Animating Your Brand: The Benefits of Animated Videos for Marketing

Marketers and production agencies alike are constantly seeking out new ways to communicate and engage with target audiences. As digital media grows and evolves, capturing the attention of consumers becomes more difficult — but challenging situations often lead to the most creative solutions.

Sometimes creativity looks like joining in on social media trends, and other times it means injecting new life into marketing campaigns through fresh and fun digital media.

As a full-service production agency, (spark) prides itself on reinvigorating brands through creative marketing tools, and one of our favorites is animation.

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Today’s digital consumer craves more than still images. They’re interested in dynamic video content.

Animation is a light-hearted and flexible tool for creative marketing professionals. Animated videos can be used on websites and landing pages, across social media or in email marketing. They are fantastic ways to advertise product launches, reinforce a brand’s position in their market and generate leads and sales. Brands can use animation to boost their popularity and memorability, all at a cost-effective price point.

From engagement to conversions, incorporating animation into your marketing toolbox will give your brand more opportunities to connect with consumers and grow your business. Here are a few of the top benefits of animated videos for marketing:

• You have complete creative control. From shapes to colors to movement, you decide what your product looks like. Your creativity is the limit. Because of your creative control through every step of the process, you can create a unique animation experience that your audience will enjoy and remember.
• Animation can provoke engagement. Animation allows brands to grab consumer interest with videos that highlight new information or products in a shareable way, such as short social media videos that invite users to share and comment. And the more times users participate in your content, the more connected they will feel to your brand.
• Animation can improve SEO. Search engine algorithms favor content that offers clear, concise information and a smooth user experience, so adding animated videos to your websites and social platforms will help keep users on your pages longer and in turn increase your SEO.
• Animation can be memorable. Visually striking animation can capture an audience’s imagination, generate interest, emotionally move audiences toward purchase and improve brand recall. Incorporating animations can also be a great way to spice up data-heavy content or inject personality into otherwise dry or serious topics.
• Marketers can recycle animations in the future. Just like other forms of video media, animations can be repurposed for future campaigns and content through creative editing, grabbing still images or overlaying new audio. Animations are also easily updated—no need to reshoot footage—and can scale as your business grows.
• Animation can simplify complicated ideas. Many brands struggle to quickly explain complex product information to customers in ways they can understand. This might include product assembly, troubleshooting or updates. Animations can explain concepts in ways other visual media cannot and leave customers feeling empowered rather than frustrated by digital pages of dense text.
• You can stand out from your competition. Another incredible benefit of animations is their ability to promote your brand’s perception. For example, it may not be practical to create live-action video of your brand’s values and motivations, but an animated video could easily highlight your brand’s commitment to sustainability or social justice.
• Animation can be affordable and have a high ROI.
  Even though prices can range greatly for professional video animation, you can still set a budget that works for your brand. And remember, the payoff can be worth the spend; not only do animations take less time to produce than traditional commercial videos, but landing page videos have been shown to increase conversions by up to 80%.
• Animation has a broad appeal. While animation was once synonymous with children’s cartoons on weekend mornings, it has now expanded into an artform with a light-hearted and ageless appeal. Animated videos are flexible and can be crafted to appeal to any target audience, regardless of their demographic.

Are you looking for exciting new ways to tell your brand narrative, but aren’t sure how animations could help you achieve your goals? There are many opportunities for brands to incorporate animations in their online presence, including:

• Animated Explainers + Education. Explainers are short videos that address problems and offer simple solutions. Animations can amplify your explainer videos to help explain your products or services and offer additional customer support. Your brand can also produce educational videos that establish you as a thought leader in your industry.

• Brand Animations. These short videos rely on emotional connection to remind audiences of your brand’s mission and capabilities. Brand animations elicit positive feelings in consumers and reassure them that your products offer seamless, dependable performance. 
• Micro-Animations. True to their name, micro-animations are small visual cues that guide users toward action. Micro-animations include hover features and progress trackers. Their primary function is to help your customers navigate your website more easily while keeping them engaged with your content.

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• Gifs. Quick, silent, and easily sharable, animated gifs can be used to make announcements or enrich company culture. Gifs are great tools for introducing new products, services, or sales and because of their small size, they can be used in any part of your brand’s digital ecosystem.
• Advertising + Promotional Videos. These videos are focused on selling, promoting, or generating business. This can be accomplished through educating your audience about new product lines or revealing upcoming sales and events.
• Social Media Content. Users are hungry for something to capture their imagination while scrolling, and animation can be just that thing. Social media animations use short, snappy bursts of video content to grab a user’s attention and invite them to engage with your brand.
• Sales Pitch Videos. Animated sales pitches present products within unique stories. Rather than blatantly pitching a product or service, brands can use animation to engage users in a more subtle manner and convey concepts that live action, still imagery or copy cannot.

With the help of a production agency, animated videos can become a powerful tool for your business. Animations can engage your audience, build brand awareness, and simplify complex ideas with captivating animations that leave a lasting impression. Because (spark) offers content packages for animation, many of our clients have already discovered the power of animating their brand.

(spark) has an in-house video + animation studio where we create exciting animation videos to help our clients establish themselves as top competitors in their industries. Whether you have existing animations you’d like to repurpose, or you’re looking for a production agency to help you start from scratch, (spark) has the tools to move your marketing strategy forward in exciting new ways. Visit our website to learn more or contact us for a consultation.