Ultimate Animated Marketing Video Checklist
Animated marketing videos are fast penetrating the video marketing space. While they may look like jolly new inventions, animated videos have been around for a long time, specifically since 1906.
Today, animated marketing videos have gained sophistication (thanks to breathtaking advancements in animation technologies) and an extended range of business applications.
Particularly, brands are leveraging these animated videos for marketing, incredibly driving sales and broadening their audience reach.
But what fundamentally is an animated marketing video, and how does it differ from your traditional camera-shot videos?
Animated marketing videos are video creatives made from illustrations and graphic designs enhanced with computer-generated effects that help you essentially sell your brand.
Animated marketing videos for business can be educative and explanatory of your service or brand identity, but most importantly, optimized towards sales.
That is, the driving intention or ultimate objective of these videos is to compel your audience to take targeted actions.
The animated marketing video production process is largely what typified animated marketing videos.
So instead of the orthodox video production process where you load the scenes up with actors and props, the whole action is animated with computer-generated imagery.
Why animated marketing videos are important for your business?
Indeed, businesses are increasingly deploying animated videos for marketing. The boom in this marketing integration of animated videos can be traced to how visually expressive they are and how much they help brands to show their audience what they (brands) are all about.
So here are some of the reasons why you definitely need to integrate animated marketing videos into your marketing strategy.
Animated marketing videos help you sell your brand better
The best animated marketing videos help you visually send your message better to your audience. There is no denying that your customers prefer to watch it than read it.
Statistics show that 79% of people prefer watching videos to reading text. You really can’t blame them, right?
Animated product marketing videos give your audience an enhanced visual comprehension of what your product is about.
Let us face it.
It takes a smart person to put the pieces together when they read text-based expositions about your brand.
But when they watch your animated video, say an explainer video, it’s so easy to see and easily catch up with what your product is about.
So fundamentally, marketing videos animated help you better visually engage your audience. They see what you do, and they better relate to your brand, consolidating a stronger emotional connection.
Animated marketing videos help transmit complex concepts more easily
The best animated marketing videos help your customers remember you more. When you read a text, it’s naturally so easy to forget.
It’s quite challenging to recall some of the intricate details. But with marketing videos animated, the graphic component of your marketing resonates more with your audience.
With animated marketing videos for business, your brand has visuals that your audience can more easily recall, effectively giving you more sustainable assets to tie your brand to in their memories.
We agree the average human being remembers more of what they saw than what they read.
Therefore, animated marketing videos, especially garnished with a powerful storyline, captivating illustrated creatives, and humor, make your audience remember you before their name.
Do you know that 80% of people remember what they’ve watched in the video? The number of people that remember to text the rate is significantly lower.
Animated marketing videos help you save enormously
Animated marketing videos are super cheap! When it comes to video creation, you want to optimize your resources without necessarily cutting down on results.
Animated marketing videos help you spend less on marketing creatives while amplifying results.
Sounds like eating your cake and having it back? It could be!
Let us make a comparison. When shooting a live video for your brand, you will look at getting the stage, scenes, characters, and other props set.
Effectively, this would cost you thousands of dollars, if not tens of thousands. And when you bring that into context, you see that with an animated marketing video (where almost everything is digital), you save way more.
Animated marketing videos for business are cheap because you don’t necessarily need to hire paid actors.
You mostly need a scriptwriter, the animator, the voiceover artist, and you’re good to go when compared to live videos. In some cases, you can handle all these roles in-house.
One useful hack on how to make animated marketing videos for business is using lifetime subscriptions from animated marketing software, where possible.
Animated marketing videos save you from the limitations of reality
Sounds confusing?
The horizons of creativity in the best animated marketing videos are not bounded by reality.
In a real-life marketing video, your actors can’t readily defy the laws of physics. For example, there is no way an actor could actually jump 3000 feet into the air, despite how badly the video narrative would have loved them to.
Your video production team is consequently forced to make your video exciting within the tight confines of realism.
But with animated marketing videos, if you (or the animation team) have appreciably mastered how to create animated marketing videos, you can push the envelope a bit more.
In an animated marketing video, your characters and scenes can be built to easily pull off “impossible” moves, reviving the excitement and thrill of your video.
Ultimately, your audience finds your digital marketing animated video more fascinating to watch, ultimately increasing conversion.
Sound like bad business?
7 emotions that your animated marketing video MUST integrate
As humans, there is no denying that we are emotional entities. Therefore, certain emotions make or break the effectiveness of your animated marketing video.
First, here are seven emotions your animated marketing video must trigger in your viewer to achieve the desired results.
Confidence
Your animated video marketing must inspire trust in your audience. With today’s business environment littered with fraudulent actors, your audience is understandably skeptical about your authenticity.
To convert your prospects, your video must establish your authority as an uncontested destination for the solution to their needs.
By transmitting your credibility and capabilities, your video helps your audience overcome buying objections, assuring them of value for their money and getting them closer to conversion.
Fascination
Admit it, buddy. You struggle to forget fascinating movies, don’t you?
The same goes for the best animated marketing videos. Animated marketing videos that integrate fascinating stories and visual presentations get customers to act more – and faster.
Far gone are the days of boring marketing videos that get your audience snoring by the third second. Keep your videos concise, relatable, and most especially arousing.
It is a super-effective way to retain the interest of your audience, absorb their attention, and send your brand message resoundingly.
Empathy
Your animated marketing video must transmit a genuine sense of empathy and understanding. People take action faster when they are convinced you truly care about them, know their plight, and want their satisfaction above their dollars.
Your video must show you profoundly understand the pain point of your prospect. An acquaintance with their situation shows you are better informed to streamline your solution to the peculiarities of their circumstance. This makes your prospect more open to becoming customers.
Also, showing your viewers you have been in their situation triggers a sense of camaraderie with such a sense of fellowship, facilitating trust and brand-customer bonding.
Curiosity
Still remember the way your heart races when you watch a really thrilling movie? Still remember the way your nerves rattle (forgetting just everything around you) as you eagerly anticipate the next scene?
Animated marketing videos that inspire curiosity in your audience equally have such an engrossing effect on your audience.
A relatively long digital marketing animated video needs suspenseful storylines to retain the audience’s interest to the end.
By triggering a sense of suspense in your prospects, your animated video for marketing “confiscates” their attention, holding them spellbound until the end of the video, where the call to action comes in.
Honesty
Few things put potential buyers off as fast as deception. On the other end, few things disarm potential buyers, making them open to doing business with you, as a sense of candidness.
Yes, it is becoming conventional to paint exaggerated and fictional realities in marketing.
But your animated video marketing SHOULD NEVER LIE. Never assure prospects of a deliverable you can’t fulfill or boast of a feat you have not achieved.
Avoid the fast-and-furious approach of hyping facts and numbers to boost your brand in your animated marketing videos. The prospects such distorted animated product marketing videos acquire usually don’t stay long.
Falsified marketing videos are regrettably unsustainable in client acquisition, with your brand’s credibility falling faster than a pack of cards once the manipulated inaccuracies in your animated marketing video are found out.
Happiness
Who doesn’t love a good time? Your animated video marketing must be entertaining to have the desired effect on your audience.
This is the 21st century, and your prospects are inevitably inundated with marketing messages. Another marketing video on their social media newsfeed or TV is sure to put them off.
How then do you appease them and buy enough tolerance for your video? By making it ENTERTAINING!
Keep it fun, lively, and possibly hilarious. From the voiceover to the storyline and visual creative, your animated marketing video must be energetic and memorable.
Ultimately, your viewers must feel they have enjoyed a good time after watching your video. This way, they are better posed to take action.
Positive fear of missing out
By positive fear, your animated video marketingmust make your audience feel that inaction on their part after watching the video would cause them to miss out on a remarkable opportunity.
Your animated marketing video – especially one selling a product or service – must be structured so that your audience fears they wouldn’t be getting a better deal any time soon if they fail to act on the video.
With as much conciseness as possible, your animated marketing video must communicate the inevitability of your product and how time sensitive the offer you present is.
Note that this necessarily doesn’t mean stuffing deadlines into the offer in your animated marketing video.
3 emotions your animated videos for marketing should never trigger
On the other side of the fence, there are FORBIDDEN emotions your animated marketing video should never communicate to your audience.
By triggering these emotions in your prospects – however unintentionally – your animated marketing video risks putting off your potential buyers and discouraging them from taking the desired action.
Confusion
Clarity is one critical parameter you shouldn’t miss out on when exploring how to make animated marketing videos for business.
Your animated marketing must be CLEAR about what your brand is and what you offer. Most likely, your targeted buyers don’t have an IQ score of 200+. Therefore keep your video as simple as possible.
The last thing you want is your audience racking their brains to figure out the underlying message behind your video.
Your storyline, as interesting as you want it to be, must be easy to understand. Your choice of visual creatives must be easy to interpret.
Use animated marketing video software that gives you as much creative freedom to expressly demonstrate the most sophisticated concepts associated with your business.
Given the infamous impatience of today’s buyers, they are sure to abandon your video at the slightest ambiguity.
Helplessness
Your audience should never feel helpless after watching your animated marketing video. Remember, the fundamental purpose of your animated marketing video is to position your brand as a readily reachable solution to your audience.
However terrible the prospect’s situation is, your video must adequately establish your brand as a guaranteed beacon of hope.
Your animated marketing video will have failed if it makes your audience feel there is absolutely nothing they can do to improve their situation, even with your help.
Desperateness
There are fewer ways to lose the trust and respect of your audience than your animated marketing video sending a message of desperateness on your part.
Such financial desperateness tarnishes your credibility, painting you as a rip-off.
As much as you want to create a sense of urgency for your viewers to act, your animated marketing shouldn’t excessively harry the viewer into taking financial action.
If possible, your video should portray willingness on your part to give your audience the time to critically analyze their decision to buy from you.
Critical considerations on how to create animated marketing videos
When creating animated marketing videos, there are vital considerations you want to make beforehand to facilitate a successful animated marketing video production process that delivers your marketing goals while staying within budget.
Length of animated marketing videos
One of the biggest considerations when pondering how to create animated marketing videos is the duration of the video content.
The length of the video must be concretely agreed on before the animated marketing video production starts.
The recommended length of a digital marketing animated video ideally depends on the video platform through which you are delivering your animated marketing video and what stage of your sales funnel or content funnel your marketing video
is.
Are you using your digital marketing animated video for paid ads, organic social media videos, or as a webinar?
If you’re using an animated market video as paid ads creatives, you want to keep it as direct, quick, and short as possible.
This is typical if you’re going to deliver those paid ad videos on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, where marketing is generally interruptive (in terms of disrupting the natural experience of social media users).
If it is the awareness stage, your animated marketing video for a paid ad should optimally be around 60-90 seconds –if you can get it shorter, the better.
This is because your prospects are just seeing your animated marketing videos for the first time. Possibly, you have not built that acquaintance that mandates them to watch extended video ads from you patiently.
However, your animated marketing video for your sales funnel’s consideration and conversion stages can be longer.
This is granted because the customer knows a bit of the value you offer and has been reasonably engaged with your previous content.
At this point, you can proportionately increase the length of your animated marketing video.
The style of your animated marketing video
Next, you want to look at the animation style when pondering how to make animated marketing videos.
Generally, there are many styles in animated product marketing videos today. The most common styles are whiteboard animation, motion graphics, and stop motion.
Whiteboard animated marketing video software commonly maximizes white-and-black static drawings on a white screen. These animated marketing videos are engaging as they bring the speaker’s message excitingly to life.
They are quicker and cheaper to roll out via an animated marketing video maker with pre-built characters and scenes.
Motion graphics are a bit more advanced. This could involve creating custom visual creatives, rigging characters, and dedicated scenes.
In situations where it is not a regular narration — that is, an interactive animated marketing video where characters have allocated scripts –you would need to do extensive lip-syncing.
Stop motion animated marketing videos — are as you would envisage – involves taking pictures of still images and aggregating them into a coherent story with an associated voiceover.
It yet retains a bit of the old-school approach, although a lot of the process can now be automated with an animated marketing video maker.
So there you go! This is an exhaustive guide on the vitals of animated marketing videos you need to know to beat the marketing results you envisage.
At Lotusbrains Studio, we create viral animated marketing videos – expertly combining absorbing storylines with fascinating visual creatives.
Little wonder, our videos have made household names in their respective industries for peanuts. Yes, we mean that.
Feel free to contact us with your project details, and we will immediately get to work exceeding your expectations.