The art of selling the invisible: how animation brings intangible products to life

Selling a product you can see, touch, or try on? What on earth can be easier! You put it in front of your audience, maybe slap a 30-second video ad with a catchy jingle, and voilà — everyone loves it. But what if you’re selling something your customers can’t physically hold or experience before they buy it—like software, insurance, or consulting services? What then? Could be a big bummer. 

When it comes to services or products that don’t fit into a package, traditional sales tactics can fall flat. Describing abstract offerings like cloud solutions, risk management, or financial consulting with just words can be dull and inspiring. Unless you put in a video. It turns complex, intangible ideas into something people can see, understand, and most importantly—trust.

Let’s explore how animation can work with such things, and what are the advantages for you in comparison to simple advertising.

Making the Buying Decision Easier

Making the decision to invest in an invisible product often requires a leap of faith. Admit it, we all have been there. Buyers can’t just test drive consulting services or “try on” a CRM system for size. But animation provides an immediate, digestible snapshot of your product, making that leap a lot smaller.

Animated demos or tutorials, for instance, can guide potential clients through how your service works in practice. When they can visualize how they’ll use your product or benefit from your service, the path from consideration to purchase becomes much clearer.

Building Trust Through Visualization

Have you noticed how people tend to trust things they can see? No brainer! In the absence of a physical product, clients might feel skeptical about your offering—particularly if they’re shelling out significant money for something they can’t touch. Animation bridges that gap by turning intangible concepts into something visual.

For example, in a financial consulting firm, clients need to trust that the strategies you recommend will work for them, even if they can’t see the results upfront. Animation can show projected growth or explain complex strategies visually. 

In fact, animated explainers are a perfect tool for introducing a new service to the market. They allow potential clients to visualize how the service will work for them and answer the age-old question, “What’s in it for me?”

Flexibility in Style and Tone

Every business is unique, and so is its audience. Animation provides unique flexibility when it comes to matching the style and tone of your brand. Whether your company’s vibe is corporate and serious or quirky and fun, there’s an animation style to match. It means that you can find a visual representation for anything you need. Examples? 

For software companies, minimalist Explainer Video might reflect precision and professionalism. For insurance, warm, comforting animation can evoke trust and protection. Consulting firms may opt for sleek, modern visuals that project expertise and efficiency.

And let’s not forget the voice-over. Whether your message requires a reassuring tone, a touch of humor, or authoritative gravitas, animation lets you pair the perfect voice with your visuals to strike just the right chord. Just make sure to discuss it with your animation company—they know the best option for you. 

Bringing Abstract Benefits to Life

Selling a product that doesn’t exist in the physical world often means relying on promises of benefits—more efficiency, better security, peace of mind. These benefits are crucial, but they’re also intangible. How do you make something like “boosted productivity” feel real?

Animation lets you visually represent these outcomes. If you’re selling software that streamlines workflows, animation can show documents zooming through digital spaces, landing perfectly where they need to go. For insurance, you could visualize security by showing protective bubbles around families, homes, or businesses.

The beauty of animation is that it doesn’t have to stick to reality. It gives you the freedom to exaggerate, use metaphors, and make the invisible benefits of your service feel concrete.

Conclusion

After creating a variety of animations for companies from many industries for over a decade, we have witnessed the incredible impact of these visuals for them. There are many clients who turned to the services we have discussed just because they saw a simple – and often short – video that needed no rewindings: everything was understood right away. 

Contact us if you need to market your product through a video — we’ll deliver it right before their eyes.