Top 5 Questions Your Video Content Agency Should Be Asking You

As Marketers, Advertisers and Producers you will go into the video production process with some base of strategy and tactic. However, what often gets overlooked are these key components, necessary to the final success of each video. Your video production partner should be asking these questions of you ahead of anything else.

QUESTION 1: Who are the primary, secondary and (perhaps) tertiary audiences for these videos?

Simply put, who are you trying to reach with these videos? More often than not, we as marketers and communicators work on building the plane without fully understanding where we want and need it to land. The video production process has to start with understanding who the intended audiences are for the video content, so that we can begin to understand their needs and how those needs shape the messaging and creativity that will go into each video we produce. “Who are your audiences?” should be the base question to ask your video production company.

QUESTION 2: What do you want viewers to do after they’ve watched your video?

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
– Maya Angelou

When you’re working with a video production partner/company they should be asking what you want your audiences to do and how you want them to feel as a result of watching your video. If your production partners aren’t taking the time to listen to what you know about your audience and the intended outcome of watching these videos, they’re not appropriately intellectually invested in what you’re trying to say through video.

QUESTION 3: What is your budget range?

There is a financial reality to video production, regardless of production value, that should be discussed early in the process of working with a video production company. Videos cost money. Like most things, no one likes to talk about how much money they’ll have to spend to get what they need. The sooner that your video production partner understands what your financial limitations are, the sooner you can move on towards what’s possible, what’s feasible and what’s fitting for your video’s outcomes. Wading too far into the creative process without establishing a budget basis, is a disservice to everyone involved. If your video production partner/company isn’t quickly discussing your budget with you, they’re wasting your time and potentially your money.

QUESTION 4: What is your process?

Creativity can be wild and free and unbridled. Video production is a creative process. A good video production partner/company knows the art of harnessing creativity with some structure and guidelines for a well planned review and approval process. There are three key phases of video production: Pre-Production, Production and Post Production. But inside of each of those phases can be any number of milestones for reviews and approvals. So much time, energy and creativity can get lost if the review and approval process isn’t well established in the very first conversations between you and your content production partners. Conversely, it’s important to consider and define all the stakeholders involved for your review and approval process and what everyone’s availability will be to ensure the train stays on the tracks.

QUESTION 5: What does success look like?

“We want to make a viral video.” “We just want something authentic.” “It needs to be 4 minutes.” These are a few common statements we hear when we embark on new projects. All three of these criteria are worthy of consideration, but they don’t speak to tangible key performance indicators or “success” as it relates to your investment in video. We have to define the destination before we can build your ship and chart a course.

So, what does success look like for your videos? How will you track that success and know when you’ve hit the mark? These are questions that should be asked of you by your video content producers, because if we can define success we should pause and rethink it all. Walking without a destination is just wandering.