How to make an effective explainer video

Explainer videos are currently an important method for businesses to market themselves and attract potential customers. Among the different types of video marketing strategies, explainer videos are the most influential. Over 96% of audiences watch explainer videos to familiarize themselves with a service or a product.

In this article, we are going to look at some of the ways you can make an explainer video for your organization or brand.

Explainer video defined.

Explainer videos are short clips that explain your brand’s services or products. Good explainer videos effectively promote your business and clearly explain to your potential customers exactly who you are, what you do, and why they should choose you.

These videos are usually found on website landing pages, product or service pages, social media pages, or web homepages. They can also be of good use during events, presentations, and crowdfunding events.

Some of the advantages of creating explainer videos include:

• Easily shared content creation.
• Improved SEO rankings
• Increase in sales funnel conversion rates
• Longer viewer engagement

Reasons for making explainer videos

Some of the common reasons for making explainer videos include:

Informing and educating:

Despite teaching a new skill, generating information, or telling a story with animations, explainer videos are geared towards educating and informing. They help to clarify to the customer why they should select you and not your competitor.

Making easily shared content

The video can be shared on any other platform for video sharing like Vimeo or YouTube with the help of focus keywords to be easily found by customers and make it easy for people to share them.

Informing the viewers

We can be able to process images faster with our eyes than any other sensory organ. The retained information means that people will be able to remember your offering when it comes to purchasing your product or service or sharing the information with other potential customers who are interested.

Brand awareness

Your brand personality can be reflected in your explainer video. The scrip tone and visual make-up can be able to show who you are. Creating an effective explainer video offers support to audiences who will notice your brand authority.

Promoting a service or product

When you create an effective explainer video customers easily understand your product or service by seeing the value in purchasing that product or service.

Step-by-step guide on how to make an explainer video

You might be required to follow several steps while making an explainer video:

1.Research topic at hand

Making an exceptional explainer video requires some research first to make sure the content is relevant to the target audience. You should know the subject matter thoroughly to pick out what will work best for you.

You can do research on conversations on the video topic via conducting surveys, Google Analytics, and social media to get valuable data concerning the topic. This research should be guided by certain principles:

• Taking a complex idea and simplifying it to offer a clear solution.
• You are offering a chronological solution to a problem. If you are looking for a solution to a problem that affects many people you can make an explainer video that easily explains the solution.

2.Choose the type and style of the video

This depends on the intention of the explainer video: whether you are explaining a service or product or trying to make a sale.

Type

i)Whiteboard

If you have a short budget and want to make a simple video you may need a whiteboard explainer video. This format involves a single individual, a hand, or an animated individual drawing on a white background to illustrate a voiceover. This is a simple, effective, and memorable style.

ii)Live-action and professionally shot video

This kind of video is shot on camera rather than being an animation. It is important when you want to illustrate a step-by-step process for a product or service.  Having people in the video can help make an emotional connection with the audience.

iii)Animation

These types of videos can help in illustrating abstract matters like software. They are also useful in explaining or simplifying complex subjects or processes.

Styles

i)Sales

Sales explainer videos are geared toward informing viewers about the advantages of a service or product to lead customers into the sales funnel.

ii)Educational

These are simple tutorials for students and for helping customers learn about services, products, or processes.

iii)Informative/casual

This video style offers information and instruction on services and products using humor and clear presentations making it easy to understand.

3. Scriptwriting

Video production companies like Spiel emphasize that script is the most important thing in the explainer video. Even if you have a superb video, it will not work if you do not have very solid ideas presented in the script. It makes more sense to make the script individually since you know your target audience the best including their needs and preferences.

4. Storyboard mocking up

If you have an excellent script and only use it to make the video you have a risk of having products that do not resemble what you had imagined. Mocking up a storyboard enables you to make sure that the video goes hand in hand with the intentions of your story.

5. Audio recording

Audio elements are important when recording an explainer video.  This would require you to look for professional voice-over help. To have an accomplished presentation you need to hire a professional voice-over artist.

6. Make visual assets

 Visual assets will be required to create the final explainer video. They involve moving animations, brand logos, live video clips, motionless images, and infographics among others.  Some visual assets need different expertise and software, therefore, having a plan of creating and making them available for adding during editing is prime.

6. Adding effects and music

Visual assets are not the only thing needed when making explainer videos. Setting the tone of the video is important. Sound effects to accompany activities in the video are important.

7. Video editing

Upon having your visual assets, audio record, and sound effects the post-production or editing part is where the final explainer video is made. The editing method depends on the type of video you have shot. You will first begin to organize your files and name them accordingly.

8. Test the video

Before uploading your video, test it with your target audience to figure out its effectiveness. You will get more useful results when you use clients from your target audience than choosing family and friends. Figure out whether they understood what the video was trying to achieve and if there is anything they did not like about it.

9. Publish the video

You can upload the explainer video to your website upon completion. You can also upload it to your social media or landing page to audiences who have already formed a relationship with your brand.

In summary, a good video explainer is simple, short, clear, and easily understood by the target audiences. By following the steps above you can create an authentic explainer video for a new product or service in a manner that satisfies the needs of a customer, building the loyalty of a brand, and increasing sales. Having the correct tools and help from an expert can make you use explainer videos as a productive marketing strategy.