2020, the year that marks the peak of the video for marketing success. No one can deny the impact video has on any industry marketing strategy. Video has become an essential path for marketers and small businesses/startups. One type of video has particularly garnered positive reviews from marketing specialists. We are here discussing animated explainer videos.
It’s important for business marketers to ask themselves a few questions that will determine how they will go about the video for marketing success. Before engaging in any campaign, we need to know what makes an outstanding video first. We also need to establish what story we should highlight, and how to look for elements that will keep the audience both entertained and informed. These questions provide factual information that will contribute to the structure of your video campaign.
If you find the answers to your questions, then you have unlocked the road to video for marketing success. It’s true that successful campaigns require time and effort to reach prominent success. If you ask any of the big companies' marketing team you will notice that they have all started from level 0 to reach their position. Yet, this shouldn’t discourage small businesses that have only managed to create a few campaigns and generate modest customer conversion rates.
As a starting point to your video for marketing success, an animated explainer video is one of the popular mediums you can use in your campaign. It’s renowned for all age ranges. The reason is the fact that people get emotionally attached to animated videos. Therefore, they can connect on a deep level with the product showcased.
Emotions are considerably assisting the transmission of the right message to viewers. They are the ultimate brands' target to increase revenues, traffic, and most importantly loyalty. You will notice that most brands choose to express happiness in their ads or use children. This is because the happiness score is higher and it is the most popular affection among viewers when watching a video. Fun videos are also popular. The study was conducted and compiled in data by Unruly, a video ad tech company.
Besides emotions, many elements need to be considered when working with animation videos to achieve video for marketing success. Before diving into these elements, let’s first take a look at what should be avoided in your video marketing campaign.
For small businesses and startups, coming up with a video marketing strategy means allocating the majority of savings in order to reach that video for marketing success. Some of these companies hire a professional marketer or simply use modest tools to advertise their brand.
In both cases, content creators need to plan ahead and conduct a thorough case study. They also need to research what their audience would most likely enjoy watching. The one thing you don’t want to experience is for you to create your video marketing campaign and be defeated. You can’t risk your time, money, and energy preparing and expecting video for marketing success without actually knowing common trends and strategies.
The following are few actions to avoid when working on your video marketing campaign:
You definitely want to skip this plan. When working on your animated explainer video, you don’t want to come across as a pushover. You want the viewers to click on all the links and check your products subconsciously. The more natural you come off on screen the more people will be driven to check your website and might as well purchase your brand on the first encounter.
Video marketing is essentially selling your brand to strangers. So when you create different animated explainer videos demanding people to check something, 95% of the audience will decline your offer and might as well block anything from your company. You can’t risk being shut down by a group of people as you will limit your audience reach.
Businesses should aim to establish relationships by covering and showcasing products’ functionalities. Animated explainer videos should not force people to purchase the product otherwise people will try to skip your ad. You should aim to be clear and informative. People will be inclined to check your website for more information.
Who has time to watch a 10 min ad on social media? We live in a fast-paced world where people acquire information in the fastest way possible: social media. As of 2020, the average daily social media usage is 145 minutes per day. People spend around 3 hours and 53 minutes on social media each day worldwide according to Statista.
This implies that people scroll up and down social media platforms for 3 hours daily. So when people browse the internet and encounter a 10 to 15 min ad, they will most likely check the first 5 seconds and move on. Only people who are already familiar with a certain brand would go through the whole video and expect new updates.
Long videos also tend to be redundant. You can’t fit all aspects of a product into a single video. That is why there are different types of videos for each stage: introductory video during a product launch, animated explainer video for product features, training videos to publish on Youtube, short video for a special discount for example to add to Instagram stories, and so on!
If you add all this information in bulk to a single video, you will risk its significant value. Plus, the human being’s attention span is limited day by day. The perfect length to create your animated explainer video is under 3 minutes. Furthermore, it also depends on the platform you intend to use for your video marketing strategy.
Video for marketing success depends first and foremost on a clear call to action. It is a closing statement in which you guide viewers to the next steps after watching the video ad. They are essential to a video in a sense you most certainly secure a deal.
Sometimes call to action in videos marks the shift or the turning point in the storyline. If you’re marketing a product or a service by recounting a story through an animated video, the climax is generally where you should add your call to action. It can either show how that specific product can help the protagonist in your videos, or how using the brand’s service will lead to a happy ending.
It’s important to note that the storyline in an animated explainer video needs to be in line with the product’s functionality. You can’t just use a random storyline or lie about a specific feature on your product just to get views.
Just as we expressed that overpromotion can sometimes kill your video creativity, a shallow promotion also has undesirable side effects. The golden rule to learn here is that you need to promote your products based on what you would like to achieve for your video marketing strategy. Just as marketers need to conduct research on potential audience and revenue, they also need to understand what they would like to gain from these promotions and how they will affect the brand.
Moderation is key to everything. You can’t promote your videos on a single platform and outcast the rest. Most social media platforms and any content platform today support videos. You need to consider promoting on Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Websites, and more! One of the perks of today’s world is that people consume digital content more than any other medium. Therefore, promoting on all these platforms is crucial to generate organic traffic and secure potential customers.
Social media platforms make it easy to upload your animated explainer videos and add any additional information or links. The best part is that the process is free and only takes a few seconds to grow your brand awareness.
Video SEO is essentially optimizing your video content. SEO indexes and ranks videos higher on the search engine results pages using relevant keywords. Since the video for marketing success has become popular in the business industry, the number of videos online is peaking every single day. (a 2021 study by Youtube shows that content creators upload around 300 hours of videos on the platform every minute!)
Accordingly, it has become more challenging to rank in the universal search results with the extreme competition in the video industry. Therefore, videos need to go through an SEO strategy as well to increase viewership rates.
Seo strategy concerns optimizing videos by adding the proper keywords, eye-catching thumbnail, meta tags, title descriptions, reduce image sizing, etc.
Animated explainer videos are one of the mediums many content marketers can use to aim for their video for marketing success. Regardless of whether you choose to work on animated explainer videos or live-action depending on your budget, you need to make sure that the content speaks to your audience.
The core focus should be on stories and not sales. Yes, the revenues are crucial but they are just a small part of the whole package. Since the competition in the digital marketing industry can be quite draining, brands need to aim to build a relevant relationship with an audience that will always have their back.
If you want your video creation to be viewed by more people, you need to create a value for them to claim. Videos that are heavily promotional and poorly advertised will face failure. Brands always need to attach a significant story in animated explainer videos.
These stories can be brand creation stories, solutions to an existing issue, success stories, etc. The better you recount the brand in these videos, the more credible people will understand what your company is presenting and how the services can be of use to them.
You also need to make an impact in the first few seconds of playing your video. We have seen how people are now busier and their attention span is decreasing by the day. Most people will only watch the first few seconds to understand what the video is about and based on it they will choose to continue watching or scroll past it.
No need for all the boring information, the best practice is to start off the video straight away with the necessary information. You might as well go straight to the call-to-action segment. Another aspect that could help in this matter is to attach an eye-grabbing thumbnail to your video. This way you will give your audience a first impression of what they can expect from your video.
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
Linkedin
Youtube