Video Strategy vs. Video Production: What’s the Difference?
Knowing the difference between video strategy and video production allows you to make more informed decisions when creating video.
Video strategy dives deeper into the pre-production phase of creating video content. It should establish the overall strategy and goal for every piece of video content.
Video production is the creative process of actually producing the video. This is the actual production portion, where you shoot, edit, and get the video ready for publishing.
By understanding the difference between these two elements, you are already setting yourself up for success. In this manner, your videos will both be visually appealing and successfully communicate the desired message.
Understanding the functions of both phases allows for unified content that satisfies business goals and captivates audiences.
What Is Video Strategy
Video strategy is the process of creating an in-depth plan that outlines how video content will achieve marketing goals. It’s become a roadmap of sorts for how to develop and distribute video content. By tying video initiatives to overarching marketing objectives, an effective video strategy helps create content that hits home with your audience and drives higher engagement.
Definition of Video Strategy
Consider a video strategy as the architectural plan behind a marketing campaign. It combines audience insights and brand messaging into videos, cutting a cohesive path in conjunction with wider marketing strategies.
This level of alignment creates a more holistic branding effect and enables strategies to be tweaked based on real performance data, ensuring strategies stay effective long-term.
Importance of Strategic Guidance
Without strategic guidance, even the best video content can fall flat and fail to drive business objectives. It ranks projects based on the strongest potential returns and current audience needs.
This emphasis on strategy first is incredibly important in today’s rapidly changing world of digital media. Having a strategic framework in place helps streamline the planning and execution process, ensuring that video content is as targeted and impactful as possible.
Elements of a Video Strategy
Clear objectives and goals
Target audience identification
Content themes and topics
Distribution channels and tactics
Identifying Your Target Audience
Getting to know your ideal customer is the best way to ensure that you’re producing the most relevant video content. Understanding the demographics and preferences of your audience will be crucial in informing the messaging and tone of the video.
Insights about the audience result in more audience-focused, engaging content and help strategies to continue to develop and strengthen over time. Ongoing engagement further homes this process, so video content resonates and leaves a long-lasting impression.
What Is Video Production
Video production is the comprehensive process of creating video content, starting with that first concept and ending with the finished video. Filming is only a small aspect of the entire process. It comes down to turning a strategic idea into engaging visual storytelling.
Videography usually focuses on one-time events, like weddings. Video production takes a great deal of artistic and logistical advance planning to produce effective content that meets strategic objectives.
Definition of Video Production
Video production involves both technical and creative processes in the making of videos. It’s a combination of the creativity we put into our narrative craft and the technical know-how that leads us to execute on-time and on-budget.
This balance is what makes video production different from other content creation practices. Video production brings together all the details, from the script to the final cuts, under the umbrella of that strategic vision.
This strategy increases brand awareness on various platforms, maximizing audience reach through social media, websites, and YouTube.
Role of a Videographer
Whether you are creating a video to showcase your business, products, or services, the videographer is an important component in video production hardware. It encompasses everything from being able to shoot and tell the story the script demands, to working intimately with directors, lighting, and audio professionals.
It’s this collaboration that ensures that the end result educates the public. It engages them, which is why video production has become a crucial component of marketing strategies.
Key Differences Between Strategy and Production
Purpose and Goals
Both video strategy and video production play different but equally important roles in a business’s marketing initiatives. While production is about making a video, strategy is about what you want to achieve with video. This can be anything from boosting brand awareness to customer engagement to sales.
It’s all about knowing your target audience and figuring out what message will hit home. Conversely, video production is the art and science that brings those strategies to life. It includes filming, post production and delivery of the final video asset.
For instance, an enterprise brand could strategize an entire campaign of educational content in video format to boost engagement. Afterwards, the production team will work to create those videos.
Process and Execution
The processes that go into video strategy and video production could not be more different. Video strategy isn’t just for production, though. It looks at how the video works into the overall marketing strategy.
Video strategy focuses on the strategic planning behind the scenes. You go through all of the pre-production steps, including scripting and storyboarding. Then you hear about the production side, filming on-location with a camera operator and editing everything together during post-production.
The production phase is where the abstract strategy takes shape and form through the creative tools and techniques.
Required Skills and Expertise
Varied skills and expertise are needed for video strategy and production. A strategist, ideally, should have a very robust understanding of marketing fundamentals and audience insights. They research and test the most effective ways to deliver messages within video assets.
Production is much more technical skill-based, being on set, the filming process, editing, and sound design. A strategy video production company usually includes a collaborative team of professionals, including directors, lighting technicians, and editors.
This team-oriented approach provides advantages that aren’t always found when working with a solo videographer.
Collaboration and Integration
Close collaboration between video strategy and production teams is key for success. The strategy team determines the direction and goals, and the production team makes these concepts a reality. Integration helps to make sure that the video works within the context of larger marketing campaigns and overall brand messaging.
Businesses increasingly require integrated cooperation in order to have the smooth hand-offs that keep their video marketing strategies consistent. Perhaps that’s why 91% of businesses make video part of their marketing strategy.
Working with a reputable video production company rather than a solo videographer can enhance this collaboration, resulting in higher-quality, more impactful video content.
Types of Video Content
Overview of Video Content Types
Video content includes a wide range of content types, each with their specific focus. Marketing professionals are obsessed with explainer videos. In fact, 76% do so on social media sites.
These videos are usually around or less than 10 minutes long and can be incredibly helpful in showing your audience how to use your product or service. Related to this, how-to videos are in demand, with 57% of marketers creating them for use across digital platforms.
They’re instructional, providing sequential how-to guidance, which makes them especially useful for drawing in audiences seeking actionable solutions. Short how-to videos, typically only a minute or two in length, work wonders in conveying the most important features and benefits of the product.
These tools are attention magnets. They fit like hand to glove on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, where younger users are looking for fun, engaging content. These platforms all prioritize videos that have trending music, text, and flashy effects to keep people watching.
Selecting Appropriate Content for Goals
Selecting the appropriate type of video content supports your objectives most closely. If you’re looking to communicate your brand story, tap into the magic of video. An astounding 44% of marketers claim that video is the best at producing emotionally compelling stories.
Explainers and product demos, showcased by 74% of companies in their organic content, go a long way to attract and engage your potential customers. It can’t be overstated how crucial it is to adapt video content to the platform.
For example, TikTok videos are very different from those in Google Ads display campaigns. The short, quick-paced videos that your audience is expecting on TikTok wouldn’t work on Google Ads, which may need more professional, educational videos.
In-House Production vs Outsourcing
Advantages of In-House Production
This is where in-house video production really shines, especially with in-house video production’s agility and cost effectiveness. This agility means teams can adapt on the fly to last-minute changes and create content that more accurately reflects the company culture.
However, this can mean an expensive upfront investment in equipment and technology that may be a resource burden at first. Teams that create in-house tend to have their own internal lingo. This language can be really hard to make stick even with the most sympathetic audiences.
Scalability is another important factor to consider. While there are many benefits of an in-house team, their size often dictates how much video can be produced, affecting scalability.
Benefits of Hiring a Production Company
When you hire a production company, you’re not just hiring a production company. You’ll gain access to best-in-class resources that are otherwise out of your internal teams’ reach.
This means experienced storytellers, writers, and actors who can take the work to new heights. When you outsource, the end product is usually more polished and professional because of access to specialized equipment and extensive software suites.
Outsourcing might be more expensive on a per-video basis, but the process provides a polished grasp on branding and narrative. It can also be tricky to keep that creative control — which can take some clear communication and collaboration.
Cost Considerations in Video Services
Cost is a major consideration when deciding whether to produce video in-house or outsource. In-house production is more cost-effective in the long run, as long as your organization can afford the upfront investment in equipment and technology.
Outsourcing does necessitate a greater per-video cost, but this is usually accompanied by a better production value. According to Nielsen, internet users consume almost seven hours of video per week.
For brands hoping to engage with their consumers in deeper, more meaningful ways, putting dollars behind smart video marketing is key.
Benefits of Engaging Professionals
Accessing Talent Networks for Projects
When engaging with professional video production services, you’re not simply contracting a crew to complete a task. You get access to a deep bench of specialized talent and resources.
SkyBlue Creative raises the bar by providing clients with deeper connections. This not only simplifies the production process, but it defrays the cost while enhancing the final product.
This methodology levels the playing field for businesses of all sizes to achieve enterprise-level video production quality. In turn, it evens the playing field among all industries.
Full-Service Support in Production
All that to say that when you engage with a professional video production company, you’re not just getting someone who shows up and shoots. Full-service providers like Lemonlight take clients from ideation to execution, managing the entire production process to make sure each piece fits into the larger strategy.
By leveraging this highly specialized holistic support along with innovative technology, the workflow is streamlined to reduce production time by more than 40%.
SkyBlue Creative truly marries production and marketing to achieve strategic goals. When put together, this dynamic duo maximizes both the power and potential of their video content.
Delivering Value Through Professional Content
The power of professional content is hard to overstate. Ninety-six percent of video marketers agree that videos improve the user experience.
This makes the case for high-quality production. At Lemonlight, a commitment to understanding each client’s narrative ensures that the content produced resonates deeply with audiences, elevating brand presence globally.
The right agency can seamlessly blend video production with marketing, offering a tailored package or focusing on specific needs, thereby delivering powerful results.
Conclusion
Knowing the difference between video strategy and video production allows you to build content that is really going to move the needle for you. Strategy is about planning and purpose. It determines the strategy and makes sure your message is on target. Video production is where your ideas get transformed into video with creativity and technical skill. Both are important and they go together.
When determining if in-house production or outsourcing is the right fit, consider your capabilities and expertise. Bringing in professionals can help improve your content and overall impact. They come with rich experience and new ideas.
Explore the right balance for your needs. Whether you focus on strategy, production, or both, aim for engaging and impactful videos. Check your resources and goals, then dive in. Start creating videos that resonate and captivate your audience today.
Elevate Your Brand With Peakbound Studio’s Video Strategy Services
Struggling to capture your audience’s attention in a crowded digital landscape? Without the right tools and strategy, even the best ideas can fail to connect with your audience. At Peakbound Studio, we know the frustration business owners feel after pouring effort into marketing campaigns that don’t deliver results. Our mission is to help businesses and nonprofits like yours transform their messages into compelling visuals through an expertly crafted video strategy that cuts through the noise.
Peakbound Studio’s video strategy services are designed to bring your vision to life. From developing a unique concept to aligning it with your business goals, we focus on creating videos that engage your audience, build brand trust, and drive action. With a deep understanding of marketing, storytelling, and strategic planning, we ensure your videos don’t just look professional but also serve as a powerful tool for business growth.
The reward? A brand that stands out, a story that resonates, and results that matter. Whether you’re launching a product, training your team, or connecting with supporters, our team is here to help you succeed. Don’t settle for less—partner with Peakbound Studio and let’s craft a video strategy that takes your business to the next level. Reach out to us today to start your journey.
