Outsource or In-House for Video Production?

Use of video as a corporate communication tool is undoubtedly the highest it’s ever been. Lockdown has seen more and more people turn to video as a way to communicate with clients and colleagues alike. 96% of video marketers have said they will either remain at their current usage levels of video or increase it!*

But with this increased desire to use video comes an age-old question – do you outsource this, or bring it in-house?

Obviously our business is based on companies that choose to outsource this work, but we’re going to give you what we feel is a balanced opinion on when it’s right to outsource, and when you can do it better in-house (and when we say ‘better’, we also mean ‘more cost-effectively).

The way we’re going to present this is to just lay out the benefits to both, and the situations in which one might be better than the other.  You can then see where your needs lie, and decide what works for you.

In-House

When?

If you’re likely to have a large volume of video content that you need, and the technical set-up for this is relatively simple, you should consider getting someone in-house to do it. You’ve potentially outsourced it for a while and know it works for what you want to achieve, and now need a more cost-effective way of doing it.

Alternatively you’ve decided you want to commit to making video more frequently in your business, and the content and style of these is likely to be consistent.

Considerations

• If you’re going to employ someone to do it, you need to make sure they’re multi-skilled; they need to be able to film (lighting, sound, camera op), edit and ideally do some simple graphics. More and more people are now ‘all in one Producers’ and can turn their hand to all these areas of video production but make sure whoever you choose has these skills to the required levels.
• You may need to think about an up-front investment in a bit of kit (decent camera, a few lenses, a couple of lights, 2 radio mics and a good computer plus associated software on which to edit).
• How often are you going to need a bespoke bit of kit? Look into hire costs in advance.
• How often are you going to need video produced for which the creativity and scale may be beyond your in-house production person/unit?  If – for example – your main need is to do more regular vlogging content for a platform like LinkedIn, this should all be very manageable by an in-house team.
• Are you confident that the person/team you have – or will have – in-house can give enough creative variation to the video content you need? As above, if you need a large volume of vlogging videos across the business, this is not such a consideration, but if you need different films for different audiences, it’s not easy for the same person to give the variety you might need.
• And now the C-word: cost. There’s an assumption that producing content in-house will be cheaper, but this depends a lot on the above considerations. Plan it all out over a 12-24 month period and see whether this is correct or not.

Outsourced

When?

There are a variety of situations in which outsourcing is likely to be the best option for you. But here are those in which we think you will be better outsourcing:

• You only need a small amount of video or you want to test the water.
• There is a large variety to the scale and creative treatment needed of the videos you need. The skillsets required are wider than you want to employ (or it is economically viable to employ).
• You do not have the time/long-term budget commitment to create a team and make the required cap-ex outlay to get things started properly.
• You need external expertise to support you on your journey with video and do not want to (or have the need, usually) make the financial commitment of employing such a high-level person to your staff.
• You want to go in a different creative direction (or know you are likely to want to in the future) so don’t want to make too much of a commitment to one individual or team.

Considerations

So it’s a bit of a re-cap on the above, but if you’re thinking of outsourcing your corporate video production, here are some things to bear in mind:

• How much variety is there to your requirements?
• Do you need high levels of experience and creative development for the videos you have in mind?
• Do you have the time to manage the internal resource to the level that might be required?
• Who do you have in-house already? Is there someone with the skillset that you might need, and can you ‘give them a go’ with very little budget at risk if it doesn’t go as planned?
• What’s your budget? Can you make it go further if you do what’s needed in-house?
• Do you want the freedom to work with multiple different external agencies to add even more variety to your work?

So that’s it.

Or that’s almost it.

There’s one key factor however you do it: TRUST. Whether you’re working with someone internally or externally, you need to trust them – or at least know you’re building towards trusting them!

If you’ve more questions about what can be achieved when outsourcing video production, or you want an honest conversation about what can be achieved with either method, we would love to get on the phone with you about it.

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

*https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/state-of-video-marketing-new-data