We live in a world where attention spans are waning and where you can search and digest a little bit of everything all of the time. Thanks to the wonders of the internet abyss you have a limited window to capture your audience’s attention before they fall down another rabbit hole of content and information.
How many times have you visited a website only to be confronted by reams of text and then swiftly clicked away? How often have you tried to find some information about a product only to be directed to download a document and then the file doesn’t open quick enough or is so badly designed that you make an immediate judgement on that brand and go elsewhere? This limited window is a crucial moment to capture your audience’s attention, explain to them what it is your offering and make them feel something about your brand. If they don’t feel a connection with your brand and understand it, they’ll likely go elsewhere. This isn’t a rare occurrence, it happens all the time. But you can avoid it. Using video to explain a product or service is incredibly powerful and animated video especially is incredibly versatile. It definitely belongs in every business marketing toolkit. 86% of businesses already do and 93% of marketers say it’s an important part of their marketing strategy! So, what are you waiting for? Here’s why animated video is the best way to explain anything…
1. You have complete control
To put it simply, you have complete control over what’s on screen. You can control the pace, soundtrack, voiceover and the design and style of your characters and illustrations. Being able to tailor the style to your brand, ensuring it’s consistent with all your other marketing assets is a win-win situation. On top of that, there’s no need to worry about the cost or stress of finding the right actors, organising schedules of multiple people or finding the right locations and scheduling and budgeting for those. And because you aren’t caged in by time constraints for locations and actors, you can really take time to ensure it’s absolutely right for your brand. No costly re-shoots and no re-hiring actors for extra time can mean that choosing animation is actually much more cost-effective.
2. You can reinforce the message
Using animated video to communicate your product and service means that you can reinforce your messages by combining audio and visual elements at once. Using illustrations, infographics, product illustrations and demonstrations and highlighting important key points with animated text as well as audio, means your message is boosted, absorbed and there’s more chance of retention.
You don’t need to just tell your customers what you’re offering, who you are or how it works, you can show them! As a bonus, all the wonderful, beautiful illustrations and graphics can then be used across your print and digital media as well! Ensuring consistency and boosting brand awareness.
3. Consumers expect video
It’s no secret that your audience just prefers learning things by watching a video. Who has the time to read reams of text these days? Not us (in fact, maybe we should make this content into a video). There are tonnes of data out there to support this, we’ve gathered our favourites here.
4. It inspires action
What do you say when someone asks you what you do? If you’ve got 1-2 minutes to explain that to someone, where do you normally start? It would be impossible to tell them everything in that time frame so don’t feel like you need to cram everything in. Instead, think of your video as a teaser trailer, or as your elevator pitch. Rather than telling your audience everything, it’s more important that they leave feeling that they understand who you are and what you do and that they care. 84% of people say that they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video. That’s huge! If you can make a connection with your audience they’re more likely to take action. To do this, there’s a simple formula: Identify the problem, explain your solution, cover the benefits and most importantly; call them to action. If you haven’t told the viewer what to do next or where to go, you’ve lost them forever. Make it clear what action they need to take to get started, get in touch or find out more information.
5. Its shareability
Animated video just won’t quit! And they live everywhere! You can showcase it on your website, send in your email marketing campaigns, social media content, presentations, sales pitches. You could even project it onto a giant building if you wanted to. (Go nuts!).
They can be watched over and over again, shared infinitely across the globe. Not only that, people are actually more likely to share video content than any other type of content. Did you know that people watch an average of 18 hours of online video per week?. So don’t get left behind. Video is here to stay.
