Before your potential customer makes a purchase, they need to understand exactly what it is your solution is offering that benefits them. Once your customer makes a purchase, you also need to ensure they have everything they need in order to be successful with your product. This is where explainer videos come in handy. In this article, we’re going to review what an explainer video is and why they are so important to use in your business.
After all, one of the main reasons customers churn is when they don’t find value in a product or solution. Often the reason they may not be finding value is simply not understanding how something works. Instead, they might not understand how to use it correctly. This is especially true if you’re selling solutions versus physical products.
That’s why customer education is so critical. You can retain customers for longer and keep them happy by making the right resources available to them.
Explainer videos are a great tool that businesses can use to educate and demonstrate their product. Or solution’s full value and proper use to prospective and existing customers
In this post, we’ll examine what makes explainer videos so effective. And look at a few real examples of explainers that do this well.
Before we get too deep, let’s start with the basics and define what is an explainer video.
What is an Explainer Video?
An explainer video is a multi-media asset that walks the viewer through a specific product or solution’s functions, use, and values. These videos provide a granular look at how someone could use a product or solution from start to finish.
Most explainer videos take a step-by-step approach, breaking down how to use the product to accomplish a specific task.
The videos are created in order to answer basic questions that a customer or prospect may have about a product. In a way, they serve almost as a salesperson explaining the product and its benefits directly to the user.
Explainer videos can be easily embedded in an email and sent directly to a prospect or customer for one-on-one product education. In addition, they can be used as a part of your video marketing strategy and placed on a landing page or your homepage near a call to action to convert potential customers.
While there are different types of explainer videos, each has a handful of common components.
The Components Of An Explainer Video
In order to begin thinking about what type of explainer video you want to make, you should consider the core structure of every high-quality explainer video.
This template will help you plan and create a storyboard for your short video that highlights your new product.
Every good explainer video has these four components:
- Value proposition - You should highlight why your product is valuable before you jump into how it can be used. Reframing this in your customer's or prospect’s mind will reinforce the value that your product can provide.
- Clear direction - Many explainer videos talk the viewer through how to use the product in multiple quick steps. This can be accomplished by adding a voiceover and subtitles if it isn’t a live-action video.
- Elements of intrigue - You don’t want your viewer to zone out after a few seconds. Humans have short attention spans, and you need to continue to win their attention throughout your own explainer video. Add motion graphics, sound effects, whiteboard animation, and other elements of surprise to your video script.
- Call to action (CTA) - What do you want the viewer to do next? Direct them to another one of your marketing videos that examines a different aspect of your product or lead them to another tutorial. Make sure you test and optimize this CTA to increase conversions.
By including all of these components, you can make a great explainer video that increases retention and your overall conversion rates.
But why exactly do explainer videos help so much? Let’s take a deeper look.
Why Are Explainer Videos Effective?
The best explainer videos simplify complex ideas into a short one-minute to two-minute video. They don’t overwhelm the viewer with any excess information.
Instead, they make the product easy to grasp and understand for a specific target audience. This type of video content is valuable for savvy marketers who are looking for an effective tool to impact the bottom line at their business or startup. But why?
Well, customers and prospects are looking for explainer videos to address their pain points and provide an overview of products in a simplified way.
Once they find this type of video content, whether it’s on social media platforms or the company’s website, they will sit and watch it until it’s over. In fact, research shows that 77% of viewers will watch an explainer video in its entirety. That’s a lot of people spending time learning about a company’s product on their own.
That’s why explainer videos are so important in your content marketing strategy. Your customers want them, and they impact your business’s bottom line as well. More than 73% of marketers can attribute an increase in sales to the usage of explainer videos.
Now that you know why they are so important, let’s take a look at three of them that set the standard for you to follow.
3 Effective Explainer Video Examples
There are so many different types of explainer videos that you can make.
From whiteboard explainer videos to 2-D animated explainer videos, there are many ways to get your point across.
Here are three great examples of explainer videos that you can use as your baseline standard when you begin to create yours. The tenets of each of the videos can help form a foundation for your storyboard.
1. Locker
Locker is a web extension that helps people tag and save items that they see while browsing the web. Instead of trying to explain that through complex messaging on their site, they created a short explainer video that shows the product in action:
The video opens by highlighting the problem that Locker solves—finding a place to tag and store all the items you’re hoping to buy while browsing. Then, it showcases the product and how customers can use it.
2. Egnyte
Egnyte provides “real-time visibility” of your company’s data, making it easier to spot any privacy issues or security breaches. To share their value proposition, they primarily used animations and illustrations to highlight how different data silos are connected and show the types of people who make have access to this information:
After the animations, they shared product images and walked the viewer through their offering. These visuals helped show explicitly how the product works and how a user would get started with it.
3. Digital Realty
Data Realty’s explainer video focuses on the challenge of the high volumes of data that companies use and how Digital Realty can help businesses design their architecture with a connected data approach:
The concept of “data gravity” is something that everyone might not immediately understand. Digital Realty’s video explains exactly what it is and why it’s important to unlock the insights found within connected data sets.
By focusing on the problem and what exactly data gravity is, Digital Realty positioned its product as a must-have solution.
Explainer Video Software
Whether you’re looking to post a live-action explainer video on LinkedIn or fancy 2D infographics on your website, there are a number of video creation softwares that you can use.
Animation Style Video Makers
For explainer animation, tools like Video Scribe and Vyond are perfect for creating educational, onboarding, or how-to videos with 2D animations. Explaindio is another good and slightly more advanced option. This explainer video software allows you to create 2D animations, 3D animations, sketch elements, and full-motion videos. Create explainer videos easily by combining pre-made text animations, animated scenes, fonts, characters, and sound design.
Live Action Explainer Videos
If you want to create a live-action explainer video, the video maker Camtasia can be useful for both screen capturing and webcam recording. This video maker software allows you to create explainer videos using both your webcam or previously recorded video. To spice things up, you can add titles, typography, effects, and music from Camtasia's royalty-free music library. This platform includes customizable video templates, a simple drag-and-drop editor for easy video editing, and even a green screen option!
Producing an Effective Explainer Video
It doesn’t matter what you’re selling. An explainer video is a “must-have” for every company.
If you aren’t savvy when it comes to video production, don’t worry. You can partner with a video production company to help guide you through the process.
By doing so, you’ll create an effective explainer video that captures your viewer's attention and sets your company apart from your competitors.
Start producing your explainer video today. Contact us today to see how we can help take your video marketing efforts to the next level.
