Five reasons why animated videos should be part of your marketing strategy
Animated videos are becoming one of the most popular types of videos because they have certain advantages over other marketing videos, including helping to illustrate diversity, being cost effective, and being an impactful way to communicate complex information. Here are five reasons why you should incorporate animated marketing videos into your video marketing strategy.
Why you should create animated videos for marketing
1. Animated videos are great for explaining complex information.
Sometimes animated videos, or “explainer videos” can break down complex information in a way that videos with speakers cannot. Using text overlays and callouts, these videos can help clearly illustrate how your product or service can be of benefit to a potential customer, bringing them along with helpful graphics and upbeat music. These types of videos can also be a great option when you have camera-shy subject matter experts.
2. These videos can easily communicate the basics so you can share deeper information.
More and more companies are using short video to communicate the basics rather than forcing visitors to dig around for content on their websites. Having a video easily accessible to people browsing your website prevents your customer, member, or patient service teams, as well as sales teams from having to explain the basics, enabling them to dive deeper with interested potential customers.
Videos like these are also beneficial as a complement to a great presentation for live events or sales pitch deck that goes into more detail and can be customized, whereas the animated video, sometimes called an “explainer video”, provides a high-level overview of your value proposition.
3. Animated videos can help with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts.
Since there are no live people in animated videos and subjects come in all shapes and sizes, it can be easier to show diversity with illustration.
4. They’re are often more cost effective.
Though creating custom animation from scratch can be pricey, animated videos can sometimes be more cost effective than live action videos, which require location scouting and coordination, production and editing, costs associated with hiring talent, and more.
An affordable and quicker solution can be to use stock illustrations and create movement through animation.
5. Animated videos are flexible.
The top three video types on YouTube in 2021 were commentary, product review, and how-to—animation works well for all three—plus many more! Whatever the theme of your video, animation can work. And maybe it’s because we were all raised watching cartoons, but people tend to become captivated by animation and may watch longer than if you were offering the same content using live action.
How long should my video be?
Animated videos should be less than two minutes in length, which translates into a written script of 300 words or less. Tempted to just post your script as web content and skip the video production? Unfortunately, you won’t see the same results. Videos hold people’s attention more than standard web content or blog posts. In fact, marketers who are using video are seeing an average of 49 percent faster growth in revenue, according to the latest Aberdeen report.
In fact, micro-videos are becoming more and more popular among marketers not just consumers. Can you get your message across in 15 seconds? 5- to 15-second video ads are becoming mainstream inventory.
Inspiration for animated videos
If you’d like to incorporate animated videos into your video marketing strategy, check out this list of common categories:
- Awareness – touching on a new product, service, or important public service announcement
- Benefit-driven – hitting on the top three benefits of your product/service
- How-to – breaking down a process into steps
- Demo – showcasing your product in its most popular use case
- Compete – comparing your product to your competitors’
- Recruitment – onboarding and training employees
Examples of animated videos from GA Creative
Here are four animated videos developed for a variety of purposes. They might inspire you to think about how an animated video would complement your own marketing mix.
Internal Communications Video
Product Value Proposition Video
Social Media Video
Awareness Video