Planning Your 2027 Video Content: A Practical Guide

Most annual video budgets are set before anyone has decided what the video is for.

A figure gets carried over from last year, adjusted slightly, and approved. Then at some point in the spring someone works out what to spend it on, usually under time pressure, usually by commissioning something similar to what was made the year before. The budget was agreed; the thinking never happened. Autumn is when that can be fixed, because the figure hasn't hardened yet. This is a guide to planning a year of video content while you still have the latitude to shape what it's actually for.

Start With the Year, Not the Videos

The instinct when planning content is to list the videos you'd like to make. It's the wrong starting point, because it skips the question that determines whether any of them are worth making.

Begin instead with what the business is trying to do next year. A new market. A product launch. A hiring push. A shift in positioning. A particular objection that keeps costing you deals. These are the things video can actually help with, and each implies quite different content.

Then work out which of those are genuinely helped by video and which aren't. Not everything is. A brand entering a new market where nobody knows them has a video-shaped problem.

Five Questions Worth Answering in Advance

What do we need people to believe that they currently don't?

The most useful framing available, because it identifies a gap rather than a deliverable. If prospects don't believe you work at scale, that's a different film from one made because the website needs refreshing. Gaps produce briefs; calendar obligations produce filler.

Which audiences are we actually trying to reach?

Clients, candidates, partners, investors and existing customers all need different things and are reached differently. A single film aimed at all of them usually reaches none of them properly. Deciding the priority order early prevents the most common compromise in annual planning.

What's already fixed in the calendar?

Launches, events, trading peaks, conference dates, recruitment cycles. These are the anchors everything else schedules around, and they determine when production has to happen rather than when it would be convenient. Mapping them first prevents the familiar situation where three projects all need delivering in the same fortnight.

What do we already have that we're underusing?

Most organisations have more usable material than they think - footage from previous shoots, recordings from events, interviews that were cut short. Auditing what exists before commissioning new work is the cheapest line in any content plan and routinely skipped.

Concentration Beats Spread

The most common structural mistake in annual video planning is dividing the budget evenly across a list of worthy-sounding projects.

Spread thinly, each project gets enough resource to be adequate and not enough to be good. The result is a year of competent content that achieves little individually and nothing cumulatively. Concentrating the same budget on fewer, more ambitious pieces - supported by lighter-touch content in between, generally produces more.

A practical shape: one substantial piece that does real work for the business, two or three mid-weight projects tied to specific moments, and a steady stream of lower-cost content keeping things alive in between. The proportions shift by sector, but the principle holds, something in the plan should be genuinely ambitious, or the plan is just maintenance.

Putting a plan together for next year? The conversation is most useful now, while the shape is still open rather than once the budget is locked. Get in touch and we'll help you think it through. Happy planning!