Is your video content your product or is it your marketing?

Creating videos as part of your marketing strategy can easily lead you into a perfectionism trap. We consume a lot of video content on platforms like YouTube and Instagram that are of exceptionally high quality and it distorts our perception and expectations towards our own. Because here’s an important distinction to consider.

Coming from a filmmaking background (as deep as having worked on the movie "Dune: Part One" in a technical role) I understand the effort required to produce visually and acoustically polished content. Good-looking content that sounds great and feels great takes a lot of time, money, and expertise to create. This is particularly true for YouTubers and some Instagram content creators whose videos are their products. They earn some money from YouTube and Instagram, but primarily from sponsorships and affiliate marketing. These creators can afford to spend an entire week—five days at eight hours each—on a single video because that video is their product.

However, if you are a solo entrepreneur providing a service or selling a physical product, your videos are not your product. They are your marketing tools. You simply don’t have the luxury of spending a whole week to create one high-quality video. At best, you might have half a day a week—let’s say six hours—to dedicate to content creation. Spending six hours on a video or podcast will never match the production value of someone who can devote an entire week to it. And that’s okay.

Quality is not everything. Most of the content I create is of lower visual and production quality and often not even edited. The critical distinction is whether your videos or other content (podcasts, articles, images, slideshows, carousels, stories) are your product or your marketing.

If they are your product, treat them accordingly.
If they are your marketing, treat them as such.