Animated Video Production – Getting Started

Think­ing about cre­at­ing a white­board explain­er video or a series of ani­mat­ed videos? Here’s every­thing you need to know about explain­er video pro­duc­tion, which is also often referred to as ani­mat­ed video pro­duc­tion.

An explain­er video is a short ani­mat­ed video that explains what your busi­ness is all about in a visu­al­ly engag­ing way. It does this through com­pelling visu­als and clear lan­guage that attract and retain the viewer’s atten­tion.

Ani­mat­ed video pro­duc­tion is a cre­ative process that doesn’t enforce any clear-cut rules on how explain­er videos should be made. That means you can make them as long or as short as you want to. Usu­al­ly, though, short videos tend to per­form bet­ter. The style of the ani­ma­tions and their detail are entire­ly up to you. Think about your audi­ence and what kind of images, sounds, and emo­tions trig­ger them the most.

An explain­er video com­pa­ny is able to cre­ate an explain­er video that suits not only your audi­ence but also your needs. In this arti­cle, you’ll learn what makes a good explain­er video com­pa­ny and how to choose one.

While explain­er video pro­duc­tion dif­fers in many regards from the tra­di­tion­al ad cre­ation process, the aim is sim­i­lar — peo­ple who see your video should be com­pelled to learn more about your com­pa­ny and what you have to offer. More than cre­at­ing con­tent, ani­mat­ed video pro­duc­tion aims to forge a link between you and your audi­ence.

The Ingredients of a Successful Explainer Video

Whether it’s 90 sec­ond explain­er videos or  longer ones, those that engage audi­ences have a few things in com­mon.

• Short — Explain­er videos cov­er a lot of ground in about 90 sec­onds or less. While there are longer videos out there, the explain­er videos with the high­est engage­ment rates and shares are decid­ed­ly short.
• Sim­ple Nar­ra­tive — The ani­mat­ed video pro­duc­tion process works best when it answers the key ques­tions in mar­ket­ing: “what?”, “how?”, and “why?”
• Ani­mat­ed Char­ac­ters — Char­ac­ters help view­ers con­nect more with the video, and also add a sense of fun. Even when they are sim­ple doo­dles or stick-men, char­ac­ters are some­thing that every ani­mat­ed video pro­duc­tion should cre­ate.
• Voice-over — While ani­mat­ed videos con­vey a lot of infor­ma­tion, a pro­fes­sion­al voice-over is indis­pens­able for most of these. It explains the visu­al infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed on screen and guides the view­er through the whole expe­ri­ence.
• Music — Com­bined with voice-overs, music adds a rhythm to an explain­er video and also helps build mood. Choose music with care — it should fit the mes­sage of your video and, if pos­si­ble, even enhance it. Some­times it’s a cheap­er explain­er video pro­duc­tion deci­sion to cre­ate your own sim­ple music rather than to buy it.

As you can see, ani­mat­ed video pro­duc­tion has to com­bine many dif­fer­ent ele­ments. With our expe­ri­ence as a Los Ange­les social media agency, we know how impor­tant it is to get every­thing right while stick­ing to the scope of the project. We apply the same key con­cepts of mar­ket­ing to our 90 sec­ond explain­er videos to make them engag­ing and com­pelling.

Explainer Video Production Questions You Should Ask

The key to cre­at­ing an explain­er video that peo­ple will like is to clar­i­fy your objec­tives ear­ly on. Before you move on to the first phase of the ani­mat­ed video pro­duc­tion process, you need to ask your­self some ques­tions.

How do I know if I really need an explainer video?

If you’re try­ing to explain how your com­pa­ny works, what you pro­vide, or how a prod­uct or ser­vice works, explain­er video pro­duc­tion can do it for you in an engag­ing way. Con­sumers are 64% more like­ly to buy a prod­uct online after watch­ing a video, accord­ing to Com­Score.

If your busi­ness has an online pres­ence, ani­mat­ed video pro­duc­tion is def­i­nite­ly some­thing for you.

What kind of explainer video do I want?

A white­board explain­er video? An ani­mat­ed video? A live action video? It’s real­ly a ques­tion of what works best for your brand. Ani­mat­ed videos and white­board explain­ers are safe and cost-effec­tive. They enable you to include screen­shots of the prod­uct or ser­vice you’re offer­ing, help­ing to famil­iar­ize view­ers with them. In this way, explain­er videos become mini-tuto­ri­als. A sim­ple intro­duc­tion peo­ple need to start using your prod­uct or ser­vice. Ani­mat­ed video pro­duc­tion can be great for explain­ing your app, some­thing Mint.com offered us a great exam­ple of.

How long should my explainer video be?

When it comes to ani­mat­ed video pro­duc­tion, there are no hard and fast rules. But many brands seem to have set­tled on 90 sec­ond explain­er videos. Atten­tion spans on the web are noto­ri­ous­ly short, so 90 sec­onds is a good start­ing point for most dig­i­tal audi­ences. Besides, a short video means low­er ani­mat­ed video pro­duc­tion costs.

Who will see it?

If the video will go on your home page, every­one will see it. But if you want to place it on a spe­cif­ic prod­uct page, or cre­ate mul­ti­ple videos for dif­fer­ent pages, you can tar­get a more spe­cif­ic seg­ment of your audi­ence. Either way, your ani­mat­ed video pro­duc­tion guide­lines should ensure that the video will be rel­e­vant. Every sin­gle ani­ma­tion, screen­shot, or video ele­ment that goes into your video should serve a pur­pose.

How much can I spend on animated video production?

Explain­er video pro­duc­tion is for the most part a scal­able process. You can fit the video to your bud­get. When you’re on a tight bud­get, you can keep the video short and sim­ple. You can include only essen­tial fea­tures of the prod­uct or ser­vice you’re cov­er­ing.

But work­ing with an explain­er video com­pa­ny doesn’t have to be expen­sive. In fact, explain­er videos often come with low­er pro­duc­tion costs than oth­er forms of dig­i­tal video mar­ket­ing.

Should I use an explainer video company?

An explain­er video com­pa­ny brings to your project their skill and expe­ri­ence. The pop­u­lar­i­ty of explain­er videos have made this form of con­tent a refined type of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing which requires spe­cial skills and a good dose of cre­ativ­i­ty.

Ani­mat­ed video pro­duc­tion isn’t some­thing you can do in your office with your smart­phone cam­era. The rules are dif­fer­ent, and even if the video will be short, it requires frame-by-frame plan­ning.

Explain­er videos call for more than spon­tane­ity and cre­ativ­i­ty — they call for clar­i­ty. That’s where an explain­er video com­pa­ny comes in. They can draw on their expe­ri­ence and skills to make your video not just enjoy­able, but so crys­tal clear.

Animated Video Production Phase One

The heart and soul of an explain­er video is the script. A 90-sec­ond video should fit into a script that’s no more than 250 words long. You can write this script your­self, or have some­one write it for you. How­ev­er, keep in mind that the script will most like­ly be tweaked and altered to sync up with the frames and char­ac­ters.

Once you know what you want and who you are tar­get­ing, you can start the ani­mat­ed video pro­duc­tion process. An explain­er video com­pa­ny can turn your idea into a video that not only explains your brand, but increas­es your con­ver­sions and social shares.

Unless you’re mak­ing the video your­self — and not many com­pa­nies have the resources to cre­ate pro­fes­sion­al videos — you have to choose an explain­er video com­pa­ny. This is the first and per­haps the most impor­tant step in the ani­mat­ed video pro­duc­tion process. If you’re based in LA, find a Los Ange­les social media agency that real­ly match­es your needs. Local is often the best choice, espe­cial­ly if you tar­get a most­ly local audi­ence.

Here’s a checklist for choosing the right explainer video production company for you

• Social media mar­ket­ing expe­ri­ence, make sure they inte­grate your explain­er video(s) into your greater social media efforts
• A team of experts that can take your ideas, expand them, and kick­start a cre­ative ani­mat­ed video pro­duc­tion process
• Abil­i­ty to cre­ate the explain­er video in house and or out­sourc­ing part of the cre­ative process to get the work done on time
• Friend­ly cost — In gen­er­al, an explain­er video pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny that cre­ates videos reg­u­lar­ly will have in place both the tools and the process­es need­ed to pro­duce them at a good cost. The same can­not be said about social media mar­ket­ing or SEO firms that don’t have a cre­ative team.
• Feed­back sys­tem for work in progress, so you can see slides or even a quick demo and com­ment on it before the whole thing is cre­at­ed

Animated Video Production Phase Two

After choos­ing your ani­mat­ed video pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, you can send them your ideas.

Explain­er video pro­duc­tion involves a two-way cre­ative process. You pro­vide the ideas, and the explain­er video pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny picks up on that and turns it into a visu­al­ly engag­ing expe­ri­ence that they can pack in 90 sec­onds or less.

A pro­fes­sion­al com­pa­ny will take a look at your web­site and social chan­nels to under­stand your brand. They may also ask for addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion and data that will inform their explain­er video pro­duc­tion process. It’s impor­tant for the style and tone of the video to be aligned to the style and tone of your brand, and of your mar­ket­ing in gen­er­al. You want it to blend in with your site and the oth­er con­tent you’re pub­lish­ing online.

Depend­ing on the length and com­plex­i­ty of the explain­er video, the team work­ing on it will send you reg­u­lar updates, sketch­es, demos, and oth­er mate­ri­als. The feed­back you pro­vide on these can help steer the direc­tion of the ani­mat­ed video pro­duc­tion process.

Some brands choose to release explain­er videos only to a lim­it­ed audi­ence ini­tial­ly and mea­sure reac­tions. An explain­er video pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny can help you do this by tar­get­ing the video at a par­tic­u­lar social audi­ence or seg­ment, using social media, email, blogs, land­ing pages, social adver­tis­ing, or a com­bi­na­tion of these.

Animated Video Production Phase Three

Good explain­er video pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies also have SEO and social mar­ket­ing exper­tise. That can be very use­ful when launch­ing your first explain­er video. In most cas­es, you will have to sup­port the video with traf­fic from oth­er chan­nels and sources oth­er than your reg­u­lar web­site vis­i­tors.

Social media mar­ket­ing and blog­ging are two effec­tive ways to spread the word about your explain­er video in an organ­ic way that can cap­ture the inter­est of your fans and fol­low­ers while help­ing you reach out to new audi­ences as well.

Explain­er videos should always have a lucra­tive call to action at the end. For exam­ple, “Get $50 off when you sign up for our wait­list!” or “Get a free ebook when you vis­it our site!” When they do, con­ver­sion rates grow sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

After the video is ready, you can decide where it’s best to pub­lish it. Most explain­er videos go straight to com­pa­ny sites, and then also make it on social media and their blogs. If you want your video to go viral, then you need to make sure you have prod­uct -mar­ket fit and have tru­ly built a “must-have” prod­uct.

For this rea­son, explain­er video pro­duc­tion should also include a strong ele­ment of mar­ket­ing. A pro­fes­sion­al explain­er video com­pa­ny can find afford­able and sus­tain­able ways to dri­ve steady traf­fic to the video and increase shares. This can make adver­tis­ing the video unnec­es­sary, even though you can always use social ads to pro­mote it.

Conclusion

In the end, ani­mat­ed video pro­duc­tion is a straight­for­ward process, but it requires the same pro­fes­sion­al approach you use for oth­er types of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing con­tent. That’s why defin­ing your expec­ta­tions and choos­ing an explain­er video pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny can make all the dif­fer­ence.

At Swift­ly Dig­i­tal we are a Los Ange­les social media agency that loves to cre­ate explain­er videos. Find out more about our explain­er video pro­duc­tion.

Also pub­lished on Medi­um.