What is an Explainer Video?

An explainer video is a short entertaining animated video that explains and idea, concept or how a product or service works. This form of video has gained immense popularity in the past few years owing to the great success such videos have at keeping the viewers engaged and educated at the same time.

Explainer Video Styles

There are three animation styles that are predominantly used by animation studios and they are…

2D Character Animation

character animation style example This animation style is used when you want to tell a story in the video. This animation style typically uses characters like those in disney animations, but involve less motion and simpler animation. These type of videos are more work intensive and take longer to produce and so are the most expensive of the three.

Motion Graphics

Motion Graphics Style Example A motion graphics style video is essentially an infographic that has been animated. This style uses abstract animated elements like icons and shapes to tell the story. This animation style is favored by corporates as it seems more serious compared to character animation.

Whiteboard Animation or Doodle Videos

Whiteboard animation style example Whiteboard animation is the latest style that has entered the market and shows a hand drawing characters, assets and text on a whiteboard. Given that this style of animation is very new it keeps the viewers engaged for a longer time. This kind of animation when done traditionally was very expensive as it involved using a camera to actually film a cartoonist drawing the animation on a white board and then speeding up the film to create the final animation. These days thanks to software the same can be done at a fraction of the cost.

What you should check before you hire an explainer video company

Experience

The experience of the animation studio you hire is one of the most important deciding factors. A company that has been in the business for a couple of years has learnt a lot from past mistakes and will be in a better position to create a video for you that will convert better.

Client List

While almost all studios proudly list their main clients on the website, it is prudent to ask them the contact information of the person who was their point of contact and then confirm that they indeed worked for their company.

There are a few unscrupulous studios that list big companies like Microsoft, IBM etc as their clients. Though they may have worked for such companies, it is at times only at creating minor internal training videos which are not really what you would be looking for.

Turn Around Time

Turn around time refers to the time taken by the studio from the start of the project which is the script writing to delivering the final explainer video.

Make sure that you get the turnaround time in writing from the studio you choose, as there are a few that take on multiple clients and then keep pushing the deadline once they have your deposit.

A typical turnaround time of two to four weeks is the industry standard

Free Revisions

Most animation studios offer free minor revisions. However if a major change is required once the animation process has been started then it tends to become a point of contention if the terms aren’t fixed earlier on.

Some companies will give you 2 to 3 revisions. There are some companies that claim that the offer unlimited revisions, but its better to take such claims with a pinch of salt.

Storyboard Styles

There are two types of storyboards provided normally. It can either be a textual storyboard where the animation that is to be shown would be described textually along with static drawings of the assets that are to used. Some of the more expensive providers will provide a full blown storyboard which will be similar to a comic book. So each scene from the final video is shown as a square from a comic book with static drawings of how the scene will look.

Obviously a provider that provides this level of storyboarding would be on the more expensive side.

Choice of Voice Talent

All studios provide a voice talent as a part of the project, but some will also let you provide your own voice over and then they will sync the video to the audio you provide.

A provider who is willing to do this is a better fit at times, if you have your own in house voice over artist that you prefer to work with.

Explainer Video Production Process

video production process

The explainer video production process comprises 7 distinct steps.

They are

The creative brief
The script
The Storyboard
Illustration
The voice over
Background music and foley effects
The animation

You can read this in detail in our other blog post

How much does an explainer video cost to produce?

how much does an explainer video cost

Obviously like everything else in life that you spend money on, you will have a budget when you decide to have an explainer video created.

Explainer video cost in most cases depends on both the complexity of the animation as well as the provider you chose.

As a rule of thumb, the bigger explainer production agency, the higher they will charge.

In the early days when the number of providers was lower, the price was very high and went up to $5000 per minute.

With the increase of competition and more people entering the business, the price for decent quality animation has fallen to one fifth of that.

A smaller studio like our studio charges an amount that is economical and yet studio quality. Take a look at some of the animated explainer videos we have created in the past so you get an idea of this

You do get free lancers who do the job much cheaper, but then again you get what you pay for, so dont expect a high quality animation from such projects.

DIY Explainer Video VS Animation Studio?

Most people think that they can save money and create an explainer themselves using software or services. While that is possible, the quality of such DIY videos turns out to be very mediocre.Every business that has an explainer video created, does so with an end result in mind. For some it may be a sale, for another lead generation. The ROI on a video that they get made is evaluated based on these results. You can take a look at these best explainer videos of this year as a guide when you get a video produced

A home made video unfortunately will not convert as well as a professionally created video. A shoddily made video also makes your company lose trust in the eye of the viewer.

If you do decide to go down that path then you would need to learn to animation software which has a steep learning curve.

Benefits of Explainer Video

Increase conversions

A recent study showed that people who watched an explainer video are 85% more likely to buy a product or service within a week of viewing the video. These conversions can either be a lead or a sale. The most probable cause for this is that since the video clarifies all that the product can do in a easy to under stand manner, the visitor is more comfortable making the purchase or filling out the form.

Improve Rankings in Google

Bounce rate or in other words, the number of people who visit your site from a search result in Google and then click back to the search page is a metric that Google factors into its ranking algorithm. The idea is that a person clicking the back button didn’t find what he was looking for and hence is assumed to have not been shown a correct match for his search.

Another factor is the amount of time spent by a visitor on a site. Google assumes that the longer time a person spends on a website, the content that was shown to him was a correct match.

A well crafted explainer video keeps the viewer on the site for a longer period of time. Due to this Google tends to rank such sites higher in the search results

Free Traffic From Viral Video Effect

An engaging funny video is shared by people on social media and gets shared further by the people who see it. This has an exponential effect and its quite possible that the video goes viral.

There are several examples of videos that get shared and tagged by a few people on day one and within a week that video has a hundred thousand views and shares.

This kind of traffic is free traffic and would be welcome to any business.