Planning to scale your business to the next level?
Video marketing could be the ultimate answer here!
According to Hubspot, 81% of businesses use video as a marketing tool. On the other hand, Insivia revealed that consumption of mobile videos is rising by 100% each year.
Video marketing has become the most effective element in the digital marketing strategy for many brands.
What do you think when you see cartoons? Do you also think they are for kids?
Here's news for you: 80% of adults between 18 and 44 years love watching animated content.
Today, animated videos have become one of the most popular digital marketing trends; especially today, when your users are in need of more human connection and fewer sales pitches.
Many leading brands across the globe have already unlocked the sales and marketing power of animated videos for their businesses. Some even say that this has become essential to their product marketing strategy.
Now, before jumping into “how to make animated video for business”, let’s address the “why” part.
Animated videos are one of the most effective tools to engage your users and drive them to take the desired action.
So why is video so powerful? How did this cumbersome format overcome a myriad of technical barriers to become so popular?
Here’s where the power of storytelling really gets to shine.
Storytelling is an underrated and underappreciated format that is far more engaging and impactful than any other medium. Here’s why.
Words and information connect with a viewer’s mind. Facts, figures, statistics; numbers and arguments; these are easily understood on a logical, data level of consciousness.
And while this is important, it lacks the “heart” or emotional impact. It’s quickly forgotten and the viewer moves on immediately.
Worse, the viewer probably got bored as soon as you started listing off specs and numbers, so the battle can be lost before it’s even begun.
Art, music and film touch the heart, stirring emotions. They connect with the audience at a far more emotional, abstract level.
But when you combine the two, you create a story, which creates trust in the viewer, which makes a more powerful and far longer lasting impact.
And in a way, we all know this already. Take a moment and recall the last time a movie really moved you.
Think of the lasting impression made by the experience, how it stayed with you.
How the story drew you in and took you on an emotionally charged journey, with ups and downs, leading to a powerful and satisfying conclusion.
This is the secret behind the popularity of the video format in general, and in animation in particular. Animation gives the storyteller unparalleled freedom, because you’re really only limited by your imagination more than, say, your budget.
Here’s an excellent example of what we’re talking about in this video for Virgin Media:
Here, rather than talk about the various factors concerning internet security, HeartShaped created a story with goofy but relatable cartoon characters.
Invisible and abstract ideas like viruses, hackers and security leaks were personified as literal bugs and ghoulish physical villains up to no good.
But a team of heroic ninjas burst onto the scene to save the day and protect our protagonists’ humble home-- all without the family even realizing it.
This video works on multiple levels. Firstly and most importantly, it’s delightfully entertaining.
It tells a fun story that keeps you watching and interested right to the end.
On a different note, it does a great job of explaining technical and somewhat abstract ideas like computer viruses, phishing and hacking by transforming them into literal bugs, creepy crawlies and cartoony villains.
All this allows even the least tech-savvy audience to easily grasp and understand these technical concepts by using these clever metaphors and weaving them into the form of an engaging story.
This is just one example of the sheer power of storytelling through animated video marketing.
And going into it’s a power that you can harness too!
No matter what product you sell, no matter how serious or funny your product persona is, it can be marketed through an animated video. Being an effective marketing tool, animation always rocks when it comes to driving a better return on your marketing investment:
An animated video helps set you apart from your competitors by establishing your brand as a creative, innovative, and futuristic entity.
Not only does animated video engage your users but it also guides and inspires them to move from one customer journey touchpoint to another.
It enhances your customer experience as well as helps maximize profits.
We know they are engaging throughout all channels.
But do you know that just like you and me, Google adores them too?
With an embedded animated video, you can increase traffic to your landing pages.
It helps your business rank higher on SERP and attain higher brand visibility and accessibility to your potential customers.
No matter how important a message you are trying to convey, if you fail to explain it to your potential customers, all your efforts spent on a particular campaign goes in vain.
Animation makes your message simplified and understandable using visually relatable content.
Animation can explain the purpose and function of your product in a much-simplified way.
Animation is a never-ending trend that never ages or goes outdated. You can watch such videos over and again without getting bored.
Unlike live-action videos, it doesn’t demand a huge spend on time, actors, and other resources.
They are easy to reuse or repurpose without having to shoot again.
As we know, animated videos are great storytellers. They help you explain any story you visualize.
In the most simple, fun, and creative way, animation may have expressive characters and answers to all your customer’s questions on how your product can help or benefit them or how your services can make their life easier.
By now, we probably don’t need to explain the worldwide impact caused by the Coronavirus pandemic and resulting lockdowns.
A majority of the world’s population was essentially confined to the house all day for a year.
By 2023, this resulted in a marked spike of internet usage, both for working-from-home purposes as well as for personal use.
Netflix, Hulu, and other online video streaming platforms reported an enormous surge in traffic as millions began bingeing movies and TV series, and video calls with distant family and friends became commonplace.
There had never been such a worldwide phenomenon that resulted in enormous amounts of free time spent indoors.
One of the many side effects of the year 2020 was seeing most of the world’s population become intimately familiar with online video.
If the public wasn’t already conditioned to consume video by now, they certainly were by the start of 2024.
However, video (including animated video) was serving a myriad of roles already.
Animated videos in particular are highly popular because of the flexibility and clarity they provide.
With animation, you can depict ideas and visuals not otherwise possible with real-life footage, and the cost doesn’t multiply with complexity nearly as much.
If you created an app using a white label app builder and
want to make a mobile app demo, animation can be an excellent tool to
showcase your app's features, functionality, and user interface in a
visually engaging and dynamic way.
The applications of animated videos are as broad and diverse as its genres and styles.
Animation is an amazing and underrated tool for practical applications like training, education and PSAs; as well as the more obvious areas like social media engagement and branding. It’s a long list but includes:
Here’s another example of how powerful and effective an animated video can be:
Hootsuite is a platform that helps businesses of all sizes reach out across multiple social media platforms and stay in touch with their customers.
It’s a fairly simple idea but it’s hard to explain how it works and what the benefits are, especially to the less internet-savvy members of the audience.
However, Giant Ant created a video that’s stylish, colorful and vibrant, holding the audience’s attention while explaining the platform through a clever and engaging script that complements the visual artistry.
Regardless of the viewer’s level of technological expertise or lack thereof, they’re brought to a level of clear understanding about what Hootsuite is about by the conclusion of the video.
A new dental drill isn’t much cause for excitement or celebration-- even if you’re a dentist, far less if you’re a novice with no interest in that field.
But Giant Ant created this outstanding, minimalist video that draws you in and seems to take you on a journey while it explains why Soleas’ new dental drill is a pretty big deal.
The script is almost poetic with juxtapositions and dramatic contrasts, and the animation complements and underscores it perfectly.
We keep mentioning how storytelling is key to crafting a successful video that sticks in the audience’s memories long after they’ve finished watching. Here’s another excellent example.
Rather than list off their accomplishments or humble-brag about their success, this video shares the story of BNY Mellon in a style that feels natural, down-to-earth, and even relatable.
They simply tell their story of how they started and got to where they are now. The animation is clever and playful, accenting the natural spoken script perfectly.
Once again, we see the power of storytelling. A good story can transform an otherwise bland video, into an experience and a lasting memory. And animation gives you hitherto uncharted freedom for storytellers to really flex their creative muscles, because you’re only really limited by your imagination. Enter the age of animated video marketing.
Here at Broadcast2World, we’ve been crafting animated videos for just over a decade now. 2024 marks our fourteenth year in this industry.
We’ve meticulously woven together a 20-step strategy for powerful storytelling using a myriad of techniques used in Hollywood scriptwriting, advertising and marketing.
It all comes together to create unique and customized animated videos, specifically for each client, usage case and need.
Here are some examples of animated marketing videos we’ve created over the years:
Factspread is a non-profit organization on a mission to combat misinformation and ignorance.
Their goal was to break out of the political polarization spectrum and present the public with unbiased, hard facts.
But the problem is, just listing off chunks of dense information is simply not entertaining or interesting enough and the reader can just tune out or get bored quickly.
So we worked with Factspread to create some clever, interesting and engaging short videos designed to grab and hold the viewer’s attention, while presenting the vital information they need to understand the world around them.
Over the last century or so, we’ve seen an explosion in technological progress and information. It’s been relentless and dynamic, at breakneck speed. But most of us don’t know that the world of agriculture has also been changing just as drastically.
Omnivore is an agro-tech venture fund helping to shape the future of food production with the aim of making it more ethical, sustainable, and less exploitative. They needed to bring awareness and knowledge to the public.
So we worked together with them to create this lush, immersive animated video that draws the viewer in and explains the background and minutiae of the history of agriculture, in a way that’s in-depth enough to really help them understand, but not so heavy and complicated that they would lose interest or get confused. This was the end result.
When you drive to work, you don’t really think much about your car’s inner workings. You might not even understand how the engine works-- or need to. Our digital world isn’t too different. Everyone’s familiar with it but most of us don’t give much thought to what’s under the surface, how it all runs. We simply focus on the end results.
Suse is an open-source company that creates enterprise software for Linux-based systems, and they wanted to form connections with the network administrators and software engineers who run the digital machines behind the scenes of businesses of all sizes and types. It’s a complex, alienating world that few really understand or even want to.
Our challenge lay in creating a video that was relatable and interesting to those administrators, but also understandable and easy to follow for those who were unfamiliar with that world. So we created a story with a hero or protagonist whose job it was to ensure these systems perform well, run fast, and can flex and expand with unexpected challenges, all while keeping costs and downtime low.
And in comes Suse via the cloud, with powerful tools that our hero can weild and save the day, delighting his bosses and customers alike.
Rather than explain in detail what Suse do, or list off their products and solutions like a catalog, we used the power of storytelling to break through the dense technical stuff and really connect with you, the viewer, and leave a lasting impression.
Be it explainer videos, product demos, mobile app demos or social media engagement videos or even promotional videos like commercials - a lot can be done in your business with animated videos.
To make the most creative and attractive animation, hiring a suitable agency that specializes in video marketing is essential.
Agencies like Broadcast2world produce the best animated videos. Tell target audiences your business stories through attention-grabbing short animated videos and leave them wanting more. Contact us to know more.
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