You don’t just want to find a production company – you want to find the production company that will best fit you and your business’s needs. Here are some tips and tricks for finding the perfect fit for you and your business.
How to find the right video production company for your business
How do I find a production company?
Two of the best ways to find a production company are through (1) Recommendations, (2) Researching online. While you can look at ‘Top Video Companies’ lists, you can also simply search for companies that create the type of video you want to make, or companies in the area you’re looking to create the video in on Google, and look at both the organic and paid results that show up. If you know of other companies who have created videos similar to what you’re looking to do, you can ask them (or your network in general) if they have any recommendations. It often makes sense to work backwards from work you like, find the work, then find out who made it.
How do I choose a production company?
Once you’ve compiled a general list of options, it’s time to narrow your choices down. You should write down a short criteria list of what you’re looking for in a video production company. Ideally, everyone you found is competent enough to do the work, which is where this criteria list will come in handy to differentiate between the companies when it comes time to make the final decision.
Figure out what it is that you want from the video itself. What are your goals? What type of video do you want to create? What ideas do you have for the video? Do you already have footage and just need a company to edit it together, or do you need a company that will help you with conception all the way to a finished project? Do you want to film in one location, or choose a company that has the ability to film in multiple cities, states, or countries? Do you want to do one video, or multiple videos? You can even go a step further and start to ask yourself if you want actors for your video, or will your video feature you or your employees.
Decide what your budget is for your video project. Now, you’re not expected to know the pricing of all of the intricacies of creating a video, and pricing will vary by company, but figuring out a rough outline of how much money you can afford to spend on your videos will help you once you start to gather quotes. Pricing will vary depending on a lot of different factors, such as the ones listed above. If your budget is flexible, have a range in mind – you might be able to create more video than you originally thought with your budget, too.
Gather quotes from the list of video production companies you compiled. Many companies are willing to talk with you and give you a quote (for free!) on your video project. You can use this as a baseline to compare against your budget, to see if what you’re budgeting for your project aligns with what most companies are charging. They will likely have follow up questions, and will only be able to provide a range, but it can be helpful to determine if your project is feasible within your budget. It can also help you spot pricing outliers, if most are saying your project costs $100,000.00 , but another says it costs $1,000.00 we would be skeptical of the outlier.
Choose people who you’re comfortable working with. Once you have the quotes, you can make the decision on money alone if you need to. However, you can also go a step further and choose a company that shares similar values or company culture to you. You can also determine a lot by how they respond to your initial inquiries. Be sure to hold a call with the client to make sure they have the right skills, and you can see yourselves working together. A lot of a good partnership is the relationship, not just the resulting work. In short, you’ll likely be working closely with the people at this video production company to bring your vision to life, so you want to work with a team who is easy to work with. While this may be a one off project, you could also be fostering a long term professional relationship that extends over future projects, so that’s something to keep in mind when making your choice.
Work with a video production company that fits your goals best. Ultimately, you want to look at all of your options and choose whatever company feels right to you. You may need to compromise on a few of these criteria (for example, if your budget is low, you might not be able to afford a full service creative agency, so you’ll have to adjust accordingly, one way or the other), but chances are you’ll be able to find a great video production company that aligns with your goals and meets all of your preferred criteria.
How do I hire a video production agency?
The hiring part is easy – once you choose who you want to work with, you let them know, and let the company tell you next steps and streamline the process from there!
Now that you know how to find the right video production company, it's time to get to work! Have more questions? Check out our guide to creating video for your business.
