G R O W I N G Y O U RB U S I N E S S W I T H V I D E O

Let’s assume you want to grow your business - because

who doesn’t. We’ll what if I told you that we could

increase your brand awareness, increase your website’s

conversion rate and give you a 24/7 salesman...are you

interested?

Of course you are.

THE ULTIMATEANIMATED EXPLAINER VIDEOGUIDE

W I L S O N C O M P A N Y

N E W S L E T T E RC O N T E N T SIntroduction to Animated

Video

How Much Should you Spend

Choosing a Video Producer

Planning for Your Video

How Long should Your Video

Be?

Creating a Brief

Working With the Team

Your Final Video

Here at Squideo, our talented team of animators have created thousands of animatedexplainer videos for companies across the globe. We understand our customers, we know what works and we know what you need toknow to get results. Videos shouldn’t just be something that look cool, they shouldserve a purpose. We tie together our creative flair and marketing expertise to createthe perfect digital marketing synergy. We may not be the company you’re looking to work with, but we are passionate aboutanimated videos and want to share the power of a well-done and correctly marketedanimated explainer video. We’re here to guide you through every step of the process,so we can help you leverage the power of explainer videos to benefit you as we knowthey can.

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I N T R O D U C T I O NVideo can often be underestimated inits ability to nudge a customer downthe sales funnel in just 60 seconds, butthat’s exactly why we create them. Tohelp businesses just like yours to grow. This guide has been made by us, tomake you money. By the end of it you’llnot only know how to plan, create anduse your video, you’ll know all theindustry secrets most animationcompanies, freelancers and videoproduction companies don’t want youto know.

Now don’t get us wrong, if you want a more convenient and assured way ofgenerating an ROI, animated videos are still a lot cheaper and more convenientthan a live action video. With an animated video, you don’t need to hire actors, locations, insurance,costumes and make-up, filming equipment etc. One option is to use filmingalongside animation, with animated transitions, icons and infographics to reducethe filming, resource and editing. However, you have the risk of re-filming anysections which you are not happy with and having to re-hire your actors,location, equipment and videographer. Live action films are also difficult to update according to new business processesand procedures i.e. if an employee featured in the video leaves, or you have newproduct updates or launches. Animated videos are a lot easier to update and itsharder to tell if they are outdated as you do not have to include productplacement etc.

H O W M U C HS H O U L D Y O US P E N D ?

Now this is the age-old question, howmuch should my marketing budgetbe? If you’re lucky and you’ve beengiven a designated marketing budgetby your manager, then you’ll knowthe limit and will be able to contactcompanies and find out what is inyour price range.

However, deciding the budget for your animated explainer video can be trickyand can take a little bit of shopping around before you understand what differentagencies charge for their animation. Prices for a 60 second animated video can range from £200 to £70,000. Thisdepends on the company, the animation style, time, resources and equipment.

The standard of their animation

What’s Included?

Is it in-house?

It might be your first thought to try and find the cheapestanimation video company out there. In this case, there are several things you should look outfor:

If you post a low-quality video, users won’t watch it, so youwon’t generate a return on your investment. Plus, the oneswhich do will get a poor first impression of your brand,which is damaging.

Videos can come across cheap but it’s because there maybe hidden costs later. What extras do you get with it? Howmany seconds do you get? Do you get revisions? Is astoryboard included? Do you have to provide your ownscript?

Some companies outsource their animation to a third-party animator to make this cheaper. These third-partyanimators can be anywhere in the world, socommunication can take longer to reach the videoproducer, lengthening your project and potentiallyincreasing the number of revisions. The more you spend on an animated video can bebeneficial to the company and your brand as you mustensure that your brand is represented correctly right downto the voiceover, characters, music and script.

H O W M U C H S H O U L DY O U S P E N D ?

Their resources and equipmentOverheads – They may not be necessarily cheaper than an animation agency ifthey have to pay for office space, travel or equipment themselvesTheir reliability to contact youReliability to see the project throughDo they have the correct digital marketing knowledge to be able to produce avideo that meets your video marketing goals?Do they have a good animation library, or do they have to create all assets fromscratch? Is their schedule jam-packed and if so, do you have to wait months for your video?If their schedule is empty and they can do it straight away, make sure you ask tosee some example videosCan they provide music and a voiceover?Can they provide a money-back guarantee?

Freelancers A freelancer is a good start of you’re looking for a very low-cost animated video;however, you need to consider the following:

C H O O S I N G A V I D E OP R O D U C E R

DIY Software There are many programmes and softwareout there to make it easy to produce yourown animated video, so you could eitherdo this yourself or get someone in-houseto produce this for you. You need to be confident enough inyourself that you can produce somethingwhich represents your brand and conveysyour message perfectly and set aside thetime to do this. Are you confident thevideos will generate an ROI?

Agencies usually have a good animationlibrary and will deal with clients likeyourself all day long, so they’ve hadtime to perfect the process. They willalso have a team of animators with adifferent skill sets and are usually prettysavvy on digital marketing so they cantailor your video to where it will bewithin your strategy. Because of all of this, an animated videoagency will probably generate you abetter return on investment than acheaper freelancer or a top rangeagency. If you decide to go for a top-rangeanimation company, be prepared setaside anywhere up to £15,000 for 60seconds. You will have a top-qualityvideo but it will be harder to generate areturn-on-investment from this unlessyou have a much, much higher adbudget to make this possible.

An Animation Agency Using a mid-range animation companyis probably the best way to get the mostbang for your buck. They will have ateam of video producers and animatorswho can produce a high-qualityanimation video for you without thecompromise on quality or sky-highprices.

C H O O S I N G A V I D E O P R O D U C E R

P L A N N I N G F O RY O U R V I D E O

Before you even begin to start the creative process, you need to begin to planyour video. You’ve decided on a budget, you know how much you are prepared tospend so you should have a good expectation of the video you can get producedfor the money. Start by deciding on your business objectives.

You also need to fit the video intoyour marketing strategy. Is going tobe on a PPC landing page, is it onyour homepage to help SEO, is it forsocial media, is it for an emailcampaign? This will also help todefine the video length, if you needany keywords in the script, whatstyle the video needs to be (soft sellor hard sell) and the call to action.

What do you want your visitors to do when they see it? How will you get them to that point? Where will they see it? Who are your target audience? Will it reach your target audience? Does it appeal to your target audience? What message will resonate with the viewers?

Whether its shouting about newfeatures of an app, promoting a newproduct, explaining the benefits ofyour SaaS, you need to decipherwhat will entice and engage yourcustomers. A great animatedexplainer video will push viewersfurther down the sales funnel by thetime they reach the end, so when it’stime for the call-to-action at theend, they know what to do and theyknow how to do it.

Start by making an emotional connection – Resonate with the viewer byaddressing the pain points you know they feel.Become the solution to their problems – Cause intrigue by showing thatyou can solve the users problemsGive them the reasons to buy it – How do you solve a problem, what arethe features and benefits, what makes you better than your competitorsCall-to-action and Offer – Whether it is directing them to your site to tellthem to get it, giving them a voucher code or shouting about apromotion, tell them how to take an action

Writing Your Script Your script is the backbone of your video, it creates a basis for your producerto create a storyboard and brainstorm ideas for the animated video. Here’san ideal script structure we follow which tends to work well with any videolength.

1.

2.

3.

4.

Buyer Personas As time goes on, more and more marketers are figuringout marketing is about PEOPLE and not about numbers.In order to make a sale you need to emotionally connectwith your audience. Create a buyer persona card whichlists all the qualities of the users which buy from you.Now this is important, these must be the types of peoplewho are ALREADY buying from you, and not who youWANT to buy from you. If you want a different audience to buy from you, youneed to analyse your products, branding, messaging,competitors and marketing channels. If there are certaintypes of people already generating a profit for yourbusiness, you need to leverage this. Analyse the top 4%of your customers. What do they do? What do theywant? What do they dream about? What do they fear? This will craft your video and your messaging towardsthe right people, allowing them to identify with whatyou’re selling.

P L A N N I N G F O RY O U R V I D E O

At Squideo, we work to a ratio of 80words per 30 second of script. This givesenough time for the voiceover artist toread all the commentary without rushingand is long enough for the reader toeasily digest and retain the informationgiven, so you should use this as aguideline. Ideally, the shorter your video, the morelikely the user will reach the end.Depending on how you structure yourmessage, you will know how long yourvideo should be. For social media, wewould suggest 15 seconds. YouTubevideos can be longer however if they aresponsored you will be given arecommended time depending on theplacement of the video. For your website, we suggest around aminute long for your homepage, but indeeper pages you can feature longervideos like tutorial videos etc. as the useris already invested enough in yourmessage, they want to know more aboutthe product you’re offering.

H O W L O N G S H O U L DY O U R V I D E O B E ?

Your creative brief ensures your video animators are given the correct directions toproduce a video which is intended to meet your goals. What should you include?

Your Video Script If you don’t already have a script, then avideo animation agency will be able towrite one for you at a small cost.

Video Details The more information you can give herethe better. Provide your website URL (ifyou have one) or provide competitorwebsites which are like yours. Ensure yougive important details about the product,process or service which you are trying tosell in your explainer video. The more information you can give, theless likely your video producer will get thewrong end of the stick and providesomething completely off the mark.

C R E A T I N G A B R I E F

Your Business and Branding Start by outlining your business and branding toyour creative producer. This helps then to decideon animation style and make suggestions forcharacters, colour schemes. They can also sendyou music styles, voice over samples andanimation styles to choose from. Make sure they fully comprehend your branding,logo, tone of voice, colour scheme and font stylesfor your video, so they can match the tone of thevideo to your website. This ensures it doesn’t lookout of place on your website, social media oremail campaigns.

You can also ask if they provide any extras such asanimated GIFs, social media banners, animated emaillogos etc. We here at Squideo offer a wide range ofextras to give you other animated content to featurealong with your video.

W O R K I N G W I T HT H E T E A M

Most animated video companies will work on a flat rate pricing structure, sowill charge you per 15 seconds of animation. Its best that you outline yourterms for revisions before you buy, as some companies give you unlimitedrevisions whereas some give you a free set of revisions and then charge forrevision time after that if they have a very tight schedule.Find out what theturnaround time is – most animation companies have an average turnaroundtime for their standard projects. If you have asked for bespoke assets this can take longer simply due to havingto create each asset and animate it separately. Some companies offer anexpress service however and can create and send your project in a very quickturnaround time.

Make sure you know at what stages you can providefeedback. A good animation company won’t just gatherall the information from you and make a video and sendyou it. You should be able to make tweaks during theprocess, so you need a direct point of contact in caseanything changes within the business. Also, find out when you should pay as some companiestake a deposit upfront, some take the full paymentupfront and some allow you to pay when the project isfinished, but be prepared for legal terms of latepayments in this scenario.

Video Hosting Depending on where you host your videos depends on your goals. If you want to useVideos to impact your SEO, we recommend YouTube. If you’re savvy, then YouTube canbring your video up in Google searches to help increase your visibility. Plus, you earn alink back from YouTube to your site and you’re also directing traffic to your site fromyour Video. Vimeo also follows this ideology, allowing you to link back from Vimeo to your website.One advantage of Vimeo over YouTube are that there are no ads or other suggestedvideos at the end of your video, and you can remove all branding. Hosting your video yourself and adding it to your website doesn't give you the SEObenefit that YouTube does, but you can feature your subtitle transcript on your page orin an SRT file and the addition of keywords with benefit your on page SEO content. Plus,you’ll have no ads or suggested videos when the video has finished. There are ways which a video on your website can add benefit to your SEO, your websitepage and usability and direct traffic to your site from other sources, so it depends onyour goals as to what’s best for you.

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Y O U R F I N A L V I D E OGreat you have your video…so now what? Some animationcompanies like us here at Squideo, have a full digitalmarketing team, so we can help drive users to your websitethrough PPC, SEO and help to optimise your website forconversions so your video is the star of the show.

Measurement Calculating an ROI from your video can be daunting if you’re new to this. Your webdeveloper will be able to help you with setting up the tracking. This will give youinsights into how people are interacting with your video i.e. If you regularly see thatusers are bouncing at a certain point during your video, you’ll know to either make yourvideo shorter or cut out the part that is causing users to bounce.. You can then also calculate your return on ad spend and figure out how much revenuewas generated from the amount spent on the video to see if it was a profitableinvestment.

A R E Y O U I N T E R E S T E D I NG R O W I N G Y O U R B U S I N E S S

W I T H V I D E O ?

C L I C K H E R E T O B O O K A F R E E 3 0M I N U T E V I D E O C O N S U L T A T I O N

O R E M A I L A D A M D I R E C T L Y A TA D A M @ S Q U I D E O . C O . U K

About The AuthorAdam is the Co-Owner and Accounts Director of Squideo.Adam has been with Squideo since it started in 2015. Adamhas managed thousands of animated video projects for a widerange of business, from startups to world famous brands. "We wanted to write this eBook as we believe the power ofanimated explainer videos is often underestimated as asuccessful marketing tool due to the lack of availableinformation. If we can prove the power of a 60 second video tobusinesses who have a complex service/product, we can helpbusinesses everywhere overcome their sales barriers."

The Ultimate AnimatedExplainer Video Guide