Animated video is an engaging medium to tell your animation clients’ stories more thoroughly in an informative, entertaining, and memorable way.
Animation can strike a broader range of emotional tones. No matter how complex a concept is, animation can bring it to life with ease. It can help cover difficult subjects in a way that the customers of your animation clients can easily digest.
With an affordable resource cost, your business can use the power of animation to meet different marketing objectives.
Different Videos Animators Can Make
Below are seven video content types to create for your animation clients and ways they can benefit their businesses.
1) Animated Advertisements
GIF from Andrey Smirney via GIPHY
Advertising is one of the oldest forms of marketing strategy. It’s the process of creating excitement, bringing awareness of a product or service, and persuading the target audience to buy it.
As an animator, you can make animated advertisements for your animation clients. They are short creative videos that quickly and clearly convey information, persuade, and remind people about your animation clients’ products or services.
With their presence on almost all social media platforms, YouTube videos, websites, and television, they have been proven effective in engaging with audiences in many niches.
Animated advertisements don’t limit your imagination. With creative animation, a clear voiceover, engaging background music, and sound effects, you can help your animation clients grow their businesses.
On the other hand, live-action advertisements can be more expensive than animated advertisements and tend to have more space for errors and delays compared to animated advertisements.
Animated advertisements can help your animation clients by:
- Raising Brand Awareness: Videos can be used to launch a product by creating a short trailer video showing what products or services are coming soon, which can help your animation clients generate buzz and create excitement. Fostering new audiences through videos is a way to cultivate brand awareness.
- Increasing Conversions: Most videos can easily grab audiences’ attention, but it takes a great video to retain viewers and entice them to buy a product or service. When published on a social media platform or website, animated advertisements have a high chance of reaching a large audience and increasing your conversion rate than promoting a product or service via word of mouth or in-store.
- Escalating Sales: Animated advertisements reportedly have 30% higher engagement rates than live-action advertisements. Including videos in emails optimize your marketing campaign. They also encourage prospects to click on the call to action button and purchase from you, resulting in an increase in sales.
An example of an animated advertisement is Nike’s cartoon advertisement, “Air Reinvented”. They used pop-art 2D animation combined with real photos to show the story of their brand.
The burst of colors and splash of different elements play with the audience’s eyes. The coolest part of this animated advertisement is the way the sounds and visuals change every time a new sneaker model comes in.
2) Explainer Videos
In a world where everybody seems to hurry, getting a quick overview of a product or service is preferable. Explainer videos are one of the most recognized ways to relay information to your animation clients’ prospects and customers who might not have the time to research on their own.
Explainer videos are short videos used to break down complex processes or ideas in a comprehensible way and offer easy demonstrations and step-by-step tutorials. Most explainer videos fall into three major categories:
- Animated Explainer Video: This is the most popular type of explainer video because of its visual nature and relative ease to create. You can create this kind of video to turn something complex and boring into something fun and very easy to grasp.
- Live-Action Explainer Video: This is harder to pull off than the first one because this type uses real people to explain a service or a product and it requires a lot of creativity to keep it interesting. It also requires a lot of planning because revisions are hard to make, especially at the later stages of the production. Compared with animated explainer videos, live-action explainer videos are very limiting. This type is ideally used for companies that want to connect with customers on a human level and show their products or services in action.
- Crowdfunding Explainer Video: Crowdfunding campaigns aim to raise large amounts by getting small donations from people interested in a product or service. A significant success rate of 50% is seen when a video is used to back up a crowdfunding campaign. Including animation in your crowdfunding videos allows you to make your story more fun, memorable, and engaging. Good visuals and audio will help your campaign's most important message stick with your audience.
Explainer videos can benefit your animation clients by:
- Creating a Lasting Brand Recognition: The use of the color scheme, captivating visual aesthetics, unique voiceover, and script can help your animation clients build a long-term brand identity.
- Improving SEO Ranking: Explainer videos help keep visitors on a site longer, resulting in a better ranking on search engines. The more video content you create, the more quality traffic you can pull to your websites which will boost your overall SEO in the long run.
- Generating Income: Explainer videos can play an important role in your marketing strategy. According to a video marketing statistics survey conducted by Wyzowl, 80% of video marketers said that video contents directly help in increasing sales. This is also affirmed by Aberdeen's latest report wherein they found that marketers who are using video content are seeing 49% faster growth in revenue.
An example of an animated explainer video that you can get inspiration from is the one by Med Mart. Med Mart App did an awesome job in explaining how to use their app.
They talked about the complex process of plastic surgery and how their app can simplify that process while being complemented by the 3D animation and the cute music at the side.
3) Animated Educational Videos
Generally, people are better at learning things they are curious about. According to Celeste Kidd, a professor of Psychology at the University of California, people are the most curious when they feel uncertain about something.
That's where educational or FAQ videos come in. FAQ videos answer the frequently asked questions of your animation clients’ customers, leads, and business partners about the products and services they offer.
These questions can be obtained by reviewing user-submitted questions and asking questions through a survey.
There are times that your client might have to answer the same question asked by different customers. It would take a lot of their energy and time to answer each inquiry. The best solution for this is to create animated FAQ videos that:
- Build Authority: Your animation clients can establish themselves as trustworthy authorities by teaching something useful to their leads and customers.
- Foster Trust: Your animation clients can make genuine connections with their leads and customers, creating brand loyalty and improve their company’s reputation.
- Increase Conversions: Once your animation clients have gained their prospects’ trust, it becomes easier to convert them into regular customers.
An example would be Zoho Corporation, an Indian multinational technology company, who did a brilliant job with their FAQ page. Instead of a dry and plain FAQ page with text, Zoho created a series of informative FAQ videos filled with text and tutorial-based responses.
4) Animated Testimonial Videos
GIF by Saturday Night Live via GIPHY
Would you agree that one of the most challenging hurdles to conquer when closing a sale is a customer’s last-minute change of mind? Everybody wants an extra pinch of assurance. By offering testimonial videos for your animation clients, you can help assure their customers of a positive experience with them.
According to Wyzowl’s testimonial statistics, 95% of people say that reviews, may it be positive or negative, influence their purchasing decision. As an animator, you can create animated testimonial videos for your animation clients to help them generate brand trust.
Testimonial videos excel at nurturing brand trust by letting the target audience know how a company and a product have helped others like them. A great testimonial video will likely move viewers to take action after hearing from a person they consider as a peer.
Testimonial videos can be approached in different ways with their unique edge and downsides. Animated testimonial videos usually use the talking heads format but it can also be a live-action or mixed media video where the animator adds texts and other effects in the video.
The biggest advantage of live-action testimonial videos is the presence of people that adds a more authentic and instructive tone that makes it more relatable.
Video testimonials add an extra element of persuasiveness, making them the best choice when your animation clients want to convince their audience to take action. However, it can get expensive and time-consuming as the video gets more complex and high-quality.
On the other hand, animated testimonial videos don't require people or expensive locations, which could save your animation client's time & money.
They also have more visual flexibility than live-action testimonial videos. However, animated testimonial videos are far less personal because of the absence of actual people that makes it harder to relate to.
An example of a testimonial video that you can learn from is Demoflick’s animated client testimonial video. In the video, the animation client talks about his experience and opinion on how the video production went with Demoflick.
The best thing about this testimonial video is how well the background music and voiceover complement the unique 2D animation about the client’s testimonial.
5) Animated Case Study Videos
Case study videos are like testimonial videos. In case study videos, the leads and customers discover the human side of a company by letting them see the behind-the-scenes of their businesses.
When it comes to the origin of the information, the case study comes from the company itself while testimonial videos come from a satisfied customer that voluntarily gave feedback to promote a company's product.
Many companies worldwide, such as KFC, Facebook, and Samsung, have used animated case study videos to outline their company’s success and effectiveness in dealing with its clients.
Animated case study videos can help your animation clients to:
- Focus on their Customers: Instead of solely talking about the company itself, animated case study videos offer your animation clients an opportunity to describe the process and the results of implementing their products and services from the customer’s perspective.
- Build Trust and Credibility: Since animated case study videos also show the success of your animation clients’ previous projects, brand trust and credibility can be built. They’re great at helping customers visualize what they can expect if they purchase your animation clients’ products or services.
- Increased Brand Awareness: Animated case study videos let your animation clients leverage the brand powers of their previous customers that are willing to back them up and talk about what they do.
An example of an animated case study that you can get ideas from is My Wendy’s Mobile App Case Study Video. The video talks about how Wendy’s consumers went to their restaurants with health in their minds.
They created a mobile app as a solution for their customers’ lingering problems. The 2D animated video explains the app’s benefits, making their app the first personalized, nutrition-based app.
6) Animated Onboarding Videos
According to the Society for Human Resource Development, employee onboarding is integrating new employees with a company and its culture and policies. It means giving new employees all the tools they need to start and eventually succeed in their new roles.
Analysts at the Aberdeen Group, an international intent-based marketing company, said that companies with well-considered onboarding processes have an average employee retention rate of 86%.
Onboarding videos can be live-action or animated. You can choose from different styles to create animated onboarding videos for your animation clients. You can deliver the message in either flat 2D or 3D style, stop motion animation, and whiteboard animation.
Onboarding videos are very important, not only for your animation clients but also for their new employees. Here are some reasons why:
- Consistent Message: Using videos on onboarding processes removes the situational factors, like when Monday’s onboarding group had a better teacher than Friday’s, which could affect the employees’ onboarding experience. Onboarding videos ensure that new employees receive the same message.
- Fast and Easy Onboarding Process: In a survey conducted by Kaltura, a New York-based software company, 80% of the new employees said that videos positively impacted their onboarding process making it smoother. Onboarding videos can quickly and successfully show new employees what it means to be a part of new workplace culture. They empower new employees and make them comfortable and excited about their future with the team.
- Engagement, Connection, and Retention: Viewers retain 95% of a message through video compared to only 10% through text. The use of video in employee onboarding does not only help new employees to retain information but also to be engaged in the onboarding process. They also encourage connection between employees. By fostering connection through onboarding videos, your animation clients can ensure productivity and engagement that will help their new employees get to their new roles quickly.
An example of an onboarding video is GrubHub’s 2-minute employee onboarding video where they show the work environment and give tips and practical tricks to new team members.
7) Animated Sales Letter Videos
Video Sales Letter or VSL replaces written sales letters with a video exploring a problem and introducing a product or service as a solution. Video sales letters target the pain points of your animation clients’ customers.
The main objectives of video sales letters are to sell a product or services and urge the customers of your animation clients to take an action immediately such as filling up a form and dialing a number.
Video sales letters can be animated, live-action, whiteboard sketch, or a simple slideshow presentation with a voiceover and background music. Deciding on the format of video sales letters is critical as this establishes trust and credibility while accomplishing the business goal of making the sale.
According to Dan Kennedy, a marketing and business strategist, the most effective video sales letter follows the PAS format:
- Problem: Lay out the problems your audiences are facing.
- Agitate: After identifying the problems, focus on their pain points and appeal to their emotional side.
- Solve: Convince the viewers that your solution is the one that will solve their problems.
An example of an awesome VSL that you can get inspiration from is Squatty Potty’s. Squatty Potty’s VSL followed the PAS framework.
They went pretty bold and added a bit of humor to make it more entertaining for the viewers. Squatty Potty's video sales letter succeeded because it used a creative concept on top of a proven sales framework.
All the Different Animation Video Types You Can Make
Animated advertisements, explainer videos, educational/FAQ videos, testimonials, case studies, onboarding videos, and video sales letters are the seven video content types you can create for your animation clients.
They simplify complex processes and ideas while helping audiences stay engaged and retain information about your animation clients’ products and services.
Offering these video content types the right way and at the right time will benefit not only your animation clients’ businesses but your own animation business as well. Your animated videos will give you more credibility and strengthen client relationships which lead to increased sales.
If you’d like to know more about how to get animation clients and master the business of animation, join our free masterclass and download a copy of our free marketing handbook.
