B2B Video Marketing
The honest answer to "how much should we budget for video" is not a number, it is a question back: how much video do you actually need this year? A single video priced honestly carries the full setup cost every time, so a brand buying one project at a time pays roughly the same on its fiftieth video as its first. A brand producing a steady stream should budget differently. This guide sits inside the complete guide to B2B video marketing.
The right first step is to count assets, not price a video. Across the next twelve months, how many anchor pieces do you need (brand, explainers, customer stories), and how many derivative cuts for social, sales and product pages? A realistic always-on programme is usually a small number of productions turned into many assets, not a long list of separate one-offs. Once you have the count, the model follows.
There are three ways to buy, and they suit different volumes. A per-project model is right for one or two pieces a year: you pay for each as its own event and you should not fund a system you will not use. Prepaid credits suit a brand with steady but variable volume: you draw down across the year and the per-asset rate improves. A monthly programme suits a brand producing continuously with a dedicated team. The full comparison is in video subscription versus a production agency, and the tiers are on the yourfilm pricing page.
Four levers move cost more than anything else: volume, complexity, the number of deliverable formats you need from each production, and how much footage and brand context already exists. The last one is the quiet one. When every brief starts by re-explaining the brand and re-filming things you already own, you pay a standing-start cost on every asset. When the brand, the footage and the history live in one place, each brief starts from something, and the cost per asset falls as the library compounds.
Estimate the anchor productions you need, then assume each becomes several derivative assets. Price the anchors at a realistic range, add the always-on layer as a monthly or credit commitment rather than a series of quotes, and hold back a contingency for the launch moment that always appears. Then pressure-test it against the model: if you are buying more than a handful of projects a year separately, a programme will almost certainly cost less per asset and take work off your team.
The real cost is rarely the invoice. It is the internal time spent briefing from scratch, the footage delivered and then lost, and the campaigns that reset every quarter. A yearly budget built around a compounding programme removes most of that hidden cost, which is why the per-asset price falls even as the output grows. Tell us your volume and we will come back with a scoped number.
Size it from the number of assets you need across the year, not from a per-video rate. A brand producing one or two pieces a year budgets per project; a brand producing a steady stream should budget for a programme, where the price per finished asset falls as volume grows.
At volume, yes. A per-project model carries the full setup cost every time, so the fiftieth video costs roughly what the first did. A programme priced in prepaid credits or a monthly commitment spreads that setup and lowers the cost per asset as the library compounds.
The main levers are volume, complexity, the number of deliverable formats, and how much footage and brand context already exists. Starting every video from zero is the hidden cost; a compounding library is what brings the per-asset number down over time.
Most clients start with a single project, then let the library compound. Tell us what you are building.