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How to Create Animated Marketing Videos to Improve Your Business

Feb, 06, 2023
Christina
Christina
Senior Account Executive

Introduction

Every marketing campaign aims to achieve concrete practical goals. Goals that you can assess, measure, and analyze. The means of their achievement, however, rarely fall into the category of practical knowledge. You can’t expect a user to click on your ad X times just because this is written in your marketing strategy plan, or expect customers to buy your product or service just because the ad says it’s better than the competition.

Emotions, colors, tone, and ad storyline all strongly affect the buying decisions that customers make daily. The ability to effectively appeal to them via visual means separates a good ad from a poorly performing one.

In this post, we’ll show you how to create animated marketing videos, why this content medium is good for marketing efforts, and go over the most recent trends in the video production industry 📌

Summary:

  1. How Animated Videos Can Be Used in Marketing
  2. 4 Reasons to Create Animated Videos for a Marketing Campaign
  3. How to Create Animated Marketing Video: Step-By-Step Overview
  4. Key Tools That Can Be Used For Making Animated Marketing Videos
  5. Future Trends in Animated Marketing Video Production Industry
  6. How Blue Carrot Can Help in Making Marketing Videos For Business
  7. Final Thoughts

How Animated Videos Can Be Used in Marketing

In order to make a purchase a customer goes through several stages, which in marketing are called sales funnel stages: Awareness, Interest, Decision, and Loyalty. Marketers have to use different tools to ‘move’ customers through each of these stages smoothly and naturally.

What’s great about animated videos is that, in contrast to other content mediums, they can be used across all these stages. Want to raise brand awareness? Just go with a short and eye-catching marketing ad. Looking to educate your audience on your product instead? Feature a longer video that will explain to the prospects what your offering is about. And so on.

The versatility of use is what makes animated videos, as a marketing tool, really special. But that’s not all the benefits. Let’s look at more advantages of using promo videos and animation in marketing campaigns.

4 Reasons to Create Animated Videos for a Marketing Campaign

1. Videos are ‘easier to consume’

When preparing the next campaign one of the main tasks for any marketer is to captivate the audience — grab viewers’ attention and hold it for as long as possible. Unfortunately, that’s a really hard task to do considering that today people get bombarded with hundreds of ads on a daily basis, and 90% of those get skipped right away.

Videos are easier to consume, so even when compared to other forms of advertising (pop-ups, emails, etc.) they have a higher chance of being noticed by the target audience. Especially if they are short, come with an engaging storyline, and have eye-catching visuals.

2. Great for promotion of intangible products

One of the undeniable advantages of animated videos is that this marketing tool works where traditional methods don’t. Here we’re talking about the promotion of digital products such as apps, websites, software, etc. Products that the audience cannot ‘physically’ touch or experience, but you still need to somehow explain to them what your offering is about, and outline its features and benefits.

GET THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO EXPLAINER VIDEOS: TYPES, BUDGETS, STYLES

3. Have a long-lasting effect

In spite of typical ads that normally exist and stay relevant within a specific timeframe, animated videos on the contrary hold their value much longer. Aside from the campaign itself, videos can be used during webinars, online presentations, workshops, etc..

Given that such videos represent not only the product itself but also brand values, mission, and image, they can also be reused for training purposes when onboarding new employees to the company.

4. Video’s content can be reused

During the production of promo ads or animated explainer videos, a team comes up with tons of content — illustrations, graphs, text copy, slogans, creates characters, etc. So, even after the campaign ends, all these assets can be repurposed for other communication channels. Graphs can be reused in presentations, animated characters added to a website, illustrations used in printed pamphlets, and so on.

How to Create Animated Marketing Video: Step-By-Step Overview

So, how to do animated videos for marketing in particular? The process itself includes numerous steps that are normally carried out in the particular order. Some of them, however, can be merged, go in parallel, or even be dropped if your project doesn’t involve a step, like VO production for example.

In general, the process of making animated videos for marketing purposes always follows certain logic steps, which are described below. Please note, though, that this is more of a general overview rather than a detailed guide.

👉 So make sure to check the article How to Create an Animation Pipeline: Pre & Post Production Process for more detailed information in that regard. 

Here is how we create animated videos for a marketing at Blue Carrot:

1. Initial research, briefing and scripting

During the first phase, we do the initial research of the project to better understand its goals as well as the client’s vision and expectations. We come up with a brief document that includes the basic information regarding the project sourced from the client. It then is used to shape a general concept and to create a script scenario for the video itself.

2. Storyboarding and voiceover actor casting

The next step in doing animated videos for marketing is the creation of a storyboard. A set of sketches that helps a team (and a client) to understand how the final result will look visually. Once the storyboard is agreed upon, we cast a voiceover actor according to the project requirements; gender, language, accent, tone of voice, etc.

For more complex projects, aside from the storyboard we also create the animatic that comes in the form of an ‘animated’ storyboard with a rough VO overlay, or a pre-recorded live footage accompanied by the VO.

3. Style-framing and creation of illustrations

Style-framing is a single finished shot that determines the overall visual look of the video. It serves as a point of reference giving a team and client the opportunity to see how the final result will look in terms of colors, textures, backgrounds, mediums, etc. This way all the desired adjustments can be made before drawing all other frames or scenes.

After the style-framing is done, a team creates illustrations and/or models if the project involves the production of 3D animation.

4. Animation production and sound design

At this stage, all the still assets get animated and, along with the VO, soundtrack and sound effects, combined into the final video. The video is then handed to a client for review, and final corrections get added during 1-2 rounds of edits.

👉 At Blue Carrot we always provide clients with a few edit rounds during each step of animation production. So, by the time they get to review the finished video, there may be no edit suggestions at all since everything has already been addressed at the earlier stages. 

GET THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO EXPLAINER VIDEOS: TYPES, BUDGETS, STYLES

Key Tools That Can Be Used For Making Animated Marketing Videos

There are dozens of different tools and software solutions that companies use when making animation videos for marketing. The choice is more about individual preferences and workflow structure rather than a particular software. The following list is what we at Blue Carrot use during video production and which you can also adopt for your projects: 

  • Script scenarios — Google Docs;
  • Storyboards — Boords, Adobe Photoshop, and Google Docs;
  • Illustrations — Adobe Photoshop, Adobe AI;
  • Animation process — depending on the type of animation, we use Adobe After Effects, Cinema 4D, Toon Boom, Blender, or TV Paint;
  • Client reviews & feedback collection — Frame.io.

Future Trends in Animated Marketing Video Production Industry

Similar to just about any other market, the video production industry as a whole is constantly on the lookout for ways to produce high quality videos more effectively. In recent years agencies started to rely on AI to automate or semi-automate particular areas/processes in video production.

For example, AI can be used to generate the VO according to a script and automate the narrator’s facial movements to sync with the VO. Agencies also use motion capture — where motion sensors get attached to the actor’s suit to record all the body movements and then translate this data into animation — to speed up the character animation production.

However, such technologies cannot guarantee you a perfect result and don’t get used very often for creating marketing videos that have to be short and perfectly polished.

When it comes to innovations, these are largely used for the production of educational videos instead. As to their marketing counterparts, producers focus more on the use of advanced software to a) improve the designers’ work (think of Adobe products) or b) improve the effectiveness of their communications with clients (think of Boords, Frame.io, etc.). These are examples of software that we use at Blue Carrot as well.

GET THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO EXPLAINER VIDEOS: TYPES, BUDGETS, STYLES

How Blue Carrot Can Help in Making Marketing Videos For Business

Our 8+ years of experience in the video industry grants our team the needed know-how to deliver services across a wide range of markets and types of products. At Blue Carrot we can help with the production of explainer videos, promo videos, corporate videos, and marketing cartoons.

If you want to create a training course for your employees, we’d be glad to help you with tutorials. For those looking to raise funds for their startup, our expertise in creating kickstarter campaigns would come at handy too.

Final Thoughts

Animated videos can be effectively used across different communication channels. They are versatile, eye-catching, and can significantly boost marketing campaigns. In order to create animated marketing videos that will perform as expected, you need to know what you aim for from the very beginning. Plus, the video production process should be carried out in a certain order to ensure that you get your project completed within the projected time and budget. 

We hope that with this post you’ve got a better understanding of how to create animated videos for a marketing campaign. If you have any additional questions on how to make animated video ads, please don’t hesitate to contact us via the feedback form below 😉

FAQ

Which software is used to make animated videos?

When creating animated marketing videos at Blue Carrot we normally use Adobe After Effects, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe AI, Cinema 4D, Toon Boom, Blender, etc. For script writing, we use Google products, and for storyboards, we use Boords or Adobe Photoshop. We also use Frame.io to gather client feedback during review rounds. 

How long does it take to create an animated marketing video?

The video content production timeline depends on several factors, such as the size of a project. For example,  video length, animation complexity, its type and style, as well as additional requirements like multiple voiceovers in different languages, creation of additional illustrations for social media, etc. Considering all factors, marketing animation video creation may take anywhere from a week to a few months, with the average median being 6 weeks. However, if you want a more precise number, you can always contact our team directly to get an estimate for your project. 

I want to create animated marketing videos. Where should I start?

First, we recommend outlining your business goals, meaning deciding what you want to achieve with the final video. Then, outline 3-5 core messages you want your video to deliver to the audience. These are the messages that all the script scenarios and video structures will revolve around. Once that’s done proceed to create animated marketing videos as described in our article How to Create an Animation Pipeline: Pre & Post Production Process. If you don’t have an in-house team and want to outsource your project, then this article will be helpful as well: Checklist: How to Choose an Animation Video Production Company.

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