As a B2B company, you’ve got a million marketing goals, right?
You want to boost brand awareness, promote your product, educate your audience, and so much more.
But what if there was one solution that could help you do all of this—and do it effectively?
We are talking about animated marketing videos!
They could be the game-changer your marketing strategy is missing.
Not only are they incredibly engaging, but they also deliver your message quickly and efficiently.
Plus, unlike live-action videos, animations give you full creative freedom. They have no restrictions, just endless possibilities!
So, if animated videos are all you need, why aren’t you using them yet? Chances are, you’re not sure where to start, right?
That’s exactly where we come in. Our blog is your step-by-step guide on how to make animated marketing videos.
Scroll down, get started, and create videos that stand out.
While animated videos look effortless, they aren’t that effortless to make.
A lot of consideration goes behind making such a video.
It needs to fit perfectly with your brand, message, and marketing campaign.
But how can you make it do all this?
Follow these detailed steps and by the end, you’ll know exactly how—
Source: Freepik
Before getting started with the video, you need to plan out what you want it to achieve and how.
To do this you need to focus on a few things-
You need to make sure that your animated video seamlessly aligns with your brand.
It should have a strong and consistent branding.
This is the only way to make sure your video fits and feels in line with your overall content strategy.
Once you know what you want to achieve with your video, jump right into creating a brief.
This is the step where you jot down your video goals in writing.
Why is this step important?
Well, it helps you have a clear ground to refer to when you start scripting and storyboarding.
Here are some core points that you must include in your brief-
Once you've documented all this information, you'll have a clear roadmap of the key elements involved in creating and distributing your animated video.
After this step is done, move forward and select the video style you want to create.
Source: Freepik
Animation is a big umbrella term that covers a lot of different video styles.
To create an effective B2B animated marketing video you need to zero down on the particular style that’ll work the best for you.
How do you figure that out?
Well, the style depends on your message, audience, and most importantly your product/service.
It’s also better to select the style and then start the step of scripting.
This way you’ll be able to structure the video information better.
For example, suppose you want to create a video highlighting your brand’s growth through statistics.
An animated infographic video will be the best to do that. And when you know you are going to make such a video, you’ll be able to make the script accordingly.
This will save you the trouble of unnecessarily adding dialogues describing the statistical data that is already going to be shown visually.
Go through the list below, it’ll give you a brief idea of what styles you can choose from—
Most B2Bs prefer 2D animation videos for their marketing. In such videos, characters and objects move within a 2-dimensional space.
They are the best types of videos for explaining the benefits of your products/services—they help viewers understand such information easily.
Apart from their usually high engagement rate, these videos have a plethora of other benefits—they can improve your SERP ranking, increase brand visibility, and help establish your brand authority.
These videos are primarily of the following types-
Infographics:
Infographic videos are best for breaking down complex ideas and highlighting important information.
Using bars, graphs, GIFs, and other imagery, they easily transform large volumes of data into a story.
Character:
In this type of 2D animation, characters are brought to life through movement.
Animators use several techniques to add subtle movements or gestures to these characters, like a nod or a slight turn of the head.
The character videos can be really effective for your marketing campaigns. If you are able to make a character that is relevant to your target group, they’ll relate with it more, and watch your video till the very end.
Mixed Media
Synonyms to its name, a Mixed Media video is a mixture of a lot of elements like still images, 2D animation, 3D animation, live-action footage, text, and other visual effects. It blends all of them in a unique, cohesive, and visually appealing manner.
Kinetic Typography
Kinetic Typography videos are all about playing with the appearance of text—using different fonts, speeds, and colors to make a big impact.
Brands love them because their dynamic motion and visual effects grab attention and make content more engaging for the viewers.
Plus, they’re great at getting your message across even if the viewer has their sound off.
These videos are a game changer for your marketing campaigns. They effortlessly provide a 3D representation of your brand, product, or service.
They visualize stuff no other videos can capture or show.
For instance, Imagine you're a healthcare company with a drug that treats a specific disease.
With a 3D animated video, you can visually demonstrate how that drug works inside the body—something that would be nearly impossible to explain as clearly with traditional video.
Beyond technical topics, 3D animation videos are also super popular in marketing because they're engaging and hold people's attention far better than more traditional, dull videos.
So, these were just a few animation video styles. To dive deeper into the various other types of animated styles, check out the link.
Source: Freepik
With the goals and the style of the video clearly in mind, get your pens or laptops and start scripting.
A script will help you lay out all the components of your animated video. This will keep you on track when actually making the video.
Here’s how you should start with your script–
This is the key moment of your video that grabs attention right away. It’s where you showcase your unique angle to hook viewers.
Before starting with the hook, ask yourself, "What will grab my audience's interest?"
If you have a company song or jingle, this is a great spot to feature it.
This section has the meat of your video—-the message. This is where you dive into your story.
For this part, focus on what you need to back up the promises you made in your hook and include that here.
A CTA is typically placed at the end of your video and tells your audience what to do next. The key to an effective one is to keep it short and clear.
Tell people clearly what you want from them—whether you want them to visit a link, sign up for a webinar, or take another action.
We have covered a blog on best video CTA examples, go through it and you’ll know how to make good CTAs.
Once you have checked the blog and these points are done, you’ll have your script ready.
What’s waiting for you next is storyboarding…
Source: Freepik
A storyboard is the entire blueprint of how your video will unfold.
In this step, you draw out what happens in which scene—basically creating a visual roadmap for the animation's narrative.
You sketch out each shot in a series of panels; this helps you plan and ensure continuity between the shots.
This also gives you an idea about potential issues even before you start animating the video.
While storyboarding, you need to make sure that you adhere to your branding practice while making the storyboard—note the places where you can place products, use branded colors, add logos, and so on.
Just like the brief, your storyboard doesn’t need to be a masterpiece. If the sketches aren’t perfect, that’s totally fine. The key is that you and your team can spot potential issues, like sections that might be too cluttered.
And remember—both your script and storyboard are likely to evolve. So, don’t get too attached to any part of them. Before you start making the video, you might find that some lines don’t work or scenes need adjusting.
Until the video is finished and published, these are a work in progress.
Source: Freepik
With the script and storyboard in hand, you are ready to animate your video. Here are a few points to keep in mind while animating the video–
Think about what kind of animation will hit home with your audience. To make sure the video fits your brand, use your existing style and content as a guide. Also, check what your competitors are doing.
Using all this information, pick out ideas that you think will work best for your audience.
If your video needs a voiceover, choose the right person for the job. If you have someone on your team who can record a professional-sounding voice, great! If not, there are plenty of online voice actors who can provide free demos to help you find the perfect match.
Using animation video maker software can be a game-changer for you. It’s a good way to save both time and money compared to custom animation.
While design studios might take about six weeks to finish a project, the right software can speed things up, especially if you’re able to dive in and work on it.
However, if you're a B2B business and you’re not an animation pro, a poorly made video could hurt your reputation.
So, you’ve got two main options–
Make sure your animation design is simple and clean. Try to stick to your brand colors and fonts throughout the video to stay consistent with your other content.
And lastly, avoid clutter to make sure your message is clear and engaging.
Music and sound effects can add life to your animation. So, once the visuals are set, add suitable background music and sound effects to match the mood and enhance the action of the video.
Source: Freepik
Polish your video with some editing-
Once the first course of editing is done, review the video for any more inconsistencies or areas of improvement.
Re-edit if needed and then before finally publishing it, show it to your peers or test audiences. Gather their feedback, try to refine it more if needed, and then push the publishing button.
Source: Freepik
Just publishing the video won’t get you viewer engagement, you need to share and promote it with the right people. Share it on social media, your website, and your email list.
Here are some tips to help you promote your new animated video effectively–
Before we play any video, the first thing that gathers our attention is its preview image. So make sure you choose a preview image for your video that entices viewers to click. Try something like a snapshot of a new product, an image with text asking intriguing questions, or something even more interesting.
Here are some great places to promote your video:
But keep one thing in mind, video promotions don’t give you instant, so don't give up. Just keep testing, track the performance of your video, and keep fixing your video marketing strategy to get the best results.
Source: Freepik
After publishing and promoting, it’s very important to check if your hard work is paying off or not.
You need to track how well your video is performing on the platform/s where you have published it.
This will show you what’s working for your video and what isn’t—giving you a reference to depend on for your future efforts.
Here are some tips you must keep in mind while tracking the videos—
Use a platform that offers solid analytics, like YouTube or any other professional alternative. This way you’ll be able to check out where most viewers are dropping off your videos, what part is getting liked, and what part is getting skipped.
These insights will help you improve your future videos.
In today’s AI era, you can also check video analytics with AI.
We already covered an in-depth blog on this topic, so be sure to read it to learn about this game-changing way of tracking a video’s success.
You should track how your emails are performing. See if people are opening them, clicking the video, and watching your content.
If you observe a poor open rate, try to do things differently—like using more unique subject lines. The most probable reason why people aren’t clicking the video is because your preview image isn’t enticing enough or maybe you have a more core problem—your content itself isn’t up to the mark.
If you are paying for ads, make sure you are getting the most out of it. Use A/B tests on different versions of the ads and observe which one gets more clicks and conversions. Take what you learn from these tests and use that data for better performance of your future ads.
One thing to remember here is—it takes time to get video analytics right. You’ll gradually understand what metrics are most important for your brand, and as a result, you’ll start tracking performance more effectively.
And there you have it—all the steps needed to make an effective animated marketing video for your B2B brand.
Got more questions about these videos?
Let’s answer some frequently asked questions below.
These versatile videos are an effective solution for both small and large businesses from all industries.
Because of their inherent feature of making complicated concepts easy to understand, animated marketing videos are quite popular in the education, healthcare, financial, and IT industries.
From basic product videos to cutting-edge videos explaining innovative technologies to emotional campaigns–these videos can fit any of your marketing goals.
The right time is now!
With the peak popularity of animation, it’s currently a lot cheaper and easier to produce these videos than before.
So, it’ll be excellent for you to invest in them now.
No two animated marketing videos come with the same price tag.
Each one is different in terms of its need, style, and number of experts being involved.
To get the best results, you’ll need to work with top-notch scriptwriters, animators, storytellers, and voice-over artists.
All these factors influence the cost of producing an animated video, so the prices will vary based on your project.
Just to give you a rough idea—expect to spend around $5000 to get a good quality one-minute video.
And that’s a wrap on our guide to making animated videos!
See?
It’s not that hard to get started, right?
All you need is a clear goal and a vision for your animation style.
Follow the steps we’ve laid out, and you’ve got a solid framework to create an awesome animated video for your business.
Now, go ahead and tap into the power of animated videos for your business—make your marketing pop like never before!
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