As content creators and digital natives, we’re surrounded and often bombarded by the latest trends, tips, tricks, bamboozles, and hoodwinks (okay, maybe not those last two).
One of the biggest trends in the digital space is the use of video.
In the past, we’ve blogged about important video marketing statistics, use cases for sales teams, and even shared examples of training videos. But we’re not going to re-hash those here. Instead, we’ll focus entirely on why you should use animated video.
Why animated video
Content is all about telling a story. Whether it’s a story about your product, your customers, or maybe even compliance changes, your main goal as a content crafter is to share a message that compels, persuades, and convinces your audience to take action.
But the story is only as good as its execution. Think about it. If you have a great story, but deliver it poorly, your audience is less likely to take action. That’s where animated video can help.
Animated video is a rich, engaging medium, that is cost-effective, easy to manage, and will help your key points pop. It offers all the benefits of a visual medium with much smaller resource requirements than you might expect.
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Benefits of using animated video
Here’s why animated video is a great medium for telling stories:
You can bring any concept to life
Animation allows you to slide scales and bend the laws of nature.
With animated videos, you’re free to do whatever you want. Let your imagination run wild!
It gives you the ability to bring any concept, no matter how complex or out of this world, to life with ease.
You can give context to your ideas
Imagine starting on a closeup of a person, then zooming out to show a crowd of people, then blasting up into the stratosphere for the truly BIG top view. And, to take it a step further you zoom out to show our entire galaxy.
It puts that one lonesome person you started with in perspective, doesn’t it?
That’s practically impossible in real life, but with animated video, it’s a snap!
Animated video is a great medium to give context to even your most far-fetched ideas.
You can strike the right tone
At times, your message can get muddled with the portrayal of real people, or can even fail to explain the topic at hand. For example, which option (shown below) would you use to address complex topics like sexual harassment training:
Option A
Option B
With animated video, you can take all those factors away and strike a wider range of emotional tones. This can help cover difficult subjects effectively, without causing your audience to put their defenses up.
You can visually represent abstract ideas
Perhaps one of the biggest benefits of using animated video is the ease with which you can visually capture abstract ideas.
Just ask yourself “Can I aim a camera at it?” If the answer is yes, then live-action may be more straightforward than animated video.
But what if you wanted to capture something very big (like global logistics), something very small (like the workings of a microprocessor), or maybe something abstract (like Bitcoin)? It gets a little more challenging, doesn’t it?
That’s where animated video has the advantage. With animated video, you can easily capture hard-to-represent ideas on a screen without constraints.
You can easily manage video production
If you have ever shot a live-action video, you’re probably aware it’s a complicated and sometimes frustrating process. You have to worry about the location, actors, props, equipment, sets… and that’s not even taking the weather into account!
With animated video, you’re not constrained by any of these factors.
You can switch backgrounds, move characters, and even add props with a simple click, drag-and-drop. This makes it easy to test different ways to communicate your message.
7 reasons why animated video is the best type of content
Now that we’ve covered some of the benefits of animated video, let’s talk about why it’s better than other types of content. Namely, why animated video is better than text, infographics, and live-action video content:
Animated Video vs. Text
1) Animated videos are more visual
The first and foremost reason for using animated video is that it is rich media. Videos, in general, are composed of pictures that make up rich media moments.
This visual medium appeals to the senses and offers an easy and effective way to communicate important messages. And the best part is that visuals are consumed a lot more easily than text, and leave a lasting impact on your audience:
90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text. – Source
Here’s a great video that takes advantage of this visual medium, created by GenieBelt:
2) Animated videos are psychologically appealing
One of our earliest (and possibly fondest) memories, as kids growing up, is watching cartoons. Cartoons are so captivating because they’re fun, engaging, and most of all colorful.
There’s something about moving images that appeals to the human brain, and this naturally extends to animated video. As Nicola Davies asserts in this post, “If you want people to emotionally connect with your content, animated video is an investment worth making.”
Here’s a great example from Fixed that shows you how to deal with the frustration of traffic tickets:
3) Animated videos cut through the digital “noise”
Content shock is real and a major challenge facing all organizations. But with the ever-increasing presence of “noise” in the digital space, content creators need to find a way to differentiate their content from everything else out there.
Animated video offers a great medium to do exactly that. For example, there’s a lot of “noise” surrounding content marketing, and a visual way to stand out from the crowd would be to create a whiteboard video like this one:
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Animated Video vs. Live-action Video
4) Animated videos are cost-effective
One of the biggest challenges most video producers face is the lack of a large budget:
41% of marketers cite a lack of budget as one of three main reasons why they hesitate to use video. – Source
Live-action video expenses usually include finding suitable actors, a location to shoot your video, equipment, and video production costs. Animated video, on the other hand, just needs a monthly subscription. Cloud-based solutions (like GoAnimate) make it easy to create videos online with simple drag-and-drop tools. Just sign up for a subscription and you’re ready to create professional animated videos.
Don’t believe us? Watch this video or read the case study to learn how animated videos helped MailLift improve conversions:
5) Animated videos scale with your business
A related challenge with video production is the need to create more content. As your business grows, so does the need for more engaging content.
Initially, you may need an explainer video about your product or service. Soon you begin to create gated assets that need supporting videos. Or, even more challenging, you need to create a tutorial series for your customers or a training video that helps your team adopt a new process.
Creating content is a challenge, and video adds to the complexity. But with animated video, churning out multiple videos is a very simple task. Just think about visuals, write the script, storyboard, and before you know it, you’re on your way to producing another video.
Here’s a great example by eDepoze, a cloud-based deposition software company. They used this video to drive audience participation with the help of a simple “audition”:
6) Animated videos are easy to update
Content creation has seen dramatic growth over the past few years, and rightfully so. But one of the challenges is updating all of your old content. Whether you’re a trainer updating compliance content, a salesperson revisiting old presentations, or a marketer restructuring your branding; updating content is a challenge!
Video content, however, poses an even bigger challenge. If you use live-action video, you simply can’t re-shoot scenes or update critical parts of your message without taking into account a large number of factors.
But that’s where animated video has the edge. Animated videos allow for more flexibility because they’re easier to update. You can go back and change text, edit animations or even do a complete overhaul of your entire video.
For example, TRAC a public service agency created this great video in English and subsequently released one in Mandarin as well:
Animated Video vs. Static Infographics
7) Animated videos upgrade your visual content
You’ve probably heard of infographics (If not, here are some examples). An even bigger trend than infographics is infographic fatigue. Many content creators adopted static infographics as a way to visualize data by turning dry stats into a visual feast. But lately, infographics have increasingly become text- or data-heavy and therefore visually cluttered (and headache-causing).
If you allow a reader to view a static infographic unsupervised, what happens? They race through it and probably miss a lot of the content. This is exacerbated if the infographic is overly cluttered i.e. text- or data-heavy.
That’s where animated infographics can help. Animated infographics provide a “guided tour” through the content, which offers two benefits:
- You can control the viewer’s pace through the content
- You can use rich media (movement, music, sound effects, visual elements, etc.) to highlight specific points
Just take a look at this example:
Wrapping it up
Animated video is a dynamic and versatile medium that can elevate your story to a new level.
It offers an engaging and fun alternative to text content, is not impeded by traditional constraints surrounding live-action video, and upgrades static infographics into a highly engaging “guided tour” through the content.
Upgrade your visual content and use the power of Vyond animated videos! Vyond is the premier tool for animated video creation for businesses. Our set of animation tools lets you include the characters, charts, and props necessary to prove why your product is the leading solution in the market.
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