Making Animated Marketing Videos That Actually Engage Your Customers

Back in the day – and I mean, the old days of traditional advertising – only a handful of companies were able to spruce up their ongoing marketing strategy with a few high-budget commercial ads for TV that reached thousands and thousands of viewers.

Now, it’s hard to find a successful strategy that doesn’t include animated content in one form or another. From product videos to whiteboard-style pieces, marketing animation is everywhere.

However, not every animation video hits the spot, especially in terms of engagement! There are a couple of ground rules you must follow if you want your message to resonate with your audience.

In this piece, we cover some of the essential aspects you should mind when making animated marketing videos and break down the process into five practical and easy-to-follow steps to create a professional-level piece that reaches your customers' hearts!

Step 1: Understand Your Target Audience

Way before you start working on your piece, your chief focus should be to identify the actual audience you’re trying to reach. This is actually the first step for most marketing strategies; after all, nothing sounds harder than trying to sell a product or service to someone you don’t know.

There are so many questions you have to ask yourself about the people you’re going to create your video for. But don’t get overwhelmed! You can start with some formal ones, like location, age, sex, occupation, average income.

And once you get a fair idea of your target’s demographics, you can dive into more specific traits, such as: What interests and troubles your audience? What will your product mean to them? What doubts may they have about your service?

If you begin your production process having answered these questions, then your finished piece will feel like it’s talking directly to your viewer’s mind. And audiences are drawn to content that’s tailored to their preferences and looks anything but generic.

Step 2: Write a Powerful and Flexible Script

When it comes to marketing content, videos have an undeniable vantage point over plain text or pictures: rather than just telling what the benefits of a product or service are, they can show them to the viewer!

For instance, the most creative product demo videos don’t stick to a list of the product’s features: they show the product being used in context so that audiences get a clear idea of how it works.

Think of original scenarios on where to place your product or service that are suitable to demonstrate its many possible uses and benefits.

Also, be open to future changes to your script as you move further into the production process. After all, a script can be used as a guide to help you structure the key aspects of your message, even if some of its ideas are transformed along the way.

Step 3: Use Animation to Make Your Message Engaging

Here’s another useful aspect of animated marketing videos: their uniqueness. There is (almost literally) an infinite number of animation techniques and styles you can choose from to create your distinctive piece. You can go with motion graphics, 3D animation, stop motion, whiteboard, or even combine illustrations with live-action footage… you name it!

But regardless of the kind of style you end up going with, don’t stray away from your main goal: using animation to create unforgettable video content. Every second of your video should feature sound and movement to keep your audience engaged until the last frame.

Plus, animation allows you to create characters that your target audience can identify with and even repurpose live-action content you already have. For example, many of the most popular podcasts out there make short animation bits from their full content.

By designing likable characters that match their characteristics and interests, you’re making sure they empathize with the story you’re telling and relate to your message.

Step 4: Adapt Your Video for Social Media

Many brands think they can simply share the same video on each social media platform and think they’ve got their video marketing strategy solved… Well, it doesn’t work that way. Customizing your message to target different social media users is a key step towards maximizing your video’s potential reach.

The most common mistakes at this stage have to do with technical aspects such as ratio, captions, and length. YouTube prefers a 16:9 aspect ratio, while square videos work better for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And If you’re uploading your piece on any of those three social media platforms, consider adding subtitles since most users watch videos with the sound off.

Plus, you can also customize the first seconds of your video to make it more eye-grabbing. For instance, on YouTube, you need to capture viewers’ attention within the first 10 seconds to get them to continue watching. On the other hand, if you’re posting your video on Facebook, you have only about 5 seconds to spark your viewer’s interest. Otherwise, they'll just keep scrolling through their feed, and your video will get forgotten!

Step 5: Promote Your Finished Masterpiece

Forgetting about the word “viral” is one of the first key steps to creating a great business video. That’s why you need to think beyond social media for promoting your animated piece and try out new channels to reach new people.

Your video will look amazing as the centerpiece of your landing site, where interested customers who’ve already heard about your company can easily find it. Also, if your brand delivers regular newsletters to its customers, you can embed your piece on it. After all, loyal customers are always willing to watch engaging content from the brands they love.

One Last Piece of Advice

Every hour, our computers and smartphones are saturated with all sorts of news, spam e-mails, pictures from our friends, app notifications, and, above all, branded content. Hopefully, I’ve given you enough tips to make your video stand out from the crowd.

But if you finish reading this article having learned only one thing, let it be this: create content that matters. Only videos that provide a valuable, educational or entertaining message will engage with audiences and stick in their minds and hearts. So, good luck!