If you’ve never heard of an explainer video, it’s not because you’ve never seen one. Explainer videos are all over the Inter-webs.
It’s nothing more than an introduction to what you can offer; a television commercial that’s posted on the front page of your website or YouTube (or both.) They can be witty and funny, visually informative (i.e., infographics and whiteboards), or a simple salesperson giving your main pitch in video format instead of text.
In fact, as far as trends go, explainer videos are arguably in the upper 3 of the hottest marketing trends business owners need to be ahead of this year.
From John Follis, contributor at smallbiztrends.com:
“You’d think that something that’s been around forever would be fading away. The opposite has happened with video. There are multiple reasons for this, The continuing serge in video-friendly mobile devises, the fact the Google has made video much more search friendly, and the simple fact that video is the most engaging of all media.
The explosion of Web video has spawned new monikers like “Explainer video.” That term didn’t even exist a couple years ago and it’s now one of the fastest growing searches on Google.” (original article)
That post got me pondering the benefits to my own sites…
After reading Follis’ thoughts from last December, it got me thinking (and researching) about the benefits of including a great explainer video on my own web properties. Then I stumbled on this great article (10 Best Startup Explainer Videos Ever). There are some real gems in there.
My personal favorite? CrazyEgg’s explainer video:
Learn from the Dollar Shave Club video
The “Dollar Shave Club” vid is pretty cool, right?
That video is just plain great. As Charlie Sheen would say, they’re “WINNING”. They do throw in some details about the product (cheap razors), but it’s the other things in the video that draw you into the product. Though this vid doesn’t have the viral appeal of a Miley Cyrus “twerking vid”, it does have close to 14,000,000 views to its credit.
Just imagine how many of those viewers turned into buyers. Not to mention the brand-recognition the company now has, which can be continuously exploited by running adsense ads and using other affiliate networks to promote their service.
There’s so much silly reckless humor that you can’t help but to watch the whole thing. Whether you’re in the market for a cheap way to save on razors or not; after watching their video, you want to be a part of all the fun that’s going on at the Dollar Shave Club warehouse!
The vid also has many great heroic sales/marketing elements, that sadly I don’t have the time to lay out entirely in this post for you.
So what can an explainer video offer you?
Better search engine rankings:
This isn’t an immediate advantage, but Google will always take on-page elements seriously when determining where your webpage will fall in their rankings including bounces rates, pages per visit, and time spent on site. Hooking the visitor with a catchy video that explains your offer and entertains is a sure fire way to improve these all-important SEO metrics.
Improved social presence:
No need to go into huge explanation about this one. It’s a very important benefit, but also fairly self-explanatory, unless you’ve just exited the cave you’ve been living in for the last 5 years!
The more people are entertained, the more they’ll share. Social sharing means more eyes make it to your site – ultimately the brains behind those eyes will decide to buy more of your products. Social will also become more of a ranking factor as we move beyond the Hummingbird algo.
Increased conversions:
This is the be all/end all of advantages to be gleaned from creating entertaining, informative – potentially viral explainer videos.
First, some people just don’t like reading. Sure you need to have text on your site, in your catalogues, mailers, etc. However, some minds are just better sold on a concept through shapes and colors instead of written text. You’ll hook this personality type when you include a video; whereas they may have bounced from your homepage out of sheer boredom if you hadn’t.
Second, even if your prospects need to see it in writing (i.e, text) before they’ll buy, a great explainer vid can help disarm them, get them into more of a buying mood. Whether you’re using infographs to plot your product or service out for them, or just making them laugh a bit – the visuals can really help manage initial buyer uncertainty.
Third is personality. Visitors might just decide to buy because they like the personality displayed in the video. Whiteboard videos trended for quite a while because of this; viewers like the quirky nature of these videos. Also, if you or an actor is talking in the video, the visitor may decide to buy because they the feeling they can trust you. Or a love at first site kind of deal, where guys get turned on by a pretty girl and decide to buy, or the ladies hearts are warmed because of the cute little baby or puppy sitting on your lap while you’re talking…
… but that’s a whole other post on exploiting human psychology to increase sales, right?
More reading:
www.videobrewery.com/blog/10-reasons-why-your-business-needs-an-explainer-video
Some words of caution
Please note that, although explainer videos rock, it’s challenging to craft a compelling ones.
In fact, Neil Patel, whose Crazy Egg explainer video drive $21,000/month in new income, says that it’s pretty challenging to create a converting explainer video. Heed his words of advice:
“The reality is most explainer videos won’t boost your conversion rate or make you more money. It isn’t because the idea sucks, but it’s because you are likely to take the wrong approach to making the video.”
Read Neil’s awesome tips here.
What do you think?
Comment down below and tell me what you think about explainer videos. Do they work, or don’t they?
