We’ve seen the rise of banner ads, blogs, social network advertising, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), email marketing and so on. So what’s next?

Businesses and companies are always looking for ways to explain what they do, how their products work, how to convey their ideas and concepts to their visitors and potential customers. Putting all these in texts might not be feasible as the level of understanding and comprehension of each individual differs. The best way is to put them in a visual form. That’s where explainer video and product demo come into place.

So how to make sure that your explainer video or product demo worth the investment? Before you order your explainer video or product demo, bear in mind that the most important thing is to keep it short and simple. You do not need to put everything you know about your service or product in the video. Tell things that your target audience would like to know about your service or product such as how it works, how it helps them in solving problems and so on.

Forget about using bombastic words. Tell things in a simple and clear manner. If you want your audience to pay attention to what you have to say, do not make your script complicated and most importantly, no one likes boring stuff, hence you need to inject a sense of humor into your script.

Last but not least, do not babysit your designers. There was a reason why you hired their services in the first place. The situation is similar to a patient meeting a doctor. It wouldn’t help much if the patient ends up giving medical advice to the doctor. Leave enough room for your designers to work on your idea and creative concepts.

A simple yet interesting explainer video or product demo can capture the audience attention easily. When an idea is painted in a crystal clear manner, chances are, the audience will be able to grasp and digest it in a split second. The best thing is, animated videos are entertaining to watch.

Investing on a good explainer video and product demo works better than many other available marketing tools. Explainer videos are easy to share via many different channels, regardless of the location and time, thus allowing your video to reach out to thousands and even millions of people. Videos create a more personal interaction and experience between a business and its customers. Instead of reading a page full of texts, with just one click, people can find out more about a business in an easier, faster and much more engaging way.

How to find a good explainer video and product demo production studio?

Make sure you do a proper research about a studio before hiring its services. For example, skim through its portfolio and clientele list. Match your budget with the expectation you have in mind. It’s just like buying a car. You can’t expect a Lamborghini with 300 bucks. You need to be realistic when it comes to budgeting. Most explainer video and product demo production studios charge between US$3k-US$15k (per minute), depending on client’s requirements. The budget dictates the amount of animation that will be added to an explainer video or product demo. The higher the budget is, the better the result, in the usual case.

With the right content and approach, investing on an animated video can be a very useful and rewarding marketing tool.

A new illustration designed and created by our team for the upcoming campaign. Feel free to share your comments below.

We run an online business, a legitimate online business doing video production for companies and businesses. Nothing of the sort that will offend anyone nor be categorized as FRAUD or SPAM. We have many returning clients (from small to large organizations) and received similar recognition on the quality of our works on the Internet.

We had WOT installed and we checked it from time to time to ensure everything was going well. Just a week ago, we found out that our site is flagged RED (considered as having low reputation) out of nowhere. One of our staff left a comment on WOT forum and suddenly, we received a comment on our Score Board from one Platinum user claiming that our site had privacy issues, we were Spammers and our website had ethical issues. He provided some links to justify his claims. One link led to a third party website which detects malware, spam or suspicious stuff on websites. Surprisingly, the link that the user provided showed that our site is clean!

We found many similar comments with links posted regarding other websites and much to our horror, most of these sites are legitimate like us!

Just one comment from our staff on the forum (the comment was subsequently hidden by moderator) and out of a sudden, one user dropped a comment on our Score Board and our site was declared as having bad reputation. The worst thing is, our account was banned without any warning.

So we made another account to communicate with the user who left the comment on our Score Board. The user copy pasted the same comment in our Score Board in his reply. We contacted WOT team and the person who replied us through the support form was one of the co-founders, further proving that the company is small and there is no way that they could monitor any suspicious activity going on their website.

Within 24 hours, our Score Board was literally spammed by some users who know nothing about what we do. The only reason that they rated our business badly was because one of our staff posted one comment on their forum. They even added an extra rating on Child Safety on our Score Board and the rating was going lower and lower. We’re not running a porn site and we do not even feature anything not suitable for kids on our site! In fact, there are many nice animations on our site which are suitable for children. Imagine a porn site having GOOD reputation on WOT, while a site which produces animation suitable for kids is being flagged RED and deemed not suitable for kids!

WOT team did not even verify whether the claim was based on real proof as long as the user who leaves a comment is a Platinum member and there was no way that they could investigate further into it nor remove the wrong rating.

This is another example of how people can easily do on a site like WOT: http://www.freelancer.com/projects/Anything-Goes/MYWOT-rating.html.

To know that there are millions of WOT users out there is terrifying. What they have done to our site affects our site traffic and our potential clients might not know that the ratings on WOT is biased.

Do not trust WOT!

More articles about this issue :

http://dukeo.com/mywot-web-of-trust-review-modern-web-totalitarism

http://www.affhelper.com/mywot-reviews-exposed

http://host-file.net

http://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.mywot.com

http://www.ripoffreport.com/Search/wot.aspx

http://www.complaintsboard.com/?search=mywot

Many individual companies do A/B testing of these specific types of videos on their own home pages, but these numbers are not usually disclosed, and I have yet to see industry-wide studies looking at the effects of these specific videos.  However, the effectiveness of product videos in the ecommerce and retail space is well-documented, and the same factors that help these videos sell products seem to apply to promoting websites and apps as well. That was typically our experience at my former employer Transvideo Studios: of the companies that kept track and disclosed the data to us, videos usually improved conversion rates by 15%-75%.

Why Video?

Conversion rates don’t tell the whole story about overview videos.  Other reasons to include video are:

- Increase press coverage

Not only does it make it more likely you’ll get covered, but also that the coverage won’t simply be the author’s interpretation of your site, but will actually include your video – your own words – to supplement the story.

- Help your fans evangelize your product. Video is an extra standalone tool that can be easily shared on Facebook or Twitter. My favorite example of this is Visual.ly – Visual.ly had over 80,000 signups from a video on its LaunchRock page… months before the company actually went live.

- Improve the SEO of your site.

- Repurpose elsewhere.  Videos can be included in email signatures, start off VC pitches, shared by sales team, etc… well beyond your home page.

- Buy you time. While “nothing kills a bad product better than good marketing”, a video can give users an insight to your product that allows them to both use it more effectively, and understand your larger vision, so that if the product isn’t there yet, they know where it is going and don’t immediately turn you off.  I’m a firm believer that if Color had originally launched with a video that explained its vision a bit better, instead of the employee–made demo they launched with, users might have given them a bit of a chance to improve.

If you are going to make an explainer video, here a few basic rules to keep in mind:

1. Don’t make a “viral” video.  While there are extremely successful and truly viral videos out there people don’t usually realize the time, effort, and experience required to create something people actually want to share.  And even if they do, virality itself is unpredictable.  Most companies would be better off leveraging the existing organic traffic on their site and focus on turning those users into customers, rather than spending resources they may not have trying to designing to get a mass audience to post their videos on their Facebook page. This doesn’t mean the video needs to be a PowerPoint pitch deck, or that it can’t be engaging, but that the top priority should be to explain how a product fits into a user’s life, and not shareability.
2. Don’t just make a product walkthrough.  Product walkthroughs have their place, but they are only effective after the user understands what the product is about in the first place. Don’t just do a product demo, starting at the login screen, and walking through all the features.  Answer the question, “How does this product fit into my life?”, or “Why should I use this?”, before answering “How does this work?”.  You want to pique the user’s interest with the video, then let them figure how the product works on their own, by signing up and using it. Having said that…
3. Prioritize your message and keep it short.  It is tempting to want to present every use case, every benefit, to as many different audiences as possible, as you might in a pitch deck.  However, the sweet spot for these videos tend to be around 45-90 seconds.  Shorter than 45 seconds feels sales-y and incomplete, and viewers don’t hang around videos that are longer than 90 seconds, so putting too much in there hurts you. That means that you should pick just a few messages to put in the video  Are you targeting your dream user, or are you catering to early adopters (i.e.: “Normals” vs “TechCrunch Readers”)?  Are you trying to differentiate yourselves from an established competitor?  Are you solving a problem that hasn’t been tackled, or is it a new solution to an old problem?  Is there information that all users must know about your product ahead of time to use it effectively?  These are the types of questions that help determine what goes into a final video.  Focus on the three most important things, and then let them move on from the video to your product.
4. Include a call to action at the end.  Videos perform better if the user knows what to do after the video is done. And if you tell a user to download a product, make sure there is a prominent “Download” button next to the video at all times. (See: Flipboard).
5. Prominently feature the video.  The video does little good if it is hidden behind a lot of links.  Put it on your home page, and place a large “play” button on a still of the video for maximum effectiveness. (See: Nextdoor).
6. Quality matters.  While you may now be tempted to grab your camcorder and record a video of your product, the production quality does matter.  A concise script, good design, clear visuals, and good quality audio all make a difference in whether users watch the video, and how they react to it and to your product.  This is especially true if your product has privacy implications, or is business to business – an amateurish production may give the impression that the company is not reputable and is run from a college dorm room.

Reference :  http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/24/rise-of-the-explainer-video

Keep the good works coming Fraser, you are a big influence for our team.

Take for example: someone asks you for direction. Well, you know the place and remember all the shortcuts and traffic lights at the back of your head. But the person has no single clue as to what you are talking about simply because he has not been there at all.

So how do you help him? You take out a paper and pen and start drawing a map. That’s the easiest way to give direction right?

Same goes with the situation where you have something, a product or a service, that you want to promote, or you have a fabulous idea that you want to sell, what is the best way to do so? One thing for sure, most people dislike reading lengthy guidebooks, articles or even sit in one place and listen to a longwinded speech that doesn’t seem to work on anyone’s mind.

Since most human beings are driven by sight, when you tell a story visually, people tend to get the idea better.

Why Explainer videos then?

There are so many reasons why explainer videos work better than real live footages. One reason being, with animation, the sky is the limit. You can imagine everything under the sun and things can be illustrated properly without the use of wires or any visual effects.

Moreover, the cost that you pay for animation is only a fraction of what you pay for live footage video, minus the costs of your casts and crews, props etc.

Since our childhood, cartoons have played a big part in the learning process. Kids are attracted to cartoons because they are fun to watch and at the same time, they get to learn new things in a much more interesting way.

Why don’t we apply the same school of thoughts for businesses? Using explainer animated videos or so called explainer videos to explain about a service or product and at the same time, keep your audience entertained. Most explainer videos don’t last longer than 2 minutes, which work perfectly on everyone due to the simple fact that each individual has different attention span. Avoid throwing everything about your product or service into the explainer video, because people tend to look for more. The best way to explain a product or service is to keep it short and simple. By creating a little bit of suspense, you will be surprised how it will drive people’s curiosity to find out more about your product or service.

explainer videos are easy to disseminate to the general public and target audience. You can send links via emails, display it on your website, share it on your social networks, trade shows and so on. The video can be used over and over again for many years to come. So do the maths on the ROI and you will find out explainer video is extremely cost effective.

In conjunction with the launching of our new web design, we have also introduced 4 different packages to cater to customers of varying needs. For those looking for a cost effective way to promote their business, we would recommend the Starter Package. It is a basic package which includes everything from creative script writing, voice-over, character design and storyboard development. Price offered is extremely competitive and affordable for most start-ups and self-funding companies.

For those who have a higher budget, just upgrade to our Gold Package which comes with some extra features such as professional voice-over, unique character design, sound design, biweekly status  update. In terms of voice-over, clients have a wider range of VO talents to choose from.

As for those looking to do a video which has a higher potential to go viral, our Viral Package is the package to choose. Incorporation of 3D elements and visual effects will certainly make a bigger impact on the outcome of the animation. Other than that, professional voice-over, unique character design and advanced sound design and weekly status report are also included in the package.

For those who are unsure about which package to order, or have a specific requirement such as a specific duration or budget, or those who prefer more flexibility, we have a Custom Package to tailor the best package based on different requirements.  We have seen many companies that boosted their sales through explainer videos, so a quality one can definitely guarantee the job.  Make sure to keep your product demo or explainer video short, so your audience won’t get bored.

Well, if you think you need to do something new and exciting for your product or service, drop by and place your order.

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