Winning new business is not to be taken lightly. With the advances in digital marketing, compelling content is vital for your business to survive and thrive. With content being churned out in record levels, competing for the valuable, and shortening, attention spans of your target customers is becoming more difficult.
That is the bad news! The good news is that 2D animated video offers a great way to bring your products to life in a short, digestible way for your prospects. Using video as part of your marketing plan means you can build a solid funnel of leads. It also gives you great content to amplify across a range of platforms including social networks, your website, email campaigns, and paid ads.
Showing off your services with cool videos
Most people on business networks such as LinkedIn are not looking to be entertained – for that they are more likely to be on Netflix, Instagram or Prime. The main goal of animated B2B videos should be to show how your services can improve a pain point or generate more revenue for your customers.
With this in mind, the business case for 2D video becomes clear. Well-presented, clear, and engaging videos can quickly showcase your services for what they are, and show buyers how they can benefit.
So how do you get started to create some animated videos and bring some fresh new leads into your sales funnel?
Making an investment
Your first step is to bring an expert in corporate video production to do the job. Video is your digital shop window, so you want your products or services looking as good as they possibly can. Cutting corners and doing a free or cheap version for yourself is really not an option if you want to entice clicks and further interest.
This is the best solution to your immediate need to create video because an internal hire at such an early stage of your video journey could be risky. The best approach is to work with an external agency first and lean on their expertise first.
The skills you will need to design and produce top-quality videos can be found in abundance with the right agency. The time needed to get started with an agency is also likely to be a lot less. Without the time to recruit and get a new employee onboarded, you can focus immediately on the project and its deliverables.
Choosing an agency to work with your brand
Putting a little effort into this will really give you the best rewards. There are a lot of agencies out there – many good ones, and many pretenders. Investing a little time into your search can really pay dividends.
Decide what you are looking for – your top three priorities. These may be production style, reputation within your own industry, price, location or any other desirables you may have.
Shortlist some candidates and tell them what you are looking to do. Whether you are looking to make a one-off video and see how it performs, or produce a new 2D animation every month, look to some different agencies to see how receptive they are. In a buyers’ market, you should be able to get a few candidates in play by using this approach.
Once you have a few replies, line up some meetings with each of them. Ask them what they have learned about your products, and how they would envisage turning them into animated form. Use this time to discuss their timelines and costing models too, so you are on the same page with expectations.
Also, outline which of your products you would like to promote first. If you offer more than one service, do not make the mistake of trying to promote everything you offer in one video. Choose your most popular services and focus on getting some new customers in the door – you can always upsell them once you have the trusted relationship built.
The most important thing at this stage is to get your videos optimized for the platforms you will distribute them on. Each social network and web page has different sizes, so you will need to work with your agency to take this into account. Also, consider your typical buyer and whether they tend to do their research from a laptop or a mobile device. Making sure your videos play well is crucial to their success.
Either way, congratulations on starting your video project! With the right agency working with you, you will very quickly see the rewards and revenue benefits to your firm.
Photo by Marina Hanna