5 Facts About Animated Explainer Videos and Production
In a recent study, 66% of consumers said that they would prefer to watch a video rather than reading about a product or service. Animated explainer videos are a great solution.
With so many potential customers seeking more entertaining content, it’s time to climb aboard the video marketing bus and start producing the content your audience is craving.
Small businesses are shying away from producing great video content because finding actors to fit their brand is expensive and difficult. They feel the only way to avoid this is to star in the videos themselves and give up because it’s too intimidating. What if there was another way to create entertaining videos?
Enter the animatied explainer video.
More and more companies are seeing the benefits of using these clever clips in their marketing campaigns. With increasing interest from consumers, it’s the perfect time to incorporate them into your sales strategy.
To find out how you can up your online content and boost sales, follow along with us and learn these five facts about utilizing and producing animated explainer videos.
What Is an Explainer Video?
An explainer video is a short clip, usually around 30-90 seconds, that gives an engaging, visual summary of your product or service.
These videos are designed to catch a consumer’s eye and build interest. Their job is to ensure your audience keeps watching to hear your message. They use a specific formula to achieve this goal and increase the number of eyes on your content.
Successful explainer videos are quick, catchy, and usually animated. These clips go far beyond basic how-to videos or step-by-step instructions and can be used in multiple areas of your campaign. The sky is the limit when it comes to this video format.
Vocalize your brand’s mission statement or zone in on a particular service to boost your sales. With incredible brand-building benefits, this method is catching the eye of major companies and start-ups alike.
So, what should you know about using an animated explainer video?
1. Animated Explainer Videos Should Be Short and Simple
The purpose of these videos is to draw viewers into your content and answer their questions. For this reason, we want to make sure to keep them short and maintain interest. They should be simple enough that the viewer could explain the subject matter after one view.
The great news about this is that you don’t have to come up with an incredibly difficult concept or try to compete with million-dollar ad campaigns. Produce simple, entertaining clips that address their needs.
If you are explaining a technical topic or addressing a lengthy subject, keep the language simple and light. Also, you have the benefit of using any visual image to supplement your explination. You are not limited to “real world” sets and props, but rather can create graphs and icons that match your brand and message.
It may even be beneficial to break your concept down into parts. Producing several smaller videos to cover multiple questions not only makes this information easier for consumers to digest and remember, but it also increases the amount of valuable content you can publish.
Always try to stick to a second-person perspective when putting together your videos. This will create a more conversational feel. Your consumers need to know why they need this product or service, not what it means to you.
The best animation explainer videos pull viewers into the content by addressing them using ‘you‘. Speaking to the individual will allow them to feel as though you’ve provided solutions specifically for them.
Remember that these videos will be a reflection of your brand so be sure to align the content and language with your brand’s voice and style guidelines for a consistent and trustworthy experience.
2. Animated Explainer Videos Will Improve Your Chances of Being Found
You probably already know the importance of SEO and how it affects your content strategy. As a refresher, let’s touch on this marketing buzzword.
SEO stands for search engine optimization. Essentially, it improves your chances of a higher ranking position on a Google search results page.
We know that 71% of Google users don’t scroll past the first page of results. This means that if you want potential customers to find you, you must optimize your website so that Google will feature you as a top result.
Utilizing animation explainer video in your content strategy is incredibly SEO-friendly. Integrate your keyword research findings into your video description and headings to target your ideal audience. This format will prove to google’s little crawler bots that you are providing relevant answers to the questions that users are typing in.
Not only will your webpage be more readily available to searchers, but explainer videos are proven to increase the amount of time spent on your website. This alone increases your relevancy and boosts your SEO ranking.
How do they increase your visit lengths?
As we mentioned above, these videos are designed to grab attention and keep it there. The goal here is to prevent visitors from reading the first two lines of your content and hitting that dreaded ‘back’ button. Instead, they will be sticking around to watch the solutions play out in front of them.
If your videos are entertaining and informative, viewers will find themselves clicking to the next video to learn more.
3. Animated Explainer Videos Increase Conversion and Sales
The internet has caused a domino effect of decreasing attention spans for online content. If your content doesn’t make an instant impression, potential consumers are clicking away from your site in as little as 5 seconds. This is an incredibly small amount of time to get any message across.
However, videos are proven to spark more curiosity from users than a photo or headline. You even can tailor your script to keep bringing up interest points and drawing your audience back every 8-10 seconds (around 20 words).
Now you can hold their interest and decrease your bounce rate. You can then maximize your conversion and sales by quickly and efficiently solving their problems. Easy, right?
Now don’t panic, this doesn’t mean you have to come up with a solution for world peace in 30 seconds. Remember that humans are creatures that crave instant gratification. You can feed this craving by giving them the answer they were looking for quickly and simply.
Identify what they need and tell them. Once they start to trust you to give them the information they want, they will be more interested in trying your product or inquiring about your services.
Think about it like this: How many times have you opened an email or advertisement for answers and discovered absolutely no helpful information? Perhaps they even require you to pay for it before the reveal. What is the likelihood that you will trust that company when they pop up in your browser again?
Use animated explainer videos to eliminate this annoying trend in your business model and boost your conversion and sales.
Related reading: Check out our 99Designs Review
4. They Facilitate More Meaningful Engagement
Social media platforms are working to improve user experience by filtering the content that reaches their pages. This is great for social media audiences but not very helpful when it comes to your social marketing strategy.
The most recent filter from social platforms is placing more value on meaningful engagements like shares and page clicks. Because of this, there is less weight on the likes and comments of your posts. This allows them to bring an audience more of what they want, and less spammy ads.
In order to crack this algorithm rule and appear in consumer’s feeds, your content needs to be shared, bookmarked, and reposted more.The great news is, content featuring animation encourages these essential engagements because they are an ideal format for sharing. What this means is that by creating enjoyable videos you are wrapping up your brand in a pretty little package for your audience to pass on. They can then easily and confidently share your information with their friends, family, and followers. They love sharing your video because it takes the work out of answering questions. Their audience will find it more time-efficient to watch and be able to quickly understand the concept. Now that your content is being circulated by people and pages that consumers trust, it will be gathering those valuable engagement points. You’ll start appearing in more and more newsfeeds and you know what that means. More eyes = more opportunities.
Further Reading: Synthesia Review – Ai Video Avatars
5. There’s Already a Tried and True Formula for Success
When it comes to animated explainer video production there’s no need to feel overwhelmed. Unlike commercial style videos or video-blogs, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel with every clip. The content should follow a pretty simple and specific formula to deliver maximized results.
The best animated explainer videos follow a simple four-step formula that looks like this:
Identify the problem and why it needs to be solved. Catch your viewers by addressing the problem they are facing and speak to them on their level. Use the animated images to evoke emotional relatability to the problem and speak to them in a way that makes them feel understood.
Provide a solution. Efficiently solve their problem by offering a solution. This will be your product or service.
Explain it. Show them exactly how the product or service works and how it solves the problem. Keep this simple but informative.
Call to action. Set your viewers into motion by giving them something to do. Direct them to your webpage, have them signup, or even encourage them to learn more. Don’t skip this step as it is essential for converting viewers into customers.
Simple as that. When putting together your plan, just follow this 4-part plan to produce effective videos.
Once you have an outline that fits into this layout, there are a few additional factors you can take into consideration to up your explainer video’s success.
Animated Explainer Video Success Boosters
The optimal time for your video will be 90 seconds but be sure to fit the most important touchpoints into the first 30. This 30-second mark is when viewers tend to start losing interest and click away. Be sure you are mentioning the top points within this time so that they are intrigued and keep watching.
Keep the visual content relevant to your script and don’t worry about getting too fancy with graphics and transitions. Utilize animated explainer video software to turn out entertaining clips or consider hiring an animated video production company to take your ideas and outline to the next level.
There are several different styles within the animated video category. Just because you select a certain style for one video does not mean that you are bound to this choice for all future videos.
Don’t be afraid to try your hand at a few of these styles depending on the context of your information and what you are looking to accomplish. Take note of which styles your consumers responded well to and use these findings for future projects.
Animated Explainer Video – Let’s Get Started
Now that you’re up to date on the benefits of using an animated explainer video in your digital marketing approach, it’s time to set forth with confidence and create compelling video content for your projects.
With these tips and tricks, you are guaranteed to be boosting conversion and watching your sales soar.
Ready to bring your ideas to life? Get in touch with us today and start planning your successful animated explainer video campaign.