How much to charge for making promo videos for businesses?

Charge toward the top end of the going rate. there's an old expression in sales, "perception equals reality." In other words, if you charge on the low end your potential clients may think that they'll be getting an inferior product; charge on the high end and they'll think, "Wow, these guys must be awesome!"

The fact that your brother is graduating with a degree in video production/digital filmmaking is huge, and should be featured prominently in all of your sales material and during every pitch session.

I know this is more advice than you asked for but do make sure that you have the best equipment available to you. Here's a video I shot on a Canon T2i:


Will

What havee you noticed is the "typical" range that most are charging?

Test it out either with PPC campaigns or walking into places and saying a number. Look at their reactions. Can never know what a market will bare until you take this step. I quickly found out with a few days of cold-walking that I could charge double what I thought for a bit more professional site and adding a bit of extras (perceived high value).

We are a local video production company, shooting full HD on 3CC cameras with lighting rigs and editing suites, duplication machines and a 4 room office. We charge a premium. Charge as if you do this for a living. This is why I rarely do work for warriors anymore. I charge real prices unless its the simplest of work.

let me know if you need an announcement made about that on my site. Just $100 and it will be up as little as one hour :-)

I've noticed with local video you need to carpet youtube for some local terms....even make some generic niche videos and then sell the NAP (name address phone number) in the description when you find some clients. Also, charge top end, just be prepared to get rejected alot. Its fine you want the more pricey clients they will appreciate you more

I charge in the mid 4 figures for our video lead generation package. I only target clients with high customer value and we shoot high quality video. Because I am not selling just a video, but selling a complete lead generation system complete with lead capture web pages, I can charge a lot more than my so-called competitors. My USP is unique, my service is a premium service and I only work with high value clients. Once I get more testimonials, I am thinking of raising my rates.

$199 as the initial fee, then $99 a month

As a lot of the previous posters have said, you need to provide a lot more than a video. There are regional and national companies doing this by the dozen. Your value add to local businesses is going to be getting them leads (unless they need a promo video for a trade show or something). Think about it this way, if a local business gets a video done, what are they going to do with it? You need to think in terms of selling it to generate leads, get higher ranked etc. It also is a great lead in to other services. Signing up the client is the hard part, once you are in, you should be leveraging the relationship to offer services they need to help improve their business that maybe they haven't been focused on. You need to really understand their business, goals etc. to help with a comprehensive marketing campaign (which you can outsource if it's not your expertise). Things like web design, seo, pure lead gen etc. Understand their needs. If you go in with that perspective when producing the video(s) then you will have positioned yourself to providing real value and hopefully a long term relationship for both parties.

I think it also depends on the amount of work and editing you (or your brother) will be putting into it.

A video that will take a lot of work editing & shooting should be upwards of a thousand or two.

A simple flip camera YouTube video I would say go for $500.