One of the mistakes you can easily make is not knowing what kind of marketing, advertising or media services you want or what’s best for your organization before getting quotes. When delivering your estimate, companies sometimes have to base it off of an assumption of your needs, instead of an understanding of them. There are things that you should be prepared to inform a production company of, when you first contact them.

Being able to deliver this information at the beginning, should start bringing those quotes in a little closer together. It will also perspective companies the ability to give you a much more accurate estimate as to what you’ll end up paying when everything’s said and done. But of course, there are also other factors that need to be worked into your quote.

A production is described as such, because it’s exactly that – a production. It takes hours of planning, logistics, and administration for even a 3 minute marketing video. All that time can’t go unpaid, and will be worked into your quote.

Post production is pretty much the same story, however it is even more involved. Expect to see costs for things like editing time and music rights in your quote as well.

As with any company, overhead costs vary, and those costs get passed to you, the customer (which is true of any business). There are things such as liability insurance (you should make sure your productions have some), and equipment.

The cost of these things has to be spread out throughout the year and worked into every production estimate and eventually, invoice.

If you’ve successfully conveyed what your needs are to your production company of choice, then they should have a good understanding of how many people it will take to produce your campaign. A good question to ask yourself at this point is, how much is your time worth to you?

The more people you can afford to have work on your campaign, usually means the actual pre, post and production time will be cut down, freeing more of your schedule to focus on working on what you do best.

After all is said and done, some companies are willing to work with you if you’re upfront about your budget. Hopefully, you have an interest in marketing and advertising your product or service the proper way because you see the value in it as an investment.

What you can afford and what you are willing to shell out for your campaign are two very different things. You should have a clear idea of which is more important to you, and how much quality vs. cost means to you, because it’s in direct correlation to the finished product you will receive.