What’s the Best Explainer Video
Style for your Business?
Explainer Video Styles
You know that your business needs animated explainer videos, but don’t know how to get things started. You have read about it everywhere and you hear about all those start-ups that are doing just great with a video marketing strategy. But when it comes to creating a great explainer video, you have no clue how to create a video that converts.
Whether you run a startup company a big business, you need to include a great looking video in your marketing strategy. This is because there is nothing like a video that grabs the attention of your visitors. Some of the best startup videos became a launchpad for the success of some startup companies. Businesses like to use videos on their landing pages, their product catalogues as well as on their recruitment pages.
What is An Explainer Video?
An explainer video is a short live action or animated video that explains what you do, tells a story, or helps make the complex simple to understand.
Today’s busy internet users are likely to sit through an interesting video rather than going through endless pages to know more about your company. That’s why you need to partner with a company that provides professional video animation services.
There are many kinds of explainer videos that can be created and used to accomplish different goals.
Boosting your sales, launching a new product or building your brand, everything is possible with a professional looking video. Different companies have different needs. That’s why you need a new explainer video every time you want to fuel your marketing campaign.
Before you decide on the right kind of explainer video for your business, don’t forget to ask yourself the following questions:
- What is my goal?
- Who am I targeting?
- What is my video’s message?
- What is my budget?
The best online animation maker makes all attempts to understand the message you are trying to send across to your audience. The explainer video creator then recommends or chooses the best style of explainer video to boost maximum engagement and trigger conversions.
Here are the most common types of explainer videos:
- 2D Character Animation
- Whiteboard Animation
- Motion Graphics
- 3d Animation
- Live Action
These are some of the most popular animation styles, which are hugely popular among several B2B and B2C companies. The number one reason why these types of animated explainer videos are popular is quite simple.
Characters evoke emotions. All the scenes and characters which are used in the animation have more depth than an ordinary explainer video.
Your characters can be real or fictional. However, the best way to create a 2D animation is to create funny and colourful characters that instantly grab your audience’s attention.
We all like to watch cartoons and that’s one of the reason we never skip a video that features interesting characters. These types of explainer videos are popularly used for landing pages and recruitment pages.
Motion Graphics Style
When your business is all about selling a complex service or a product, you need a motion graphics video to impress your audience. This is because the use of a demo video animation can simplify the most complicated features of your products. It is easier to show how a product works or heavy machinery operates by showing it through motion graphics. If and facts, motion graphics animation gives you the best way to create a hard-hitting explainer video.
Even though these explainer videos do not initiate a deep personal connection, you can get the most out of these videos when using them for product demos and tutorials.
2D Cartoon Animation Style
2D Cartoon Animations are some of the most captivating videos in delivery messages that need to show people. They don’t have to be realistic looking drawings with Hollywood style animation. Even simple stick figures can deliver the same or even more compelling stories, when the story is well crafted.
Some messages are best served with animated characters that take on personalities your audience can relate to. One advantage of cartoon characters is that they can illustrate a problem your ideal customer faces and visualize how you solve that problem.
Whiteboard Animation Style
Whiteboard animation is another interesting and popular type of animation which illustrates sophisticated processes or cycles.
This is one of the most preferred styles of animation for non-profit organizations and corporations that want to be direct without losing the human touch. This type of explainer video is usually used to provide training or educational video content.
Businesses can also use whiteboard animation to present their company history or highlighting past and present accomplishments. Here are some of the best whiteboard animation videos to inspire you.
Make sure your audience is ready for a whiteboard animation. We’ve answered the question on how to make a whiteboard animation video here.
Live Action Style
The oldest trick in the book is to show the human side of your company. That’s why many businesses still opt to shoot live videos that involve real people. It doesn’t matter whether you want your most loyal customers to give an honest feedback of your company or your own CEO to spell out your company values in front of the camera, a live action explainer video is a great way to show that your company actually exists on paper. Companies can also livestream a Q/A session or a webinar.
These explainer videos also create meaningful connections with your audience. They work best to fuel your recruitment efforts as well as establish your credibility in the market. You can also partner with influencers in your industry to shoot live action videos.
Creative video production companies also provide models who can act out for you in your videos. However, not all companies may have the best technicians and artists to shoot live videos.
You can also make your video partially live and partially animated. There are several variations and endless possibilities to make your videos interesting. The use of fictional characters that interact and ask questions from real people is a great way to fuse both the elements together.
Adding animated motion graphics with carefully crafted sound effects will make your explainer videos way more engaging.
3D Animation Style
There is little we can do to create a mesmerizing explainer video without using 3D animation. The truth is, the possibilities are endless when you opt for 3D animation for your explainer video. It’s like watching a TV show or a movie in a cinema. If you have the budget to create a 3D animation, this is one of the best styles to choose.
How to make the Best Animated Explainer Video
Animated videos are a must-have tool for marketing any business, service or product.
A custom animated video gives more information than an infographic or plain text. Now that you know about the different styles of videos and how you can use them to promote your business, here are a few things to consider.
Budget
The biggest concerns when creating your video is your budget. Choose a video production company that works to create the best explainer video for your campaign, but does not go beyond your budget. Many video animation services work with pre-defined animations or design components that cost less. This is great news for start-ups that don’t want to go for an expensive video.
Quality and Expertise
Not every animation company produces a high-quality video. To make sure you pick the right team, make sure you check out the portfolio and testimonials of an explainer video creator. A professional animated video production company has a qualified team of storytellers and technicians.
If you want a crystal clear video with crisp audio and a hard-hitting script, choose the best quality video production companies.
Communication
Businesses fail to achieve any notable results when they fail to communicate their true needs and objectives to video production companies. It is important that you communicate effectively and establish an open dialogue to address the key issues you want to highlight in your explainer video.
Benefits of Explainer Videos
Words are tricky when you’re describing a sophisticated product or service. Including a video in your strategy lets you promote a product that is difficult to use.
Explainer videos do all the hard work for you. Whether you are creating a live action or a stop motion video, there are thousands of ways to use an explainer video according to the needs of your business.
Here are some of the best ways you can use explainer videos to fuel your marketing campaigns.
Generates more interest
Studies prove that online visitors are curious to know more about an animated video maker online company’s history, products and even work culture through videos. That’s because the human mind pays more attention to visuals than plain text. If you are looking to ignite more interest and grow your subscribers, a video provides the best way to add the wow factor to your campaign.
Improved SEO Rankings
All businesses dream of achieving higher rankings on SERPs must create animated videos online. But what does it take to get a favourable spot on Google? Not only a video is great for your brand promotion, an appropriately optimized video can also get you a decent place in the search engine’s rankings. Since, Google now is linked to YouTube, it is best to update content on your YouTube channel regularly.
Best Places to Showcase Your Explainer Video
Apart from YouTube, you can publish and promote your videos on these pages of your website.
Landing Pages
Posting a video on your landing page is a great way to provide both entertainment and information about your products and services. Choosing the best animation creator helps you come up with an interesting video that is created just for your landing page.
Career Pages
Most explainer videos are produced to promote your recruitment drive. Businesses can show their work culture through an animated explainer video to attract potential employees.
Blog
If your business website has a blog, this is the perfect place to place your explainer videos. Video content has more chances of being like or shared and increases your subscribers. Just make sure you stick to your brand’s voice.
Social media pages
You probably don’t know, but your social media followers can be your most loyal brand ambassadors.
Roughly 500 million people on Facebook watch videos every day. You can also hold contests or offer giveaways to promote your video content. When thousands of users share your video on their Facebook, Instagram or other social media accounts, you get more visibility. Since you can link back all these pages to your official website, you can get more organic traffic to improve your conversion rate.
What’s a video when it does not feature any call to action. Your video should be able to promote some kind of activity. Whether it’s about clicking on a ‘thumbs up’ image to like your video or subscribing to your YouTube channel, it’s crucial that your animated videos for business provoke the right emotions and actions.
Why every business should get an explainer video
Statistics reveal that a business can boost its chances of being on the first few pages of Google if it uses video content. But not just any video does the trick. You must partner with a good video production service company to create the best animation video to fuel your sales and engagement.
Choose an online animation maker that you’re comfortable working with. Check their portfolio and clients. The best explainer video creator does not hesitate to discuss their video creation process from brainstorming to production.
The secret to creating a successful explainer video for your business lies in partnering with the best animation creator company. A professional video easily lands you many customers and also introduces your business to a whole new segment of customers. Use video in your email marketing, on your landing page, or on social media.
If you are launching a business in a new country or community, you can create a video that resonates with the cultural and social values of people who live in that community. The goal of your explainer video helps you choose the right type of explainer video for your content.
Your video is a slick way to create that long-lasting impression you always want to leave on your audience. A great way to spark more interest is to end your explainer video on an open-ended question. This way you can prompt your audience to comment and share the video.
Conclusion
Now that you know everything about how to choose the best explainer video for your marketing campaign, initiate the process by hiring the best animation production companies to help create the perfect video. The best animation studios work with the finest animators and storytellers to produce high quality videos. Whether you want to launch a new product or promote a service; an explainer video lets you bridge the gap between your company and your consumers.
Larry Mutenda is the Founder and Creative Director at Creamy Animation. Larry is a multi-talented designer with over 20 years experience in advertising and marketing, and has a passion for fine art and design.