So, you’ve just completed your new website. You’ve spent time, money and energy working with your developers to form a bespoke site that engages with your audience the way you want them to. It allows them to clearly find what they are looking for, in the easiest and most efficient way possible, because let’s face it, no one has much time these days.
It’s busy and crowded out there
You are competing in a crowded, busy world saturated with rich visuals and strong messaging. There are billions of people online today [ 4.388 billion in Jan 2019 to be precise ] with an infinitesimal amount of data shooting around the globe. How do you get noticed? How does your site, your marketing, your brand stand out amongst the 500 million Twitter posts per day, or noticed by the 1.56 billion active Facebook users per day?
“Video increases organic search traffic on a website by 157%”
- Conversion XL
How do you keep them engaged in such a visual, fast paced environment? How do you quickly tell them what’s unique about your company, your ethos and your product or service? How do you even get the right people to your site in the first place?
“Video on a site’s landing page boosts conversion by up to 80%”
- Unbounce
Dare to be different
A strong visual will always grab people’s attention. It will stop them scrolling through the various feeds of cat videos, friends holiday snaps and political posts. Because it’s different. And we’re all drawn to investigate something attractive and different. If you can entertain whilst enlightening, inform whilst amusing then your brand and it’s product / service will already have a warmer place in people’s hearts.
“85% of consumers want to see more video from a brand or business they support”
- Hubspot, 2018
So, do you go to a stock library and pick a collection of images one of your competitors may very well have picked already? More and more of what is shown is now generated by bots, or artificial intelligence, using algorithms based on viewers past browsing habits to give them, well, more of the same. Do you really want to communicate to your audience using their predefined behaviour rather than connecting with them as a unique individual?
You could create a quick video of your team talking about how great the company they are working for is? Or hire actors to play out a story that may not connect with the audience watching it? Or do you create something that gets right to the heart of what you are trying say, in a rich, exciting, dynamic form where there are no boundaries to how your message can be delivered? Something that a robot can’t create, something crafted with effort and skill that reflects the passion you have for your own business.
Perhaps you create a bespoke animation…?
A medium with many methods
Let me kill one myth right off the bat. Animations are not cartoons!
They are a very strong and effective art form. A series of moving illustrations and graphics that can convey complex information, stimulating stories and breath-taking worlds. They can enrapture and engage with wide audiences and niche markets, all at the same time.
”The average user spends 88% more time on a website with video”
- Forbes, 2018
And more importantly they are versatile.
If you invest in creating a world and aesthetic that is unique to your company, you can use it to create one or even several short videos that can you keep potential and existing clients on a journey with you. Short, easily digestible animations can first introduce yourself, then explain your heritage and story, before presenting more detail on what you are offering. You can deliver short bursts of information that won’t take up much time for people to watch, with less effort and more immediate entertainment than reading (or being spoken to by a talking head). Before they know it, they’ve watched your entire series, are connected to your brand and most importantly understand it and what it could do for them. These can even be broken up into animated vignettes, looping illustrations with keys messages, so your audience is drawn in one step at a time. One video can easily be reformatted and composed for different posts sizes, from the standard video screen to the favoured square for social media and portraits for mobile. The possibilities and applications are truly limitless. Filmed footage simply doesn’t have the same versatility once shot without re-shooting.
”72% of customers would rather learn about a product or service by way of video.”
- HubSpot
You get what you pay for
And it doesn’t have to cost the earth. It may be more expensive than stock assets, but with animation there are many ways to skin a cat. From simple info-graphics to richly detailed worlds full of character. There is always an approach to suit the budget as well as the company. And the ROI is always higher than that of the repeated, recycled click fodder you’ve seen somewhere else before.
“88% of video marketers are satisfied with the ROI of their social media videos”
- Animoto, 2018
As I mentioned, animation is nothing more than a series of images presented one after another, albeit very quickly. So once you have your world, character and style, it’s very easy ( and therefore cost effective ) to populate your site, branding and even printed materials with the same assets used to create the animations. This keeps the audience connected, with a company that is speaking in one clear, unique voice. A voice not spoken by anyone else or by regurgitated by ‘bots’. A voice that’s really yours.
So again. Don’t use library footage. Use your imagination. Your audience will appreciate it much more, which means ultimately you will too.