Most advice about business video is written for companies selling to the whole country. If your customers live within a few miles of your door, almost none of it applies to you.
A local business does not need a brand film. It needs a small number of specific videos that answer what somebody nearby is actually wondering before they walk in. Here is the order that works.
What video does for a local business
Not reach, mostly. Something more useful.
It removes hesitation. Somebody deciding whether to come to your shop wants to know what it looks like inside, whether it seems like a place for them, and whether the person they will deal with seems trustworthy. Photos answer some of that. Thirty seconds of video answers all of it.
It proves you exist and are open. For a neighborhood business this is not a small thing. A place with recent video looks alive in a way a place with a photo from 2022 does not.
It works on your Google listing, which is the part almost nobody uses and where it may matter most. More on that below.
The first three videos
Make these before anything else. Together they are one shoot day.
One. The walk-in. Thirty to sixty seconds. Someone walks up to your door, comes inside, sees the space. No script. This answers the question that stops more people than any price ever has, which is “what am I walking into.”
Two. The person in charge, introducing themselves. Forty-five seconds, no more. Who you are, how long you have been here, what you do. Not a pitch. In a neighborhood business, people are choosing a person as much as a service, and this is the video that does the choosing.
Three. The work happening. Hands doing the thing you do. Cutting hair, fixing the car, preparing the food, filing the paperwork. Nearly no talking needed. This is the video people watch to the end.
That is it. Those three, filmed properly and used in the right places, do more than a single expensive brand video, and they cost less.
Where to put them, in order of value
Your Google Business Profile. Video can be added directly to your listing, and hardly any local business does it. Since the map is what most people see before anything else when they search for a local service, a listing with video stands out against a row of listings without.
Your website home page. Above the fold if you have it. The walk-in video is the right one here.
Your Instagram profile, as a pinned post so it is the first thing someone sees.
WhatsApp. Underrated. When somebody asks “where are you,” sending the walk-in video answers a question they did not know how to ask.
Note the order. The listing is first because that is where the customer is, and it is the part that is almost always left empty.
In which language
If your customers speak Spanish, film it in Spanish, or film both.
Two things worth saying honestly. First, subtitles on a Spanish video are not the same as a Spanish video: somebody hearing their own language relaxes in a way that reading a translation does not produce. Second, if you make both versions, use each in the right place rather than pasting both everywhere.
For a business in much of the Bronx, Spanish first and English second is often the correct order, not the other way around. Look at who walks in.
What not to spend money on yet
- A drone shot of the neighborhood. It looks good and it sells nothing.
- A voice-over in a language you do not speak. People hear it.
- A polished sixty-second brand film, before the three basic videos exist. It is the most common way a small budget gets spent on the least useful thing.
- Actors, when you have real customers and real staff. Real reads better here, and this is a neighborhood where people recognize each other.
Realistic budgets
Under $500. A phone, a $30 clip-on microphone, and a window for light. If you plan the three videos and film in the morning near a window, this genuinely works. The microphone is the part that is not optional.
$1,500 to $3,000. A shoot day with a small crew: the three videos plus ten to fifteen short vertical pieces, edited and captioned. Best value for most local businesses, because you leave with a quarter of content instead of three files.
$4,000 and up. Adds a second location, more considered lighting, a testimonial from a customer, and a longer piece for your site.
If you are choosing between spending it all on one polished video and spending it on a day that produces fifteen, take the fifteen. Consistency beats polish for a local business, every time.
The thing that matters more than any of this
Video helps somebody decide once they have found you. What decides whether they find you at all is your Google listing and your reviews.
If you have not claimed your Business Profile, or you have eleven reviews and the shop down the block has ninety, fix that before you film anything. It is free, it is more powerful, and video will work much better afterward.
We will tell you that on the phone if that is your situation, before quoting you anything.
If you want it done
We film around New York from a studio in the Bronx. A first shoot day for a local business usually covers the three videos above plus a batch of vertical clips, delivered captioned in English, Spanish or both.
We come to you, since a local business video should look like the actual place.
Tell us about your business and we will come back with a plan and a number, including the version where you spend less.
You can also read what video costs in New York by type, or how a shoot day produces a quarter of content.