Rypple, which provides cloud services, wanted to show that its solution increases the efficiency of managers and employees.
The B2B business was showing more and more interest in modern ways of storing data, but the competition was not idle and more and more similar solutions were appearing.
How to effectively communicate that our product is the best, when everyone loudly shouts about the advantages of their platform? And whhen all the slogans sound similar and the customer has less and less time to meet with our salespeople…
[More about the potential reasons for rejecting our offer: 4 unobvious reasons that make your offer land in the basket]
How to break through?
Rypple created a landing page to attract new customers. However, it did not bet all the money on one card. It prepared three versions of the landing page:
- With text and images
- With testimonial video from Facebook
- With an explainer video
The results of the campaign were astonishing: the landing page with the explainer video had 20% more conversion than the other two versions. [1]
What was the secret? Or was it a blind hit?
Studies confirm the advantage of video
In 2010, Forbes, in cooperation with Google, conducted a survey in which 306 executives (from American corporations, whose profits exceed $500 million a year) participated.
More than half of the respondents occupied the highest levels in the company. So, they were people who often make the final decision about what will happen with our offer.
What do we learn from the survey?
- 75% of the respondents answered that they watch videos related to work on business websites at least once a week, and 53% of them watch videos related to work on YouTube.
- Younger people are more likely to do some action after watching the video. 51% of respondents under 40 years of age made a business transaction after watching a video, while only 26% of respondents over 50 admitted the same.
- 54% of people in managerial positions share work-related videos on social media on average once a week. [2]
What is the conclusion of this? To put it in a few words: videos are becoming increasingly important in business and can influence decisions made by managers.
This applies to everyone, regardless of age, but this trend is particularly pronounced among younger people. Nielsen’s survey for Google shows that more people aged 18–49 watch YouTube per week than all cable TV stations combined. [3]
The results of Forbes Insight in collaboration with Google on how often and where employees in management positions in large companies watch work-related videos. Source: Video in the C-Suite: Executives Embrace the Non-Text Web, Forbes, 2010
Well, we already know that videos effectively reach their audience. But why is it worth betting on an explainer video?
Explainer video effectively sells
Explainers are less frequently used than regular movies, so they stand out in the crowd. In addition, they don’t seem to be a typical commercial. At the same time, if they are properly constructed, they draw the viewer into the story from the very first second.
And there are literally seconds at stake. According to Charbeat, internet users decide to stay on the site or leave it within 15 seconds on average. [4]
It takes 15 seconds to write a text message.
In 15 seconds, we barely have time to put on our shoes.
15 seconds is less than it takes us to make tea.
We must use our seconds wisely. Throwing a text on our side of the wall hoping to encourage someone to read, we miss the goal. Time is money… and the explainer video allows us to make the most of that time.
Below are examples of explainer videos that show how a well done animation can attract and keep the audience’s attention, generate leads and increase sales.
More about the advantages of an explainer video: What is explainer video (and how your business can benefit from it)?
1) Explainer video of Rypple
The company mentioned at the beginning was Rypple—bought out by Salesforce in 2011.
How did one animation increase the conversion by 20%?
Explainer video about the company’s offer was short, simple and—very importantly—told in the form of a story.
– The video had a significant impact on Rypple’s records and interest. “I think it explains the problems Rypple solves,” said Jesse Goldman, then VP of Customer Success of the company.
After watching the explainer video (in the form of whiteboard animation), the visitors were 15 times more willing to leave their contact to the company. [1]
2) Explainer video of Dropbox
Imagine that you have a revolutionary product in your hands. A program that will allow you to access all your files and documents regardless of the device you are working on.
You have an idea, you have a product…but no customers. Without this key element, all of your work can go on brand, another company will release a similar solution and you’ll be out of business before you get started.
Such a fate meets many companies. But not Dropbox.
Initially, the brand advertised through Google AdWords, but spent an average of 244–399 dollars on each acquired customer. Considering that the product cost 99 dollars, it was a bad business, to put it mildly. So she bet on a viral campaign—people got more space on their accounts for sharing product information.
The campaign started to bear fruit. So they worked on its further improvement and produced a two-minute explainer video. The video was accepted and provided the company with a 10% increase in time spent on page.
Of course, this was not the only action the company took at that time, but the popularity of the animation speaks for itself—during the period of the highest growth, the company had an average of 750 thousand views per month. [5]
Several years have passed since then, but Dropbox still appreciates the power of explainer video. After years it released another animation.
3) Explainer Video of 3S Grupa Play
3S Grupa PLAY has been changing its business model for several years. And it is not an easy task. The bigger the brand, the more difficult it is, because customers are already used to the company’s image.
That is why 3S has created four brands assigned to different projects. This was the first step. The second step was to present new services to the customers in a simple way. But for most people, the words “simple” and “IT language” do not go together.
That’s why 3S asked us to present their services in an accessible and engaging way.
We created a series of animations.
The result? The campaign with the explainer videos generated the first lessonleads on the first day. In addition, the leads generated during the campaign were obtained 10 times cheaper than during the previous Facebook campaigns.The animationa are now used by salespeople during meetings with clients. [6]
Thus, the explainer video brought a triple benefit: it attracted potential customers, reduced costs, and became an attractive tool for salespeople.
4) Explainer Video of Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg is a platform that allows us to track traffic on our sites. Literally follow your mouse movements and clicks.
It sounds simple, yet the company had trouble communicating the advantages and functions of its service to potential clients clearly and quickly.
Crazy Egg made an animation. When entering the company’s website, the client got an engaging content instead of a text wall. The main character of the animation was a bearded egg, who introduced the audience to the problems most companies face, explained possible solutions, features of the website and benefits of using Crazy Egg. And all this in just 2.5 minutes.
It was a hit. The animation helped generate $21,000 of additional monthly revenue and increased conversion by 64 percent. [7]
5) Explainer Video of Akademia SkuteczneRaporty.pl
For most people, learning Excel does not sound fun. So how to talk about it in such a way as to make HR departments interested in it? As you can deduce from previous stories—use the explainer video.
– Even in a direct conversation, it was difficult for me to convince Excel users to take part in the course, let alone the HR departments. At that time, I found examples of ExplainVisually videos on the Internet and everything became clear. I need a short, funny movie that shows what’s all about in the style of an elevator pitch – says Bartosz Czapiewski, founder of Akademia SkuteczneRaporty.pl.
This is how the story of our cooperation with Akademia SkuteczneRaporty.pl begins. “Begins”, because it was not the end. The results were so good that later we created some illustrations for Akademia’s students.
And what were the effects?
– This video brought me a lot of new clients, new students in the Akademia, and a lot of noise. It is constantly up to date, so I use it every day to communicate with my clients, encouraging them to pass it on – says Bartosz Czapiewski. [8]
Our explainer videos:
6) Explainer Video of AutoCAD WS
CAD (computer aided design) as defined on Wikipedia is “computer aided design, the use of computer hardware and software in technical design.” [9]
That doesn’t sound very interesting to most people, does it? Meanwhile, Autocad WS’s animation on this subject was watched by over a million people!
It is the magic of an explainer video in practice.
– We created the figure of ‘Engineer Andy,’ which became our mascot. The animation for the new application presented an architectural version of Andy and was full of humor. […] Such actions ensured our presence on the main blogs about Android, thanks to which Android fans passed the information on – writes John Walker, the co-founder of the company, in an article “Reaching 10 million downloads and the guerrilla marketing tactics we used to get there” on TechCrunch website. [10]
Animation with Andy’s robot can no longer be seen on the internet, but Autodesk, which bought AutoCAD WS, still uses explainer video.
7) Explainer Video of Inbenta
“Well, no, another search engine?”
This is probably what many people thought when they heard about the service of Inbenta. The company had a tough nut to crack. After all, one of the competitors on the market is Google, a brand that does not need to be presented to anyone.
The same difficult task was faced by the company that was to create an explainer video about the advantages of the browser.
The explainer video emphasized that Inbenta focuses on something different than Google, so it is not its competition —it is not about finding key words, but whole questions and statements, so it can generate more accurate answers.
In the six months since the publication of the explainer video, the company has seen a 20% combined lead growth.
– I never thought a simple animated recording would be so useful in so many different situations. We use it in every presentation, on our website and during meetings with potential investors. People love it. It also provides them with basic knowledge about us, which makes our conversations richer and more concrete – says Jordi Torras from Inbenta. [11]
What to do to create an effective explainer video?
As the above examples show, a well-prepared animation can be an investment for years, and pay off in the form of leads or multiplied profits.
This does not mean that it is always so.
– Marketing is about telling a product story, which is difficult to do with a simple photo if the story is a bit more complicated – writes John Walker, co-founder of AutoCAD WS. [10]
Firstly, the secret of a good explainer video is a story. A nice picture without proper content will only be a nice picture. It will not encourage customers to cooperate.
Secondly, the animation must be adjusted to the target group. All presented explainer videos were prepared for specific audience. Graphic style, length of the animation, voice of the reader—nothing here is accidental.
Talking about complicated and complex issues in a simple and engaging way requires preparation. Therefore, the initial stages of work on animation are most important.
Imagine that you’re baking a cake. You have a list of ingredients. You have written down the individual steps of dough preparation. Finally, baking instructions. If you immediately combine all the ingredients—yeast, flour, milk and sugar—and put them in the oven, nothing will come out of it.
For baking to succeed, you must remember to combine the ingredients one by one, and add them in the correct order and proportions.
The same goes for the explainer video. It is not enough to combine all the elements at random.
That is why utilizing a brief, getting acquainted with the company’s goals, interviews and market analysis are the first steps a company interested in the professional preparation of an explainer video should take. On this basis, it can start to create a scenario and build a story. A good script is the basis of an effective explainer video. Without this, our animated “cake” will be inedible, and inexcusable.
More about how we approach this in ExplainVisually: Our creative process
Our explainer videos:
Bibliography:
[1] Case study Rypple: https://www.switchvideo.com/case-study-rypple/
[2] Video in the C-Suite: Executives Embrace the Non-Text Web, Forbes, 2010
[3] Google-commissioned Nielsen Custom Fusion Study, U.S.,Desktop, mobile, and TV fusion, TV measurement of television distribution sources, reach among people 18–49, May 2018.
[4] What You Think You Know About the Web Is Wrong: https://time.com/12933/what-you-think-you-know-about-the-web-is-wrong/
[5] Case study Dropbox: https://www.commoncraft.com/blog-categories/dropbox
[6] Case study 3S Grupa PLAY: https://explainvisually.co/case-study-projektu-dla-3s-grupa-play/
[7] Case study Crazy Egg: https://demoduck.com/portfolio/crazy-egg-explainer-video-case-study/
[8] Case study Akademii SkuteczneRaporty.pl: https://explainvisually.co/skuteczne-raporty/
[9] Computer Aided Design – Wikipedia: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projektowanie_wspomagane_komputerowo
[10] Reaching 10 million downloads and the guerrilla marketing tactics we used to get there: https://techcrunch.com/2012/07/22/reaching-10m-downloads-and-the-guerrilla-marketing-tactics-we-used-to-get-there/
[11] Case study Inbenta: https://www.switchvideo.com/case-study-inbenta/