Animated videos are a great way to show the world what your company is about. It’s a versatile format that, when used correctly, can make for one of the most compelling ways to communicate your brand.
In this article, I’m going to go over five things to keep in mind when producing an animated marketing video. Here are some of the topics I’ll be going over:
- Knowing Your Target Audience
- Animated Production Tips – Crafting A Relevant Message
- Why Quality Animation Is Important
- Customizing Your Video For Your Audience
- Branding And Promoting Your Video
Let’s begin, shall we?
Knowing Your Target Audience
Have you ever told a joke you knew was going to kill it only to get nothing but silence in return? If the joke has worked in the past, then chances are your audience was likely not the right one for the piece.
The same thing can happen with your video. You may think it has beautiful visuals, a nice message, great delivery, but then nothing happens. Perhaps you didn’t quite understand who your audience was, and, in return, the audience did not engage with your message.
This is why it’s so important to research your audience before production starts. This way, you won’t have to modify the essential elements of your video later. It’ll save you both time and money down the road.
One way to do this is by using social listening tools like Hootsuite, Social Mention, or Followerwonk to see how people perceive your brand in the social media sphere. You’ll gain insights on market sentiment, popular keywords, trending hashtags, followers, and influencers.
You can also conduct surveys to find out which groups are most excited about your product. In these surveys, make sure to ask about preferences, lifestyles, habits, and any other important parts of daily life. It might seem small, but the more you understand your audience, especially those who like your product, the more successful you’ll be when making your video.
Taking note of all this information will come in handy when crafting your video in terms of both message and aesthetics.
Animated Video Production Tips – Crafting A Relevant Message
In today’s attention economy, being succinct is a must-have skill. Especially when it comes to promoting your brand.
People are constantly being bombarded with messages, which means businesses are left with very little room to make themselves memorable. That’s why trimming your message down to its essence is so important. Your message will have to be brief and be able to stand out.
Video is the right medium to do just that. In my experience, a 2-minute video is enough to be able to get your message across without boring your audience.
Still, making it 2 minutes is not going to make your video more engaging. You’ll have to do that in the first 5 seconds of your video.
One way to do this is by posing a question at the beginning of the video. Then make it clear that you’ll be answering this question during the course of the video.
The trick is then to use animation to illustrate both what the question poses and what the answer proposes. The whole point of this is to make it a visual message. If you manage to do that, people will follow along.
Remember to trim your message into the shortest form possible. If it ends up being less than a minute, all the better. Lengthy videos don’t necessarily mean quality, which brings me to the next section.
Why Quality Animation Is Important
I could go on and on about how crisp images, smooth animations, and clear sounds are an indication of quality and how these are things your viewers will notice and be grateful for. And you know what? They will notice, and they will appreciate it. I mean, nobody wants to see unintelligible drivel. But to me, it really is all about originality.
These days, originality is tantamount to quality.
See, quality is more than just taking care of the technical aspects of the video. It is about providing viewers with content they can’t get anywhere else.
I mention this because there are many self-serve services out there that allow users to make their own animated videos through templates and presets.
Don’t get me wrong, those services are great, and they may serve your purpose. However, they are probably not going to help you create the kind of content that will set you apart from the pack.
Because these self-serve tools exist to serve a mass market, they have to make their solution appealing and generic so that it reaches the most people. This means that a lot of the animation presets will look and feel like templates, and their limited features will only allow you to communicate very basic ideas with very basic visuals. These, I’m afraid, are not the hallmarks of quality.
Instead, you might do well to consider reaching out to a skilled video company. Not only will it bring your brand’s unique quality to life, but it will also set you apart by giving your viewers something different than what these other services offer.
In order to stand out in today’s saturated sea of web content, your animation has to go beyond any prepackaged solution. Spending a little more now on a truly original, high-quality video will pay off in the future.
Customizing Your Video For Your Audience
Earlier in this article, I wrote about the importance of knowing your audience. It’s time to put that research into good use.
If you asked the right questions and collected the right data, then you should be able to describe both your average target buyer and the world he or she inhabits.
Find the common denominator from all your data points and write down all the adjectives that best represents that data. Try to be as descriptive as possible. You’ll quickly begin to get a rough idea of your animation’s tone and style.
You can get really specific too. If your data suggests that the people who are more enthusiastic about your brand happen to be 40-year-old males who enjoy both golfing and scatter graphs, then include those elements into your video. It’s about establishing empathy, so show your audience that you know them. Don’t use characters that look 20 only because you feel it’s more trendy. Listen to your data.
Having said that, don’t be rigid. It’s an animation, and if you have the opportunity to make it a custom one, then strive to make it so that it jumps out at the viewer.
Branding And Promoting Your Video
Your brand has an identity, which means you’ll probably want to preserve some of the aesthetics of your brand. A way to do this is to make the color palette of your video resemble that of your brand’s. It’s an elegant solution and a relatively simple undertaking seeing as how it’s animation.
If using your brand’s color palette doesn’t feel right, then you can always watermark your video with your company logo. In fact, you should always do this. It’s your signature.
Also, don’t forget to mention your company every chance you get. This sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how forgetful people are and how many videos don’t take this into account. So take the time to remind viewers who you are throughout the video. This way, you’ll embed your brand into their brains.
Finally, don’t forget to promote your animated video. Use your social media presence and make your video available to all of your followers. You can also put it up on YouTube and embed it into your website’s homepage.
But don’t stop there. Go online and buy targeted traffic so that the right audience sees it. Use the research you made. It should help you map out the right segments. Then, It’s just a matter of launching a campaign through Facebook ads to reach the desired audience.
Conclusion
Making an animated video that resonates with your audience is what you should always hope to achieve. Of course, this is not always guaranteed. Just make sure you know your audience right from the beginning.
This information will be useful during the production and promotion of your video. It will help you craft your characters and tone as well as help you define the segments you’ll be targeting. Also, be sure your video is engaging from the beginning and succinct in its entirety. Follow these tips, and you’ll be fine!