Online Marketing Tips via Video’s

People are spending more and more time online. Digital marketing is about connecting with people. Think about how much time you spend on social media or how often you consult Google when you question. Digital marketing is about bringing your brand into spaces where people are already spending their time.

Animation can improve your digital marketing:

Websites

Websites are often an organization’s primary public face. When someone wants to learn more about your organization, chances are they will look up your website first. Hence it should be attractive, engaging, informative, and actionable. But did you know most people leave a webpage after less than a minute? How do you capture someone’s interest enough to keep them around actually to learn about your business and maybe even take action? For example, a video on your landing page can increase engagement, keep people on your site for longer, and create a memorable association with your organization.

Paid Advertising

One might be familiar with some of the many ways organizations can run paid advertising on the web. Some of the most common paid advertising avenues are through search engines like Google and Bing. Google also has the option to run video advertisements on YouTube. They are called pre-roll ads, and they run before YouTube videos. With pre-roll ads, you have a partially captive audience (they have the option to skip after 5 seconds) and can cater them to a particular demographic. Another popular space for advertising is on social media sites like Facebook, and turning a partially captive audience (they have the option to skip after 5 seconds) and can cater them to a particular demographic. Another popular space for advertising is on social media sites like Facebook. Turning a plain ad into a video ad can get you the attention you want on a crowded feed.

SEO & Videos

SEO services refer to Search Engine Optimization and are a strategy used to improve search engine results organically. This can be done with the careful use of keywords, frequent creation of relevant content, and a clean, fast site. Videos are a great way to boost engagement. By simply including video on your website, you signal to the search engine that your site has rich, varied content, which is a significant bonus in the SEO world. Pro-tip: include video on MORE than just your landing page, such as blog posts. And remember to include keywords in your video description, title, and tags when you upload it to YouTube. Doing so will earn you extra SEO points. There are so many ways video can fit seamlessly into digital marketing strategy, improve on what you already have, or help you get your digital strategy off the ground. We’ve detailed a few ways you can use video but encourage you to dream up ways to incorporate video into your marketing strategy.

Boost SEO x53 and other great reasons to use animation in your marketing. There are all sorts of names for it — explainer videos, corporate videos, marketing videos, animated web videos, and cartoons for your company. I prefer to call them animated videos, but whatever you call them, their popularity in digital marketing strategy is growing. Once the animation was limited to those with massive six-figure production budgets, current technology means you no longer need a big studio or access to television broadcast channels to create and distribute animation. Anyone can have one written, designed, storyboarded, and produced tailored to your marketing needs in theory. Four primary reasons to use animation in your marketing.

Benefits of Visuals & Videos

1. increased conversion rates — 64%- 85% of people are more likely to purchase after watching a product video. And, on average, people will stay two minutes longer on your website when engaged with a video, “Internet Retailer 4/2010 / Com Score 8/2010”. A video on your site’s landing page will save visitors time clicking and reading through your website. You have a chance to grab their attention and communicate using a powerful mix of pictures, motion, text, voice, sound effects, and music in a short amount of time. It is an efficient use of time and condenses information in several forms of media. Read more about the power of video and why you should be using it in this paper.
2. Video boosts SEO; Google owns YouTube, so a presence on YouTube and embedding video on your site gives you a 53x higher likelihood of a Google front-page search result “Forrester, 1/2010”. You can also add keyword tags to your YouTube videos. For example, adding the keywords “hire freelance animator” into my YouTube videos resulted in commissions for projects from clients who discovered my business through these videos.
3. Viral marketing and video sharing. A viral video marketing campaign increase click-through rates by 750%. 68% of people who watch online videos will, in turn, pass links for these videos onto their friends “Marketing Experiments.com, November 2006”. There is no magic formula for creating a video people will want to share. Free Range Studios has made several animated videos that have gone viral and had this to say; “…there’s no guaranteed recipe for big numbers on a video campaign. What you can do is make sure you’ve got a solid idea/story/message, a clear understanding of your target audience, an action step or ‘ask,’ an excellent outreach plan to pound the ether-pavement and get folks ready for your launch. “So, although you shouldn’t simply upload your video, sit back and expect people to start sharing without any other form of promotion — it can be a powerful and unexpected part of your marketing campaign.
4. Video saves time in creating and delivering PowerPoint presentations. Once you’ve created an animation, please make the most of it and use it offline too. Animation can enhance presentations, pitches, and meetings by helping to explain and promote your business. It’s a great conversation point and useful for networking. I have all my animation available offline on my phone, iPod and tablet. So, if I ever get into a conversation with someone about what I do, I can whip out a device and show them. My animated videos have generated as many leads as my business cards. I will provide you a tip with as many as I can to succeed.

TIPS for Online Videos

TIP 1 — remember it is not a live-action video, be imaginative. One of the benefits of using animation over live-action video is you can create something engaging and high impact. You can make things happen that would be outside the realm of a typical corporate video production budget. Many people approach an animation thinking they will need the main character who talks to the audience about the company in a setting consistent with what the business does. If you want to be this literal, you may as well hire a film crew to do a live-action corporate video. Animation allows you to break through the boundaries of reality. Have fun with metaphors and symbolism. The message you want to get across is vital. Add some humor or strange situations; anything unusual that will entertain and connect with people so they’ll remember your video.

TIP 2 — Share writing the script. If you’re struggling to think of a creative storyline, or can’t envisage your animation, then consult your designer/animator — this is their job. They will digest your marketing literature and communication aims, understand your business and target audience, and then develop some creative ideas for you.

TIP 3 — Avoid shoehorning technical information and sales literature into the script. Think of the animation as an entertaining and engaging signpost to further knowledge. Try showing the script to people outside your organization, collect feedback and adapt the animation accordingly. An approach I often use in scripts is to establish a problem at the start of the animation and then show the viewer how a particular business, company, product,, or service can solve this problem.

TIP 4 — It’s not a PowerPoint presentation. Avoid the temptation to fill your animation with paragraphs of text (that’s even a bad idea for PowerPoint too). Even if you animate it like the scrolling text Star Wars intro, this approach is still not recommended. It would help if you aimed to entertain your viewers with a pleasing mix of moving imagery and sound. Use text sparingly to highlight key points. Try to incorporate any text into the visual design of the animation.

TIP 5 — Plan and prepare for production. It is difficult and costly to make changes to animations once they’re finished, so it’s essential to plan and sign off each pre-production stage. I would recommend your animator goes through each of the following stages with you: project brief, script and treatment, visual style concepts (how the animation will look), storyboards, animation style test (So you can see the style of animation that will be used), revisions and feedback, start animation production, and opportunity for modifications within the agreed storyboard.

TIP 6 — Animation has no boundaries, but it does have a budget. If you want some 3D animation resembling Avatar, Shrek, or any Pixar film, be prepared to pay a lot. If your animation involves lots of character animation and movement, again, this has a cost. The animator Mike Milo explains the reasons for the varying price of animation styles in his blog. Remember, it’s the communication that comes first — the impressive visual effects are there to enhance your message. Talk with your animator/designer about what is possible within the budget and timescale. You can easily create a compelling, engaging, and aesthetically pleasing animation with some creative thinking.

TIP 7 — Branding your animation. Consider what you want to communicate using imagery? What emotions and messages do you want to convey to your audience? Do you want it to follow existing brand guidelines, or does the animator need to create something new? Not all animators work in a variety of styles or will design a style specific to your needs. Check their existing portfolio of work first to see what sort of styles they can do and if a particular style compliments your brand.

TIP 8 — Do you need music, sound effects, or a voice-over? Sometimes videos work without a voice-over by relying on strong visuals and some punchy text. It may be tempting to cut costs by excluding music or using a royalty-free soundtrack from a library. Bespoke music production and sound design are explicitly tailored to your animation; they can amplify the emotion and tone of the video at key moments and help set the pace. If your message is complex, you really should consider hiring a voice-over artist; otherwise, the animation may end up like a game of charades with the viewers trying to guess what it’s trying to say. Most animation production companies will include the cost of voiceovers and sound production in the animation fee and manage it for you. Just ask them at the beginning of the project because the sound is best developed alongside the animation rather than as an afterthought at the end.

TIP 9 — Future-proofing your animation. Do you need to include dates and prices in your animation that might change in a year? It is more difficult and costly to update a video than a website. If you mention any changes that might arise to your animator/ designer, you can work out a solution. I hope you find these tips helpful — all the best for your future animations.

On an ending note, animated video is the right tool to sell your product. Before using some great D.I.Y., video-making tools like Animaker, you need to prepare a well-thought-out script that reflects how you want the animated video subject to speak. By focusing on writing a clear script with a good storyline, you can deliver your business message successfully to the audience. Then probably the following script you will write might be that of your company’s success story. After all, there are many powerful reasons you need to use video marketing!