The Wonders of Animation in Marketing
There’s a good chance you’ve watched animation movies and loved them; most of them are adorable, after all. What is animation, though? Simply put, animation is the creation of motion through the use of illusion.
The process takes advantage of the rapid display of static images that have minimal differences. Once displayed, the images create a sense of motion. This is the foundation of complex animation that goes into creating our favorite movies. Away from cinema and into marketing, animation has found its place in the effective promotion of businesses online and on television.
Data released by Statista show that the size of the global animation market stood at $372.44 billion in 2021, and is expected to exceed $587 billion by 2030. Besides, the use of animation is not just limited to the entertainment industry, and it has gone on to become an extremely effective tool in marketing over the last few years.
Devoid of Typical Restrictions
Have you thought of creating an advertisement for your business and found something difficult to achieve? Well, animation is free from most types of restrictions. This is because animation professionals can create just about any kind of illusion and they don’t have to deal with the limitation of using a camera and actors. With animation, your pizza will fly to its destination and your products will transform into talking cartoons. No matter what you want to achieve with your advertisements, expert animation artists have the capability to deliver.
Wide Appeal
Given the versatility that animation brings to the table, it’s common to find people who enjoy watching animations across all age groups, right from children to baby boomers. As a result, including animation in your overall marketing strategy is bound to help reach a larger audience base. This aspect gains particular importance in fields where competition between businesses is rife and the order of the day is to attract new customers.
Reaching Out to Youngsters
Since animation finds favor across age groups, it also holds the potential to appeal to younger audiences. For most businesses, this generation accounts for a significant percentage of their target audiences. A number of popular brands have already used bite-sized animation videos instead of long-form content to attract and retain the attention of younger audiences. Remember that content that’s boring or static stands little chance when it comes to winning over a young audience.
Subtle
While storytelling is a very important aspect of successful animation marketing, you don’t have to come up with a Moby-Dick to produce desired results. All you need is a short story accompanied by captivating visuals that your audience finds enjoyable or beneficial. The fact that animation helps make your marketing videos less formal increases the likelihood of their striking the right chord with your target audience. Besides, it’s fairly easy to create animated ads that don’t really feel like advertisements.
The Time Factor
Creating traditional marketing videos involves various complicated processes that one may do away with when it comes to animation. For instance, there is no need to travel between multiple locations or wait for ideal light/weather conditions. Besides, background music and voiceovers give digital agencies that specialize in this realm the ability to create appealing animated videos much faster than they would conventional videos. Another distinct benefit is the possibility to tweak existing content instead of going through the entire process gain.
Takes Little Time to Explain Ideas
Being able to put your message across in a quick and efficient way is crucial if you wish to succeed in this fast-paced world. Fortunately, animated videos can help you do just that, which is why many people prefer them over textual content, images, and even live-action videos. Bear in mind that the time it takes to put your message across through an animated video is typically much lesser than through any other medium.
The Cost Factor
You probably know that traditional advertisements can be rather expensive to create. You’ll need to pay an advertising firm to take care of the advert and the cost will be anything but peanuts. This is because you’ll need to account for costs related to possibly expensive setups, outdoor shoots, and actors.
Besides, there are scores of commercials out there and you’ll have to do something out of the ordinary for yours to be exceptional. This is tricky especially if you are shooting the advert with a camera and real people because costs can escalate quickly. With animation, you don’t really have to worry about your wallet because the advert will not cost you as much money.
The Visual Effect
Ask any good restaurant, consumer goods, financial, or nonprofit web design company what it feels about the importance of creating appealing visuals and the answer will remain pretty much the same. By now, it’s well established that people prefer watching videos about products and services as opposed to reading about them. Besides, videos are more effective when it comes to conveying marketing messages.
In this day and age, it’s hard to find another medium that can hold its own against animated videos in delivering concise and stunning portraits of different types of products and services. This is because animation videos have great potential when it comes to grabbing the attention of viewers across spectrums.
Encourage Engagement
Animated videos give you the ability to highlight your target audience’s pain points in a quick and easy manner, thereby helping attract its attention. In addition, this helps you hold its attention and encourage it to watch the entire video. Once your audience finds your videos captivating, it’s bound to get involved in the story that you have to tell. While the control and flexibility over animation help encourage participation, it also makes your audience feel connected to your brand and the products or services it has to offer.
Convert Visitors to Buyers
There are various advantages of using animation videos with websites, provides they’re funny, relevant, or informative. This is how you attract attention. This is also how you ensure that visitors stay on your site long enough to grasp the important details that will lead to them actually buying something from you.
You can also use animation in your video marketing campaign or through video-based websites such as YouTube and Vimeo. The most important thing is to ensure that a professional takes care of your animation video’s creation. What’s also crucial is that your animation video should contain content that can easily convert a visitor into a buyer and a buyer into a loyal customer.
Improve Brand Recall
Several professional web design companies now use animated videos to help create and build brand awareness. Given the long-lasting effect animated videos have on viewers, and the fact that businesses use their brands’ colors, logos, and other elements in such videos, it’s fair to expect them to recall your brand at a later stage.
Simplify Complex Ideas
A very important benefit of turning to animation videos is that they let you explain even highly complex ideas in a relatively easy manner. Besides, adding a voiceover to the mix makes it possible to explain concepts even to audiences that might have little to no knowledge about your products or services.
How You May Use Animation in Marketing
Leading digital marketing agencies now know how to use animation videos that produce desired results across different mediums, from websites to television.
Website animation. Some websites boast of providing interactive animations that are at par with modern-day video games with the aim of keeping visitors on the websites for longer. Fun elements that encourage users to spend more time on your website increase the possibility of their making purchases (or taking other desired actions). Animations can also help liven up your website for a fraction of the cost of live-action videos.
Emails. The benefits of using animated videos or GIFs in emails include being able to grab readers’ attention, showing off your products/services, creating awareness about new launches, and most importantly, making the best use of the little space you have available to showcase your offerings. However, compatibility can often play a role in a user’s ability to view animation in emails depending on factors such as the device being used and file size.
Presentations. Using animation videos in presentations with clients can help you get to the point in a quick and effective way. Such videos can be particularly beneficial when getting real products and setting them up might seem challenging. While animation videos can help demonstrate complicated processes and systems, they can also take viewers through different stages of projects that are currently underway.
Television. The use of animation in television commercials is not new, but the advancements are plain to see, particularly after the advent of 3D animation. Combined with high-definition or 3D viewing, animation videos with a range of special effects can help present your products or services much like an immersive theme park ride.
Types of Animation Videos for Marketing
It’s rare to find an agency that still creates traditional animation videos by using a hand-drawn labor-intensive frame-by-frame process. Now, even the top advertising agencies turn to alternatives such as 2D animation, 3D animation, stop motion, and motion graphics.
GIFs. Although GIFs have been around for more than three decades, a number of marketers still use them to good effect when it comes to attracting attention through websites, emails, blog posts, and social media platforms. They can be particularly beneficial when announcing new launches or promotional offers. A distinct benefit of turning to GIFs is that they give you a low-risk and low-cost way to get on the animation bandwagon.
Explainer videos. An explainer video is one that helps your target audience understand the nuances of your products or services or one that tells your brand’s story. While a live-action explainer video can be boring, animation gives you the ability to add as much creativity into the mix as you like. Marketers use animated explainer videos across platforms, from websites to social media campaigns to emails. Explainer videos for social media should ideally limit to no more than one minute.
Micro-animations. Micro-animations are small and typically functional animations that provide visual feedback and help tie together various elements of a design or an interface. Besides, these animations give you the ability to convey various messages without the use of text. Examples of micro-animations include like buttons, swipe buttons, call-to-action buttons, and buttons showing the current system/upload/download status. Micro-animations can help improve navigation, encourage interaction, increase engagement, communicate information, promote taking specific actions, and improve user experience.
2D Vs. 3D Animation for Marketing
Modern-day digital marketing agencies are capable of handling varied 2D and 3D animation requirements based on client requirements. 2D animation is the more affordable alternative and these animations are typically quicker to create. In addition, you may adapt 2D animations to work with various web- and print-based materials. 3D animations, on the other hand, are dynamic in nature and typically more eye-catching. Besides, 3D animations also come with a variety of interactive options, which, when used in the right manner, can come with a high return on investment (ROI).
CONCLUSION
Animation is not everybody’s cup of tea and you will need to find the best animation artists to deliver what you need. Fortunately, the online world lets you narrow down the top digital agencies. What follows is getting a team to work on your ideas and transform them into short yet interesting animation videos that will market your business.
Unlike most conventional videos, simple animation videos don’t take a lot of time to create. Besides, once you work with a team of experienced professionals who know your requirements well, you may expect your online efforts to deliver great results.
If you’re not sure about how to move forward, or if you still have questions about how animation videos can help promote your business, getting in touch with a web design company that specializes in this realm might be in your best interest.
Originally posted in: https://www.topnotchdezigns.com/the-wonders-of-animation-in-marketing/
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