7 Effective Explainer Video Marketing Trends for 2020

How well do you know about explainer video marketing or your beloved social media platforms?

Due to the recent developments in digital marketing, it’s a fair question to ask. What do I mean by that?

Instagram stories have surpassed the average monthly users than Snapchat. Facebook video is coming out for Youtube and Vimeo- Both massive video-based platforms! In fact, experts predict that by 2020, Facebook will only be supporting videos, not texts!

Did you know that video marketing is a 135 BILLION dollar industry in the US alone?! This is huge and tells us just how much it’s expanding and taking over marketing in general!

To keep up with this extremely competitive industry, companies and brands should be aware of everything that is happening, and everything that they should be looking out for in 2020.

However, this doesn’t mean that companies start pumping out videos left and right! This would do them no good!

Users don’t want explainer videos. They want good explainer videos. What does this mean? It means that videos should be:

1. Packed with quality content.
2. Should be relatable to the audience.
3. Must be of high quality, boosting creative animations.
4. Should be targeted to the right audience.

These things are imperative if businesses want their explainer videos to be engaging so they can pull a maximum conversion rate. To make this possible, always seek professional help.

Choosing the right company is extremely important. It’s a bridge between a business and its success!

It’s said that videos will comprise approximately 82% of total consumer internet traffic by 2022. It’s a small world and too large of a statistic to ignore.

How can you stand out from your competition?

1. Micro Videos

What is a micro-video? The same thing 400 million users on Instagram are using every day: Stories! Snapchat started this trend, which was then adopted by Facebook and Instagram as well.

This feature has leveraged brands and businesses, especially online, to increase their engagement in the form of stories. They work so well because of the short attention span that we humans have.

Stories are short, fun, yet effective and are watched by almost every user who’s following the account. This entails maximum user engagement while also creating brand awareness which is ultimately great for business!

2. Mobile Videos

With the surge in the usage of mobile phones, it comes as no surprise that videos will mostly be watched on mobile phones. This has encouraged businesses to make mobile-friendly videos.

This means that the upcoming content is going to be more visual and appealing, rather than include small graphics and small texts. Mobile screens are small, so these things matter. If text is there, it should be big and bold so the viewer can easily read it.

If the video animations are too small, it may annoy the viewer as nobody wants to squint in order to tell what’s happening in the video!

Another thing to keep in mind is the new feature where videos are automatically muted when played. This was received very well because users didn’t have to suffer when the video started blasting sound as soon as it was played.

Viewers have full control of when they want to unmute the video, so Facebook didn’t expect them to watch the whole video without any sound at all!

This leads us to another thing to take care of. Publishers should include enough easy-to-read texts and captions in the video so viewers can still get the point even without unmuting it.

Next time you have an explainer video produced, try watching it without sound and see if you can understand what’s happening without feeling lost. By doing this, you’ll know which areas need text to direct the viewer to the context of the video, should they choose to watch it without sound to aid them.

The next thing to check is the orientation of the video. Since users are scrolling through their feeds, the video should be in 16:9 ratio-which is the ratio most mobile phones use- so the viewers won’t have to rotate their phones to watch the video.

It’s a minor hassle not everybody is willing to cater to, so to assure that the video is being watched by whoever comes across it, this is a very important factor to take care of.

Most explainer videos will support call-to-action (CTA) buttons at the end of their videos. Since videos are mostly watched on phones, including a “Call Us” button at the end of the video will prompt the potential customer to click it.

Because that’s when the viewers are the most hooked and if the video is done right, they will probably end up calling the company as soon as the video ends, resulting in more leads for the company!

Not only are you optimizing the video according to mobile phones for a better watching experience, but you’re also one step closer to getting more leads by doing it!

3. Video+SEO

You probably know that videos are great for SEO purposes. This is because they enable people to stay longer on the webpage, hence improving SEO.

What you might not know is that Google doesn’t just scrap the video content, but the textual content as well. This means that video captions are just as important and should contain keywords so the video post is ranked higher on Google.

4. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality

AR and VR are relatively new to the market, however, it won’t be long before you start seeing them everywhere. Since this is a developing field with unique and less content, an explainer video supporting AR and VR could really take off, making it go viral!

Some retail brands are already investing in this technology, delivering a unique experience to the user. By using AR and VR, they are enabling users to try clothing items on themselves to give them an idea of how it would look on them. This is for all the indecisive online shoppers!

AR and VR in explainer videos mean that the viewer can move their phone around to get a different angle, or even interact with the animated explainer video!

5. Interactive Explainer Videos

Some types of explainer videos, especially product-based, can easily be made interactive for enhanced user experience. For example, if it’s a video about a product or service, a user can just hover the mouse over it, an action that will result in text information about that product.

There are numerous ways to make video interactive. This makes the user hard to exit the video as they are so engaged by it.

If creating brand awareness is what you’re trying to achieve through explainer videos, then making them interactive is the way to go. Explainer videos are memorable as it is, but making it interactive takes creativity through the roof!

This makes it hard to forget the brand and will definitely increase click-through rates!

6. Searching Videos

Search engines have been evolving ever since their existence. At first, we could only Google texts for our research purposes. Then Google added a feature in which we could use images as input in searching.

Since then, Google’s algorithms have gotten better and more complex. By investing in AI, Google is soon going to release a new feature. A feature where the users can use video to search other videos!

The AI algorithm will skim over video content, scrap its context and return videos related to it!

7. Longer Video Ads

Explainer video animators are now offering social media optimized videos and ads to run. Ads in the middle of the video are not a foreign concept, Youtube has been dabbling in it for years!

However, ads are generally not welcomed by the audience. To shift this paradigm, businesses are investing in immersive and interactive ads so they are more appealing to the viewers.

For example, there is an interactive explainer video ad about scheduling software. Due to the high-quality animation and the script, the user has stayed for long enough that they finally get to the end of the ad, where a small interactive session is waiting for them.

It might be a demo asking for them to input something, designed in such a way that it emphasizes how much the program is needed by the user!

To make video ads longer, companies will first have to make them interesting and creative, and then make it interactive so viewers actually stay and feel the impact of the ad rather than regarding it as nonsense.

Which Trend Did You Like Best?

So many trends to implement, however, it’s not necessary that each one should be followed. The dynamic of each company is different. What might work for some, might not work for others!

Judge the values of your company, your audience, your goals, and then decide on which strategy suits you best. Just because something is a trend, doesn’t mean it should be followed, right? Experiment with a small audience and then work upwards if a trend delivers positive results.

Video marketing is an ever-evolving field, trends come and go, too quickly sometimes. Always stay up-to-date and experiment with them! You never know when you might hit a gold mine.