When your company’s 2D & 3D animated video is ready to face the world there are many ways to get it across to people in the most efficient and impactful manner. You can start with Social media, your own website, and other advertising channels.
1. Social media
Most successful businesses have active social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and even Snapchat. People love spending time on social media platforms, and it’s already become second nature to the younger generations. So if you’re thinking about sharing your 2D & 3D animated video on these channels, you’re on the right track. The question is: considering that the web is full of social networks, where should you post your 2D & 3D animated video?
Facebook remains as probably the most popular social network option for most users. The stats clearly report it is the first social network to surpass 1 billion registered accounts and currently has 1.97 billion monthly active users. It has a steady increase of 17% of year-over-year.
As part of its goal to maximize the amount of time that users actively spend on their platform, Facebook has recognized the value of video format and its ability to increase engagement. In the last few years, Facebook has changed the way that the platform receives and manages video content to encourage users to use Facebook for video content. This includes making the video content more visible on the platform. Facebook used its algorithms to make engaging videos more prominent in the news feed and adding the auto-play functionality. In the last year, the social network has also launched Facebook Live, allowing users to post live videos directly to the platform.
One thing that Facebook is really encouraging is the posting of native content, meaning content posted directly onto Facebook rather than that gathered from a third party. 2D & 3D animated videos uploaded directly to the site are far more favored than those posted via YouTube link. This means you are likely to get far more views and organic engagement on Facebook with a directly uploaded video than an embedded YouTube link. Some statistics show that videos uploaded directly onto Facebook can actually generate 7x more engagement than embedded video links.
LinkedIn is the largest online B2B networking site in the world. That also makes it the largest B2B video marketing platform online. Take advantage of this massive pool of highly motivated buyers and create quality leads by optimizing your LinkedIn profile, LinkedIn company page, and LinkedIn updates with quality video. LinkedIn video marketing is easier and more effective than you think.
Industry groups and professional networks on LinkedIn generate millions of leads each month. With over 467 million users, LinkedIn is simply the best place to meet and interact with industry leaders, executives and decision makers. In fact, LinkedIn’s recent semi-annual review showed that “92% of B2B marketers prefer LinkedIn over all other social platforms.” On the other hand, half of the companies that have LinkedIn accounts use them for making purchasing decisions, and nearly 75% of all buyers want helpful video content. The numbers don’t lie. LinkedIn video marketing simply makes sense.
Instagram has over 600 million monthly active accounts. Within just two years, the user base has doubled in size growing from 300 million monthly active users to an astounding 600 million. Its growth has just been amazing. In the last 6 months, the time people spent watching 2D & 3D animated videos on Instagram increased by more than 40%. Instagram has recently announced it has extended their videos’ length to 60 seconds (previously, Instagram videos were limited to 15 seconds). This opens up an entire new world of opportunities where 2D & 3D animated videos fit perfectly due to their short and concise format.
Snapchat
Snapchat holds more than 300 million monthly users (as of Q1 2017) and reported 187 million daily users in 2018. The platform displayed massive growth in early 2016, with a 14% increase in Q1 over the past quarter. It is a great option if you target a young audience and want to set up a new way to connect with them. Keep in mind that video is the main type of content on this platform.
Twitter has been keeping up with recent competition and decided to include video promotion on their own platform. Instead of trying to fit your message into 140 characters as before, now video marketers can use Twitter to promote products and services of their brands. You can easily embed a video into your tweet and give the audiences a taste of your business, you can show off customer testimonials, announce competitions, promote special offers, showcase your product and service, and more. Twitter Ads are becoming increasingly more popular among B2B business and publishers. It provides them with significant brand exposure and high user engagement. Around 85% of B2B companies use twitter for advertisement.
2. Your company website
2D & 3D animated video on your homepage should be used to briefly outline your product or service and explain why you are better than your competitors. Because visitors of your site will leave within 8 seconds if they can’t find anything engaging, this is where 2D & 3D animated video can reduce your bounce rate, increase visitor engagement and thus improve your website’s Google ranking.
A test of 95,000 landing pages confirmed that the higher your 2D & 3D animated video is on the page, the higher the play rate will be. You are doing your audience a favor by putting interesting and introductory material above the fold on high-traffic pages, so that people can understand your business better. You can also add sharing buttons at the bottom of your video to make it as easy as possible to share the content.
3. Email lists
If you have acquired some great contacts over the years and built yourself an email list, this is a great opportunity to promote your new content. You can embed a thumbnail of the animated explainer video into an email and hyperlink it to the video itself, plus add introductory text to accompany it. Just adding the word ’video’ into the subject line, boosts open rates by 19%, and click-through rates by up to 56%. You could also simply add a link to the video into your email signature so that it will appear in every email you send out over a certain period and ensure that it is seen by as many as possible.
4. YouTube and Vimeo advertising
When it comes to video, the first stop is always YouTube. YouTube has 1 billion monthly active users. It’s also the second largest search engine in the world, falling closely behind the unparalleled Google (which, by the way, owns YouTube). The best thing about this platform is that it’s become synonymous with online video: it’s undoubtedly the number 1 option when people think about watching a video online.
YouTube advertising is the perfect way to get your brand seen by as many people as possible. It won’t burn too big of a hole in your budget, and the results could be amazing, all you need to know is a little bit about your existing customers and their interests. Research the most popular keywords relating to your business, there are many online keyword tools available. From there, set the campaign to target the location where most of your customers reside and set it as either a display or as a pre-roll ad, which appears whenever they click on a related video. Another useful option is to choose the people who have visited your website in the past as your target audience.
YouTube has already established its name at the top of any big brand’s marketing tools, so there’s no reason for you not to follow suit.
Always make sure you fill in all the different tags so that the search engine can pick up your 2D & 3D animated video easily. So many videos get submitted without proper tags, title, description, links, etc. And they never achieve their full potential. Take the time and research the keywords to optimize your video’s performance.
Another option to consider is Vimeo. Just like you do with YouTube, make sure to take your time and fill in all the tags, so your 2D & 3D animated video is keyword optimized. A lot of people have started using Vimeo for personal videos to get away from all the ads that YouTube puts up. Vimeo is getting more popular, so be sure to put your 2D & 3D animated video on there. This will also add to the search results when someone looks for a keyword you used.
Key metrics or how to measure the success of your animated video
Your animated video has been finally completed. It’s smart, original, engaging and every time you tested it with target audiences it proved to present your message in an effective way. You published it on your YouTube channel and embedded it on your website. It started getting some response. Now, you need to take some time to track the performance of your animated video.
What metrics to observe when analyzing the performance of your marketing video? These are some of the most important metrics you should bear in mind:
1. Time-on-page
Some prospects won’t even click on the video, some will start watching but turn it off before the end or leave at one point, while others will watch all the way through and follow your CTA even. In general, people spend between 10 and 20 seconds on a website, but if you make your animated video engaging, you can increase this time drastically. This is especially crucial for animated videos located on the home page or a landing page. These pages are usually the gateways to your site, and if your users just come and leave or stay 3 or 5 seconds there, this doesn’t create enough engagement. Engagement is one of the strongest points of 2D & 3D animated videos, which is the reason why placing them at the entrance of your site is a good idea. If you already did this and the page is still under performing, you should start wondering if something is wrong with the animated video. Maybe it´s not clear enough or it doesn’t load fast enough, and people decide to leave. When done right, animated video should be able to get your prospect’s attention, making them stay on the page longer. And it should also make people more interested in the rest of the content of your website.
2. Conversions
Many variables can be crucial when it comes to analyzing conversions, but probably the most important is the click through rate (CTR) of your animated video’s call to action button (CTA).
Calls to action are images or prompts that ask visitors to take further action like adding an item to a cart, visiting a company website, subscribing or learning about the product.
A compelling CTA is the best possible way to get new leads and turn your viewer into a customer. Another important aspect of the CTA is that it can help you understand how well your campaign is performing. Simply compare the number of conversions you got after the publication of the animated video with the numbers from before the video implementation.
Keep track of your conversions and always keep an eye on the stats to see what can be improved and where your weak points are.
3. Number of views and Average watch time
Evaluate the number of views your animated video gets within a certain period. The number of views will let you see if your animated video is being watched or not, and how many times. Bear in mind that this metric won’t tell you how many people saw your video, but how many times it was viewed.
You can also evaluate the play rate, which is the percentage of users who watch your animated video (number of plays divided by the number of loads). At this point, pay special attention to the thumbnail you’re using, the size of your animated video and where you place it (remember that above the fold is the best option). All these aspects could influence your play rate.
Watch time estimates how engaged people are with your video. Remember that you must keep them hooked for as much time as is needed to make them get the main message and ideally react to the CTA, which usually appears at the end of the animated video. Analyze for how long they watch your animated video and make the necessary adjustments.
Using this metrics is a good way to evaluate if your animated video is getting enough attention. The average watch time will tell you if the animated video is really sending the message through. If you published a minute-and-a-half long video, and the average watch time is twenty seconds, regardless of how many views you got for it, there is something wrong that you should try to work on and improve. It´s best to try and detect this situation as early on as possible, so that you will be able to fix it before it makes you lose valuable opportunities.
OK, you have realized how your 2D & 3D animated video can be promoted. Now what?
