Animated Videos for Brand: Why Do You Need Them?
Regardless of what industry you work in, video animation could be essential. Both small startups andhuge companies use animated videos. Videos using animation may market a product, teach complex ideas, or raise curiosity about a particular item. Everybody can relate to animation in some manner. Cartoons and animations are more effective attention-getters since almost everyone has watched them at some point. Additionally, animation may be found in various settings, including social media, web spaces,television, movies, YouTube, and commercial advertisements. Companies like to incorporate animation in their video marketing campaigns both for their benefit and that of their clients.
Speaking from a brand’s perspective, using video animation can enhance your visibility as viewers tend to engage 12 times more frequently on video content than text and image material. Additionally, click-through videos increase online store sales by up to 134%. You can lose out on one of the fastest-growing segments of digital marketing if your company does not use animated videos.Video animation is a terrific approach to communicating your brand narrative, highlighting the human aspects of your company, and conveying highly complicated concepts in a simple manner.
Animation is an exciting and enjoyable medium that is affordable, manageable, and will make your brand stand out.
The data speak for themselves when it comes to video marketing:
- 56% of companies utilize up to 5 videos monthly on average.
- 90% of people claim that watching videos helps them make decisions.
- If a brand posts videos, 75% of people are more inclined to follow them on social media.
Enhancing Brand Identity: How video animation can define and strengthen your brand
The first step in every successful marketing campaign is developing a unique brand identity for your company. Brand identity is the cornerstone of your marketing strategy since it establishes familiarity with your target market and differentiates you from the competition. Your target audience should function as the foundation for your brand’s identity. According to a recent survey, 76% of marketers found that animated videos increased their profits. Many underlying factors contribute to a brand’s success through video animation. So, how exactly do they strengthen your brand? First and foremost, animated explainer videos can serve the purpose of a more fundamental marketing need, which is to promote your products. Unlike boring and monotonous presentations and documents, animated videos can offer an entertaining way of educating your audiences about new products, services, offers, or other initiatives you might be introducing.
Animation can also transform boring content into an engaging story. It allows the audiences to visualize imaginative and creative storylines in your minds, entertainingly resonating with your brand. Your brand’s narrative and information can stay in their minds for extended periods. Moreover, using brand color schemes, fonts, logos, and jingles throughout your marketing strategies, especially video animation, can build brand familiarity with your audience. In this way, your brand becomes instantly recognizable and memorable. To establish a lasting identity in customers’ eyes, maintain consistency and adhere to a pre-determined pattern of your brand’s style guide.
Capturing Audience Attention: The impact of video animation on viewer engagement
One of the most prominent effects of animation is that it can evoke emotional reactions in viewers. Animated media can stir powerful emotions and hold our attention longer: happiness, grief, fear, or enthusiasm. Videos are an excellent method to engage viewers. About 300 hours of video content is published to YouTube every minute, amongst which your video must stand out. Animation is helpful in thissituation. A compelling marketing video animation may increase your sales by 20% on average and up to 60% in some circumstances. People spend an average of 2.6 times longer on pages with videos than those without. So, how can animation create these increased numbers of viewer engagement?
Here are the top three justifications for that:
- When people watch animated videos, their information intake and attention span increase.
- Animation can boost viewer engagement because people might feel emotionally connected to it.
- Animation is a cost-effective and time-efficient method, so you can produce more videos in
number to increase viewer engagement.
Storytelling Through Animation: Using animation to convey your brand’s narrative
The most successful video marketing campaigns that have recently flooded our screens share onetypical thing: storytelling. It is undeniably one of the most essential tools companies utilize to convey their brand’s narrative and achieve their goals. Most of our time spent in front of a screen is spent watching video content. With more businesses competing for consumers’ attention, it has become harder for individual brands to stand out. Storytelling is an effective method when conveying your brand’s narrative. A good story may captivate an audience, make an impression, and motivate your desired results.
You may build trust and loyalty with your target audience and highlight what sets you apart by sharing the narrative behind your brand. To successfully market your brand through storytelling, you must first understand what makes a good tale and how to implement those strategies. Storytelling with video animation increases engagement and conversion compared to traditional talking head interviews. To craft a successful and compelling story, you should narrate from the point of view of your audience. First, you will have to describe and identify their pain points or the problems they might be facing. Then, lead them on with a viable solution your brand can offer to fix their problem. Create characters that are easily relatable to your audience.
Consult your team of illustrators to design a virtual cast of characters that align with your brand’s ideology. A charismatic voiceover and attractive music can serve as brownie points to create an engaging brand narrative video. Video animation can bring your brand to life by incorporating your brand colors, taglines, logos, and other brand cues in your video content. Animated content is easy to update and change, or “pivot,” regarding your brand and its message. When you use animation to tell your brand’s story, you don’t have to start from scratch if there are any edits. You can quickly churn the existing content, which prevents you from spending thousands of dollars on brand-new content.
Versatility in Marketing: Exploring various marketing channels for animation
There are two broad categories in which digital marketing channels can be divided – paid and organic platforms. Let’s take a closer look at each of the channels.
Paid video distribution channels
✔ Paid Ads: Content distribution platforms such as Google’s AdWords and AdSense can be used for animation. These channels allow you to concentrate on a specific target audience while allowing you to analyze your campaign’s results.
✔ Paid Promotion of Content: There are multiple platforms like StumbleUpon, Outbrain, and Reddit Ads where you can pay to promote your video content. You can also promote your video content on distribution channels like social media.
Organic video distribution channels
Another way of marketing your videos is to share them on social media. Social media is one of the most popular tools on the Internet, and people of all ages are attracted to it. If you post your videos to any of these sites, many people from your target market will likely watch them. Make sure to choose the tool that fits your business goals the best.
✔ YouTube: It is the most popular platform for uploading video material. With over 2 billion views, this channel offers an enormous audience that every company may use to reach its target market. Use the right keywords when naming and describing your video because viewers usually feel lost while exploring other people’s suggested videos.
✔ Facebook: In recent years, Facebook has become a well-liked social networking platform, with approximately 8 billion people utilizing it worldwide. This makes it the ideal channel for marketing your videos
✔ Instagram: With over 1 billion active users, Instagram has overtaken other social networking platforms as a users’ visual paradise. You can submit a 60-second video or a reel on the site. A video preview can also be posted with a link to your official website. In addition, Instagram also gives the option of IGTV and disappearing stories.
✔ Twitter: It is regarded as one of the social media sites that both major corporations and celebrities commonly utilize. It is one of the best launchpads to upload your video content. Because Twitter users have a short attention span, making brief videos can be beneficial.
✔ Website Landing Pages: It’s a good idea to embed videos at various points across your website. If you want more people to interact with your site and make a purchase, put a video on your landing page.
✔ Email: When the word “video” appears in an email subject line, there are 19 percent higher chances of them being opened, read rates increase by 65 percent, and unsubscribe rates drop by 26 percent.
You may use marketing automation technologies to create HTML email templates and track video email campaigns. The video should ideally be between 30 and 90 seconds.
SEO and Shareability: How animation can improve SEO and social sharing
Animation has advanced to the point where it can captivate viewers towards your content and boost your website’s SEO standing. Google often gives favorable rankings to well-designed, fast, and secure websites with rich, educational, and exciting content. Other significant factors affecting search engines might help your website rank higher than its rivals. This is where video marketing comes in.
This is how animation improves SEO and social sharing for your brand.
- Engaging content for high viewing time: Animated videos are a fun and creative method to
get information across. In a world where people want everything to happen instantly, animated
videos are a great way to keep up with this demand. Search engines will likely give better
results to websites with animated videos. The longer the viewers stay on your website, the
higher the ranking on the search engines. - Reduces Bounce Rate: Visitors who visit your website and leave immediately have high bounce rates. Animation videos can be helpful in this situation. Many businesses create welcome videos that speak to the audience’s interests and immediately keep them hooked on your website, lowering bounce rates.
- Enhancing Backlink Opportunities: Animated videos that are visually appealing are more
likely to be shared on various platforms and social media channels. You will acquire priceless backlinks when other websites link or embed your videos on their pages. Backlinks from reputable websites can improve your SEO ranking. Therefore, animated movies work as a connected resource to increase your website traffic and SEO. - Boosting Social Engagement: Animated videos are an effective way to get your audiences hooked on your topic. Your videos get more exposure and visibility on social media as they are shared and commented on more frequently. People are more inclined to visit your website since they are intrigued by your brand, which results in higher website traffic.
- Enhanced Mobile Experience: Animated videos are ideal for viewing on mobile devices since they convey information effectively in a visually appealing manner. Since search engines prioritize mobile-friendly websites, animated movies that can be watched instantly and provide a pleasant experience improve SEO results.
Cost-Effectiveness: Animation Vs. Traditional Advertising
Most businesses today consider digital marketing methods cost-effective and inexpensive compared to traditional advertising methods. It could be because digital mediums allow brands to engage with audiences staying within a budget, at a mass level, or targeting a specific niche, depending upon the purpose and target market for the ad. Even if the size of the target audience is vast, digital advertising, such as video animation, costs significantly less than traditional marketing. The cost of an animated video depends on the medium you choose for advertising, your target audience, and the frequency of your ad.
The average monthly cost can range between $250 – $20,000 for medium and small businesses. Creating a 2D animation 60-second video could land anywhere between 10,000 and 100,000 USD. They can be advertised on paid platforms and organically as well. On the other hand, TV ads, especially those featuring in prime time, are the most expensive. Using other traditional advertising mediums like print and radio is more costly than digital methods, such as animated videos.
Case Studies: Best Examples of Brands Using Animation
1. The Lego Story: In this short animated film, one of the world’s largest and known toys andgaming brands talks about its initial days and how the company began its journey from a workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen in 1932. The story leaves an impactful mark on viewers’ minds and educates the world about the company’s legacy. The animated characters, the background environment, and the beauty with which it has been presented will make it difficult to take your eyes off the video.
2. Tekken 8: The Tekken video is the ideal example of the power of brand storytelling for you. You see, the gaming business is evolving into a virtual environment where players can picture themselves as active participants in the game. In the end, this is accomplished via the use of outstanding storytelling and high-quality animation that astonishes the viewer with every
scenario.
3. Honda ‘Paper’: By effectively utilizing the power of stories, this Honda commercial ad demonstrates how aesthetically stop-motion-based video production techniques can be merged into advertisements. This video narrates Honda’s Innovation Journey over a period of six years. They have used hand-drawn sketches and illustrations in a stop-motion style.
Steps to incorporate video animation into your marketing strategy
To successfully integrate video animation into your marketing strategy, there are a few underlying factors that you must incorporate.
✔ Have A Plan for Your Video Marketing: Any new marketing plan should start with some goals in mind. What do you hope your videos will achieve? The things that need to be included in the plan are your primary goal, target audience, core message, budget, and launch date.
✔ Create a Script and Storyboard: Now that your brief and objectives are defined, it’s time to write a script. After writing a script, you may begin producing the actual video. A script will list each component of your film, assisting you by staying on track while you make it. When your writing is finished, you need to create a storyboard. The storyboard will serve as a flowchart for the video, illustrating what happens in each scene.
✔ Create Your Animated Video: Your script and storyboard are complete. Now, it’s time to make your animated video a reality. In this part, you will consider your target audience and choose which animation style can resonate with them. You will also determine whether you need to hire a voice artist. Consider different animation software options, which can save your budget and reduce the time needed to make your video. Furthermore, be mindful of your branding and design. Ensure you’re using appropriate branding and company colors, logos, etc.
✔ Promote and Distribute: Your video is complete—it’s time to share it with the right people. Social media, your website, blogs, and email lists are all great places to promote your new animated video. In this step, you should also consider choosing an excellent preview image and promote using the best communication channel for the video.
✔ Track and Analyze: An animated marketing video might take some time to create. Knowing your efforts are paying off is crucial since it can guide your future efforts and let you know if you’re missing something. To guide your future video initiatives, ensure you accurately measure the performance of your videos, ads, social media posts, and emails.
Summarizing the compelling reasons for your brand to adopt animation
To sum it all up, animated videos are versatile and engaging marketing tools that assist companies in connecting with a broader segment of their target audience and increasing their conversion rates. Animated corporate films are only one of the several emerging video trends that may successfully assist a company in delivering its message to its intended target audience. A brand may distinguish itself from the competition by using animated videos. It helps improve storytelling, raise brand recognition, and build an emotional connection with customers. Animation also increases the shareability and SEO rankings for a brand through the availability of multiple marketing and social media channels.
About the author : Developer
