What should I be charging for my video production services?
Feb 25, 2023
Introduction
If you own a video production company, or you’re a videographer, or filmmaker, you’ve probably, at some point, wondered what you should be charging.
And that’s natural, because you want to be competitive.
We’re living in tough economic times and we see, or feel, budgets being slashed.
It’s a fine balance to strike between charging what a client is willing to pay and can afford, versus charging what you are worth and actually making some profit.
So in today’s Q&A, we’re going to look at this subject.
What should I be charging for my video production services?
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Transcript
00:00:00:03 - 00:00:27:08
If you own a video production company, or you're a videographer, or filmmaker, you've probably at some point wondered what you should be charging. And that's natural, because you want to be competitive. We're living in tough economic times and we see or feel budgets being slashed. It's a fine balance to strike between charging what a client is willing to pay and can afford versus charging what you are worth and actually making some profit.
00:00:27:09 - 00:00:50:13
So in today's Q&A, we're going to look at this subject. What should I be charging for my video production services? Let's get stuck in. So we've all been there. We've all second guessed ourselves when it comes to pricing up a project, or responding to a brief. We cost it up according to our rate card. Then we'll look down at the total and think: “They aren't going to pay that.”
00:00:50:16 - 00:01:14:20
So we start to make adjustments. And we've all wondered what others are charging. Maybe we've even performed a bit of sneaky research and tried to get hold of a competitor's quote or proposal. Maybe. But as I said in the intro, this is natural because we're so conformed to think that this is a numbers game. It's so easy to think that the price of a project is the deciding factor when it comes to who wins that project.
00:01:14:21 - 00:01:41:12
Or even if you're not pitching against anyone else, whether the client is willing to release that budget for the concept that you've put forward. You know what I'm going to say. This just isn't the case. Let me tell you something that I have learned from my 15 years experience within the video world. If you give your client enough confidence that the video content that you are going to create for them is actually going to drive results, the price of the project does not matter.
00:01:41:13 - 00:02:05:19
If you're willing to do a little bit of research in the pitch, proposal, or quote, stage, and you show your client how this concept is going to help them achieve that goal, the price of the project does not matter. If you spend a little bit of time showing the value of what you are going to create and using some industry standard Key Performance Indicators, the price of the project does not matter.
00:02:06:03 - 00:02:39:02
“Okay. Yeh. Sell on value. Everyone talks about that. Alright, Harmozi.” Well, yeah, they do, but nobody tells you how to do it. So let's look at how you do that now. And I'm going to provide you with some resources that will help you to do this. You can download those via the link below this video. And by the way, these lessons come from my book Conversion 90, which helps video production professionals, owners of video production companies, freelancers, videographers, filmmakers to convert over 90% of their opportunities to paid and profitable projects.
00:02:39:09 - 00:03:01:00
And you can grab that book via the links below for just $7. So, let's look at the steps that we need to take. First up, you need to know what your costs are. You need to know that what you are delivering is profitable. You need to know what fees will motivate you to get out of bed, on set, or in that edit suite, and you need to stick to them.
00:03:01:07 - 00:03:21:08
And don't worry about anyone else here. Develop your rate card for what you feel your work is worth. If it seems high, that's fine. If it seems low, up them. You deserve to be paid what you are worth. Okay. So, assuming that you know your value of what you want to be charging, this is how we show value to the client.
00:03:21:17 - 00:03:42:00
Your client will be paying you money in order to achieve results. They may have a problem to fix, or an opportunity to take. They're not creating video for the fun of it. So your first step is to understand exactly what they are setting out to achieve. So for a small business owner, this could be to generate inquiries into their business. For a bigger brand,
00:03:42:04 - 00:04:01:16
it could be to break into a new market. But you need to get very specific with this. If you or your client is unsure as to what they are setting out to achieve, ask them this simple question: “If we were sat down together in six months time looking back on this project, what would have to have happened for you to view it as a success?”
00:04:01:22 - 00:04:21:20
The answer to that question is their ultimate goal for the campaign. The next step is to understand what the value of a single conversion to that goal would mean to them from a monetary point of view. So say you are talking to a small business owner and their ultimate goal is to create 100 new inquiries for their business.
00:04:22:01 - 00:04:39:23
You'd need to understand how much a single inquiry is worth. To do this, you can simply ask them how many inquiries have they generated over the past 12 months. A very crude way of getting to the figure that we need is to divide their annual revenue or turnover by the amount of inquiries that they generated in that time period.
00:04:40:05 - 00:05:10:14
So if they had generated 500 inquiries over the past 12 months and their annual revenue is $1 million, we divide $1 million by 500, which gives us a figure of $2,000 per inquiry. These are just random numbers in this example, but I'm showing you the process here. So with that very quick bit of math, we know that for every person that engages with the video content that we are creating for the client and convert it to an inquiry, well, we've added $2,000 to their bottom line.
00:05:10:20 - 00:05:34:08
And in this example, they want 100 new inquiries, which equates to $200,000. Time to give them some confidence that we're going to achieve this for them, because if we do, if we fill them with confidence. They probably won't be worrying about another couple of grand of production budget. So the next step is to fill them with confidence. We look at their audience, their target market, and understand them intensely.
00:05:34:12 - 00:05:53:13
We understand their pain points and what they respond to. Now, I have other videos that go into this in more detail and how we perform this top level research. And the book obviously covers it in way more detail. So I'm not going to go through all of that in this video, but we build our concept around their audience knowing.
00:05:53:18 - 00:06:16:16
And here's the big part. We let them know that we've done the research. That is what is going to fill them with confidence. So assuming that you've understood their audience and you understand how video marketing works, and if you don't, I would highly recommend watching the video on The Buyer's Journey, which is linked below. You would have landed on a concept that is very likely to drive results for your client.
00:06:16:16 - 00:06:47:14
But here's the big part. Here's what stands you out from the crowd. Here's what ensures that you do indeed charge what you're worth. The next step is to forecast the results. What? How? Well, it's actually very simple. Because of the work that you have done in understanding their audience intensely, you use some industry standard metrics, some Key Performance Indicators that, if achieved (and they will be achieved because of the research that you've done), will lead to the content that you're being paid to create achieving the project goals.
00:06:48:00 - 00:07:14:22
Let's break this down. Say your video content is going to be used online and say your client is willing to put a little bit of advertising spend into promoting it. You can very easily forecast what will happen with that content by using some very basic arithmetic. Let's go through an example. And within the resources, you also have access to a resource that's called The Metric Calculator, which does all of these calculations and all of the hard work for you.
00:07:15:19 - 00:07:47:16
So let's say, for example, your client's audience spend a lot of time on Facebook. They're Gen X, so they're born between 1965 and 1980. They love sharing photos of their kids and telling the world how proud they are of little Jimmy, who came fourth in his karate competition. And say that you've got a very basic video strategy in place where you're going to use Awareness Stage content to drive well, awareness, and then Decision Stage content to generate these inquiries. A safe CPM,
00:07:47:20 - 00:08:16:03
so the cost per 1,000 placements of our video content, would be $10. And say that we have a view rate of 25%. Again, nice and safe, especially with all the research that you've done. So 250 out of each 1,000 placements get viewed and of that 250, we have 10% that are engaged with The Awareness Stage content. So for every $10 that we spend in promoting that content, we have 25 engaged views that are then served their Decision Stage content.
00:08:16:10 - 00:08:40:18
So that might be an About Us video that has a nice strong call to action of inquire now. Now, let's say that The Decision Stage content again has a 25% view rate. Which gives us just over 6 engaged views and of those 6 engaged views, 10% adhere to the call to action and inquire. This means that for each $10 in advertising spend, we've generated 0.6 inquiries.
00:08:41:00 - 00:09:12:19
If your client spends $1,000 promoting that content, that generates 60 inquiries. And we know that each inquiry in this fictional example are valued at $2,000. And $2,000 multiplied by 60 is $120,000. Again, this is purely fictional, and I'm just showing you the process here. But by showing the client the process and outlining some simple, easy to hit metrics, you can forecast the impact that your content is going to have on them, on their business, or on their cause.
00:09:13:01 - 00:09:36:15
And this allows you to forecast the results. And let me tell you this. When you do this and put the cost of your service next to a predicted Return On Investment, you can see why people that apply the Conversion 90 framework to their video business convert over 90% of their opportunities to paid and profitable projects. So I understand that this all sounds a little complex, but it's really not
00:09:36:21 - 00:09:55:09
when you know what you are doing. And I go into detail on every step that you need to take within the Conversion 90 book, which you can get for just $7 via the link below. But this is how you charge what you are worth. And I know the question in hand today was: “What should I be charging for my video production services?”
00:09:55:15 - 00:10:16:02
But this is the process that answers that. You can charge what you want when you're selling on value and that's how you sell on value. Obviously it’s going to be different for each and every client that you pitch, propose, or quote, to. But this is how you beat the competition. This is how you charge what you are worth. And this is how you build profits into your video business.
00:10:16:02 - 00:10:42:07
And, as I've said a couple of times, you can get the whole process outlined step by step and join 3,000 other video production professionals that are winning over 90% of their opportunities, by grabbing this book, Conversion 90, via the link below this video for just $7. So, I hope that's been helpful. But if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to me or leave a comment below.
00:10:42:07 - 00:10:49:13
But if this has sparked something in you, grab the book and work through the process step by step. Have a fantastic day.
