It’s looking like 2023 will be video-first in terms of marketing, and as part of that, you might be exploring how to integrate different video formats into your strategy.
Explainer videos can be one part of a video marketing and digital marketing strategy when used in the right situations.
Below, we explore some of the most important things to know about explainer videos, why they work, and what situations they’re ideal for.
1. What Is an Explainer Video?
An explainer video is typically short-form, and its use is for sales or marketing.
An explainer video can highlight the products or services of a business or a business idea. It’s meant to be shown in a way that’s efficient and compelling.
An explainer video can be hosted on a landing page or homepage, and they’re also used for advertising on social media sites.
These videos are usually animated, they’re informative, and educational, and they can communicate your company’s offerings.
Explainer videos focus on explaining certain types of perhaps complex problems and products or services in a way that’s simple. You can break down concepts or ideas that would otherwise be complicated to understand into ideas that are easily digestible.
2. The Benefits of An Explainer Video
Explainer videos can be used for both internal and external communication. They can get your audiences’ attention quickly, which is one of the biggest challenges marketers tend to face.
Explainer videos are powerful because of how enticing they are when done well. When you’re looking at an animated video, if it’s compelling, it’s going to pull you in, trigger curiosity, and motivate you to want to understand new concepts.
Explainer videos can work especially well for technical products and services. The human brain also processes visual elements around 50,000 times faster than text.
Adding video content to your set can improve your web traffic because Google loves videos. When you’re creating content Google likes, it can help your SEO rankings, and it may give you a spike in your organic traffic.
Search engine users can be 50% more likely to find you if you include a video in your content.
Users also spend more time on pages with videos, and that gives signals to search engines that your content is worth sticking around for, which also boosts your organic traffic and rankings.
Explainer videos work well for a mobile audience, which is probably what most of your online visitors are. More and more people are spending the majority of their time on their smartphones, and the size of the content with these videos works well for smartphone users. Explainer videos can perfectly fit on a mobile screen, giving a good experience.
Explainer videos can work in a lot of different formats. For example, you can use them on social media and also embed them in emails. You can create one video and get a lot of mileage on it across a variety of platforms and situations, improving your ROI.
Finally, when you use explainer videos, they’re good for conversion rates. A landing page with a video can improve conversion rates by up to 80%, and an explainer video is the right length, format, and approach for a landing page.
3. Features of a Good Explainer Video
A good explainer video will usually have certain features, including:
- They’re short. Most are under three minutes, but optimally, even shorter than this—between one to two minutes can be ideal, depending on your topic and audience.
- An explainer video should have a strong call to action. Your CTA should state clearly what you want your audience to do after they watch the video. Outline their next step in no uncertain terms.
- These videos are problem-solvers. Focusing on solving a very specific problem through the use of your product or solution. They’re problem-solution formats, and again, your goal is to position your product or service as that solution.
- A strong explainer video will have a style and tone that’s aligned with your overall brand and also your audience.
- They need to be of excellent quality. The production quality and the quality of content both have to be high, even though the videos are short. Without that quality, you aren’t going to be able to effectively convey your unique value proposition.
To accomplish the things above, an explainer should follow a structure that looks like this:
- What is the problem of the audience?
- How will your product or service fix that problem?
- Why should the audience choose you as the solution to fix their problem?
You don’t necessarily have to get too caught up on how and what because you still need to focus on the why.
4. Types of Explainer Videos
Most explainer videos are either live-action or animated. Animated is a lot more common.
Subtypes of animated explainer videos include:
- Infographic videos use elements like charts and graphs to replicate an infographic style, and in doing so, they explain your key business features.
- Chalkboard animated explainer videos use not just chalkboards but also whiteboards. They’re easy to make, which is one reason why they remain popular.
- Product simulations can include screencast footage of your product being used, and this is ideal for software or a digital platform.
- Character-driven explainer videos will use charming cartoon characters to show who your targeted customer is. You can then create a narrative about this character using your products or services, showing how it’s solved their problem.
- 3D motion graphic animations can tell a story of your products, service, or brand with objects that represent things rather than words.
5. Creating An Explainer Video
Finally, most companies opt to work with professionals to create explainer videos because even though the result is somewhat simple and straightforward, they do the same steps as any video production.
For example, during pre-production, you come up with a concept, write a script, and then you plan the shoot or animation with your video production company.
The production period is when you start to animate or shoot, and then during post-production, your team will start to edit everything together, record voiceovers, and overlay sound effects or music.
