I was asked this week by a colleague whether I thought his company needed a corporate video. It's a very good question, and needs a properly considered answer - a perfect topic for this newsletter then.

There was a time when you would have thought yourself lucky to have received change from £25k, but today corporate video is much more affordable. I generally reckon to charge around £1000, but prices range up to about £4000. Let's take an average figure, then, of £2500 and consider what else you could get for the money.

For £2600, I could film and edit 12 product videos of one type or another. That's one a month that you could be adding to your website or YouTube channel, all working hard for you to generate traffic and support your product sales. That's also a new item to talk about in your eNewsletter every month, generating further interest online. Or, for the same money again, I could produce perhaps 17 videos composed of animated stills, working off little more than a few photos and press release or data sheet. That could be one new video added to your website every week for the next four months, forming a vital part of your marketing collateral.

In that perspective, does a single corporate video start to look like poor value for money? Well, not necessarily, but you have to be very clear about the job it's designed to do, and realistic in your objectives.

Have a quick look at this corporate video. It's pretty typical, and is perfectly acceptable. But what role does it play? It's certainly not a sales aid in the way that product videos are. And it's difficult to imagine someone going to YouTube and watching a five minute corporate video all the way through to the end.

But it does offer, for example, a very good way of establishing your credentials at the start of a presentation to potential customers, or perhaps providing an introduction to your company to new employees. On the front page of your website, it sets out your stall to visitors who may not yet know you. It helps to build credibility, and there is a lot of evidence in support of it boosting memorability. It's also a useful thing to have playing in a loop on the TV in your reception area, introducing and welcoming visitors to your company. And it's useful collateral to have playing on your stand at exhibitions.

What it's not going to do is give you a massive boost in traffic or play a significant role in supporting your sales effort in the way that other styles of video can. Personally, if I only had a limited budget, I wouldn't be putting all my eggs in that particular basket – other styles of video will work much harder for you and probably represent a better initial investment. But as part of an ongoing programme of generating video content, the corporate video certainly has an important role to play, so long as you're clear about what it can and can't do for you.