Rippling: Video Services Overview

B2B Tech

As Rippling sets out to roll out video content, IRON is here to help—from production to promotion.

Step 1: The Video

In our experience, video production falls into three broad categories. Below, we’ll discuss those categories and their ballpark pricing.

Tier 1

For Tier 1, we’re looking at basic motion graphic pieces—short-form, with modest animation. These are great for high-volume customer testimonial needs. They are generally quick out the door and not promoted heavily. In fact, they are actually often designed to be used as promotions themselves.

Ballpark cost for 1-3 minutes:
$5,000-$7,500*

*Range depends on length and amount of conceptual development

Tier 2

For Tier 2, we’d be doing longer-form, more sophisticated motion graphics or simple live-action productions. The end products here are anchor pieces that tell the brand story—and definitely merit promotional support.

Ballpark cost for 1-3 minutes:
$10,000-$30,000*

*Primary budget variable is length

Tier 3

Tier 3 productions are fully-baked live shoots, involving a well-considered pre-production and strongly curated production process.

Ballpark cost:
$40,000+*

*Primary budget variables are length and number of locations

Written Content

Before we jump to promotion, let’s take a moment to look at companion content.

Often a video will have a written companion piece. This content is usually fully designed to include info-graphics, pull quotes, and other visually engaging elements—and it is generally produced as a downloadable PDF or site-based page. These pieces can often have a life of their own, extending the volume of marketing and impact generated by the video project.

Ballpark cost
$2,000-4,000

Anatomy of an Asset Ecosystem

So when it’s all said and done, we’ll have a great video asset and possibly a written asset. Where do we go from there?

The process starts with some questions. And those questions should evolve naturally and become codified over time. Is the asset part of a larger effort to attract a new market? Or is it a niche market experiment? Is there a lot of comparable messaging in the space? Or is it a unique message that will get natural SEO traction without a big spend? And so on and so forth.

Once we know where the asset stands in the larger scheme of things, we can define the appropriate campaign components. The cost of bundled campaigns generally lands between $3,000-10,000, depending on the number of components, whether display ads are static or animated, etc. But let’s take a look at the standard toolkit:

Paid and/or unpaid promotion on LinkedIn, X, Threads, or any other go-to social channel is an anchor for virtually every asset promotion effort.

Email ranks right alongside social as an anchor promotional tool. And typically, our clients establish a range of email journeys that vary in intensity. (Depending on the assessed value of the asset, we may be producing anywhere from one to five emails.)

Assuming your website is mapped with promotional opportunities, onsite placements are an obvious play. That said, if you have a very aggressive content calendar, not every asset will merit the real estate.

Like onsite placements, promotions in your newsletter are a no-brainer. But you may need to be even more choosy about what you include here, depending on the frequency of the newsletter and the amount of space you’ve allocated to promotion. (Making it too ad-heavy is bound to turn off your readership.)

Display advertising is the next step up from social in terms of budget commitment—it’s going to cost some coin, but if the asset is supporting a major initiative it’s almost always part of the mix.

Finally, a landing page may or may not be strictly necessary. (Downloadable assets need one, but for onsite articles, it’s a maybe.) Whether the landing page is gated is a secondary question, usually answered based on breadth or depth of audience. Assets that can attract a lot of leads or a small number of very warm leads are both candidates for gating—but overusing it can alienate your audience.