Video marketing trends 2020: What is new?

Video marketing is continuing to be on the rise. People consume information in the form of video more than ever before, and this tendency is going to be only stronger. Live video and animated explainer video is the first way to communicate with the audience and to share content with them. So, more and more brands make their digital marketing strategy based on a video.

In fact, not a single company can run a successful promotion without different animation video formats. Studies convince that it is worth for the brands’ owners to invest in various forms of video. Consumers are spending more time watching animated videos online every single day. Statistics predict that this number will be only increasing.

This is good news for those who make 2d and 3d animated explainer videos – brands will need them, and their work is required already. However, for the brands, it means a high density of competitors. Since everyone will build a strategy on the video, there will be more reasons to try to overbeat other brands. It may not be a good idea to follow trends immediately, but necessary to keep an eye on what is going on generally. If you are aiming to improve your animated video marketing strategy, you should know what is out there in your industry.

Over the years, we’ve seen motion design explainer video marketing come and go, making the history of everything that was involved – web marketing, internet, how brands evolve in its communication with the audience. The more it is changing, the more options we have. The big issue though – as it always is with a vast choice – how do you decide what is fitting into your marketing strategy?

Long explainer videos

For several years we’ve been talking about the attention span and how people can’t focus on long pieces of information. It doesn’t matter whether the talk was about text or video. Many marketers took that as a personal truth, and short-form media became a requirement.

Like any trend, this one is going down. Notably, we expect this to change during 2020. No one would deny that short animated video ad – a minute long or so – are better to watch. However, to provide consumers with more structured and profound information, brands need more time. Hope for an emotional connection with the viewers comes from the belief that people need more time to identify themselves with the brand. Also, there are exciting statistics that defended long explanatory videos as a better tool for engagement.

Long videos are better suited for the narratives and storytelling structures. We presume easily digestible animated videos will be changed by more creative, long-form content. Such 2d animation videos are more memorable. It helps the audience to get to know the brand better, get along with its values and to understand the principles behind a particular company. The thrill of a quick look at some moving images is not the same as focused attention one has to provide in order to grasp a long video.

Video will be the dominant form of content

So far, brands used animation and marketing videos for specific reasons and posted them mostly on some platforms, dedicating another form of content (text, pictures) to other pages. Since interest in the video is becoming only more significant, it is predictable that it’s going to be a prevailing form of content everywhere.

Using animated video across all the pages could be a significant advantage for those brands that want to convey their value. Looking ahead, there are now opportunities to predict that in a few years’ videos may become a necessity on every platform. It is different now; we are only on the way to this.

To put a video on every social media platform or channel could be hugely beneficial. An abundance of new technology allows people to consume information in many ways. For the brands, it is a chance to create multiple narratives, to create their myths to make people interested in them. Superbly crafted narrative in the video animation makes people connected to a brand in many ways.

Brands, in effect, have to imply 2d animated video graphics into marketing strategy as many times as possible, without losing coherency in meanwhile.

Why is live video becoming more trendy?

If we would want to build a hierarchy of most important marketing tools among videos, live video will be somewhere on the top. Live video is an engaging way to interact with people without firm preparation. Besides, it perfectly coincides with other moods of the time. To experience something rather in a present moment, to feel connected to the brand is vital for the audience.

Live video, in many ways mirroring the fashion that all the internet is following today. Live video, however, works very differently on most social media. For example, in Instagram, you can save most of the stories and live sessions to provide an opportunity to watch it later. Unlikely someone would attend a live session after it finished on Facebook or YouTube. Anyway, you should be aware of the high interest in a live video this year.

Customers could buy things from the video

Literary from the video and animated explainer videos. A shoppable link will be a part of a video so a user could make a purchase immediately, without leaving or stopping a video. Interacting with promoted products in a video and services in mainly animated video will be an integral part of watching experience.

Link for purchasing a product will be embedded in an object of an explainer video. Doesn’t matter if it is a computer or a phone – it will be easily reachable on any device.

Ephemeral content

The most exciting form of ephemeral content is stories. It is inherent not only to Instagram now, even though when we say “stories” we always mean Instagram. If it were about some other social media, one needs to be more specific. It is a prevalent form of content – for bloggers, companies and individuals. It is hard to keep your consistent online presence with video because it demands lots of work.

With stories you’ve got this opportunity to share something more intimate because stories are quite different from the other formats of videos, we used to.

Vlogs will continue to be in trend

Vlogging is a kind of fashion that will be spreading into different spheres of the internet. Including marketing. To film product features from the first-person perspective is very convincing for customers. We used to think of vlogging as a form of talking from all kinds of things. It can be more specific, though.

Brands can use it to show how they work, to highlight some of the stuff from the inside of their team. The options aren’t limited by anything. It is safe to assume that many genres of video are changing, becoming less definable, more complex. Vlogging is such a video where you can easily step out of the familiar.

Except for YouTube, we have now Instagram, which is perfect for vlogging thanks to the format of stories. This isn’t hard to film short vlog videos on Instagram several times per day. We shouldn’t miss from the account how much of our reaction is emotional. The intimacy of stories, the way this medium shows life, creates profound emotional feedback.

The animated video will be more interactive

It is not like we claim that animated video is not interactive now. On the contrary, at least partly, every marketing video contains some humorous intention. What we are saying here is that video animation is going to be more interactive considering formats. For example, 360 video is in trend now. No wonder, it creates a unique perspective for those who want to be present somewhere in the world in a virtual way — the gist of it in the very feeling of reality. To walk through iconic places or streets is more real with this 360 view perspective.

Since there are many places one would want to visit in this fashion, we assume that 360 videos will be improved, and consequently become more attractive. Doubtless, in the same spirit of interactive, we will encounter another form of video as well. When we are talking about interactive video formats, it is unfair to ignore how this is going to affect communication.

People crave for a more transparent way of communicating with each other. So many would opt in the improvement related to 1:1 video format. There is no better way to make communication better than an opportunity to see another person’s face.

Search optimization will be more video-focused

Organic reach on the biggest search engine will be more video-oriented. Google already announced that animated video is in priority when it comes to search optimization. So it’s going to have an impact on a brand’s SEO – now you have to optimize your video to be found in the search.

Desire for education

Live and animated video and is not formed itself – there are external reasons for one genre or another. There is a massive trend in education. It is fashionable to learn something new – whether it’s a language, a set of concepts or some skills.

So, since there is a potential demand for educational content, we expect more educational interactive animated videos. It works for other types of videos as well. The root cause is a demand for some specific form of content; therefore, we find more genres of marketing video. For the brands, it’s an opportunity to create unique educating content.

Advertisement

To assure people that purchasing decisions are the right intention, brands have to show why exactly the product is worth its price. The more complex advertisement is the more immersive experience the viewer has.

In the end, a consumer would have an approximately real picture of what it is to use the product. Immersive video technologies like VR will be more popular to use in the relation of ads.

Summary

As a rule, with every year passing by video taking up all the space in marketing strategies. Video marketing — with live, 2d, or 3d animated videos — trends come and go; some of them vanish almost immediately after appearance. Brands should know each of them in order to be on board. The reason for that is to find out what could be your building blocks for the industry you are working in.

Knowing upcoming trends helps to reflect on what is best for your goals. It’s getting harder to realize what suits your brand. What you should use – live video streams, enhance reality videos or stories is depending on your brand awareness and how you understand your brand identity. And animated explainer video to strengthen the positions and run trust for services and innovative solutions.

Make sure that you are picking up the right thing to use in your digital video marketing strategy.