Digitalisation has democratised a lot of things in the past decade, one such is marketing. While traditional marketing via billboards and banners are still taking place, the impact of online marketing cannot be ignored!
What makes it so important today, is the tech-savvy audience. As there is no age bracket which is not using the digital platforms today, every brand has raised the need to reach their prospective and present clients via social media. Now, marketing on these media is not easy as users are usually scrolling at a fast pace and may not stop for an ad as such. Amidst all the options available to advertise, one option that has been grabbing the attention of the audience successfully is the animated explainer videos. Well, let's have an insight into the process of animation and how it benefits a brand?
What goes into producing an Animated Video and budget for the brand?
Being easy to make if one approaches an expert, an animated video is efficient in terms of money and costs. So even if you are a small business with a limited budget, well you can have a kickstarter campaign marketing your brand. And in the era we are in, every single editing tool and latest technology is being present to be availed by brands themselves, if you decide to get a video created that resonates with your customers, here is a process you will have to go through:
Ø Step One
Scripting: Every video has a purpose and target audience. Scriptwriting is an underpinning and first thing involved in animated video production. If you are outsourcing, you will usually talk through your ideas, and the key messages that you want to convey in your video. At this stage, you get a brief document of a script which can be revised unlimited times for the optimum results and clear message to be crafted.
Key decisions to be made: Length of the video, what kind of characters, the text required as per the length of the video for voiceover.
Ø Step Two
Designing: Once the outline is created, what's on paper gets designed into graphics and the process of illustrating everything that was mentioned in your script. From characters like dogs and humans to the moon, and whoever and whatever else is needed, since each element is designed according to the script, the end product is unique. After a few working days, you will have a storyboard at hand with everything that will be put together in your moving video.
Key things to notice: The plot of the story has followed what your expectations were when you read your script and visual components of your video reflect your brand, and also the messages you want to get across to your customers.
Ø Step Three
Voiceover and Music: Discovering the voice over artist is essential now that you have a designed storyboard ready. The music and voice over will also depend on how you want to reflect your brand. For a corporate video for a B2B business, a serious voice voiceover will be apt, while for a B2C promotional video, it can be the most fun music and friends and relatable voiceover.
Key things to notice: Nationality of your voiceover should be according to the target audience. You can also have a video with voice overs in different languages depending on your clientele.
Ø Step Four
Animation: The final step in the video production of an animated video. The animation is where your video comes to life. The animation team at the video production company takes all of the previously created assets: the script, the storyboard, the voiceover, and the music, and mix it all to create your finished, engaging video.
Key things to notice: Animation experts must have a keen ear and eye to ensure that everything is seamless. They take care of the finest detail like a character's footsteps make sounds as he walks across the screen.
WHY ANIMATED VIDEOS?
Well, animated videos are perfect for your brand if you are looking for a medium to bring your company's style, convey your values, and manifest your brand's uniqueness. The animation is a creative concept by default but is also effective in communication. As video marketing becomes more and more popular today many companies invest in animation. Thus, choosing the medium is perfect to unlock the marketing potential of an animated video for your business.
AN ANIMATED VIDEO TRANSFERS EMOTIONS AND ENGAGES THE AUDIENCE
While it is a popular source of entertainment, animated cartoons have been entertaining and indulging kids. They are also a great source of getting the information at the same being funny. The animation is indeed a very powerful tool for customer engagement and creative storytelling. It grabs the viewer's attention for a longer span than any other type of content.
A short, sharp, and saturated, and intriguing animated film equipped with all the information has the ability to transform brands marketing and can give your business a significant advantage before your competitors in the market. With its ability to transfer emotions, it can easily ensure that whatever emotion your brand wants to invoke and interact with the audience's emotions and start a more intimate conversation with them.
Well, the basic logic is that emotions often influence our choices and with animated videos that one can attach to allows brands to create a space in the audience's mind.
Increasing chances of Engagement:
As the videos invoke motions, it allows brands to engage with customers but also derives action from the audience as these videos motivate them to take the desired actions. A video can be produced to showcase the plethora of services and products that you offer to your clients. In the video, there is a potential to describe the benefits of the product in a creative way like through a conversation between two characters.
Well, once you have discussed a problem and the solution you offer, it is advised to put an inviting CTA button at the end of a video. The CTA can lead a viewer to a landing page with an in-depth overview of solutions offered.
So you can promote your brand without being too intrusive and obvious via animation and without using words to praise the services and solutions you offer. It can be entirely about something different. However, it is powerful in terms of sales.
Once the people are interested in the video content, they will want to discover the brand behind the creation and this curiosity will eventually lead them to turn from a prospective client without the brand's information to a prospective client with their information where they can learn about who you are as a brand and what products (or services) you provide.
An Explainer Video Helps Your Website Rank Better
As discussed the landing pages, well, your landing page can also be your website's home page and unlike a simple post, an interactive video has a better chance that one may visit the website. Well over the years, the web user's attention spans become shorter and it has become a more challenging task to draw the users' attention and make them stay on a website to learn more about a company.
With the power of engagement and entertainment, a video helps to keep visitors on a site longer helping them boost SEO and helps a website rank better on search engines. If people spend on a web page than on average, well that's what guides Google to put them on high priority.
Once the search engine considers your website as an authoritative web resource, it ranks it higher in search results. Both Google and customers prefer video content due to its properties of being short and informative at the same time which is a big reason to consider animated videos as a part of your future marketing effort.
Animation Helps Build Customer Loyalty and Trust
Creating a brand name is very much dependent on the image it has created and how it perceived in the audience's mind. In such a scenario, we tend to trust brands that are associated with positive emotions and invest in entertaining their customers. Animation assists this process of creating a trusted and loyal clientele which is complete allowing them to set more effective and enjoyable communication between companies and their audiences. And it drives customer loyalty.
Investing time, money, and efforts in the animated video production, one essential thing is that you also invest in your audience engagement and entertainment and let the audience subconsciously perceive it as a gesture of the brand's care of them.
An Animated Video Helps Create the Needed Associations and Build a Brand Image
It all comes down to the brand image at the end and it is no secret that eye-catching visuals evoke strong emotions and associations. With the animated video, one can do the same as it is one of the most impactful types of content both on the visual and audio level. Using a video, you can intentionally shape brand associations that create a positive brand name leading to an increase in the number of sales and leads.
Bottom Line:
From marketing storytelling to customer engagement, and entertainment, animated videos are used to help various brands shape a positive brand image by evoking the viewer's needed emotions and associations. We hope that this animated video marketing overview will inspire you to take a step towards marketing via the animated videos and get your business to prosper.
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