How to Create an Engaging Explainer Video?

An explainer video is a great way for a business to give a customer the quick run down on their products and services. Typically, these videos will be roughly a minute or two in length and will be your customers first exposure to your business. This means you need to get it right the first time, and create an engaging, interesting piece of video content. This can be difficult with such a short time frame, but thankfully we’ve developed a list of tips which can help you hit the ground running with your company’s’ first explainer video.

Scripting it Out

The first factor to a successful explainer video is a well-written, cohesive script. The script you’ll be using is the foundation upon which your content will be built, so it needs to be one of the things you’ll spend the majority of your time working on. Sometimes it may help to hire an outsider or freelancer who can offer an outside perspective on your business and explain it to layman’s. You’ll need to come up with a creative brief first, which helps you define what really matters about your business. You’ll use this to determine your ‘elevator pitch’, target audience, what problem your product or service solves, the 3 benefits of your product, explaining how the product works, the tone of your video, the visual style, and the overall call to action of the ad. Using a creative brief is a great way to build the skeleton of your script, and is a great thing to follow during your writing process.

Aim to Keep it Short

While you might feel making a longer, more detailed explainer video is the best bet for your product and services, this may not be the case. Your video is meant to be an overview, yes; but you want to keep it brief and have a great hook in getting people interested into doing their own research into your business. Try to keep your content to 150 words per minute, you want to read at a good pace so you don’t skip any details but you also don’t want to burden your viewer with too much information at once. Moreover, its found the longer a video is; the less likely viewers are to retain information. Keeping things simple and concise c an be difficult, but it’ll ensure the message of your video will be more easily remembered and more likely to entice your customer.

Keep it Simple

To keep your video short, you’ll also need to keep it simple. One way to do this is to take the 4 main points of an explainer video and give them a time frame. This way, each individual section can be presented by your video without going over the one to one and a half minute limit. First, identity the problem a customer may be having within the first 20 seconds. Next is the solution, where you introduce your product and service to the customer. This should only take around five to ten seconds. From there, you’ll explain how the product or service works. This’ll be the meat of your video, and will typically take anywhere from 30 to 45 seconds. End your video with a call to action, where you tell your customer what to do next. This should take no more than ten seconds and services as the proper conclusion to any explainer video. Following this breakdown is a great way to keep things short and simple.

Explain the Benefits, Not the Features

The difference between features and benefits of a product is simply a difference in language. You may want to get into the technical aspects of your products, but sometimes technical jargon can be off putting to new customers who may not understand the terms of your industry. For example, instead of saying your gaming console has 500GB of storage and a GTX graphics card, you could change it to “Plenty of space for your installed games, with a top of the line graphics card to run your games at a great frame rate!” This delivers the same message as your ‘features’ pitch, without the technical information that may throw off newbies.

Be Professional, but have Fun

Of course, the tone of your video should be informational and formal. This doesn’t mean you need to create a robotic, generic cookie cutter video however. While professionalism makes your video higher quality; content consumers need things such as humour, surprises, or something left field to keep them interested. Entertaining your customers is just as important as informing them, and it’ll make them more likely to do business with you in the future if you’re about to have a laugh and a little bit of fun.

These tips aren’t exhaustive, but they’ll provide the basic skeleton you’ll need to create your first explainer video. As you continue making content, you’ll refine these skills, save your business time and money, and produce great content with measurable results.

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