When you hear the word “animation”, the first thing you think of may be a children's cartoon. But the animation is much broader than that. To create an animation, you must first create all the graphics that will appear in your video. Most teams will design them in a storyboard that breaks down the video scene by scene.
This is one of the main advantages of animation, since it gives you total creative control over your video. There are no actors to manage. In fact, the subject of your video doesn't even have to be tangible. As Walt Disney once said, “Animation can create anything the human mind can conceive of.
Thanks to this ability to “create” everything you can imagine, animation is the perfect tool to explain difficult or complicated concepts in an easy and digestible way. So, if you're having trouble explaining something about your product or service to your customers, a simple animation could help clarify things and reduce the number of customer service calls you receive. Stop motion is really just another form of animation. It still requires you to create all the visual elements of the video, but stop motion animation must be created frame by frame and cannot be captured digitally (as is the case with most current animations).
. Although we have mentioned that stop motion is mainly known for films such as Wallace and Gromit, it can undoubtedly be used to promote your business and many brands have used it with great success. Stop motion videos are striking and different. This makes them ideal for increasing brand awareness and increasing your online presence.
Mixed media videos are exactly what they sound like: videos that use more than one form of multimedia content. It could be an animated video with some stock photos or a live action video with some screencasts (for example). With mixed media, you can include actors to give it a personal touch, use animations to explain concepts and ideas, and show real screenshots of your software to help manage customer expectations. You can use mixed media, as in the previous example, to showcase your platform or software and, at the same time, add a little more energy to your video.
A screencast (also known as a recorded screen demonstration) is a video that shows a direct recording of your website, software, or application. A screen video is an excellent tool to show your product in action, as you can highlight all the incredible benefits for potential customers and create realistic expectations. Plus, since you record directly from your product, all you need to add is a fast soundtrack and voice-over. This makes screencast videos one of the most cost-effective types of video to create.
Screencasts can be used in a variety of ways, both before and after the sale. Pre-order and on-screen videos can be ideal for demonstrations. This allows you to highlight all the incredible benefits of your product to win over customers. After the sale, on-screen videos are great tutorials and allow you to show customers exactly how to get the most out of your product.
Like screencast videos, they are animated demonstrations. Animated demonstrations help you show your software in a dynamic and eye-catching way, so you can offer viewers a representation of your platform or application without showing them the real picture. An animated demo is a great way to spice up your software with interesting transitions and images that highlight functions. Animated demonstrations are perfect for showcasing your platform or application and, at the same time, they give you the freedom to make updates and changes to the user interface in the future that don't affect your marketing or disrupt your videos.
For this reason, animated demonstrations are also a good use case for platforms or software that are confidential. For example, if you're promoting a banking application, you might prefer to opt for an animated, reduced representation of the software instead of filling in a real account with fictitious data. Both animated demonstrations and on-screen broadcasts have their advantages, but animated demonstrations are usually better for pre-sales marketing (to attract attention) and on-screen broadcasts are better after the sale (to show new users exactly how to use the software). Live-action video is a form of cinematography that uses videography instead of animation.
That means real people, real sets, real accessories. It's one of the most common forms of video marketing. Live action videos are a great way to personalize your brand. You can put a face to the name and this helps build credibility, gain trust and show the world that behind your company there are real people with passion and experience.
Live streaming is still relatively new compared to some of the other types of video on this list. It's basically the process of broadcasting live to your audience through a social media platform such as YouTube and Facebook. With more and more video content being uploaded to the Internet every second, live streaming offers an opportunity to stand out. The great thing about live streams is that you can save them to your channel or page once they're finished, so if someone misses them in real time, they can catch up later.
First, you'll want to create a rough plan of what you're going to talk about. Live streaming is a great way to share interesting announcements with your audience, and it's also an incredible way to interact with people. Interactive videos are fun and a very easy way to surprise your customers. But on the more practical side of things, you can use interactive videos to target more than one audience at a time.
For example, let's say your company is a real estate agency. With an interactive video, you can take people interested in selling one way and people interested in buying the other way. As mentioned earlier, 360 is an excellent use case for product videos. Viewing a product from every angle can give potential customers the peace of mind they need to make a purchase.
You can also use 360-degree videos to show people around you, making them a perfect type of video for the hospitality industry. And, like 360-degree videos, it's still a relatively new space for marketers. Videographers combine facts and figures with interesting graphics and animations to create an engaging and memorable experience for viewers. Data can be quite boring in the form of a report, and since 73% of people prefer to learn by watching a short video (compared to only 11% who prefer to read text), videographers are a no-brainer if you have data to share.
There are 6 types of animation that are especially popular among brands. We've reviewed each style and included some impressive examples to inspire you. We took a look at more than 60 of the best examples of explanatory videos and analyzed why they were so successful. Complex ideas work great with online video.
Would TED's “ideas worth spreading educational videos” be so successful if the same content were simply published in a magazine article? Of course not, great printed content is already published, but it is rarely shared or as “viral” as some TED videos have done. The video medium has a real capacity to “engage” viewers and interact emotionally. The task of a video producer as a storyteller is to communicate ideas (and the value of ideas) in an efficient and easy to digest way that creates an impact. Educational videos go beyond simply informing the viewer: they delve into the “why” such and such is important, in addition to the “what”.
For example, an educational video on how to learn to dive will explain why you shouldn't hold your breath when climbing to the surface, instead of simply saying “don't hold your breath” without giving any explanation. This “why” is fundamental, since it offers real understanding to the audience. The beauty of educational videos is how they can easily share complex ideas and “educate” students appropriately, since understanding, even often, is able to overcome language barriers. A fundamental distinction is that promotional videos are not advertisements like those we would see during commercial television breaks.
With a promotional video, the choice to watch it is up to the viewer. The person is interested to see if the video will offer a solution to their problem and hits play. Promotional videos, therefore, are marketed to suggest value in advance. And if it doesn't, the viewer can choose to stop watching it at any time, unlike television or online video commercials, which play intrusively without the viewer being in control.
Most types of video, apart from entertainment videos, if not all videos, have a bias and aim to persuade and motivate action on the part of the viewer. Promotional videos require a call to action, which will clearly indicate the next step the viewer must take to achieve the intended result. Although each video style has a degree of bias with respect to the topic presented, it is specifically the promotional video that follows a specific formula to persuade the viewer to take action in the end. The whole purpose of the promotional video is to persuade a change of opinion or behavior on the part of the viewer, while informational and educational videos are more passive.
It has its origin in a lighting style from the 1930—40 years, as seen in American feature films of the time. To achieve your video marketing goals, you'll need different types of videos in your marketing strategy. We have put together the most important ones, from explanations and promotions to case studies and demonstrations. There are LOTS of different types of videos you can create for your organization.
The possibilities are almost endless, from instructional content to case studies, explanations and much more. In addition, for each type of video you can make, there are several different styles from which you can approach it and different orientations in which you can record and share it. To achieve the goals you set in your video marketing strategy, you'll need a variety of video types to meet different needs. With the right combination, you can guide potential buyers along their journey from awareness to decision, all with video content.
Explanatory videos (sometimes referred to as product explanatory videos) are a valuable type of video for explaining complicated products or services and increasing brand awareness. They are usually a high-level view of how the product solves a problem. Because they are high-level, explanatory videos don't need to show the actual product or service to be valuable, which means that animation is a popular style option. You can create summary videos for each vertical or product line you offer.
With these, you're not looking to make a sale or a difficult proposition. Instead, describe a problem that you know your customers are having. Product explanatory videos should answer the question “what does this bring me from the buyer's perspective?”. Companies like Box have discovered that a step-by-step tour of your audience's real tasks can be a fairly effective introduction to the product.
Instead of dealing directly with Box, the video focuses on how a seller can use Box to solve everyday problems and make their work easier. This video, which presents well-known situations (such as a cut in the marketing budget) and how their solution helps, discusses observable utility and serves as an excellent demonstration that can be used in follow-up emails for potential customers who want to see the product in action. Instructional videos are educational in nature and are one of the most popular types of videos. These videos explain to the viewer how to do something.
Step-by-step tutorials can be entertaining and informative. Since question queries are incredibly common on search engines, creating content that addresses (and optimizing it) is a great way to appear in search results. As expected, instructional videos account for 40% of the videos published by customer experience teams. Consider creating this type of video to answer important questions from customers in your industry.
You can then use the end of the video to request the download of an information piece. Or content in the middle of the funnel to help the viewer continue to move forward in the buyer process. The content marketers at Kapost do an excellent job with useful instructional video snippets. In short, informational announcements answer questions related to their specialty.
By becoming the experts who can answer the question clearly in less than a minute, they become the people that people want to do business with. Most companies already have text-based content marketing resources, such as reports or guides, to promote, and one of the best ways to make the most of these pieces is with a fun video designed to encourage more downloads. Promotional videos can work well for large events, virtual conferences, paid campaigns, and more. When thinking about new pieces of content, consider the most important story in which you can summarize them and the front-line video that you could use to promote or market the asset, so to speak.
Or, consider using promotional videos to promote brand awareness on paid and social media channels. Our goal was to use humor and highlight common weaknesses experienced by sales representatives in our awareness campaign. This promotional video shows the fear a representative feels when their champion leaves in the middle of a deal. Since 20% of companies have already invested in intellectual leadership videos, these videos aim to share a unique perspective to build trust and followers.
These videos must be authentic and focus on the point of view. Sharing experience and starting a conversation are essential. The software company Moz has created a brand as an expert in search engine optimization through its popular Whiteboard Friday videos. A member of the Moz team explains a concept in front of a whiteboard that is full of supporting material.
Sometimes the whiteboard includes illustrations, sometimes it's more of a summary of points. Webinars have proven to be a great advantage, as 53% of companies have taken advantage of synchronous video content through live webinars. Prerecorded webinars can be scheduled for a specific date and time, just like standard webinars. Or, they can simply be published on your organization's website, which can be on a landing page, in a resource center, or embedded in a blog post.
When planning new webinars, think about how you plan to reuse them from the start. If you want short videos, design your webinar so that the recording can be easily edited into bite-sized video clips. These types of videos can then be used in ongoing content marketing programs. If you create topics strategically related to a specific question that the buyer has throughout their journey with your product, for example, these videos can serve as the perfect stepping stone on the buyer's journey.
Vidyard's Fast Forward Summit works as a continuous live series to bring together the sales and marketing communities to learn about best practices. In addition to live sessions, on-demand content is located in a video center, and the edited versions of the best-performing content are used in video marketing programs. The following is an example of a popular on-demand session that was edited from a 25-minute video to just over 10 minutes. Arguably, case study videos are one of the most important types of videos in your collection.
Many B2B buyers will be looking for customer testimonials when they visit your website. Don't you have the budget for a high-production case study video? Never fear; the most powerful customer stories are still at your fingertips. Try asking satisfied customers to shoot a short video testimonial with their webcam to answer some basic questions that you send them. Vidyard's Chrome extension is a free and easy-to-use tool that allows anyone to record a simple video of themselves in a simple way.
A testimonial is the seal of approval of other companies. Shooting a great movie is the perfect way to show how your solution solves common customer problems. Testimonial videos are a valuable type of video, especially for marketing and customer experience departments. Nearly 50% of the videos created by marketing are testimonial videos and 30% are created based on customer experience.
When creating a testimonial video, never underestimate the power of advertising, ask prominent questions instead of the typical Q&A and always look for ways to position your customer as the hero of the story. In one, an artist explains how he uses Google Street View to paint places all over the world and how he has created a community of people who are passionate about doing the same. Brand and culture videos are what inform your audience about your brand and what you represent. More than 50% of companies have already invested in branded videos.
And more than a quarter of companies use cultural videos to help showcase business culture. They are an opportunity to have fun and be creative. Videos about vacations, about us, hiring and business culture may fit into this category. On the occasion of its 200th anniversary, HarperCollins Publishing presented viewers with some of its most notable titles in a video that sparked nostalgia and introduced viewers to the brand's long history.
Like explanatory videos, demo videos explain how your product or service works. However, they should be more detailed about the specific features and functions, since they appear later in the marketing funnel. Usually, somewhere from the middle to the end. Product demonstration videos show viewers the value of your product rather than simply telling them.
In industries that sell physical products, this could even include unpacking videos. These types of videos show the packaging and the product, and show potential customers what to expect. Your audience should be nodding with you at all times. Your goal is to show them that you understand their world.
Demo videos benefit the customer experience and make up a large part of the videos created by sales teams. Even better, they rank as the second most popular type of video, and more than half of companies use demo videos. Vidyard's 3-minute demo is a great example of what this type of video can look like. We have created separate versions to address different parts of our product for different use cases.
There is one for marketing, sales, support and secure communications, all included in the following playlist. Your organization's video library will include a variety of video content. Start by choosing a few formats that you think work well for your brand and the story you want to tell. Then, do a test to see how your audience reacts.
Keep iterating, try new things, and don't be afraid to mix and match different styles and types to find something that fits your vision and meets your goals. FAQ videos are often found on knowledge base sites or are used in customer service conversations to help solve technical problems and the most frequently asked questions. An FAQ video, known as an “80% video”, is gaining popularity and is used in sales discovery to answer the main questions that potential customers ask sales representatives eighty percent of the time. Frequently asked question videos are at the end of the funnel.
An 80% video would be used higher up the funnel. However, the 80% video can help advance negotiations and make prospects go from being discovered. In Vidyard's 80% FAQ video, our goal was to answer the main questions our representatives are asked, from pricing to integrations, to provide support. Frequently asked questions or videos benefit potential customers by offering a smooth investigation where they don't even have to talk to a representative if they're not prepared.
Buyers and sellers can spend valuable time in live meetings to follow up with more specific account-related questions and answers. Kendall is a content marketer, pop culture fan and bibliophile, and she's a traveling encyclopedia full of curiosities (mostly useless). When she doesn't produce the kind of content you *really* want to read, she can be found learning to label with a pen and dance swing. Vidyard helps you create engaging presentations for customers, onboarding new customers, keeping your teammates informed and much more, all with video.
The guide includes an analysis of where each video fits in the funnel and breaks down what you need to consider when creating each one. Help your staff understand how a system works or how they can use it more effectively by providing a training video on internal systems. This type of video is ideal for implementing backend software, such as a new analysis system. Record a quick screencast that you can easily share with members of your team or with the entire company.
Showing is more effective than telling alone. Product videos are a great way to show your customers how to solve a problem. By creating a simple video tutorial, you'll be able to provide comprehensive technical support. You can also use these videos to answer the most frequently asked questions, creating easy and repeatable answers for customers.
You can even reuse these videos on your company's FAQ page. Unlike training videos, providing information may consist of providing an update, providing context, or explaining important information. This type of video is ideal to include in an email or to record a presentation before a meeting that you can't attend in person. Onboarding videos are great for updating team members.
You can create a video about anything, from helping them discover who is who, to guiding them on cultural values or how to find the dining room. If you want to take your onboarding to the next level, you can even create a video library of corporate training videos for new employees to consume once they start. You can invite them to record screen videos from key systems or interview them in front of the camera. Are you looking for inspiration? See how Virgin Media used the video to capture years of personal knowledge from 150 retired colleagues with the help of TechSmith Snagit.
If you find that the other video format works much better, try incorporating more of that format into your program. After reading this post, you'll know not only how to produce great content on a limited budget, but your team will also have the tools they need to create videos themselves. For example, their explanatory videos of the different programs they offer are very useful in convincing people to take out their credit card and make the conversion. With easy to use templates and a super simple interface, Powtoon helps you create engaging and engaging animated graphics videos that fit your brand.
Video is now one of the most popular forms of communication, and video consumption and video creation are on the rise. However, while this video style was very popular a few years ago, that popularity has been declining recently. The only difference is that the content creation process involves a video camera rather than a Google document. Showcase your unique brand with animated marketing and promotion videos that perfectly reflect your brand's style, energy and personality.
Combining Q&A with guests and videos with instructions and advice from the channel's presenter seems to be a trend on successful YouTube channels, so think about how you can incorporate those two formats. This simple execution of the use of a white board, some markers, dubbing and editing software makes whiteboard videos an economical option for brands that don't have a huge marketing budget. .
