In fact, this refers to both offline and online sales: an eye-catchy packaging and a nice placement on a supermarket shelf, or pixel-perfect visuals used on the monthly newsletter you send to customers. 

While we’ve all figured out the approach to increasing sales in the traditional offline market, there are still some valuable trends we need to uncover when it comes to the digital world.

One of them are the explainer videos, that have boomed in popularity over the past years due to their budget-friendliness and proven effectiveness. This is how these fun animation pieces can help your small business grow.

Play The Almighty Bots

A key factor for Google’s algorithm for search rankings is the amount of time visitors stay on your website. Fun and informative videos will definitely make your audience hang on your page longer, thus persuade the search bots that you are providing quality content. Moreover, you can easily clarify your product, spread a word about your services and increase your conversion rates.

More traffic, more revenue, simple as that.

Explain It Better

Speaking of clarifying your product. Explainer videos are a perfect tool to deliver precise messaging, as the text can be easily misinterpreted. In other words, your audience will gain a better understanding of a product or service once they see and hear someone explain it. Key point: explain it through simple animated graphics exactly the way you see it.

Save Money

As a small business, you don't need to overspend on your marketing campaigns. Investing money into a short explainer that actually works is much better than spending your budget on ads or promotions that bring useless traffic. 

To create awesome explainer videos without hassle, all you need is a smartphone and basic video editing software. Want to go pro? Video editing companies or talanted freelancers out there will help you reach your targets at a really affordable price.

Let Them Share

An explainer video doesn’t necessarily have to stay on your website, Google or Youtube. One of the advantages of such visual content is that they are easily shareable. In fact, people are more likely to share and watch videos on the Internet and social media than any piece of text. If done right, people will spread a word about your small business on different social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.

This basically means that the chances of going viral are higher, hence, again, more viewers, more customers.

Leverage Youtube

Once done with SEO rankings, the next platform to conquer should be the second largest search engine in the world, the Youtube. It’s one of the websites with the most traffic on the internet with unlimited educational content, “how-to” videos, and DIYs on top.

“How-to” searches went up 70% in the last couple of years, so creating educational videos should be a part of your marketing strategy to improve awareness and maximize your visibility.

Use Storytelling

We all love stories, don’t we? Video content uses the power of storytelling to connect with the audience and build trust. With animated characters and scenarios, you get to create characters that resemble your target audience, creating a feeling of similarity.

They help you build an emotional bond, which is one of the most important aspects of any marketing campaign out there.

Stay Up to the Minute

In 2019 digital experts have predicted that videos will become the major player on the internet and by 2020 and 82% of internet traffic will be video. Well, statistics didn't lie.

The huge success of this trend supposes that a video-based campaign should definitely be in your company’s top priority this year. Not including this hype into your business development endevours might mean staying behind your competitors, losing potential clients and looking outdated.

Animation, as we know it, brings life to pictures, objects, or illustrations to create a more animated and eye-catchy effect for the viewers. Today, it is characterized by cartoon characters in motion, telling a story, but not everyone knows that this form of visual art dates back to five thousands years, to the mysterious Egypt, where ancient creators und ways to create an illusion of a motion picture by depicting moving images in series.

To achieve such an art-in-motion effect, animators have been using different techniques throughout the history like hand-drawn shadows, lanterns and moving objects.

Early animations, which started appearing before 1910, consisted of simple drawings photographed one at a time. Just imagine how extremely labor intensive it would have been to draw and match hundreds of images per minute of film.

The Famous Cels

Within a few decades, hand-drawn animation started using transparent cel sheets. Characters were drawn on cels and superimposed on common background images to create layers. This made it unnecessary to repeatedly draw the background, as it remained static while the characters moved. Shortly after, films were made using techniques such as keyframe, registration marks, and animation loops. The most famous example of all is Gertie, The Dinosaur.

The Disney Figure

The next great breakthrough in the world of animation is connected with the name of Walt Disney. Steamboat Willie was released in 1928 and it was the first animated film to include sound. Even though there were 7 films which were shot before this, Steamboat Willie was the first one completely made using hand-drawn animation technique.

Steamboat is also often mistakenly thought to be Mickey Mouse’s debut, but it’s truly the one that popularised the character the most. Another favorite characters debut happened in 1930 – Dizzy Dishes, where the epic brunette Betty Boop appears on screens.

This is when animated films became a popular form of entertainment. The stories and the characters started getting widely recognized and remembered by the audience. Read on

The history of animation technology has evolved immensely throughout the years, and we are now in a world where computer technology helps create eye-catching animated videos enjoyed by a larger public, thanks to internet streaming.

Even though we’ve seen major names in the sphere who have changed the direction of animation to what we know it today, many of us link the progress with the Disney figure. 

The stories and characters of these popular animated feature films have become part of our modern traditions, enjoyed by every generation. Gone are the days when animators used cels, hand-drawn shadows, lanterns and moving objects. The way of doing animation today is much more progressive and it majorly depends on advanced computer-generated imagery (CGI).

The Era of Computers

Even the early Disney masterpieces like Toy Story wouldn’t have been possible without the computer technology. In the past the animators used to work very hard just to make a small video, but now it's all computerized and one can easily see the true evolution of animation. Today it’s far less time-consuming and apparently far more diverse.

Why They Show Us What They Show Us?

Nowadays, the animation technology is not only widely used in cartoons and TV shows made for both kids and adults, but also for business purposes. Just like The Simpsons, South Park or Rick and Morty have an insanely broad audience, animated videos have a power to grab the attention of huge masses. We easily allow ourselves to become inserted in a world that is not ours, and go along with the story. In spite of all the concpiracies going around the animated content on Netflix, Amazon or Hulu, this is definitely the favorite passtime for millions.

Explainer Videos

Animation opens up a world of opportunities for not only entertaining the audience, but also promoting an idea or vision and educating them. Throughout the recent years, animated videos have become a powerful marketing tool in the hands of brands and individuals. 

Why? Because they are simple, informative and fun! It takes no time to engage with potential clients through a cool video that lasts around a minute, rather than with well-documented boring info.

No matter whether it’s an animated whiteboard explainer, illustrated humans or a mix of live-action and motion graphics, these explainer videos have a story to tell, a product or a service to sell.

Check out how Weexplain.it uses these techniques to showcase brands in the best light, get inspired and contact us with any inquries.