It can feel overwhelming to make decisions about what direction to go with your precious marketing budget – there are so many moving pieces, endless options, and a massive range of quality from vendors.
Our award winning animated explainer videos occupy a pretty specific niche in the marketing world, and we’re always keeping an eye on the most effective marketing trends.
Let us shine some light on the path from Big Idea to Awesome Marketing. Here are five of the most common mistakes we’ve seen over the last 11 years, and how to avoid them.
Mistake: Making your marketing all about you
Marketing Tip: Make your marketing all about your audience
Sure, your ultimate goal is to show off your awesome organization or idea. But to really persuade people with your marketing, they need to see what’s in it for them.
Make sure to frame your content in a way that will connect with the audience you’re trying to reach, not just tell them who you are.
Consider ways you can invite the viewer to be a part of the context of the story you are telling, rather than the victim or the savior. How does your message impact the viewer and the world around them, and how do you want them to respond? We think a little more about this point in our blog post about Thoughtful Storytelling.
Mistake: Your content is too generic
Marketing Tip: Express your unique branding with customized content
When developing marketing content, you will at some point make a decision between custom and cookie cutter. While cookie cutter might save you money, it will also do little to set you apart. Customization helps you catch the eyes of consumers and overcome the obstacle that is an oversaturated, over-advertised population.
Customization can sometimes mean significant investments, but there are plenty of budget-friendly options for custom content. Consider the humble animated whiteboard video: the clean, hand-drawn style lends itself to ease of production, making it an affordable option that is also able to absord edits and updates as the process – or even the years of use – go on.
Mistake: Doing Too Much
Marketing Tip: Break your content down into bite-sized pieces
Sometimes, your message is simple. But more often than not, you have a big idea to get across and you want to make sure your audience has all of the crucial details.
We recommend breaking down your content into the most important nuggets of info, data, or meaning. Like we said above, consumers are oversaturated with advertising at every turn.
You can see this tip embedded into our studio’s product offerings: we know that using multiple images or videos to explain the most important things is more effective than a 20-minute infomercial packed to the brim with details that people don’t really need to know. So, we offer discounts for series of videos made together, and we also offer an add-on Social Media Package which uses imagery from your video to create stills and graphics for platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and more.
Breaking down your marketing into bite-sized pieces also means having more content to spread out over time, which is key for pleasing the ever-changing algorithms and maintaining brand awareness.
Mistake: overdoing the DIY
Marketing Tip: Work with someone that knows their stuff
These days, there are more resources than ever for marketers to create beautiful content on their own. Programs like Canva and Doodly make it possible to ‘DIY’ content that used to only be available to organizations with the largest of marketing budgets.
If you have a tiny to non-existent budget, and the time and creativity to invest, DIY can be a good choice. However, if you have a budget, we very strongly recommend partnering with an expert shop. This is the only way to ensure a high-quality, highly-effective product. And with different options around style, length, and timeline, we can work with a variety of budgets. Let’s talk.
Mistake: Starting too late
Marketing Tip: Call Next Day Animations!
Timeliness is key when it comes to marketing: your message means nothing if it’s too late for your audience to act.
You also want enough time to send your content through several rounds of edits, to make sure you’re getting the high quality product you want. But that takes time! The good news is, even if you’re starting a little later than ideal, we’ve got your back. We can produce a video in as little as 24 hours! Our more standard timeline is 4-5 weeks.
For more of our tips and tricks, you can sign up for our low volume newsletter on the right side of this page, or maybe even head on to the next blog post. You can always reach the wealth of knowledge directly by scheduling a free consultation call with our friendly client advisors today.
