Learn about the different ways you can use motion graphics animation

Motion graphics animation has become a huge part of the digital marketing industry. The reason motion graphics is so popular is that it constantly proves its effectiveness and how versatile it is. If you have the budget, the time and you know how to communicate, you can create a number of things. Let’s look at the different ways you can use motion graphics animation.

Explainer animations

This term covers a wide variety of animated video content. If you’re trying the tell a message or you have a great story about what made you start your business, you can give explainer animations a try. It might have come to your notice that we often explain the same thing to every potential client. By incorporating motion graphics animation in explainer videos, you can use the same video repeatedly to attract more business and make your brand entity unique.

Video overlays and titles

Motion graphics is the best way to enhance video content on your website. You can improve your basic generic titles with branded and custom animation that can make the content distinctive, engaging and memorable in the long run. You can always add more graphic overlays to draw attention to the important bits. Motion graphics animation allows you to increase the information density of your video content without it looking too preachy.

Social Media Content

If you’re looking to stand out in a sea of tweets, posts, messages and snaps, you need custom motion graphics animation which can help you get better ROI on your major branding efforts. You can also try animated GIFs. These can loop indefinitely; they’re quick to load and are also extremely popular. Motion graphics animation also works well for 10-second video posts with sound.

Event invitations and logo animations

Motion graphics animation videos can showcase the style, mood and information about any upcoming event, in the form of a short animation that can easily be posted on social media or linked to emails. You can spice up your website with the help of logo animation. An animated logo is a great way to attract and retain customer attention.

Expo Booth

Most basic conference booths at expos have business cards and brochures placed on a display table. On the other hand, booths with TV screens that show dynamic and fun animation are usually packed full of people. This is because when you incorporate video with a saleable item you spark more interest. Here, you can even make a cheaper motion graphics animated video without the audio so that it can be deciphered at the din of a high attendance event. Most importantly, the script of the video needs to be cohesive to sustain without sound.

All you need to know about motion graphics animation

Everyone who’s newly introduced to the animation industry has doubts about how they can use motion graphics animation to communicate their business idea. In this article, we have put together a bunch of useful information that will help you understand everything you need to know about motion graphics animation.

Professional image

 If you want to bring your service/product in the market and give it a more professional profile, you should know that motion graphics is the best alternative if you don’t want to go for live-action videos.

Elegant style

Always remember that motion graphics animation is considered to be the most formal and elegant of explainer video styles. Hence, if you need to pass an image of sophistication to your audience and show how well versed you are with your industry, this video style is for you.

Abstract concepts explained in a concrete manner

When you need to pass out hard data like numbers, facts, statistics and other information, motion graphics can really make it go from boring to attractive.

Synthesis of concepts in an educational manner

An image is said to be worth a thousand words but a moving image has an astonishing power that can captivate the viewer’s mind if done correctly. When you use motion graphics, you can educate your audience and synthesize your ideas in a catchy and interesting manner.

Explaining business ideas effectively

If you have a B2C or a B2B company like a financial company, Software Company or IT solutions company, motion graphics animation functions as the number one tool to deliver all your ideas in a compelling and straightforward manner.

Motion graphics and other video styles

The best advantage of motion graphics animation is that it’s so versatile. You can mix motion graphics with character animation, live-action and whiteboard animation. Let’s get into details.

Motion graphics animation and live-action

When you mix the two together, you overcome all the limitations of live-action videos. With this combination can go you transmit concepts and ideas that would have been otherwise very difficult to deliver using only live-action.

Motion graphics animation and character animation

Motion graphics can lack that touch which makes videos more humane. In case you want your videos to look more funny and charming, you should use character animation and give it the emotional dimensionality it needs.

Motion graphics animation with whiteboard animation

If it’s a high-quality whiteboard animation then it has made use of the motion graphics technique. Combining the two together makes hand movements, graphics, camera movements and other elements look seamless.

Learn where to use your animated explainer video

An animated explainer video can be extremely satisfying because you get to see your business represented in a perfect package. Once you have it, it’s very important to immediately start focusing on the distribution and promotion. Let’s look at some of the best places to promote your explainer video.

Landing page/home page

Where you position your animated explainer video on your homepage/landing page is of utmost importance. You should always place the video on that part of the page that is visible as soon as a visitor opens the site because a lot of them don’t scroll all the way down. Make sure you guide your visitors with arrows and a large play button, enticing them to click on the video. Always use social media to invite people to watch and share the video.

Social media

Social media sites are cost-effective, simple and easy to control when it comes to sharing animated explainer videos. Social media sites are free and hence can lead to a good boost in word-of-mouth marketing and viral videos. Almost all social media channels- Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter etc have paid options where you spend some money to distribute your video, obtain new leads and find the right target your audience.

Press release

A press release is the best initial exposure you can give your explainer video. You can maximize the initial exposure by launching your animated explainer video on a number of multimedia channels simultaneously. This way you will get a number of people talking about you.

Blog

Always embed your animated explainer video on your blog. This will help in enhancing the page organically on search engines and it will spark more interest than a typical text post. Once you upload a video on your blog, Google will register the growing interest and will optimize it. Also, a video has more than 50% chance of being found organically than plain text.

Newsletter

Email marketing has never been simpler. Animated explainer videos and emails are a match made in heaven. Click-through rates can increase up to 300% when videos are included in email marketing and business campaign. Having a video in the subject line of the email also boosts the open rate from 7% to 13%

Paid advertisements

The benefits of paid advertisements can be seen in minutes. Organically driven traffic can take months to show any concrete results. When you use paid ads you get to test your marketing assets and achieve quick results. Get creative and connect with influential bloggers who have an interest in your area of business and can promote your animated explainer video on their social media and blogs.

Learn how to choose the correct creative design agency

Most companies, large or small hire a creative design agency at some point in time. This is because a creative design agency offers outside perspective and knowledge about numerous trends and industries and has expertise in producing creative content. If it’s your first time hiring one, let’s learn how you can get the one best suited to your needs 

Your brief needs to be clear about what you want to achieve

A company needs to have a basic idea of what it wants before aimlessly hunting for a creative design agency. Set some expectations about what you want to achieve and then start assessing agencies. You might be doing a launch campaign or a direct response commercial to increase brand awareness. Think about your advertising platforms and your main KPIs.  Best is to ask your network to recommend you creative agencies that would suit your industry and the type of campaign you want to pursue.

Your agency partners should be collaborative

You can always work with a creative design agency that has worked with globally known brands and has won impressive awards and accolades but it is more important to find an agency that will be right for your company’s culture and would truly want to work to build something with you. You need to choose an agency that isn’t concerned with how your brand can satiate its goal of becoming famous. If the agency feels it knows your brand better than you and doesn’t want to hear what you have to say then you know it’s not right for you.

Understanding the team

As a company, you should understand how the agency deals with campaign and strategy problems. Let’s be honest, not every campaign is going to be profitable and successful. A creative design agency must look at mistakes objectively and should have the ability to learn from experience. You need to clearly understand if the agency has what it takes to make a campaign successful and if they will be the partners that take credit and accountability to fix anything that goes amiss with a campaign or design.

Checking regularly on its progress It is important to check-in on the efforts and progress of the agency you are collaborating with. With the help of weekly and biweekly status updates and check-in calls, you can stay on the same page with the agency and its team. A creative design agency is going to want your feedback after each step in the process. Hence it is important that you take time to think and then provide thoughtful and critical feedback so that you don’t get disappointed with the end results.

How to use animated videos to increase video engagement

According to most marketers, animated videos are way more effective at generating leads than articles and blog posts. However, it doesn’t just end with publishing videos. For an animated video to be engaging, it needs to be compelling enough for people to press play and continue watching it till the very end. Let’s see how you can use animated videos to increase video engagement.

Focus on quality

The most important part of getting an animated video right is focusing first on the basics- a great script and good audio and video quality. Think like a video consumer and create something that they would enjoy. It is important to share a message you believe in but it is more important to create videos that actually entertain and create value for your audience. Also keep the loading time fast and video quality high to reduce bounce rates.

Create a good introduction

The first five seconds of an animated video are crucial. You should figure out what your hook is and how each video will start. Animated videos aren’t lengthy which is why right at the beginning, you must incorporate an important message and subtly tell your viewers that there is more to come.  This keeps the viewers engaged and interested for a longer period of time because they believe an important subject is yet to be discussed.

Incorporate questions

When you ask your audience questions by incorporating a poll on screen or even in the comments section, you make them feel involved. The best way to get skyrocketing video engagement is by asking the viewers to comment the answer to the question. Questions also make your video interactive and push the viewers to share their own expertise on the matter.

Make it emotionally evocative

Human beings are more emotional than they are logical. You must remember this before creating an 2d animated video. If you just throw data and facts at people, they won’t care. However, if you use these statistics and facts and relate them to the audience’s day to day lives, it will create a huge impact. Thus, higher engagement depends heavily on your tugging at the emotions of the viewer.

Always include visual cues and CTAs

An animated video is all about visual cues, however, they should be meaningful enough to hold on to the audience’s attention throughout the video. Incorporating a call to action is a must if you want your viewers to follow you on social media or subscribe to your newsletter. By incorporating CTAs and annotations you don’t miss out on valuable subscriptions and leads from people who may not have watched the whole video.

Everything you wanted to know about whiteboard animation

The whiteboard animation video market has exploded in recent years. These videos have become an integral part of a successful marketing plan because consumers are now four times more interested in watching what a product is all about than reading at length about it. More than 50% of marketers consider animation video marketing as the best ROI. They consider whiteboard animation to be the best because they really help customers to retain important bits of information, thus making it an integral part of a company’s marketing and communications strategy.

What exactly is whiteboard animation?

Whiteboard animation is a frequently used video style where the viewer watches static images get drawn in succession on the screen. The script has a smart storyline and it is usually from a third person’s point of view. Especially when complex concepts need to be explained in a straightforward manner, whiteboard animations can be very effective.

Costs involved

Like most videos out there, whiteboard animation costs involve numerous factors. This includes the length of the video, the complexity of the characters and the kind of creative design agency you’re hiring. A whiteboard animation usually starts with a script and there are a bunch of sample drawings shown to the company before a full storyboard is created.

Dynamic whiteboard animation

In this method, expensive animation methods are used where necessary but at the same time, the cost is kept down by using whiteboard animation. This style may incorporate talking characters, 3D animation, motion graphics to give an edge to the animation

Timeline

For whiteboard animation, the script along with the style frames need to be made first. Next comes the storyboard and that takes around 4-6 days. After that, an animator begins to animate the storyboard. This process takes anywhere from 5-10 days. The project can take up to a month if the number of revisions is more. To avoid constant changes, it is best to communicate your vision to your creatives as clearly as you can.

Uses of whiteboard animation

• They can explain difficult concepts in a very easy and understandable fashion. Pictorial representation helps us learn difficult and complicated material, thus making concepts explained via whiteboard animation more memorable.

• They are also attention grabbers. They can thoroughly expand the viewer’s recall ability in comparison to a live-action video. With its help, customers can appreciate engaging visuals and remember your offering even after they’ve left your website.

• Any aspect of your business- be it a service or a product can be portrayed in a fun yet informational way with the help of a whiteboard video.

• Lastly, they can help with generating business, explaining services to customers and training new employees.

Learn how a creative design agency can help you

A creative design agency offers a variety of services like marketing, advertising, branding, promotion, designing creative strategies and campaigns. Let’s look at some of the qualities of a creative design agency.

Fresh perspective

A creative agency can help by providing a much-needed outsider’s perspective. They can make your marketing strategy better by including fresh ideas so that you can achieve all your targets and goals. An outsider’s perspective is very important because often businesses become so immersed in their own brand that they can hardly look at what’s going downhill for them.

Expert execution

A creative design agency has a team of specialists who can design and execute your branding and marketing strategies. It consists of a team of designers, developers, copywriters, animators and data visualization experts who develop content day in and day out. They have experience and know how to improve the user’s experience. They have knowledge about the best practices in the industry, the kind of content that works best on a specific platform and they understand how a company can get high engagement.

Insider secrets and knowledge

As a company, you may know your brand inside out but you often know next to nothing about your competitors, the industry and the trends in the marketplace. A creative industry works with numerous clients across a range of industries which gives them a unique understanding of what works, what doesn’t work and the kind of things that can drastically change the outlook of your business and improve your profits. In short, with a creative design agency’s experience, you get to benefit from other business’s mistakes and successes.

Networks and connections

One of the main reasons any company seeks outside help is because it doesn’t have the bandwidth, knowledge and resources to execute the work. In addition to this, a creative design agency has a large and established network of creators and experts, from video producers who can help you film a live-action video to coders who can make an interactive website. If you’re looking for speciality services, a creative design agency either has the skills or the expert referral to do it.

Speed

A creative design agency is a quality machine that can produce quick, efficient and variety of content. With years of experience, they can finish projects within a stipulated period of time because they’re aware of the mistakes, common pitfalls and roadblocks that are likely to come in the way of their production, hence they’ve learnt to navigate better through it all.

Know the difference between brand and corporate identity

 

Identity of a business is very important in determining how it fares in the market. This is why both large and small businesses must understand the details of both brand identity design and corporate identity so that the company can be globally successful.

 

What is the brand identity?

Brand identity is how a customer perceives and relates to a product or service. This identity is specifically developed by the business owner. When it comes to creating a distinguishable brand identity, differentiation from similar-looking products is the key to success.

 

What is a corporate identity?

Corporate identity is similar to brand identity, however here the perception isn’t limited to a product, idea or service but extends to the entire company. A single business has one corporate identity which can branch into numerous brand identities.

 

Understanding the difference

Visual appeal

Both brand and corporate identity are linked because both come under the same umbrella. Both are made up of logos and imagery. However, visual information is more important in brand identity than in corporate identity design because that is what the customers see on a daily basis and retain.

 

Importance

Both brand and corporate identity are important for a company. They tell investors why they should work with a particular company and make customers understand why they should purchase it. Brand identity appeals to markets and retains a loyal client base which in turn helps in building up the corporate identity of a business through regular revenues.

 

Development

A marketing agency is responsible for the brand identity of a product or service. Most customers develop their perception of a company based on just one or two products, making brand identity crucial.

On the other hand, a company usually assigns one marketing agent each to a product, service or an idea. Together, they create a strong unified corporate identity that matches the vision, goals and philosophies of the business.

All in all, brand identity unifies the goals of corporate identity.

 

Concept

Brand identity helps in creating an emotional relationship between a business and the customer. The logo, design and packaging are all part of brand identity. They make a product relatable and establish an emotional relationship between the brand and the customer. On the other hand, corporate identity is how a business looks and feels. It’s mostly for the insiders of a company, investors and the people who want to be closely attached to the company.

Know the objectives of brand awareness

 

 

As a business, it is important to identify the goals you want to fulfill with your brand-awareness campaign. An outline helps you with your content, distribution channels and helps you accurately identify your target audience. Knowing the objectives and goals of your company’s brand design awareness strategy will help you track its progress. Let’s look at some of them.

Increasing web traffic

A very important objective for any brand awareness strategy is to have increased web traffic. If you’re looking to build an online presence and want people to read your blog, company announcement and product pages, you can’t do it without substantial web traffic. This can only be created by constantly posting related articles about a topic. This strategy will make the visitor click on your next article after finishing one, thereby staying on your website for longer.

Promoting products

Brand awareness is key to let the world know about your products. Overall, it helps in building a general and basic knowledge of your brand. Once you have a targeted strategy in place along with good content, you can drive people to your website with posts and offers to try samples of your products.

Improving reputation

Branding design is a blessing when it comes to building brand affinity. A lot of times PR mishaps take place, leading to blowing in the company’s image.  This might cause the customer’s loyalty to waver. Thanks to brand awareness you can shift the conversation in your favour by sharing customer testimonials, positive news and facts and information for customers and get them to stay.

Becoming a thought leader

By establishing your business as a thought leader in your given industry, you choose not to get into the rat race of creating online noise and take the softer approach to make your brand known. With this strategy in place, your brand will become a resource of information and insights for all kinds of customer problems. Customers who didn’t know about your products will find answers to questions about recent trends and other data on your website.

Increasing leads, purchases and sign-ups

Brand awareness is said to be the first step inside the marketing funnel. To reach all your performance marketing objectives you need brand awareness campaigns to drive people to complete specific actions like signing up for your newsletter, buying a product or even downloading an FAQ eBook.

To conclude

If the idea of starting out is overwhelming, remember that brand awareness campaigns are never foolproof from the beginning. It can take years to perfect branding design schemes and there are always opportunities to use content discovery platforms to reach your target audience.

5 tips to create a brand awareness campaign

 

Brand awareness is a strategy to keep target customers aware of a brand. Companies need to keep pushing their branding design campaigns so that loyal customers don’t forget the brand. Gone are the days when building a brand awareness campaign meant spending millions of dollars on traditional advertisements. Let’s look at some of the new brand awareness campaign strategies

Industry-related hashtags

Hashtags are imperative to drive exposure to social media. You can use branded hashtags to specifically target sales for your company or you can use unbranded ones that pertain to your industry.

Branded hashtags need a campaign of their own to become popular, but once they do, a large number of people begin to get aware of your brand. Contests are a great way to promote branded hashtags. Industry-related hashtags are easy to use. They allow for conversation around your brand and help you get associated with your famous counterparts.

Complementary partnerships

A good way to build brand awareness is by partnering with companies who already have a base of customers that make up your target audience. Complementary partnerships mean partnering with businesses that sell products complementary to what your business is selling.  For example, a shampoo brand will partner with soap and body wash brand to use each other’s target audience and accomplish a goal together.

Guest blogging

Guest blogging needs to be done actively and on a regular basis to get significant exposure for your brand. Start running sponsored posts on popular sites that will allow for a mention of your brand. The more you get published with the name of your brand  the better it is your brand design. Look for sites that will allow you to have an author bio at the end or at the beginning of a post.

Start your own podcast or partner with podcasters

Millions of people around the globe listen to audio podcasts on a monthly basis. There are numerous podcasters who have a loyal base of listeners and you can partner with them. People who listen to podcasts want to learn new things or get entertained, hence a sales pitch must be introduced very subtly and should provide value to the listeners.

Using videos in your brand awareness campaign

Video consumption makes up most of the internet traffic, which is why more and more companies are incorporating videos in their brand awareness campaigns. You can use video distribution services to put your branded videos on different publications. A lot of companies these days are using animated explainer videos so as to make audiences understand their brand offerings as quickly as possible.