How to Produce B2B Videos During a Recession

“You don’t want to miss out on establishing your company’s brand in a down market, particularly given the fact there are very compelling ways for you to get video content done.”

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It’s no secret: the markets are unstable right now. Inflation is on the rise with interest rates quickly following. Markets are tanking, and it’s harder to raise capital than it was six months ago (or even three weeks ago). And don’t even get us started on gas prices . . .

History tells us, this is not great news for some marketing budgets and content marketing teams. In the aftermath of the last recession in 2008, for example, ad spending in the U.S. dropped by 13%. Broken out by medium, newspaper ad spending dropped the most at 27%, radio spending dropped by 22%, followed by magazines with a decline of 18%, out-of-home by 11%, television by 5% and online by 2%. Put simply, many companies cut marketing spend during recessions.

However, it’s important to recognize that while cutting marketing spend does save cash, it is also potentially a big mistake. From a report done by the Advertising Specialties Institute, “Companies that kept advertising actually increased sales and market share during the recession and most importantly, afterward . . .” According to the report, this is mostly due to three things: 1) the advertising market will become less competitive, which means you can purchase more ad spaces with the same budget. 2) by maintaining advertising spend, your company shows potential buyers that you have corporate stability, and they don’t have to worry about your product or service going bankrupt. 3) Your presence in the market will increase compared to your competitors.

And the data shows that companies who maintain marketing spend during recessions manage to outperform those who didn’t: McGraw-Hill Research recently conducted a study on 600 companies across 16 industries and to find out how marketing efforts impacted company growth in and after the early 1980s recession. The research revealed that companies who increased or kept their marketing budget the same had more sales growth during and even three years after the recession. By 1985, the companies who focused on aggressive recession marketing grew by 256%, unlike those who slashed or eliminated their advertising budget.

So, when it comes to video content, which is often quite expensive and time consuming, it can be tempting to stop making them to save cash. This could be a big mistake, however. You don’t want to miss out on establishing your company’s brand in a down market, particularly given the fact there are very compelling ways for you to get video content done.

Here are some things to keep in mind as you decide where to allocate resources for video content:

1)    Stop paying for expensive production to get images:

You should probably stop doing this in general, but it is certainly true when cash is a concern during a recession. In today’s world, there are a ton of ways to get really high-quality images and footage without paying upwards of 15K for a production crew to invade an office with cameras. Be smart/creative with planning, then get out your iPhones out or work with DSLR cameras in-house ($2.5K investment – there are auto-settings on cameras like these for novice camera-people who don’t feel comfortable going fully manual), and you will have all the technical specifications you need to record high quality images.

2)    Find motivated storytellers in your network to take part in production.

The key with good video content is having motivated people on camera (and behind the camera). Whether this is a star customer (for customer stories), a motivated employee, or a member of your marketing team with a passion for video (or a willingness to learn!), start asking people: who is comfortable using a camera or being on camera? Create a list of people willing to participate so that when your team comes up with fresh new content ideas, you know who to turn to.

3)    Work with strong storytellers to help with ideation:

You may have someone in-house who has a background in storytelling, you may work with an outside agency for messaging/storytelling, or you may work with a freelance content writer/creator (for storytelling tips for short-form video click here). In any of these three situations, though, there are great storytellers at your disposal to help develop and shape your ideas.

4)    Work with elite editors to edit the footage:

The fact is that recording the images/video is the easy part. The tricky part is cutting it down to short form content that delivers on your ROI. Editing is a very particular skillset, and it is here you want to invest in premium talent. Reach out through networks to find freelancers or remote production companies like Elemmir that excel at remote production techniques and editing B2B videos that convert.

When you do these four things, you have setup a system that creates video efficiently and of high quality, which is a huge opportunity for your brand. Ultimately, when it comes to videos, this quote by Harvard John Quelch is poignant, “successful companies do not abandon their marketing strategies in a recession; they adapt them.”

How will you adapt to the times we are in? If you follow the simple steps above, you can more than triple your output of high-quality videos. During a recession, this can set you apart from your competition in a big way.