ExplainerVideoReport

EVERYTHING YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT EXPLAINER VIDEOS
Quotable:
An explanandum (a Latin term) is a phenomenon that needs to be explained
and its explanans is the explanation of that phenomenon!
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Introduction
Explainer Videos get their name from the concept of an ‘explanation’!
“An explanation is a way to package ideas”. To create an effective explanation
necessitates transforming facts into a more understandable collection of ideas
and concepts.
Explanations help to clarify why something (a law, an idea, a process, a
product, or service for example) makes sense, thus making it easier to
understand and apply to some purpose.
Explanations enable people to “see an idea from a personal perspective”, thus
allowing them to make educated decisions about whether they want to invest
their time, money, or energy to learn more about the idea.
Here is an example of an explainer video campaign where comic script characters and
typography were used to produce a lead generation video with a comic script theme. See
if you can follow the story throughout the remainder of this report.

With the wide availability of broadband services, the proliferation of video
hosting platforms (YouTube, Vimeo, Vine), and the reducing costs of video
production, online videos have become an indispensable part of the businesses
marketing arsenal.
Explainer Videos are short (less than 2 minutes), imaginative, and succinct
videos that can be used to communicate a business, a product, a service, an
idea or a value proposition quickly and effectively.
Explainer Videos can use real people, places, and objects, or 2D/3D animations,
or a mixture of these to communicate some aspect(s) of your business, and
create an engagement with your potential, or current customers, partners, or
other stakeholders.
Explainer Videos use animated characters (or human, if you have a larger
budget) and story to create emotional bonds, trust and empathy with your
viewers.

How Should Explainer Videos Be
Used to Gain The Most Benefit for
Your Effort?
Using Explainer Videos as part of your overall marketing solution will enable
you to communicate information, feelings, and emotion to your audience, by
using motion, images and sound.
Explainer Videos should be included on your website, on video hosting sites
(YouTube, Vimeo, Vine), and within your Social Media Network; Twitter,
Facebook, Instagram.
To give a good return on your investment, you should have a video channel set
up on YouTube (or other video hosting sites), with video and channel branding
which is consistent with your overall online brand; your website and all social
media channels.

You need to ensure that your videos are properly annotated, and include video
sitemaps. This will ensure that your videos are properly indexed on Google,
YouTube and more easily found by your potential viewers when performing
searches.
To be effective, Explainer Videos need to have a well thought out script and
proper animation. If using animated characters, they do not necessarily need
to be complex to be effective. In fact, Lee Lefever of Common Craft uses
animated characters with no facial features in many of their animations. As this
removes the emotional distraction created by our brains interpreting the
emotion on a characters face.
So, some considerable thought and creative imagination needs to go into your
explanation and the proper format and structure of your video for it to have
the desired effects of communicating your message and creating engagement
with your audience.
rding to Neil Patel, co-founder of CrazyEgg, a good Explainer Video script for a
startup company should contain the following elements:

An Example Startup Business
Explainer Video Script Outline
An introduction to your company & an overview of the problem you solve
Why the problem is valid for the industry
Specific example of the problem
Show off your features and how they solve the problem
Give the call to action
Answer any objections & state your guarantees
Use client proof to seal the deal

Why you should be using Explainer
Videos in Your Marketing Mix
Some Very Relevant Statistics
According to a recent survey by Shutterstock / Comscore, when users perform
online search they are significantly more likely to click a video link rather than
a text link.
Digital Video also tends to be most often watched on mobile devices, when the
viewer is in their own home, or on their own leisure time. So, your viewer is
relaxed and has more time to take in your message.
60% of all Internet data is now made up of video content.

Of the 190 million videos watched, one sixth were watched on mobile devices.
36% of those 190 million videos were ads, some being forced views to get
access to otherwise free content!
So, video ads have also become a popular and acceptable medium for viewer
business/product/service information gathering, and entertainment.
According to the Internet Advertising Bureau, online advertising
revenue/spend has been above $11bn for three consecutive quarters in
2013/2014.
Of this figure, mobile advertising makes up $5.3bn, a 76% growth on 2013
figures (PWC/IAB 2014);
Digital Video makes up $1.5bn, a 13% growth over the same period in 2013.
The proportion of consumers watching TV or movies on tablets on a weekly
basis has grown from 17% to 26%.

Many companies are adding videos to their home pages as a means of
increasing user stickiness and engagement. It has been shown experimentally
that users spend more time (up to 88% more) on websites that include video
content.
This can also help search engine rankings, as search engine algorithms also
take duration of user time spent on webpages as a measure of relevant and
quality content.
Explainer Videos can lead to a higher sales conversion rates; online retailer
stacksandstacks.com reported that visitors were 144% more likely to purchase
after seeing a product video than those who did not.
Including video in emails greatly increases the probability of reader click
through CTR:
GetResponse Study showed that video Emails Increase Click-through Rates by
96%

Wistia showed a 300% increase in click through rate compared to emails not
including video
Hubspot - normal CTR 2.4%, with video CTR of 16.4%, 583% higher than
average
According to Kissmetrics, video now appears in 70% of the top 100 search
results listings, and viewers are anywhere from 64-85% more likely to buy after
watching a product video.
Short, relevant Explainer Videos are ideal for small to medium businesses with
a low budget
Why Explainer Videos?
All videos enable you to connect with potential customers in ways that you
cannot do with e-mail, phone calls, or white papers.

For sales professionals this is especially important, as it takes time to build
customer rapport and trust.
Explainer Videos can help introduce your company, staff and products/services
before you make direct contact with prospects. As the customer has contacted
you after seeing your videos, this cuts down/out most of the initial effort
required to get a customer familiar with your business, brand, team and
products, and increase the prospect of a successful relationship going forward.
Impact of Effective Explainer
Videos on Sales
Higher Conversion Rates and Reduced Returns with Videos
Recent research has shown that shoppers who chose to view product
specific videos were 85% to 174% more likely to make a purchase than
viewers who didn't, and that pre-purchase video viewing reduced
returns by up to 25%. [Sources: Retail Touchpoints, Internet Retailer,
Ice.com]

Reduce Your Bounce Rate
When making buying decisions, 60% of consumers will spend between 2
and three minutes watching Videos that educate them about a product
that they are considering purchasing.
Video Gives Higher Search Rankings
Video results appear in about 70% of the top 100 listings.
Increases Sales
Retail site visitors who view video stay two minutes longer on average
and are 64% more likely to purchase than other site visitors.
Encourages Use of QR and Barcodes
The most popular use for mobile action codes, such as QR and bar codes,
is linking to mobile video: 40% of codes link to video content, including
product demos.
Establish Credibility and Trust with Your Customer before Selling To Them
57 % of purchase decisions are made prior to ever talking to a sales rep.
Wht Kid of Explainer Videos Work
Best?
According to one recent analysis by socialbakers.com, YouTube videos under 2
minutes in length get almost 50% of all views. This is an ideal duration for short
Explainer Videos.
A recent study, “Types of Brand Videos Consumers Want to Watch” (Source
Levels Beyond August 2014) found that viewers were primarily looking for the
following kinds of videos online:
How-to, instructional or tutorial videos 67%

Comedy or spoof videos 42%
Product/information videos 34%
Micro-documentaries telling the story of a person or event 33%
Animations/infographic videos 30%
From the point of view of Explainer Videos it is interesting how many viewers
are interested in animation/infographics, product/information videos, How-to
and micro-documentaries. All of which allow ample scope to create interesting
videos with business objectives in mind, especially product, branding, support
videos.
The reason we don’t emphasise comedy, or spoof videos, is that it is easy to
offend people with comedy, and it takes either a naturally funny presenter, or
team to pull them off effectively.

However, younger viewers do prefer humour, and, if you have the imagination
and resources then this can work very well to show your brand in a light-
hearted and different way than the fact-heavy manner of a the usual how-to
video, or product showcase video.
So, keeping in mind the above insights, small to medium businesses should be
able to effectively use low budget, short, Explainer Videos to help boost
marketing with the following*:
Promotional: Showcases your products and services
Testimonial: Highlights your talents by showing clients raving about work
you’ve done
Thought Leadership: Presents new or useful information relevant to your
industry
How-To: Informs prospects on how they can use your product or service
Product Information: Explains new features, benefits, solutions,
troubleshooting
Entertainment: Shows your brand’s human side; leverage viral videos, contests

The first five of these video types would be standard items that any business
should be able to make use of to help promote their business, products, or
services. They fit into the ‘normal’ range of things that good businesses do in
their usual marketing efforts, but transformed into a new medium that allows
more creativity, expression, engagement and dynamism in their
communication.
A recent STRATA survey* found that viewers are more inclined to watch online
video ads if they’re entertaining (43%), targeted to their interests (31%) and
educational or informative (30%). Younger viewers (18 - 29 year olds) prefer
humour, whereas older viewers find the informative side of an ad more
appealing. *[Source: marketing Charts, STRATA]
Further evidence for the use of Explainer type videos comes from Advance
Auto Parts, a car parts retailer, which tried placing how-to and instructional
videos on its website and Facebook pages. They found that 'visitors who watch
video stay on the site twice as long and visit twice as many pages versus those
who don’t see video. Sharing their videos on Facebook further enhanced their
online reach.

In Summary
Explainer Videos are a very effective way to communicate your business,
product or service in an engaging and imaginative manner. With the rapid
uptake of Video as a marketing communications medium by many businesses,
it would be very easy to get left behind and lose the advantage of Explainer
Videos to reach and engage new customers for your products and services, or
just to get your ideas out there and get recognition as a thought leader in your
industry.

About Our Video Production
Company
We are an Explainer Video creation company that produces animated videos
for small and medium sized businesses.
We help companies exceed their online marketing, sales, and customer
support objectives through the creative use of custom Explainer Videos.
For us, an Explainer Video is a unique way to create a lasting engagement
between your customer and your business, product or brand.
An Explainer Video communicates your unique brand, product or business
identity through the creative combination of colour, design, music and
animated characters and objects.
We combine all of these to create a video that is unique to you, and helps you
to build rapport and trust with your prospects.
Our clients and their customers love our high-quality, colourful, engaging
animated videos.
If you have any questions about Explainer Videos, or the production process
involved in producing one, or if you are considering having an animated
Explainer Video produced, please contact us at (615) 681-8851 for a no
obligations conversation about your aspirations!

About The Author
Keith Gloster is the President & CEO of Street Smart Consultants, an Internet
Marketing and consulting firm based in Nashville, TN.
Street Smart Consultants specializes in working with small- to medium-sized
businesses locally and abroad.
Keith has vast experience in video creation, production and scriptwriting.
Keith loves his clients and strives to deliver new imaginative ideas on each and
every project his staff works on.
Keith is also a project management ninja and involved hands-on in every
project!
His goal is to make every Explainer Video a fun, captivating and engaging
experience for the viewer.

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