If there’s one asset that no marketing campaign should go without, it’s video content.
Think we’re biased? There’s no downplaying the statistics.
A staggering 96% of marketers say that videos are important parts of their marketing strategy.
What’s more, videos are more than twice as likely (52% more likely) to be shared, than any other type of digital content.
As you can see, there’s no underestimating the value of company videos, and how effectively they can showcase your brand and business identity.
The benefits of using videos to showcase your brand
Before we dive into the how, let’s start by exploring the why.
The biggest benefits to be gained by investing in company videos include:
- Enhanced engagement - thanks to their bright colours, bold design, creative motion and innovative storylines, videos are inherently far more engaging than other content types.
- Memorable branding - company videos are a fantastic way to bring your branding to life. Plus, this high engagement and readily shareable posts content dramatically increases your brand awareness and brand recognition rates. In fact, on average, videos improve brand recognition by 54%.
- Showcase product or service - rather than a static image (or attempting to describe your product through text), videos showcase your product or service in a dynamic, creative and highly engaging way.
- Increased conversion rates - by adding videos to key areas of your marketing channels, you can dramatically increase your conversion rates. Taking your company website as an example, adding a video to your landing page can boost conversion rates by 86% (compared to pages that only contain text).
- Boosting SEO efforts - according to research published by BrightEdge, you can improve organic traffic from search results by up to 157%, all simply by using videos.
- Social media shareability - video-based content is twice as likely to be shared as other content types. What’s more, taking Instagram as an example, video posts have double the engagement of other post types. You can’t argue with those stats.
Understanding your target audience and tailoring video content
As you create your company videos, one of the most important aspects to consider is your target audience.
Throughout every design decision you make, you need to assess whether or not this would be the best way to engage your target audience.
This means you need to go a step beyond identifying who your target audience is - you need to determine what they want to see, and the styles of communication that would have the greatest impact.
Tailoring your company videos to your targeted audience is the most effective way to ensure your content resonates with these viewers. Then, you can increase the likelihood that they will complete the action that you want them to make.
As such, shaping your content in this way is one of the best ways that you can increase your video’s KPIs, and deliver valuable results.
To help you deploy this strategy, you firstly need to identify your target market.
This involves reviewing your current customer base, and identifying the biggest areas of opportunity. This could be pinpointing the age, gender, geographical location and background of your average customer. Or, you could identify any age groups (for example) where sales aren’t as high as you’d expect.
Then, you can create consumer personas to help you better understand the customers you are targeting. These personas can give you a clearer sense of your customers’ behaviours, mindset, and what drives their purchasing decisions.
From there, you will need to determine the most effective ways to engage them.
You could achieve this in a number of different ways, including:
- Conducting focus groups
- Releasing surveys
- Conducting market research
- Seeing what your competitors are doing
- Identifying wider marketing trends
- Speaking to a professional video advertising agency
Crafting compelling brand stories through video narratives
Once you have identified the target audience you’re looking to reach, the next step is to figure out the story you'd like to tell them.
Alongside the techniques that we outlined above, creating innovative and captivating stories is critical for capturing your viewers’ attention.
So, the golden ticket question is, what are the best ways to make brand stories compelling?
Branded content incorporates any brand films and corporate content, which enable companies to achieve a required KPI, and to tell their story. These usually form a part of either commercial advertising, marketing or brand identity campaigns.
These company videos can be used for a wide range of purposes, including product or service demonstrations, product launches, about us pages, explainer videos, or user tutorials.
Although this might be fascinating to you (as someone who is part of the brand and committed to its success), this content might not be so immediately interesting to wider audiences.
So, you need to pay careful consideration to how you communicate these messages. For your video to achieve the results you’re after, your content needs to be delivered in an engaging, entertaining, clear and memorable way.
With this in mind, the most effective techniques for crafting compelling branded content include:
- Creating a clear and entertaining plot - make sure your plot clearly communicates your brand identity and the KPI at the heart of your video. But, at the same time, do so in a way that is unique, creative and genuinely entertaining for the viewer.
- Making sure your story structure is clear - it’s all well and good having creative ideas, but you need to ensure they are delivered in a clear way. Your video should be engaging but easy to follow - after all, you’re not creating a three hour epic!
- Establishing a clear CTA - your video should direct your viewer through the storyline, before (seamlessly) taking them to the ultimate CTA. This could be making a purchase, understanding how your product works, understanding your product’s benefits, or being able to recognise your brand in the future, for example.
- Writing a great script - for our experts’ detailed script writing tips, see our article outlining how to write a script for an explainer video.
- Creating strong characters - design characters that are entertaining, relatable and personable.
- Ensuring striking visual design - devise a design style that is not only original and striking, but also achieves a sleek, professional finish. Also remember, no matter how wacky you go, your design needs to retain a very strong link to your company branding.
- Keeping pacing engaging - even the most intriguing stories need to be delivered well. So, carefully plan your storyboard, to ensure that the pace you follow is dynamic and keeps the viewers hooked.
- Building a strong connection with your audience - to do this, you will need to achieve emotional resonance. If you can engage with your audience on an emotional level, they will actually enjoy watching your video, and will be far more likely to remember it.
- Effectively using music and sound effects - in order to achieve a professional finish, your company video needs to feature high quality, well-timed audio. Not only is this one of the best ways to create a seamless finish, but it is also a great way to increase audience engagement.
- Carefully considering your video’s length - don’t make your video unnecessarily long. But, don’t feel like you need to cram it all into 10 seconds, either. Work with your marketing team and animation agency, to assess what the optimum length would be, to achieve the highest level of engagement.
- Understanding the latest video trends - spend some time researching the latest video marketing trends, so that you can tap into ‘what’s hot’ right now.
- Exploring different animation styles - your video needs to have what it takes to stand out amongst the crowded world of advertising. A great way to achieve this is by exploring all the different animation styles that are out there, and finding an option that’s a little out of the box.
- Communicating your brand’s personality - throughout every element of your company video, showcase your unique brand identity. Not only will this increase brand recognition amongst your target market, but it will also keep your marketing efforts sleek and harmonious.
Leveraging 2D animation and motion graphics for visual appeal
When it comes to standing out in a crowded marketplace, animation is a marketer’s ultimate asset.
2D animation is renowned for its high engagement and entertainment value, and its ability to captivate both the attention and memory of audiences. Plus, this advertising medium is about as flexible as they come.
Animation can be bold, creative and individual, while still reflecting your brand’s unique identity. A prime example of this is motion graphic design.
Motion graphics feature text as a core component, but display text in a fun-filled and stylish way. This means that, by embedding motion graphic design into your animated company videos, you can ensure your video’s message is delivered with as much clarity as possible. At the same time, you can communicate this information without compromising the video’s stand-out design.
Working with a professional animation agency, you can devise a unique animation that is entirely bespoke to you. It allows you to think completely outside of the box, with endless opportunities for original settings, characters, designs, typography, audio and storylines.
Case studies: Successful examples of brand-boosting company videos
To showcase the power and potential of company videos, here are two of our favourite, most recent projects:
Deliveroo
Our team recently worked with Deliveroo, to create a bold new company video, advertising their service.
One of the key strengths of this video, from the company’s perspective, is the fact that it is firmly on-brand for Deliveroo. This content is immediately recognisable as being part of a Deliveroo advertising campaign, thanks to its strong use of Deliveroo’s brilliant brand colour.
We then created a colour palette and illustration style that would complement Deliveroo’s logo. From there, we designed a busy city environment and filled it with characters. This created the sense of hectic-ness (and so, highlighted the benefits of the service) but in a playful and lighthearted way.
Vocation Brewery
What better way to kickstart Vocation Brewery’s brand refresh, than with this bold, dynamic company video?
Working closely with the client, we showcased the personality behind the brand, with an impactful message and a wide range of pioneering animation techniques.
The video featured motion design, 3D animation of the beer cans, and kinetic typography, as well as Vocation’s striking new logo designs, colour palette and a variety of custom illustrations.
We were also able to bring in all of the different tones and attitudes that came with each type of beer, in a harmonious way, achieving a consistently high engagement level throughout.
Conclusion
Video is an extraordinary advertising medium, which offers brands a wealth of exceptional benefits. When done right, company videos can completely transform an advertising campaign, cementing brands’ reputations as playful, creative, innovative and modern.
Why work with an animation agency like OK Social?
OK Social is a video animation agency, renowned for its ability to enhance animation storytelling.
Don’t want to just take our word for it? Well, our team has been trusted by some of the biggest brands in the country - including the BBC, Coca-Cola and Ford - to create content that takes their advertising to the next level.
We are highly skilled and experienced animation specialists, who work closely with every one of our clients, to create bespoke content that delivers real results.
To find out more about any of our animation services, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
