camera, there are a thousand choices, everything from the camera, the lenses, the lighting, the location, the on camera, the director camera, off camera, literally there's a thousand things that could be thought of in equipment, location, talent, approach, it's overwhelming the number of choices and to just hope that someone's going to guess all of those things correctly for your particular application is just not realistic.
Adam Marquardt: So the one thing we've said a few different times throughout this episode is the word companies and I think that there's a vast difference between somebody that is hiring either a freelancer or a solo cinematographer versus actually hiring a company that has production crews because I think that when you gave the example of you could get a video for $5,000 or you could get a video for $100,000, people look at that and they say, why the variance, why the range? And I think that part of it is experience, equipment, crew, but I also think that it comes down to what are you selecting? Are you selecting an individual that may ghost you in the middle of the project? Not that that ever happens. Or you hiring a seasoned production company that is going to be there and has a positive track record that will work with you every step along the way. And those two are very different and will vary the quote that you essentially get back.
Nathan Yerian: And there's nothing wrong with freelance videographer out there. I mean, they have a place, they have value, they can show up if truly what you're looking for is someone to show up with a camera and just capture moments and hopefully that turns into a video that makes sense, that might be the way to go. And there are productions that that makes sense for. You're trying to do BTS, that's the way to approach that behind the scenes footage. You're trying to just document an event and it's not super critical that we get certain moments or we tell a certain story that might be appropriate for that. If what you're trying to do is have a well orchestrated story or presentation of information to an audience, your freelance videographer is not the guy or girl for that. That's not what they're set up for. They could be as part of a larger team, but when you're talking about a real production that has to deliver a succinct message to an audience and it has to be the correct message, it has to look right, it has to feel right, it has to sound right, everything has to be right, it's never one person.
It's not just me or just you, it's just me and an entire team of people that we work with to make sure that it happens correctly in the planning phase, in the production phase, and then in the post-production phase. And you drop the ball in any one of those areas. If there's incomplete information in any one of those areas, almost from the start, you're gonna start to degrade in quality and there is no one person that just shows up and nails those. People are gonna be good at aspects of things.
That's why teams exist. Most B2B productions are gonna be most successful if they're actually dealing with an experienced production crew and not necessarily a freelance videographer. So at the end of the day, the main goal here and the message that we're trying to get out is if you're on a marketing team and you want video, which you should, and you're trying to do it on a project basis and you're out there talking to different production companies and you're getting vastly different quotes back or sometimes you select a vendor and you don't get exactly what it is you thought you were supposed to be getting or it ends up costing more or whatever it is, it's very, very easy to say, oh, you know what? It's the video production company that screwed this up. And to some degree it is. It is their fault because they didn't force you to say, what are we really talking about and how do we make this successful?
And that's really what's missing. So again, on the marketing side, most marketing teams don't create video content all the time. You're not expected to know what all the options are or what everything might cost or how something might come together.
That's why you have a video production partner to help you understand the realm in which you're playing. And sometimes the answer is gonna be the perfect thing that we need is outside the budget range that we have available to us. And sometimes the answer will be, hey, we could just make a few adjustments to pull it into the budget range that we do have available to us. And having that trusted partner that you can really rely on and say, hey, I need it to cost somewhere in this range, how would we do this? What would you recommend given that this is what I would like to have as an outcome because I'm trying to use it for this specific business purpose. If you have that level of conversation where we have a general idea budget, we know what you're trying to accomplish business-wise, it's pretty easy to start narrowing down some of the options to figure out what can we do or create that A is going to serve your business purpose because that's what you're investing in. And then secondarily, what are the options budget-wise that might allow us to get there? And from a marketing team perspective, if you're able to do that, you're gonna be in a much more successful environment where you're not overspending, there's not some surprise cost later, you're able to understand options. Sometimes you're even able to get more.
Like for instance, the conversation I had about the training videos, we will not be charging drastically more to do the introduction and closing. We're already gonna be there. We're already gonna be shooting. I have to bring one extra piece of equipment, a teleprompter for them to script read at the beginning and at the end, you're talking about a two-minute script read edit. You're gonna have nominal fees for additional post-production, but there's no more cost on the production side.
So it isn't that we were like, oh, we're gonna get them for two more videos. It's no, we're gonna help you get the right product for what you need. And knowing what that scope is helps me help you do that. Worst case scenario is we shoot the whole thing and then you decide, oh, it'd be really great if we had a introduction or we had a closing. Okay, great. Wish we would have talked about that before.
Now it's gonna cost drastically more because we have to come out and reshoot some things. And I can tell you in most of those occasions, they're gonna decide, no, we don't need it that badly. Would it have made it better? Yeah, it would have, but it needed to be discussed, decided, and finalized well before, well, in this case, well before you even got a quote, let alone well before we even got there and turned on cameras. So having the detailed scope, whether the marketing team is skilled enough to create it themselves, or whether they need some sort of outside partner to help walk them through that, it needs to happen to have successful video projects. And if you don't have a video crew or video team that you've worked with that you trust enough to walk through that with you, I would highly recommend when you start your video project to go through that process with all of the vendors that you're considering. Give them the information, let them explore the business process, look at how they guide you and what they recommend so that you can kind of analyze, are they a trusted partner that's really interested in our success, or are they just trying to sell us video?
