Elevating Your Brand: How to Craft Animated Marketing Videos for Business Success
When businesses create a marketing campaign, they expect it to achieve certain goals. Goals that are measurable, and easy to analyze. Here is the thing, though: the ways to achieve these goals often aren't something you can just learn from a textbook or manual. Just because you write in a plan that people should click on their ad a certain number of times doesn't mean it will happen. Saying that the product is better than the competition won't automatically make people buy it.
There is a lot more than just words that affect customers - there are a lot of emotions, color, tone, and strictly visual appeal that work as a trigger for a buying decision. In this article, we will show you how to use animation as a part of a marketing campaign and walk you through the process of creating an animation video. Read on.
Why Animation is a Great Marketing Tool?
A typical customer journey goes through several stages - Awareness, Interest, Decision, and Loyalty. To guide and direct customers from one stage to the other, marketers use a lot of different tools.
What is great and elegant about animations is that they are versatile enough to cover all these stages. Isn't that just a perfect tool? For example, if you need to boost brand awareness - a quick and catchy marketing video will do the trick. Want to teach your audience about your product? A longer video can explain everything they need to know. The flexibility of animated videos is what sets them apart as a marketing tool. Let's take a look at some more benefits of making an animation video a core of your marketing campaign.
4 Reasons to Use Animation Video for Marketing Campaign
Video is the Top Trend Right Now
When marketers plan their next campaign, one big challenge is to grab and keep the audience's attention. What is working the best today? Right, visuals. To be more precise - videos. They are easier to watch, and more digestible than emails (too easy to ignore) or pop-ups (quickly vanish from memory). Plus, video marketing is the most powerful tactic for promotion these days.
Perfect for Promoting Digital Products
If you think about it, all the crucial products we use nowadays are digital - apps, software, websites, you name it. Traditional marketing methods simply fall short when it comes to promoting products customers can't physically interact with. Animation, on the other hand, is perfect for explaining and making them appealing.
Have a Lasting Impact
Typical ads are mostly relevant for a limited time. Animation videos, on the contrary, maintain their value over longer periods. You can repurpose a single video for a variety of marketing goals and have tangible, efficient results.
Video Can be Used Many Times
When you create an animation video, there are still lots of materials - slogans, characters, visuals, even text - and all of that can and should be used more than once. Video can be a good fit on other communication channels.
The Process of Creating an Animated Video: Step-by-Step Guide
Now when you know the value of an animated video as a marketing tool, it is time to run through the actual stages of creating it. Of course, some animation companies can blend the steps we are about to name, or go in parallel. If you look at the bigger picture, the process of creating an animated video that should serve marketing purposes follows a few steps. Let's explore them.
First Steps: Research, Briefing, and Scripting
You kick-start the project by conducting a thorough research. An animation company needs to understand what the client expects, and what goals should a video pursue. This is essentially a preparation stage, where all the important information goes into a brief. This document serves as a foundation to develop a general concept and craft a scripted scenario for the video.
Creating a Storyboard and Casting Voice-Over
Once the script is ready, it is time to move to a storyboard. This involves creating a series of sketches that visually depict how the final video will appear. In a way, a storyboard is a guide for both the client and the production company to ensure everyone has a shared vision of the project.
If the storyboard is approved, the next stage should be a cast for a voice-over artist. Every project has certain requirements for gender, accent, tone of voice, etc. It takes time to find a voice actor to fit them all.
Style Frames and Illustrations
Style framing is a way to have a reference for the whole future video. It is a single-finished shot that establishes the visual aesthetic of the video. Also, that's the stage where adjustments can be made. After that, the team proceeds to create illustrations or models.
Animation Production and Sound Design
A final touch of the whole process involves bringing the still assets to life through animation, adding a soundtrack and voiceover. This is a sync stage: movements and audio are supposed to complement each other in the storytelling experience. After submitting a video, a client should review it.
The Main Tools to Use in the Process of Creating an Animation Video
Every company has its toolkit when it comes to creating an animated video. You should know that choosing the right tools for video production depends more on personal preferences and workflow organization rather than specific software. Here are some quality tools you can use:
- Google Docs for scripting;
- Adobe Photoshop and Boords for storyboards;
- Adobe AI for illustrations;
- Adobe After Effects, Cinema 4D, Toon Boom for animation process;
- Frame.io for client reviews.
Summary
Animation is a multipurpose marketing tool that can be used across various communication channels. However, to create an animated video that works, you need a 3d animation video production company at your side. They can ensure your goals are met, a video matches your vision, and the video production process is done quickly and properly. Once you receive a professionally made animation marketing video, you are on the path to achieving your goals.