So, you have an awesome animated video (assuming it was made by us of course), ready and raring to go. That’s great. But what exactly do you do now? It can be a little bit confusing knowing the best way to showcase your new video. You want to make sure it has the biggest impact possible. Plus, you want to market it in the right way, so you can get the best return on investment.
Luckily we have created an extensive guide on how to make the most out of your animated marketing videos, with exact steps on what to do once it has been delivered.
So sit back, relax and let’s begin.
First off, where should your video live?
Whether it’s an animated explainer video to expertly convey your brand’s message, or a super sleek 3D animation video showcasing your latest new product, your video has to live somewhere so it can be seen.
There are two options when choosing a place to host your videos – natively on your website or with a third party.
Whether you choose to directly upload your video onto your website, or share it on a video hosting platform like YouTube or Vimeo, is really up to you. But each option has its own pros and cons and will need to be carefully considered, depending on what you want to achieve.
Here is our rundown of the two so you can choose wisely for your next animated marketing videos.
Natively hosted
Having your animated video hosted on your own website increases audience engagement and makes for a better user experience. This encourages people to explore the rest of your site rather than if they found the video on a streaming platform where their interaction with your business may start and end. It gives you complete creative control over the design of your video and how it is presented. Also it means no annoying ads so people can fully engage with the content with zero distractions. Plus it’s free!
However the drawbacks may include your website storage capacities which could lead to slow loading times or even cause your website to crash. Also to fully customise the look of your video requires hard coding which some companies may not have the skill set for.
Third party hosted
The main benefit of choosing to host your video on a streaming site like YouYube is the higher visibility and increased traffic, leading to more views for your video. In fact a whopping 80% of videos that come up in google search results are hosted on YouTube which is definitely a big benefit of choosing this streaming service. Third parties will also usually have a higher bandwidth, allow for larger file sizes and have faster streaming – giving an overall better viewer experience.
Some of the drawbacks are that it can take away traffic and redirect people to places other than your website. In addition some hosting sites charge a fee which is something to keep in mind.
If you do decide to choose a third party to host your video, factors to consider are the size of its audience, its user friendliness and whether it gives you insightful metrics to track if your video is getting results.
Where else can your video live?
The great thing about animated videos is that they can be used in so many different ways from email campaigns, social media and even to add some extra hype to an upcoming event. There really is no limit to where you can use them and they are an excellent way to liven up your content and get people engaged.
Here are just some of the other places your video can hang out.
Email Marketing
Once you have your video, sending it to your email list or including it as part of an email marketing campaign is a great way to engage with your audience. Not only this it can increase your click through rate and improve conversions. It also adds to the user experience and creates more memorable high quality emails your audience are sure to love.
Social media
Sharing your video on social media will help you get the most traffic and traction from your video.
There are many different social channels you can choose and you can repurpose your video into nice bite sized pieces to really get people hooked and drive engagement for your brand.
Sales Pitches
Including video in your sales pitch is a great way to impress potential clients and really ace that presentation. Sales videos can be embedded into your client pitches to really make them pop.
So now that you know where you can put your video the next step is to make sure it is optimised to pack a powerful punch for your target audience.
Video searchability
You can have the best animated video in the world, but if no one can find it then there is a problem. Therefore making sure your video can be found by your target audience is a must. This is where search engine optimisation comes in to make sure your video can be easily found online. You can enhance your SEO by carefully selecting the best title and description that matches what your target answer would be searching for. Using relevant keywords, tags and hashtags all help to make sure it can be found by as many people as possible.
Repurposing your video
Animated videos are like big pieces of fruit, you can keep squeezing them for more juice. This is where editing and repurposing your video comes in. It gives your content much more reach and allows you to create different types of content from one single piece giving you a great return of investment – a major win.
Some of the best ways to repurpose you video are:
Static images
A great way to repurpose your animated video is through images that can be tuned into content for your website, socials, blogs and emails.
Short form content
Chopping your video down into short form content is an excellent way to increase engagement, especially on social media. Short video clips can be shared on multiple channels which helps engage a bigger audience, increases brand consistency, and funnels more traffic to your main video and website. Sounds good huh?
Here at The Animation Guys many of our projects have included repurposing clients’ content into other assets. Take our work with Absolute for example. We created an engaging social media video campaign aimed at young people, encouraging them to be safe when getting home from a night out in the lead up to Christmas.
Along with the ‘Hero’ video as we call it, we also provided two short form videos to be used on social media and four accompanying static images for extra marketing material – all from just one piece of video content.
If you would like to find out more ways to repurpose your next video, read our blog on the five best ways to do it.
Let's wrap this up!
Now you know everything there is to make sure your next animated video is perfectly primed to get the best results and as many eyeballs on your brand as possible.
When using video to market your business, it’s as much about what you do with your video as it is about what it looks like. Now that you have read our handy guide, we know you’ve got this!
So, if you are a business that wants to get more results with an awesome animated video then get in touch here or give us a call +44 (0) 207 2886 319. We can make amazing animations that are guaranteed to get your brand noticed.
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