Explainer Video Creation – Best Practices for Developing Effective Explainer Videos
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Explainer videos are a sure way to direct the attention of potential customers to what you do and offer as a business. A good explainer video does most of the work for you and help you to showcase your products or services in an innovative way.
Consumers today have become very sophisticated and do not want to spend time reading or scrolling down to know about your product offerings. Instead, they prefer to watch a video which can accurately represent your business in a short few precious seconds.
This means, you have to produce videos that are engaging and memorable to garner the necessary interest about your products and services. Therefore, is there a way to create effective explainer videos that will help you making the best of the opportunity?
Of course there is! And here is all you need to know about how to make explainer videos that are sure to rope in your audience and help you generate the sales you want.
Audience First
Before you start to list out what you need to highlight in your explainer videos, you must first understand your audience. If you do not know your audience, you will not be able to communicate with them through your video. After all, you are making the video for your target audience and not for yourself, right?
Ask these questions before you start planning on making a video:
- Who is your audience?
- What are their pain-points related to a product or service that you intend to solve?
- What would you like your audience to do after they watch the video?
The answers to the above will help you direct the message of the video more efficiently and create an effective explainer video.
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Brainstorming
Create a pool of ideas to choose from. In order to do so, you must sit down and brainstorm with your team and come up with ideas that are creative and innovative. Easier said than done. However, it is imperative that your explainer video is original and strikes the right chord with the audience. Find ways to show how you are different from your competition and not just in terms of pricing.
Again, try not to put a limit on your brainstorming sessions and allow for time to come up with ideas that will eventually rock your explainer videos. Be open to experimenting and catch on with the trends as best as you can.
Choosing a video type
As a continuation of your brainstorming session, you might want to choose the type of explainer video you would like to go for. There are several types of explainer videos:
2D character animation: It has two dimensional motion animation that involves one or more characters.
Whiteboard animation: It has animation that resembles a hand drawing on a whiteboard.
Kinetic Typography: It has ‘moving text’ or text combined with motion to get the message across.
Infographics: It makes use of graphics, text and animation to create engaging videos.
Motion Graphics: It has ‘moving graphics’ or graphics that can transition into other things.
You can choose from any type of explainer videos depending on which type will be best to project your vision and ideas.
Know More: Explainer Videos – Reasons to Create an Animated Explainer Video
Scriptwriting
Every video requires a strong script before it can start to make sense. Remember that your video is going to tell a story and that has to be a very compelling one. A good script has the power to turn an ordinary story to an incredible one.
Not only that, script writing helps you to time your video to know how long or short it will be. That way you can add or remove parts in your script that may not be assisting with the story as strongly as they should be. Always remember to keep your video length under 2 minutes.
Run your script through a thorough review to ensure that your point or story is getting across to the audience in the way that you intend. A review will check any assumptions you may have made as they are pitfalls that you must avoid.
Character Designing
You have the option of using a character for your explainer video. A character can be the mascot of your business and has the ability to connect with your audience. For instance, if you are a marketing a product made for kids, you might want to choose a character that children and parents can relate to.
Character designing is an important aspect of creating explainer videos. If your character design is flawed or off even by a margin, your explainer video will not fetch you the results you were hoping for. Remember that your explainer video is akin to an animation video where your character will go through situations that you create as part of the story and its reaction has to strike a chord with your target audience. More often than once, character design happens to be the biggest reason for the success or failure of an explainer video.
Know More: Top 7 Animated Explainer Video Marketing Tips
Story Boarding
This is the most important phase in your production process. This is where you lay out your entire animation in sketches. You can use sophisticated software to create the sketches or you may simply use paper and draw stick figures to show the flow of the story. Basically, the story boarding phase makes you visualize your explainer video frame by frame.
With each slide, you can explain how a frame must look and how it can be created using animation techniques. One of the biggest advantage of story boarding is how effective it is when it comes to getting feedback. You can share story boards and scrutinize them to check if you are on the right track of thought and aligned to the idea of the explainer video.
It is much easier and less time-consuming to change a story board in comparison to a finished explainer video. At a later stage, when you are working on the explainer video, you can refer to the story board as and when necessary.
Voice Recording
Voice over in an explainer video adds to its appeal and helps to engage audiences better. An effective explainer video should possess a good narrative with a voice over preferably done with professional services. A professional voice artist knows more about voice modulation and can bring in a whole lot of experience to the process. Voice overs that are done in a recording studio adds clarity to the recording and enables you to make high-quality explainer videos.
When you aim to create effective explainer videos a good sounding voice over is a necessity. Not only does a voice recording add to the quality of your video, it goes a long way in building brand recognition and lends credibility to your videos.
Animation
Last but not the least, animation is the one thing that will set your video apart from the competition. It is the execution of your ideas and content. Therefore, it is imperative that you invest well in creating the animation for your video.
There are several software available in the market today to create animation videos. You can even create explainer videos for free. At the same time, if you want to create explainer videos that leave a positive impact, you might want to consider using professional services. While explainer video maker software offers free graphics that you can use for your animation videos, they may not have the same effect on your audience as custom designed ones.
At the end of your video, remember to include a CTA that prompts the audience for a certain action – such as subscribing or buying your product. Without the CTA, the audience may not be able to know what you expect them to do next. This is where you can direct them to your business landing page and proceed with the next steps – generating leads, one-to-one discussions, or direct sales.
Know More: How Animated Explainer Videos Are Beneficial for Business Growth?
Conclusion
Follow the above to create highly effective explainer videos for your business. You do not have to make an explainer video yourself if it does not fall within your expertise. You can hire the services of a digital marketing company to make an explainer video for you. Professionals have more experience in creating effective explainer videos and you can remain involved in the whole process. Tarika Technologies boasts of a team of talented professionals who can make the perfect explainer video for your business. Know more about our explainer video making process here.
