A Beginner’s Guide to Animated Video Making for business

Lights, Camera, ACTION!

Let’s face it; actions always speak louder than words, even in the web marketing world. The concept of animated video market has gone viral in web circles, because it comes with the tri-fold advantage of announcing your presence, establishing your expertise, and enhancing your reach.

Why Marketing with an Animated Video Is More Effective Than Traditional Ads

• Videos are cooler and more engaging! An animated video has to all, from the fun, relatable element to an instant ability of grabbing attention. More and more businesses are now employing the art of video making to take their sales to sky and bring a more personal touch to their marketing portfolio.
• Videos Educate — A traditional ad just markets an idea, while an animated video can explain the concept behind that idea. That’s why videos are more relatable — they not only create brand awareness but also explain how a product works.
• Videos Get Shared — True that! Just create a fun and enjoyable video and you won’t have to do anything else to market it amongst your target audience — it will get circulate on its own!
• Videos Bring Guaranteed Sales — An SEO tailored video instantly enhances your rank on Google and attracts more traffic to your website within a few days of going live - something which paid ads can’t do.

How to Create an Animated Video That Boosts Your Web Marketing Strategy

The secret of making your video really shine and fuel your business reach is developing it with a targeted and conceptualized approach.

• Offer Valuable Solutions — Make sure your video is for the customer and provides valuable content that they can relate to. Remember — customers aren’t interested in listening about how your services are awesome — they want to know how your services can benefit them.
• Make Your Point Heard — Say it out loud in the first few seconds — in the making world the ‘less is more’ approach almost always strikes a connection with the audience!
• Research Before You Shoot — Take a look at what your competition in the market is doing and then go for a video marketing strategy that appeals to the end audience and is unique from what others are doing.

Making a professional animated video or an animated GIF is far easier than what you thought it would be. All you need is a vision, a concept and tons of creativity and you are good to go! Here is a step-by-step tutorial that will give you all the information about how to create a blast in the marketing world with your creative instincts. Let’s start!

Step 1: It All Starts With the Concept

While creating brand awareness is usually the key reason behind creating a video, you can always use the medium to increase the conversion rate, enhance leads to your website and boosting the sales funnel. Jot down your motivation for making the video in the first place and then make a separate column for how you can make it more focused, actionable and unique!

I’ve got to decide:	I’m looking for:	My Video is going to be:
Who is my target audience?	A relatable and fun intro to my services	A fun , entertaining mix of animation and sounds showing how we differ from others
What are the demographics of the market?	A quick go through about how we work	An informative collage of why choose us and what are our services all about
What is my marketing message?	A practical example of why customers should choose our service	A how—to tutorial of how our brand or service will be beneficial for the intended target audience
What is going to be the highlight of my video?	A medium to increase leads and sales	-
How will I draw in users with a call to action?	-	-

Step 2: Word-ify Your Thoughts with a Script!

The script is going to be the heart and soul of your video! A winning script calls for great concept, coordination and creativity all rolled into one. The backbone of your video, a script can essentially make or break your efforts so pay extra attention to this part! Once you have decided on the concept of the video, start sketching the script with a step by step approach, starting with an impactful beginning and ending it using a solid finish.

The foundation of a good script all depends upon your planning, here’s what a quality script must have:

• A focused flow of concept from the beginning to the end.
• An engaging and attention-grabbing quality so the viewer doesn’t get bored.
• A simple and relatable approach so users can understand about yours services easily.
• A powerful call to action to close the video on a positive note and invites users to take the NEXT step (for e.g. browse your website, try your services, sign up etc.)

Here are a few tips that will help you out in chalking out an amazing script:

• Speak with an engaging and personal tone. As a professional business, you are trying to win over customers and the best way to do it is through a polite and approachable tone.
• Keep it short and sweet. No one wants to watch a video that goes on and on and on without any charisma or spark. It has been proven through research that most users prefer to watch videos that span for a minute or a minute and half at max. Thus, to make maximum impact, keep your video duration under a minute and try to say more in few words!
• Adopt a problem solving approach rather than being sales pitchy. Telling them again and again how great you are can actually prove to be a turn off. Use your video to shed light on a common problem that your target audience is likely to face and then explain how you can fix it and provide a simple and easy solution to the issue.
• The closing is the most important part of the video. Hear, hear! Add an effective call to action message with your brand logo and contact details so your video serves as both a marketing resource as well as sales enhancing tool.
• Get some advice and feedback. Think your script is perfect and ready for filming? Before you finalize things, go for a second opinion or ask a friend or colleague to provide their input, ideas or suggestion. Remember - some positive insight and brainstorming always works in creating something great!

Step 3: Tell Your Story Your Own Way - Introduction to Storyboarding

Imagine the storyboard like a bulletin board where you can pin the images, sounds and graphics together and define the flow of your video. Designing a storyboard is like mapping out the whole video and deciding:

• What animations and images are you going to use in the video.
• How are the scenes going to play out and for how long.
• How would the voice over coincide with the graphics.
• What music will play in the background.

Mapping out your thought process on the storyboard may seem to be challenging, but it is all about the creative visualization that you decide. Imagine the story in your head and then write it down or draw it the best you can on paper.

Illustrations for the Storyboard

Digitally developed illustrations are your best bet in making a professional impact and translate your ideas in the best way. Stills can also be animated using specialized software. However, you can also go for:

• Free images and graphics: For still photos, royalty free pictures on websites like iStock are a great choice.
• Scans: You or any artist can also draw the images (for a more personal and creative effect) and then scan it onto your drive. They can then be edited and cut as per your needs.

Step 4: Breathe Life into Animation with the Voice of Your Brand

So, the script is ready and the storyboard is done — now the next step is to get it all going with a professional voice over. It is important to pay attention to the accent, intensity as well as manner of speaking while recording so that every word counts and makes the maximum impression.

Recording the Voice-over Yourself

• If you plan on doing the voice-over yourself or with the help of a friend, make sure that you sound original, engaging and professional at the same time.
• You will need a microphone and recording software. As for the recording software, you can always invest in paid software for a quality experience but free tools such as Mixcraft, DubIt and Audacity are also a popular choice for high quality recording on your own.
• To make the most out of the deal, record the voice-over in a quiet room where there is no disturbance, background noise or echo.
• Speaking slowly and confidently at the same time is the key to success!

Using Professional Voice-overs

• There are a lot of websites that offer professional services of voice artists that can create professional sounding voice-overs for your video at a cost-effective price. www.voices.com is a great option out there! You can also work with for freelance artists by advertising the job on Elance.

Once done with the job, save the audio file on your drive and import it into video editing software during the final stage.

Step 5: And Yes, It Won’t Ever Be Complete Without A Little Swing, Right?

Sound effects work like magic in bringing life to even the simplest of videos. However, you can’t just add any song or jingle that you downloaded off the internet and use it in your video. Royalty free music comes with copyright protection and is a safe and viable way to go about. Some websites where you can get royalty-free music are Incompetech and Audionautix.

Step 6: Edit it and Make it FINAL!

Got everything sorted? Great! Now is the time to put it all together in a video and let it create magic! Video editing software aren’t too tricky to use — you can actually just drop down the images, sounds and music on a timeline, add transits and some fine-tuning and viola! Your video will be ready! Some commonly used video-editing software includes names like Adobe Aftereffects, PowerPoint and Camtasia. If you are not aware of the sources for doing the above processes, not having much time to search them, or even limitations with budget, that’s perfectly fine. You can use a simple online-animated video making tool (Which doesn’t requires much training or external guidance) like Animaker, which adds surprisingly professional touch when you do.

Step 7: The Message in the End — Say it Out Loud!

At the end of the day, a perfect closing and effective call to action in your video can prove to be a positive booster for your business in the long run.

• Google prefers videos over content! According to research, videos have a 50% greater chance to rank on the first page of search results as compared to plain content.
• Videos are a better choice for increasing SEO rankings as there is lesser competition for video content instead of the growing number of web pages full of content that are added online every minute.
• Videos are a more relatable, fun and catchy medium and can go viral in mere hours because they are exciting to watch and can be shared socially with just a click!
• You can analyze your performance and use video analytics and statistics to improve your current and future marketing campaigns.

So, are you all set to make your mark in full animation and take the word of marketing by storm? Get started with an animated video today — it’s simple, it’s fun and it has zillions of other perks that one looks for in a successful marketing campaign. Stop fretting and get shooting! Best of luck!