Are your marketing animation videos focused on educating your target or entertaining them? It is possible to do both, actually, and we’ll explore how in this article.
When it comes to competing for consumer attention online, businesses seem eternally trapped between the question of whether they should inform their potential customers or entertain them. Figuring out what your viewers want and what they really need can be a struggle. It’s like a kid sitting down to eat their dinner. They want to dig into dessert ASAP, but their parents know they need the vitamins and minerals of those pesky Brussels sprouts.
That’s why it’s on you, as a business, to give your audience both.
No, not dessert and vegetables! Information and entertainment.
By entertaining and informing them, you can delight your customers while also providing them with the vital information they need about your product and service. You can’t deny one element without the other, but with the right tools, you can prioritize providing both entertainment and information.
With the right resources executed correctly, your viewer will enjoy the presentation while also becoming (or continuing to be) a customer. Everybody wins.
Let’s take a closer look at how you can prioritize entertainment and information, and the tools you can use to do so.
Why You Need to Educate Your Audience With Marketing Animation Videos
Imagine being in the shoes of a new customer coming across a company online. Whether you sought out the company or came across them by happenstance, what has to happen for you to take that next step within the sales funnel? Before you pull the trigger on giving them your hard-earned money, you’ll want to understand what they’re actually offering.
Every business needs to have some sort of educational resource in place to teach their customer about the product or service. There are no exceptions to this! That educational resource can take a lot of different forms. You have to be able to clearly explain what it is you do and how it’s going to make your customer’s life better.
Educating your audience is all about explaining the positive impact your product or service will have on their life. Maybe it’s a necessity they can’t live without. Maybe you offer a luxury that makes their life markedly better. Whatever it is you’re offering, it’s imperative for you to show them why what you’re offering is the solution to their problem.
This education doesn’t just begin and end with your product or service. You can also develop content that explains topics and issues within your industry. By explaining these concepts, you can position you and your company as the subject matter experts in your field. This will help build trust between you and your audience. As a result, it will make them even more likely to buy from you.
But, as noted above, information isn’t enough. Your viewers don’t just want the vegetables. They’d also like to have their cake.
Why You Should Also Aim to Entertain Your Audience With Animated Videos
It would be wonderful if you could simply state your case for why your product or service is so great and helpful. It would simplify things if your content could provide a list of benefits to the customer followed by a quick purchase.
But content marketing isn’t so simple.
The problem here is that your customer is bombarded with offers every day. They may be seeing advertisements on TV, coming across them on social media, or seeing them on Google after they’ve searched for it on the internet. The typical customer has been inundated with information before your message even makes it to their laptop, phone, or TV. Consider some of these statistics about video marketing:
- 85% of businesses use videos as a marketing tool.
- 92% of marketers report that video is an important part of their marketing strategy.
- 88% reported video gives them a positive ROI.
While those figures certainly speak to the effectiveness of video as a content format, it also reveals an uncomfortable truth. You’ll face a high level of competition no matter what industry you’re in. Other companies (likely including your competitors) will expose your target to a wealth of information.
Informing your viewer about your product or service is a futile effort if you never have their eyeballs on your content in the first place. First, you have to ensure you grab their attention. The way you do this is by presenting the information in a way that’s entertaining.
Aim to stimulate your audience in one way or another. Looking for an emotional reaction to your product – a positive emotional reaction, of course! – will help your content stand out. That gives you the opportunity to make your pitch about why your company has the best product or service.
Use Marketing Animation Videos to Combine Education With Entertainment
You may see this content marketing approach as a struggle, and without the right resources in place, it can be. As long as there has been commerce, businesses have engaged in this tug of war between telling their audience the vital information they need to buy their product and keeping them entertained. But the trick is not to favor one over the other. It’s critical that you choose a content format that can prioritize both goals.
Think about some of the most successful brands in history. GEICO offers car insurance, but the first thing you associate them with is a cartoon gecko. But while their commercials are always cute and funny, they’re also taking time to tell you that you can save 15% by switching to their auto insurance carrier. It’s a blend of entertainment and data, meshed into one successful campaign.
But what if the product or service you’re offering is a little more complicated than that? Perhaps it requires an additional level of information to help your customers truly understand your solution to their problem. If that’s the case, it’s even more important to entertain them as you provide the information.
One of the most successful content types for this is a marketing animation video.
The Role of Animated Videos in Your Marketing Strategy
Animated marketing videos give the opportunity to provide your customers with the data they need to make a decision on buying your product or service. They also allow you to do it in an interactive way. With marketing animations, you can create stunning visuals paired with cold, hard facts presented in a fun manner. You can create a character that represents your brand. You can animate members of your staff, like your CEO or other members of the senior leadership team. Additionally, you can animate a demonstration of your product or service that highlights the benefits of your offering in a way that’s sure to entertain.
There are so many ways in which video can play an integral role in your content marketing strategy. Using animated marketing videos can help you take it to the next level. But now that the role of marketing animation videos in your overall marketing strategy is clear, why does it make sense to incorporate them into it? What’s the benefit?
The Benefits of Marketing Animation Videos
If you’re on the fence about using animated videos as an option to both entertain and inform your audience, know that there are multiple benefits to integrating animated explanation videos into your marketing campaign. Six of these reasons include:
- It’s engaging. Opting for a video with a person explaining your product or service has a higher potential to lack the engaging qualities you’ll find in an animated video.
- It’s not as pushy. Animated videos have the ability to be more lighthearted and fun than traditional videos of a person speaking.
- Your brand’s animated spokesperson can appeal to a wider demographic. When you opt to have an actual person as your spokesperson, there’s a chance you can alienate a portion of your audience if there’s something about that person they don’t like or trust. With animated characters, it’s a lot easier to appeal to more people.
- You can get creative. Using an animation video opens up a world of opportunities on what type of content you can cover. You can set the video anywhere in the world. With live-action videos, you’re limited to the settings and situations you have access to. With animation, there are no limits.
- There are many different styles of animation. You can opt for a cartoon or something with computer-generated graphics. There are so many styles of animation you can choose from that you can pick the one that fits your brand best.
- It’s unique. You’ve no doubt seen a lot of video content as you scroll through your various social media feeds. How many of those videos were animated? Animated explanation videos help your content stand out from all the rest that gets ignored with a custom look and feel.
Summary
The bottom line is that just because you’ll want to educate your audience doesn’t mean you can’t give them content they can enjoy. Conversely, needing to entertain your audience doesn’t mean your content should be devoid of actionable data, either.
That’s why animated marketing videos give you a one-of-a-kind approach to video marketing that will help you inform your audience in a way that will grab their attention and entertain them. At Gisteo, we know exactly how to educate and entertain using marketing animation videos that are sure to leave your customers completely informed and engaged. For more on how we can help, contact us today!
