By The Value Investor · June 8, 2025
Introduction
You just got a quote from a professional video production company, and you’re suffering from sticker shock. In a world where you can shoot 4K video on your phone, how can they justify charging thousands, or even tens of thousands, of dollars? The temptation to go with the cheap option—the freelancer from Craigslist or your marketing intern with a new camera—is immense. My contrarian take is this: the money you “save” on a cheap video is one of the worst financial decisions you can make. The most expensive video your company will ever produce is the one you didn’t pay enough for.
The Current State of Things
The B2B market is currently flooded with low-cost video production options. The democratization of high-quality camera equipment has created a legion of solo operators and small-time crews who promise “professional-looking” video for a fraction of the cost of an established production house. Businesses, especially those with tight marketing budgets, see this as a pragmatic choice. They focus on the line-item cost, believing that “good enough” video is better than no video at all. The goal is to check the “we have a video” box as cheaply as possible.
The Immediate Risk
The immediate risk of a cheap video is that it simply doesn’t get used. A mid-market manufacturing company hired a low-budget crew to produce a new brand video. The final product was plagued with issues: the audio was inconsistent, the color grading was off, and the key message was buried. After a single, embarrassing screening for the executive team, the video was quietly shelved, never to see the light of day. They spent $5,000 to produce an asset that generated exactly zero dollars in return, a complete and total loss.
The Problem Is You’re Paying for a Deliverable, Not a Result
When you hire a cheap “videographer,” you are paying for a commodity: a video file. They will show up, shoot what you tell them to shoot, perform a basic edit, and send you an invoice. A true professional production team, on the other hand, is not selling you a video file; they are partnering with you to achieve a business result. Their process starts with a deep dive into your strategy: Who is the audience? What is the goal? What is the key message? How will we measure success? The cost of a professional team includes this critical pre-production and strategic work, which is the single biggest determinant of a video’s success. The cheap option skips this, which is why it so often fails.
The Problem Deepens with the Hidden Costs of ‘Fixing It in Post’
The manufacturing company’s failed video was a case study in hidden costs. After the initial $5,000 waste, they spent another $2,000 trying to hire a freelance editor to “fix” the footage. The editor informed them that the core problems—poor lighting and bad audio—were baked into the raw footage and couldn’t be fixed. They then lost countless hours of internal team time debating what to do. Finally, they had to hire a professional team to reshoot the entire thing, costing them more in the long run than if they had just hired the right team in the first place. As the old industry saying goes, “You can have it fast, cheap, or good. Pick two.” The cheap video is never good, and after all the revisions and fixes, it’s rarely fast.
The Far-Reaching Implications Are a Devaluation of Strategy
This race to the bottom on video production costs has a damaging effect on the entire B2B marketing ecosystem. It teaches businesses to view video as a simple, tactical commodity rather than a powerful, strategic asset. This leads to a glut of ineffective, low-ROI content that then “proves” to skeptical CFOs that “video doesn’t work.” It’s a vicious cycle where underinvestment leads to poor results, which justifies further underinvestment. It completely devalues the critical strategic thinking, storytelling, and marketing expertise that a true production partner brings to the table.
The Counterintuitive Solution Is to Invest in the Process, Not Just the Product
The solution is to reframe your thinking about the cost of video. You are not buying a 3-minute video; you are investing in a strategic communication asset. When you evaluate a production company, don’t just look at their camera package; scrutinize their creative and strategic process. Do they have a discovery phase? Do they do audience research? Do they storyboard and script? Do they have a plan for distribution and measurement? A production team that charges more because their process is more robust is not more expensive; they are providing infinitely more value. You should be happy to pay for their thinking, not just their gear.
But How Can a Small Business Afford This?
The objection is that this is simply unaffordable for a small business or startup. But a smart production team can work with you to maximize value. They can design a project that creates multiple assets from a single shoot—a main brand video, several short social clips, and a bank of B-roll for future use. This “content stacking” approach drastically lowers the per-asset cost. Furthermore, consider the cost of the alternative. What is the cost of a lost sale? What is the cost of a damaged brand reputation? What is the cost of a complete waste of your marketing budget? When viewed through that lens, the investment in getting it right the first time becomes the only fiscally responsible choice.
Final Thoughts
A video is not an expense; it is an asset that is either appreciating or depreciating in value from the moment it is released. A cheap video that no one watches, that fails to convert, or that actively damages your brand is an asset with a massively negative value. A strategic, professionally produced video that builds your brand and drives sales is an asset that pays for itself over and over again. Stop being cheap and start being profitable.
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