Bubbly, quirky, charming, suave, stylish, sharp – any or all of these adjectives could describe your brand. These same adjectives can also be used to describe animation – an emerging marketing tool that is helping small businesses grow and establish a memorable brand image.
Long gone are the days when shapes and characters were drawn by hand and given the illusion of movement through laborious cel animation. Thanks to digital computing animation has experienced major transformations making it easier, and more affordable, to produce high quality animation on a smaller budget.
In the early days, animation was only in the form of cartoons designed to entertain children — but not any more. Cartoon animations can now be designed in, both, 2D and 3D formats courtesy of CGI (i.e. computer graphics imagery) technology. Not only does today’s animation entertain kids, it also educate learners and markets brands to audiences of all ages.
How to Build a Brand Using Animated Videos
With the advent of new technologies impacting the possibilities of animation, small business owners have the chance to make their brands truly stand out from the crowd, strengthen brand presence and announce new products and services in a unique way.
Here are four distinct ways to incorporate video animation into your marketing strategy:
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Engage customers with an animated explainer video.
Demonstrate our product or service using an explainer animated video. At the risk of stating the obvious, watching a video that demonstrates how a product or service works is way more effective than reading a static web page or a brochure.
Explainer animations can effectively explain how products and services work in a short time period. Due to their visual and entertaining nature, explainer videos are more likely to leave a lasting impression on potential customers compared with static text alone. Considering that “65% of U.S. marketers plan to increase their mobile ad budgets to account for video according to eMarketer,” small business owners may want to consider the possibilities.
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Boost conversion rates with animated video.
According to ComScore, “64% of website visitors are more likely to buy a product on an online retail site after watching a video. In addition, visitors who view videos stay on the site an average of 2 minutes longer than those who don’t view videos.” It is, therefore, not surprising that a well-produced animated video can significantly boost online sales and increase conversion rates.
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Engage your target audience with an animated infographic.
Infographics are a combination of information and graphics that creatively represent key facts – making them not only easier to digest, but also fun to learn from too. An animated infographic goes a step further and enables the graphics, facts and figures to move, making them even more memorable and engaging than static (i.e. image-based) infographics.
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Improve search engine presence with with video animation.
Search engine behemoths like Google are great at indexing videos with an increasing number of SERP’s results showing videos. In addition, video can directly improve search engine rankings by improving websites metrics such as bounce rate and the amount of time an average user spends on your site.
According to Website Magazine, 62% of consumers watch videos that they happen to ‘find’ when online and 52% of consumers are less likely to return products after seeing videos about them. In a nutshell, engaging content gets ranked higher by search engines and video is one of the most engaging forms of content in your marketing arsenal.
Animation can be hot or cool, cute, quirky, weird, colorful, clever, funny, satirical, poetic. It can improve to the way you wish to communicate with your audiences and help achieve your business goals.
Sources: Invodo Statistics
Dr. Manroop Takhar is the Managing Director of Qudos Animations, a leading studio in London that produces creative explainer and whiteboard animations for businesses.
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