Explainer videos are the perfect way to introduce yourself to your audience. They allow you to engage with your audience while providing important information about your products or services. With a strong enough explainer video, you can drive inbound traffic, sales, and brand awareness.
Animation is the natural compliment to an explainer video. It’s instantly engaging and interesting, demanding your audience’s attention. Using them together allows you to hook your audience and then deliver important information to them. The key is getting it right.
Here are some of the most important dos and don’ts of animated explainer videos:
Do: Create a Video For a Specific Audience
The best way to get results with an animated explainer video is by using it to reach a very specific audience. You need to know who your audience is, what problems they face, and what they care about. You’ll need to use this information to decide what benefits your video should highlight.
It’s also vital to know where your target audience is in relation to your sales funnel. If they’re brand-new prospects, it makes sense to provide higher level information, trying to drive them to become a fan of yours. If they’re long-time customers, you can focus on something more specific such as a new product or service upgrade.
Don’t: Stifle Your Creativity
The purpose of an explainer video is to provide important information, so you need to make sure it sticks. Using a bit of creativity goes a long way to grabbing your audience’s attention and making your video memorable.
This is one reason that an animated explainer video can be so effective. You won’t be held back by anything except your own creativity. Locations, actors, and props aren’t a concern. Take advantage of this freedom by injecting your explainer videos with humor and personality. It will make them much more memorable, and much more effective.
Do: Offer Your Audience a Story
Using your video as a storytelling device is a good way to grab your audience’s attention and keep them interested throughout the video. Develop your video script with the traditional three-act story structure in mind: use the beginning to create a hook, include all your important information in the middle, and end with a satisfying conclusion. Using this template makes your video easier to develop and helps to strengthen your message.
Don’t: Focus Solely On the Features
A dirty secret of video marketing is that your audience simply doesn’t care about features. They don’t care about how your products or services help them out, they only care about what problems they can solve. This is another reason targeting your audience and telling a story is so important – your audience wants to know what you can do for them. Make sure that your animated explainer video is dedicated to providing them that information and you’ll get the results that you’re hoping for.
Do: Pay Extra Attention to the Script
When you’re creating an animated explainer video, it’s easy to focus on the animation. After all, that’s what’s making your videos unique. The script, however, is perhaps the most important aspect of your video. Without a strong script, you won’t be able to provide your audience the information they need or get them to care about your brand.
Keep your writing simple, free of technical terms or jargon. Avoid using too many cliches or sounding like a used car salesman. Take the time to read your script out loud to make sure that it flows naturally and sounds okay. This process is vital since a strong script leads to a strong video.
Writing a strong script takes time and many drafts, but nailing it is well-worth the effort.
Don’t: Let Your Video Run Too Long
It’s important to fill your video with as much useful information as possible, but you must keep it concise. Audiences get bored and navigate away as soon as their interest is lost. The longer that your video runs, the more likely they are to do so. In fact, so viewers might not even be willing to click a longer video in the first place.
Ideally, your video will run between 1 and 2 minutes long. If it’s any longer than that, you’ll risk alienating and losing a large portion of your audience. If you run any shorter, you might not provide enough information to effectively educate and convince your audience.
Do: Include a Relevant Call to Action
The end of your animated explainer video must include a call to action. It’s a relatively easy suggestion, but many marketers overlook how important it is. Your call to action must be relevant to your audience, and make sense for where they are in your sales funnel. If they’re mostly a newer audience, for example, you don’t want to push them to make a purchase right away. Asking them to subscribe to your newsletter or take a look at some other videos makes more sense.
Most importantly, make the next action simple to take. Include a link that pops up directly over the video or immediately below it. If you’re asking them to take a different action, like make a phone call, make sure the number is clearly provided. The easier you make it for your audience, the more likely they’ll be to take the next step.
If you don’t tell your audience exactly where to go next, they won’t take any further action.
If you’re looking for help creating the next great animated explainer video, make sure to reach out to us here at Blue Wave Marketing. We have decades of experience helping our clients explain the benefits of their brand to their audience using video, live events, and much more. We’ll be able to help you through the entire process – from strategic planning to ideation to the actual production of your videos.
For even more information on how to make sure your animated explainer video is as effective as possible, take the time to download our eBook 5 Critical Steps to Producing an Epic Animated Video. You can download it for free by simply clicking here!
