All posts by : Opsixty Animation Studio

In one minute a video can lead a trail of breadcrumbs that will a) attract viewers, b) talk about a feature or handle objections and c) get the audience to take action. If that seems like a tall order, read further and I will break down the composition on how to make every second count.

The First Five Seconds

The first five seconds are critical. It’s the countdown clock where the viewer decides whether or not to skip your ad and watch your video. This is the only chance to get their attention or their gone forever. That may be melodramatic, but nonetheless it’s true.

Just base it on your own experiences, browsing through youtube how many times did you actually watch the ad and what was different?

I can tell you that the most successful videos have a pattern interrupt in the first five seconds. Something that grabs attention and causes them to divert from their normal routine. It can be something as simple as causing the viewer to say hey that looks cool, or what did I just see.

When done well, it will raise curiosity and generate questions.  

Time For Content

The next 30 to 40 seconds are the body of the video. The narrative depends on the goal, it can be spent talking about pain points and benefits of your product or service, it can also tell a story about your company or production process. The possibilities are limitless.

At this stage the audience still needs to watch in order to get to your call to action. How do you keep their attention and get them interested? There are a number of key points to watch out for, like relatability, conciseness and understandability but it ultimately boils down to execution.

A handful of seconds is not a lot to work with, It’s barely enough time to put on your socks and shoes – let alone getting the point across.  A good studio will take extra care into understanding the subject material. That’s because when you truly understand something you can explain in a concise and simple way, enough that a 5 year old would understand.

As an example, when we talk about meeting goals, what image does it convey in your mind? If you’re targeting sports teams a Football goal? How about business executives? How about a graphic of charts going up, up and away. 

The Call To Action

How many seconds this takes is entirely dependent on what the video wants to accomplish. A simple visit to a website? Just a couple seconds. How about a sign up? That would be a little longer.

If the video was done correctly, every single second before the call to action should have been prepping the viewer for this. Addressing common objections, getting them excited, interested or whatever emotion that will get them to the next step.

There are ways to execute a call to action to get better conversations, but that’s an entirely different article.

To summarize. In Sixty seconds, An animated video should be able to grab attention, educate the audience and push them into action. We have the metrics and data to know this works, and i’ll be talking about that in my next article. So please look forward to that.

Till next time.

What a well made explainer video does best is to generate qualified leads, close deals, educate your market and other essential marketing goals. They can touch any topic and boost any brand, to further illustrate this – check out the different  videos we’ve made. 

Companies like Twitter and Dropbox have benefited immensely in the past. The type of auditory and visual explanation it provides has often led the charge for these companies to increase their user base and revenue.

In 2007, Twitter launched an explainer video that garnered millions of views. It explained twitter quickly and effectively resulting in millions of sign ups.  Dropbox also used it to great effect. In fact it’s one of the popular examples of an explainer video in action. Analysts suggest that the video helped them get to their 100M user base, with the video increasing signup and revenue by 10 percent.

4 Things Explainers do well

• Brand Development.

Nothing makes your brand stand out than quality content. Explainer videos build up brands and make sure the message is heard and remembered. A single video can be brand defining or help build a foundation of awareness.

• Digital Marketing

Explainer videos is a cheap way to get out and be noticed. It’s a concise way to deliver message and it’s easily shareable. It’s versatility makes it a good tool in any digital campaign.

Here’s one of the reasons why. Did you know advertising on Youtube costs a fraction of the amount it does on other platforms? I’m talking less than a cent for views. With the right video, you can start building an audience and looking to secure qualified leads and sales through a remarketing campaign.

but that’s only the tip of the iceberg, we’ll go in-depth in another post.

• Explaining your Product or Services

Explanations can be boring. Dry, and for the potential consumer a bore to attempt to understand. Videos help with that problem. They engage with their audience, They take the long winded explanations of yesteryear and turn them into a concise summary – Quick and easy to digest. Videos also love to cut through the noise of the modern market place, grabbing attention and keeping it for a few minutes.

• Education

Whether it’s training your workforce, or educating the consumer, an explainer video bridges the gap between information and understanding. A combination of strategic visuals and compelling audio is easier to remember and recall then the other mediums out there. This is great for the retention of knowledge but if the viewer needs a refresher, well it’s easy to replay the information back over and over again.

Of course, these are only some of the problems an explainer video can solve.

Tune in next time, I’ll discuss what you can do with a minute of video.

It is not that surprising that videos are the most important marketing tools used by businesses nowadays. Human beings are visual creatures. Most of the time, our minds and brains register visual impulses that we don’t even acknowledge. The average human would prefer to watch a video than to read a text.

It is therefore not that hard to believe that video marketing is the cutting edge in marketing nowadays. Keep in mind that the digital age has progressed by leaps and bounds in the past decade. It is now very easy to upload and share videos online. There are thousands of video streaming platforms. Finally, there are many easy to use applications and software programs that can be used to create a video.

The popularity of videos is not a sudden thing; it has been a long time coming. The first viral video ‘The Spirit of Christmas’ went viral in 2005. It took 10 years before YouTube, the world’s most used video streaming platform, was created.

Things went a little bit faster after that. By 2009, YouTube was registering a billion views every day. By 2012, Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ video became the first video to have over a billion views on YouTube.

The major advantage of video marketing is its visuality. Humans are much more likely to remember visual information than any other type, so videos are a great way to make your product “catch the eye” of the consumer, for example, advertises their products by making online reviews of the many gadgets they sell, which is a sort of “organic” advertisement for their products that helps buyers decide whether they’re interested in purchasing the item or not.

A video goes viral very fast and its global reach is boundless. It is projected that by 2020 videos will have taken over the internet. A staggering 78.5% of internet users watch videos regularly.

It is therefore not so hard to see that statistic will increase to a 100% in a couple of years. Since 2015, videos have become such an effective marketing tool that video marketing has become a must for all serious brands.

Nike has often dominated discussions on the internet with its video advertisements. A Pepsi advertisement featuring Kendall Jenner went viral a few years ago. Other established brands such as Adidas, Victoria’s Secret, and even Facebook, use video ads. All around the world, establishments such as football clubs have social media accounts which they regularly use to promote themselves.

It is not just hearsay. The strength of video marketing is backed up by numbers and figures. Websites which have enthralling videos get 41% more web traffic as opposed to sites without videos. YouTube is the second most visited website on the internet. The 40% of customers on Amazon will buy a product if it has an informative video attached to it. This is all video marketing at its finest.

Video marketing is everything right now, and it is cheap. Social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube will publicize videos for you at affordable rates. It doesn’t matter the niche, as long as a video is involved it will be seen all around the world.