Animated explainers are essentially short promotional videos designed to clearly and concisely communicate the core features and benefits of products, services, or innovative ideas. These videos help viewers understand what is on offer and how it can uniquely benefit them.
Animated explainers simplify information quickly and effectively by breaking down complex concepts into bite-sized, digestible golden nuggets and typically last 30 to 90 seconds in duration. They cater to a diverse audience, from your tech-savvy niece who loves the latest gadgets to your wise old grandpa who appreciates clarity.
An animated explainer video can communicate your company’s story so effectively you won’t have to say a word yourself!
2D Example
3D Example
🎨 The Creation Process: Creating a great animated explainer video is a journey that starts with understanding your audience like a close friend. This audience-centric approach is integral to the process and ensures your video resonates with the right people.
😵💫 Challenges and Frustrations: The first step is to identify the pain points, problems, wants and needs your audience faces without your solution.
🤩 Your Solution: Provide a clear and detailed explanation of how your solution effectively addresses the identified issues.
🥳 Features and Benefits: Outline what your solution accomplishes and the positive outcomes upon its implementation, detailing the benefits that arise from its usage.
😈 Competitors: Identify your three main competitors and examine their offerings and the positive details they promote about their solutions.
👪 Demographic: Understand who you target, considering factors like age, gender, location, and interests.
💫 Core Benefits: Choose three main benefits most valued by your target market.
🥇 Unique Selling Points (USPs): Highlight at least one USP your solution provides that competitors do not promote.
☺️ Differentiate: Explain how this USP sets your solution apart and why your solution is the better choice.
🟰 Takeaway: The answers to these questions will help you gather all the information you need to create a persuasive and engaging narrative.
📜 Narrative: The AIDA model, a powerful and straightforward strategy, is one way to develop a customer-focused narrative for an animated explainer video. This model, with its four vital steps: Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action, takes the viewer from curiosity to buying into the solution.
📢 Attention: Start with a problem, want, or need that resonates with your target audience. This connection helps viewers think about their experiences and motivates them to continue watching.
💡 Interest: Help your audience envision how your brand seamlessly integrates into their lives. Show how it addresses their challenges and fulfils their needs.
😍 Desire: Illustrate the value of your solution by explaining how your features, benefits and USP are better and different from your competitors.
🎯 Action: Finish with a strong call to action (CTA). A good CTA gives them a choice of how to get involved, and it can be as simple as ‘Click here’ or ‘Sign up.’
🟰 Takeaway: The AIDA model is an effective strategy for guiding your audience on a journey from curiosity to action, turning what was once just attention into tangible results!
🎙️ Voiceover: A professional voiceover artist will record the narrative and ensure that the tone and pacing are engaging from start to finish.
🧑🎨️ Design: Graphic designers use their creativity to turn written words into visual style frames. They create 2D (flat) and 3D (with depth) visual assets, including characters, backgrounds, and props.
🎞️ Animation: The visual assets come to life by animators who focus on the movement and timings of Illustrations and 3D Models, perfectly syncing everything with the voiceover.
🎶 Music and Sound Effects (SFX): Audio engineers and musicians provide the right music and SFX to enhance the video’s effectiveness, helping to build emotional connections that increase audience engagement.
🤝 Collaboration: The combination of artistic talent produces visually appealing and impactful animated explainers that engage viewers.
▶️ Usage: Animated explainers can be found here and everywhere! There are no set rules for where or how they should be displayed, which means you can make the most of your video. Here are some examples of how they can be used to maximise your return on investment:
🖼️ Website Integration: Place your animated explainer video prominently on your homepage so it’s the first thing customers see on your site. This will save them the trouble of sifting through lengthy paragraphs, turning casual browsers into eager buyers in no time!
📑 Landing Pages: Build dedicated landing pages around your animated explainers, include a clear CTA and optimise for page and video indexing to attract organic traffic.
📝 Blog Posts: Pair your written content with an animated explainer video. It adds value to your blog and keeps visitors on your site longer, which is great for increasing sales leads and SEO.
🌐 Social Media Sharing: Tailor your content to match the unique vibe of each platform to truly engage your audience. Whether creating Reels on Facebook, sharing Instagram Stories, showcasing LinkedIn In-Feed Video Carousels, or hopping on TikTok trends, there’s no faster way to get the word out about your product or service than by utilising these channels!
🔴 YouTube: The go-to platform for video content! Skippable and non-skippable ads are a great way to get your animated video in front of the eyes you need. Skippable ads can be cut short after five seconds, and non-skippable ads, which viewers must watch to continue onto the main content. Clip your animated video to the perfect length and optimise it for YouTube advertising!
📧 Email Campaigns: Add animated explainers to your email newsletters or marketing pushes. A video thumbnail can seriously bump your click-through rates compared to text.
👨🏫 Presentations and Webinars: Use your animated explainers in slideshows or webinars. It works great as a lively intro to your brand, product, or service and helps clarify your message.
🏢 Trade Shows and Events: An animated explainer video can help draw footfall to your stand, help attendees understand what you’re all about, and open the doors to business opportunities.
💁♀️ Customer Support: Animated explainers are perfect for guiding customers through different processes or addressing customer issues.
📈 Paid Advertising: Using platforms like YouTube and social media for video ads can help put your brand and what you’re all about in front of more people.
🎓 User Training: Use animated explainers in your training or onboarding materials. Combining visual and audio content makes learning more enjoyable and effective!
ℹ️ Internal information: Animated explainers can communicate crucial in-house developments, such as health and safety, human resources, cyber security, etc.
🟰 Takeaway: Adding animated explainers to your website, landing pages, blog posts, social media, and emails will help you connect better with your audience and increase your return on investment (ROI). They are also effective for presentations, online meetings, customer support, and training.
🏁 Conclusion: Animated explainers are short, engaging videos to promote products, services, or innovative ideas. The main purpose of these videos is to quickly connect with viewers personally, demonstrating how a solution can address their problems or needs. A good animated explainer video shows what makes a product or service unique and how it can help the viewer. It will grab their attention, make them curious, encourage them to keep watching and get them to take some form of action. Animated explainers can be used online, on websites and social media, or during live events and exhibitions.
🤓 Expertise: Reel Effect has an in-house team of experienced project managers, creative writers, artistic designers, and innovative animators who will work with you to transform your vision into a visual masterpiece!
🔎 Explore: Check out our portfolio and view our creative process below.
