They’re highly versatile
One of the best things about explainer videos is that they can be used at different stages of the customer purchase cycle. For example:
- The explainer video can be used to introduce your brand, your history, and your legacy in the industry during the discovery stage.
- In the consideration stage, the explainer video can provide information about your product, and its various benefits.
- In the decision-making stage, the explainer video can be used to provide nitty-gritty details such as – how to use the product, different variants of the product, technical specs of the product, etc.
- The explainer video can also be used in the post-purchase stage to provide helpful hacks & tricks or share information about upcoming updates, to keep customers engaged.
They work better than text when establishing product purpose
Let’s face it, copy is good, but not great. Especially so when you’re trying to convey complicated information to customers.
Explainer videos focus on breaking down complex data into manageable chunks. This increases viewers’ information retention rate since the data is more easily digestible in this format. You can do a series of short explainer videos, replete with animation and voiceovers, and do a deep dive into various facets of the subject. This is way better than a 3-page article that focuses on everything at once.
Your customers will appreciate you a lot for your knowledge. This will also put you in a position as the thought leader in your industry. When you become the go-to resource for your target market, you’re always top-of-the-mind and you have a higher chance of affecting a sale.
They rank well on the search engine
Explainer videos rank very high on search engines like Google for two reasons.
For one, were you aware that adding a single video on your site can increase site traffic by 157%? People also tend to spend double the amount of time on sites with videos. This is because of our primal ability to understand visual information better than textual.
As more people browse your site and as they stay on longer, Google’s algorithm automatically favors your site, giving it a higher place on the search engine. The highly informative nature of your explainer video will increase its shareability as well, leading to higher backlinks and in turn site ranking.
For another, explainer videos have immense SEO potential. You can include a variety of short-form and long-form keywords in the video’s title or in the transcript, increasing the chances of your video being found during the search. For example, say you’re selling the Nike Pegasus on your website. You could create an explainer video titled “How Do the Nike Pegasus Running Shoes Compare to Other Models?“. Here, you have a number of keywords – “Nike,” “Nike Pegasus“, “Running Shoes“, “Pegasus Running Shoes” or even “Pegasus Nike Running“. Whichever combination a user types, your video is certain to pop up.
They’re great at selling, without being too salesy
Explainer videos are an excellent way to showcase your product’s strengths and Unique Selling Points, without actually “selling” your product.
In an explainer video, you focus on providing information-rich content, that is implementable and practical to the viewer. Here, you can subtly champion your products’ strengths and benefits without being too overbearing.
For example, you are selling baking ingredients. You have an explainer video titled “How to Bake a Chocolate Cake in 10 Minutes“. Here, you can use the ingredients available on your website to bake the cake and promote your products subtly
When prospects feel they receive a lot of helpful information from you, they’re bound to trust your advice and in turn, your products as well.
They’re an inexpensive way to creatively hook prospects
A great advantage of explainer videos is that they are really budget-friendly. This is predominantly because of the way they are created.
Yes, you can use real people and real locations when filming explainer videos. But, these videos perform brilliantly when you use animations and voiceover artists as well.
Take the financial app Mint’s animated explainer video as an example. The company very succinctly explains everything about its financial planning app in just one and a half minutes. In 90 seconds, the company states what it is, how it intends to help the viewer, what benefits the app provides and how viewers can use the app.
Then there’s HubSpot’s really illuminating explainer video tackling the really complex topic of Artificial Intelligence. Let’s face it, a lot of us are not really clear what the implications of AI are. But HubSpot’s video does a great job explaining it. This was a great video for the discovery stage for their HubSpot Academy course on AI.
Animations can be designed to look and sound as realistic as real people. But this can be done at the fraction of the cost of hiring and shooting with real people. If you have a small budget, animated explainer videos are the way to go.
They can be optimized for different landing pages
Considering the above advantages, explainer videos are particularly great for optimizing different landing pages. They’re easy to create, inexpensive, and can be easily SEO-optimized. All you need to do is tweak your explainer videos to suit different target markets, different sales lifecycle stages, and different geographies and you’re good to go.
When you use explainer videos for landing pages, prospects get to engage with your brand in a robust and dynamic way. During each encounter, they’ll discover something new about your brand, which will increase their likelihood to purchase from you.
