At Cartoon Media, we get lots of enquiries from people who want a Whiteboard Animation Video to grow their business or communicate their message. However, many haven’t considered several key points to maximize the effectiveness of their animated videos for business.
A Whiteboard Animation Video is an investment which should give you a significant ROI (Return on Investment), but only if it is targeted in the right way.
If you’re considering hiring a company to produce a quality Whiteboard Animation Video for your business, these 5 areas will help you to focus on how you and your customers are going to benefit from the video once it’s live.
1. What is your end goal?
Your goal for your video will obviously differ if it’s a sales/marketing video or a training video. It will also differ if your sales are made mainly online or after a phone of face-to-face consultation.
You might primarily want to increase traffic to your website, or to a specific sales page, because you’ve already got a great conversion rate on that page.
If you want to increase the size of your email list, your video could encourage people to enter their email addresses in an online form.
If you run a service-based business, and have a specific sales script to convert people over the phone. You might want your video to increase phone enquiries, or to complete an online form which includes their phone number.
Training videos can be used to train internal staff, or help reduce calls or emails to your helpdesk, thus saving you money in reduced admin.
2. What is the target audience for the video?
Although you might have more than one target audience, it’s usually best to concentrate on one specific audience per video to reduce confusion and ‘click away’ rates.
If you’re watching a video targeted to you, and then the video starts talking to a different audience part-way through, it acts as a disconnect, making you more likely to stop the video.
Having your target customer in mind helps us focus the message and the imagery to them, creating an experience where they better understand your business and feel a closer bond to you.
3. Where and how will the video be seen?
If the video is online, will it be hosted on YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, your homepage, your sales page, your business intranet etc.?
Or will you be showing it on screen at a conference or business show, or in a 1:1 situation with your target customer?
Knowing where the client will be when they watch the video will help you define the ideal length of the video, which brings us to…
4. What is the ideal length of your video?
The most popular length of animated videos for business is between 1 and 2 minutes. However, the ideal length of your video depends mainly on three factors:
- the attention span of your target audience,
- where they will be when watching the video,
- and how much they need to know about your business before taking the next step in the sales process
As a rule, if you have a young target audience (i.e. under 25) the closer you can get to a 1-minute length, the better. There are always exceptions to the rule, and the more engaging the video is, the longer people will watch, but if you want your video to be shareable, keep it as short as possible. Older audiences have longer attention spans, though living in a distraction society is eroding everyone’s attention spans over time.
If your video is mainly going to be watched online at home, your target viewer is obviously more likely to click away from the video mid-way through than if they were sat in a room with you going through the video. When you are presenting to your target audience either 1:1 or in a group, you have a captive audience that will sit through 10 minutes or more of video if required.
Finally, you need to decide how much of your video needs to be ‘education’ and how much of it should be ‘marketing’. If your business follows an established model, such as a lawyer or cleaning company, your video just needs to concentrate on what makes you better than your competitors rather than explaining what your business is. You also need to consider how much the target audience needs to understand about your business before taking the call to action.
5. What is your call to action?
As covered in Point 1 above the call to action at the end of your Whiteboard Animation Video should focus on achieving your business goal.
But not all calls to action are created equal. If you want to sell a $97 product directly from your video, it needs to spend a lot more time selling than if you just want the viewer to enter their email address to download a free report, or contact you for a free consultation.
Measuring the success of animated videos for business.
Once your Whiteboard Animation Video has been completed, you then need to consider how you’re going to measure the success of the video. Will you check Google Analytics to see if the number of website visitors has increased since the video went live? Will you keep a tally of incoming phone enquiries, or the number of times that a specific form was filled out on the webpage displaying the video? Will you note how many people viewed and shared the video on social media? Or if helpdesk enquiries decreased significantly for the reasons covered in your training video?
You can also split-test sales pages, with or without the video, to compare results.
If you’d like to know more about how a custom-made Whiteboard Animation Video can help your business, please contact us for a free consultation.