86 percent of marketers say videos have helped them increase website traffic and 84 percent say videos have boosted their lead generation. (Source)
This number alone speaks volumes of video marketing.
Video marketing, especially today when the pandemic has pushed video consumption to newer heights, is incredibly effective and almost essential.
But that said, things aren’t as simple or straightforward as they may seem. There are many challenges on the way.
For instance, 44 percent of marketers don’t make videos because they think it’s too time-consuming, 43 percent think it’s too complicated, and 37 percent think it’s too expensive.
So, one must know how to bypass these challenges to optimally capitalize on video marketing.
Animation is not new. However, in recent times, it has become supremely popular, employed even by some of the world’s biggest brands in their marketing campaigns.
In fact, even Super Bowl ads, which now cost $5 million upwards for 30 seconds, pack animation. Either the ads are completely animated or have certain elements of animation.
Like this Super Bowl ad of Coca Cola that’s entirely animated:
And this Super Bowl ad of Oatly that has animated text overlays:
Looks great and interesting, right?
There are many reasons why such brands, along with thousands and thousands of startups and SMBs, are betting big on animation now.
And it’s a fairly good idea to follow suit and bolster your marketing ROI.
Still not sold?
You and your competitors aren’t too different. They offer the same type of product, and they are employing almost identical digital marketing strategies—including video marketing.
If you want to have an edge over them, you must do something different and better.
Animation brings you that opportunity to be unique and different in the crowd of competitors.
With beautiful and interactive visuals, you can stand out from competitors.
Look at this video by IBM:
There is no shortage of players in the Supply Chain Solutions market. But when you see this video, you are sure to remember IBM. With the help of animation and imagination, they’ve established themselves as industry leaders and have stood out from their competitors.
Of course, “stand out” alone isn’t the goal here. You have to stand out with the right identity, message, or appeal so that the consumers get attracted to your brand and engage in a profitable transaction with your business. This is why you must always work with an experienced animated explainer video production company that has a good market reputation; someone that can deliver you the perfect solution.
The world’s renowned media companies and brands are your competitors. They are working to capture people’s time – the same people who you’re targeting.
(So, you aren’t just competing with direct competitors in your industry but also thousands of other brands as well.)
And this is bad news when you realize that a human’s attention span is less than that of a goldfish.
Unless your content is really gripping and relevant, a person will move on to the next piece of content within seconds. So, you must know how to grab their attention right from the first second and keep them glued to your content throughout till the end.
How?
Animation works wonders here.
In the crowd of static and boring content, animated videos truly shine. They are colorful and eye-catchy, which does the task of hooking the audience from the first second.
So, if your digital marketing strategy is falling short in driving top-of-the-funnel traffic, animated videos can be the ultimate addition that provides you higher returns.
Look at this video by niu for Travel Alone:
It hooks you from the very first second with its slick transitions. And it keeps your eyes glued to the screen for the entire length of the video. That is the power of animation.
There are many consumers who will engage with your content or brand but won’t make any financial transaction in the first instance. And when they leave, there’s a good chance they may even forget about you.
This is why the need to have impressionable content is so important.
Animated videos fit here perfectly well.
Since they are visually striking and tell better stories, animated marketing videos for business leave a lasting impression on the audience. People remember that video (and the video-maker hopefully, if you have branded the video properly).
So, the next time they engage with your brand, they are more likely to convert – because they already remember you.
This video makes Mailchimp memorable forever. With its slick transitions and use of mixed media animation, it is a delight to watch every time.
One of the best ways to tell a brand story is through animation. And this has been proven time and again.
With the inherent properties of animation (like attractive, impressionable, and highly engaging), animated videos can tell your brand stories more loudly and with higher impact.
The video assets can explain your brand’s backstory, vision, mission, and larger goals. They can outline the core principles of the company and what the brand truly stands for.
Strong brand stories are the cornerstone to a successful and sustainable business.
So, if you’ve long been thinking about amping your brand-building efforts, this is the time to welcome animation and bolster your strategy to achieve the desired returns.
The story is the most powerful medium and Erie Insurance uses it in this video beautifully. It tells the stories of different clients and how the company could help them in their times of need. This builds trust and helps the audience connect with the company on an emotional level. This is how the story creates an impact.
When you tell compelling stories, you grab the attention of the audience and hold it for a long time. In this time, you make the audience believe that you can help them reach their goals. That you can bridge the gap between where they stand right now and where they intend to go.
And that makes all the difference. When your audience trusts you, you are bound to see conversions.
Animation helps you grab and hold the attention of your audience—and hence get more conversions.
Look at this video by Solea:
Doesn’t it motivate you to just go for it? Sure, you might be a patient and not a dentist, it is exactly what you’d look forward to in your next appointment. If your dentist were to see this video and buy the machine, you’d love the experience of going to the dentist.
A dentist looking at the video can clearly see how this can help bring more repeat customers and might go for it. If nothing, this would spark enough interest and curiosity in the product that they would visit Solea’s website.
With masterful storytelling both in terms of visuals and screenplay, the video hits all the right spots and helps drive conversions.
Now that you’re convinced why your digital marketing strategy needs animated videos, time now to address the next most important thing:
How to integrate animation into your digital marketing strategy?
This could be a bit challenging and requires some work.
The idea is to not disrupt your existing strategy and make this integration smoothly that amplifies your ROI without any hiccups.
Also, you have to think about the quality and entertainment/utility value of your marketing animated video. Because while the animation is great to achieve a range of marketing and sales goals, the returns are only satisfactory if those videos are of good quality.
The animated explainer video production company you’re working with will be of great help here. But even from your end, you must bring rich inputs to the table and have the right approach for everything to work out.
To help you get started, here are 7 tips to integrate animation into your marketing strategy:
As mentioned earlier, animated marketing videos for business can help you with virtually everything, right from driving website traffic and generating leads to making sales and building brand value.
You need to find out why you’re investing in marketing animated video. Or, to be more precise, what you’re looking to achieve from this investment?
How are you expecting animation to boost your returns? What are your expectations from animated videos?
Defining the primary and secondary goals is essential. Unless you know the ‘why’, you wouldn’t know the ‘how’. Meaning, if you don’t know what you’re looking to achieve, you would not know how you’re going to achieve anything.
Your goals will play a critical role in outlining your animated video marketing strategy, including the kind of video you produce.
Your existing marketing and sales funnels aren’t perfect. There are many gaps in them.
It's time now to spend some resources to identify these gaps and then figure how animation can help fill these gaps.
For instance, say your social media prompts aren't driving traffic to the website. This is the gap. How can animation fill this gap? The answer to this depends on the answers to questions like what kind of audience have you built on this platform and what kind of solution or content are they looking for? Should you produce long-form animation or short-form? Should your videos be entertaining or educational? Answer these questions and take appropriate measures to fill the mentioned gap.
Similarly, if your site’s average session duration is low, which is a gap in your funnel and it’s hurting your organic traffic, what kind of videos can you include on the pages to have site visitors stick around for longer?
In short, identify gaps or loopholes in your marketing and sales funnels. Thereon, find out ways how animated videos can help here.
Content repurposing is one of the most effective content marketing techniques.
Instead of creating entirely new content, why not repurpose your existing blog posts (or other forms of content) into animated videos?
You can convert your comprehensive guides into explainer videos. Or, you can turn your listicles into kinetic typography.
There are many ways to go about this. We have created a separate post, explaining how to repurpose content into animated videos. Please check it out here: A Comprehensive Guide to Repurpose Content into Videos.
This is one of the little details that are critical and yet overlooked.
You wouldn’t know what kind of marketing animated video would work better, and on which platforms, unless you have a clear idea of who you’re targeting.
This is why you need to clearly outline your buyer personas. If you haven’t already, this ought to be one of the early steps.
Gather as much information about your ideal customer or audience. Their demography, interest, job title, pain points, income, influencers they follow, and more. The more details you can gather, the better. This will help you personalize your animated videos, providing you opportunities to drive higher conversion.
Buyer personas will help you publish the right animated videos, for the right audience, with the right message, and on the right platform.
You need to establish some key performance indicators that help you measure the effectiveness and success of your animated marketing videos for business.
Not only do you need to establish these KPIs but also track them regularly.
In case, if they are inconsistent or below your expectations, you then must spend time understanding why and then making the necessary improvements.
Remember, your animated videos and video marketing strategy aren’t perfect. They need constant improvements. Unless you’re aware of the important metrics and unless you’re tracking these metrics, you wouldn’t know what and how to improve.
So, foremost, establish the key performance indicators for your marketing animated videos.
There are many different types of animation. Like, 2D and 3D animation, stop motion animation, typography animation, flipbook animation, whiteboard animation, and more…their techniques and styles vary.
One can work better than the others for you. It’s on you to find out which one will work better for you.
So, you need to explore various types of animation.
If you’ve only posted typography animation on your Instagram, how about you post 3D animation the next time?
Publishing different types of animation will also add variation to your content, keeping things interesting for your audience.
This is somewhat similar to the previous point. Only, you should experiment with more than just different types of animation.
Experiment with different distribution platforms, length of the video, concepts, and messaging.
The more experiments you will do, the more growth opportunities you will discover.
In this post, we discussed why your digital marketing strategy needs animated videos. We also explained how you can smoothly integrate animation into your existing strategies.
Time for you to level up your game.
Connect with an animated explainer video company or video production company and take the very first step today.
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