A Beginners Guide To Profitable Video Creation
When you are a beginner in the online marketing industry, it’s often difficult to carve out a niche for your brand when there is so much competition. You need to be innovate, and take full advantage of every strategy that can give you even the slightest bit of leverage.
Explainer videos can be the type of tool you need to help position your brand and products accurately in the marketplace so that your target audience clearly understands what you have to offer.
These are short, often animated videos that engage your viewers and hold their attention as you explain your product, services or brand in simplistic terms. They’re perfect for newbies because they don’t require a high level of production and complex content.
Because of the short attention span of many consumers, explainer videos have become one of the go to resources they use to gain insight into the identity of a brand. This is a strategy you can use across many different platforms to effectively communicate your message to a target audience using brevity and high value.
> 6 Smart Ways To Use Explainer Videos in Your Business <
As a newbie marketer, you may be in one of many niches or be pursuing one of dozens of different business models, and explainer videos can come in handy in just about all of them.
These are powerful, bite sized snippets of information that help you convey the most important aspects of your message and convince consumers to take action on it. One of the most popular ways online entrepreneurs use explainer videos is whenever they are promoting their own product.
Oftentimes, prospective buyers feel a bit confused about what a product does or what features and benefits it possesses, and an explainer video can set the record straight quickly and easily.
Even if you’re not launching a product of your own, you can use an explainer video as an affiliate marketer whenever you are promoting a product and you don’t feel that there’s enough clarity about what it does and why it’s useful.
If you do have a product that you want to promote, not only can you use an explainer video to detail the features and benefits of it, but you can use them specifically to showcase a product demo, which is especially helpful if they will be downloading and using some sort of tool or software.
They also come in handy whenever you are promoting a type of service that you offer. Whether it’s as a virtual assistant, freelance ghostwriter, graphic designer, or even an online coach, explainer videos can help you get your message across about why someone would need your services and how they can provide benefits to them.
Some marketers like to use explainer videos as a way to deliver their unique selling proposition (USP) to showcase what their brand and business is all about. It’s a great way to set yourself apart from other leading competitors to show how you can make a difference in a way that others are not using to serve their audience.
There are other ways you can use explainer videos, too. Sometimes, they’re great for simply delivering some news about your niche, or distilling complex information down into something easier for your audience to understand.
With a strong call to action, and a clear message to preface it with, your explainer videos can be a powerful tool to drive traffic to your site, offers, and list building landing pages.
> A Videos Placement Can Determine Its Effectiveness <
So once you understand the power of an explainer video, you have to think of where you might be using them in your business. There are several places marketers like to position these in order to be in front of their target audience.
First and foremost, many brands like to have an explainer video right on the home page of their website. This is a first impression piece of content that can have a strong impact on a visitor in determining whether or not they stick around to learn more.
You can also embed them directly into a blog post. It’s a great way to summarize information that may be written out in a more lengthy manner using text. It helps break up the content, too, which makes absorbing your message even easier.
Social media platforms can host your explainer videos, too. You’ll garner the attention of their built in audience. All you need to do is look at places where short form videos can be shown, including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube and more.
Explainer videos are also good to send out in your email autoresponder newsletters. This is perfect for conveying to new subscribers what they need to know about your brand and business or a new product you are launching.
And of course, they’re wonderful to use on sales pages, too. Sales hype often feels draining to a prospective customer who lands on your offer page and has to scroll through 20 page’s worth of copy.
And explainer video can be positioned at the top of the page or by itself as a way to summarize the offer and give people the option to go ahead and purchase with limited information rather than have to sift through page after page of text based copy.
If you want to check out how some companies are using explainer videos, look up Dollar Shave Club, PooPourri , Moz, Mint, Dropbox, AirBnB, Grammarly, Spotify and HubSpot. Many large companies use explainer videos, but they’re perfect for newbies to use in their business, too!
> Begin With a Good Script for Your Video <
When you’re ready to create your own explainer video, you’ll need to come up with a good script to use. An explainer video typically includes three to five elements. They are the problem, solution, demonstration, testimonial, and call to action.
Not all explainer videos will include a demonstration or testimonial, but they often all include some sort of problem discussion along with a solution or benefits, followed by a call to action that you want the viewer to take in the end.
Make sure you have these elements in your explainer video so that you aren’t just babbling on and not really having a strong impact on the viewer. Your message should be brief and to the point, helping them relate to the problem that is identified in the very beginning.
You want to quickly introduce the solution, which might be your product, service, or brand as a whole. It’s best if you use the one problem, one solution formula instead of trying to list a bunch of problems and solutions in a single explainer video.
If you do have some sort of product where it would make sense to showcase how it works, you can include a quick demonstration for the audience or provide them with an animated idea of how it works.
Some marketers like to include a testimonial from a customer who has been satisfied with their product. This is not necessary, but it does provide additional social proof when it comes across as genuine.
Lastly, you do want to include some sort of call to action, whether you simply want them to sign up for a free gift or you want them to make a purchase of your products and services.
> Good Tools Help You Create Great Explainer Videos <
In order to create an explainer video, you can either take the do-it-yourself route or you can outsource it to someone else. They may want to know what your script is, and what type of style you want for your explainer video.
If you’re going to do it yourself, you’re going to need to tap into your creativity and be strategic with your approach. You may want to start with stock images that you use to create a slideshow or some sort of visual representation of your message.
There are also animation software tools that you can use to create a fun and animated explain her video that conveys your thoughts in a cartoon type of manner that resonates with consumers.
If you are going to make a slideshow presentation, you can use anything like PowerPoint or Canva and insert the stock images and your text into the presentation so that it looks professional and inviting.
Next, you’ll need some sort of screen capture tool. Many people like to use Camtasia, but if you are a newbie on a budget, you may want to use Camstudio, which is a freeware version.
Using these video editing tools, you’ll be able to edit the presentation and polish it to perfection. you can add music or call outs, highlighting any important information in the video that you feel you want to draw their eye to.
If you are going to be providing the audio for your explainer video, you may want to get a couple of tools to help you deliver high quality sound. Start with a good microphone that helps you record amazing audio.
Make sure you also get a pop filter so that it will improve the delivery of your message and eliminate any distractions from your audio. And you may want to invest in and audio editing tools such as Audacity.
> Keep These Tips In Mind When Creating Your Videos <
The more you work with explainer videos, and you start to see the response coming in from your target audience, the better you will get at zeroing in on how to create the most effective concepts.
The most important thing to remember is that this is a bite sized marketing message. You don’t have a lot of time to get your point across. Most explainer videos are anywhere from 30 seconds to 90 seconds, maximum.
You also want to make sure that the language you are using in your videos is simple. This is not the time to start using technical jargon that will confuse your audience and caused them to lose interest.
You want to edit your script so that you make sure you are staying on message and focused on a single issue in each video. You can always create additional explainer videos that touch on other topics, so you don’t have to cram everything into one recording.
Whether you are using animation, slideshows, live action or whiteboard strategies for your explainer videos, you want to make sure that the viewer’s attention is captured by whatever visuals they are looking at.
It should be in line with how you want your brand to be known, and the message should be tailored to a specific target audience and their needs. Once you begin publishing your explainer videos, pay attention to the data analytics to see how consumers are responding to your content and then tweak it as time goes on.
You may even want to split test your explainer videos, changing just one element in each video so that you can see which one is a better performer for you. Pay attention to the views they get, but also to the end result on whether or not the viewer took you up on your call to action.