How to make your marketing video more engaging with animation

Why video is an essential part of communication with the audience

When it comes to marketing, especially to making marketing videos, there is no approach that would be universal. The marketing itself changes within minutes. What about types of video?

In our visual age, when each minute over a million images are being made, it is no mystery why video styles are evolving faster than ever. Partly it is due to many platforms that post only videos or mostly videos. Naturally, the more content is being made, the more styles appear to be in usage.

Just think for the moment, how many shapes video have taken recently – thanks to the approach that have stories in different social media, forms of advertisement, or even TikTok videos. But to make video work for the project you are going to need more than that — strong marketing tactic, different types of content, like blog posts, social media posts, ads.

Some of them should be written, some of them should be visualised, but to stand out from competitors you have got to make unique video content. It is all coming to this right now.

There is no need to dive into specific marketing statistics and point out how important is video content today, but we have to emphasize one thing: people get acquainted with the brands mostly through watching their videos. Or videos about them. Plus, video can be a great addition to practically any pack of marketing tools. However, it is usually very expensive.

So, many startups, even brands that already have stable positions on the market, have to look for something less costly, but in the same way effective. That is where we can stumble upon animation as a great tool for marketing videos. The visual power of animated videos proved to be extremely effective these days. Many big brands like McDonald’s, Twitter or Google use animation to depict their services in a fun, engaging way. 

And…they made a trend. Yes, that simple! Once a brand like these giants makes an animation, probably even very basic, like Google, it is becoming a trend. But it also shows how we can communicate with our customers through the video. So, why is communication with the audience essential to build through the video?

Because – and this is quite easy – if your direct communication is going to take place at chats and messages, indirect is the one you’re making through your content.

You can’t present your values, strong sides or just the “mood” of the product through direct communication with the audience. This is where animation can make everything more engaging, interesting…and can make people fall in love with the brand.

How to use animation in order to make video engaging?

If you expect to develop a video marketing strategy and beat your competitors – which is actually a lot around, according to the latest statistics once you start a startup your main problem is competitors – well, in that case, your first priority should be to cut through the market right to your goals. And the main goal is to make yourself visible. 

So, how exactly should one make a marketing video saucier with animated tricks? Let’s start from the beginning. 

Who is your target audience? Of course, you wouldn’t overlook this thing. But when we are talking about video, it is more than just adjusting your content to them. Once you know your audience well, after making a bunch of customer development sessions, tracking the metrics, you will simply know how to make a video that will amaze them.

And maybe some people who weren’t even your audience in the first place also will join your customer base. How to understand your customer?

You should look for: 

• their lifestyle;
• Age and gender;
• Interests;
• Geographical location;
• values – why they are choose this

type of content. All these things simply describe the way your customer could behave. In order to make a great customer journey map and include a video on its path, you should know who you are making it for.

Let animation make your stories more powerful

Your  marketing video must focus on telling stories, instead of just trying to sell something or even simply describing things. Storytelling became one of the main narrative structures these days. If you can wrap your story into a nice package, believe it or not, you will get a more engaging product than with a simple video.

In order to compete with entertaining content, you need to create something more interesting. Plus, there is so much content, so you have to focus even more. The most engaging video content tells stories that make viewers feel what the brand message is about. Let’s say, on a very basic human level, stories make people immerse into sequences that would lead to important messages. This is exactly how you show what your brand is offering.

Make videos that include both wholeness and particularity of your brand, its values, intentions, goals, and finally, a character erupting into insight. The animation here is the best choice possible. And you have so many options to include different styles because each of them kind of have an inherent way to use a narrative structure.

For example, with 3D animation, you have possibilities that unlikely to appear with 2D animation. Only because some elements are better at telling some stories.

Mix different approaches to video

Speaking generally, mix different styles of animation with the live video or with the filmed clips. For example, it is useful to explain the concept behind your work by mixing live video with stop motion animation (puppet animation). It is a technology to animate photographs taken with a conventional camera.

Roughly speaking, this is creating a video based on time-lapse photography. The scene is shot, then minor changes are made to it, and it is shot again. Thus, the effect of movement is achieved, which is grouped and edited on the computer.

Make animated ads

The days of television dominance are long gone, and video ads are gradually moving away to the variety of video formats. For example, in social media ads, brands are increasingly using videos that are very similar to content that has been shared lately by users. 

This is also confirmed by research – people who are willing to buy products want simple, easy and fast interaction with brands and are inclined to pay for their services. The simplicity of its creation also plays a significant role in the distribution of video content. Popular ads on social media include animated ads or fully animated videos that don’t require a significant budget to create. They can easily tell a fascinating story using the simplest graphics.

Make the tone of voice that will sound special

Animated video adds context to concepts that are hard to explain with live video. For example, there are limited ways to explain an idea with actors. But if you have in your toolkit illustrations, graphics, and different animated tricks, you can describe basically anything.

Thus, animation gives you more options to invent a tone of voice that is unique and suits your brand. With animated video, you can find precisely what you need.

The main message can be presented more clearly

You might say “why?” here, but actually, on each step you make everything work better. For example, on a hook part, there are many ways to make people interested than slowly moving to the middle where you give all the meat and after this, your call-to-action part will be impeccable. Why? Because you have more tools!

Summary

Even if your video is going to be only a minute long or maybe shorter – it actually doesn’t matter. This is quite enough time to make something happen, to drive your audience into some decision that would be a great help for your brand.