When making sure you get the most out of a conference, planning is everything, but get your planning wrong and you could miss the bus, and you lose out on all that great potential!
Creating a successful explainer video also takes detailed planning. This is because there is a lot that goes into making an animated explainer video that looks right, feels right, gets your message across and resonates with your target audience. If you get your planning and delivery right, they supercharge stories and messages, giving them a lasting impact and high engagement rates.
In this post, we’ll take at eleven ways you can make sure you get your planning right!
1 - Plan Your Messaging
Love them or hate them, plans are the cornerstone of an explainer video. Knowing what your narrative and message are before you start is essential. When this isn’t set in stone and agreed on by all, projects can get delayed before they’ve even begun. The really fun bit of planning is the vision, setting out how you want your video to look and feel. At this stage it’s also important to decide where the explainer will be used and how success will be measured.
2 - Define Your Goals and Audience
Being clear about your goals and target audience is a very important point, so we’ve separated this from the other planning aspects. Understanding who your audience are and what you want to achieve will help you know where to reach them online. It will also allow you to tailor the video from its earliest stages to be a perfect fit for them, resonating while delivering points in the perfect way.
As you you think about your goals and audience, ask yourself:
Are you aiming to educate, entertain, or persuade?
Who do want to reach?
Where is the best place to use your video to reach and engage your audience? And what does this mean for your video’s design?
3 - Make a creative brief
Whether you are planning on making the explainer video yourself or asking a studio or production company to make it, making a creative brief based on your planning allows the project to stay focused and include everything you need to make a killer explainer video.
This also allows you to think about finer details, like what must be included or should be avoided. A consideration like this is important when working in sensitive areas or when you are trying to establish a certain feel.
4 - Write a strong script
The foundation of any successful animated explainer video is a well-crafted script. Keep it concise, engaging, and focused on addressing your audience's pain points or needs. Whether you're using an animated explainer video or whiteboard animation, a compelling narrative will keep viewers hooked from start to finish.
Your script might suggest locations, if your video is filmed, or illustration ideas and visual metaphors if you are making an animated explainer video. The script also sets the length of the voiceover, and this will set the length of the video. We recommend writing 140 words per minute of video for a well-paced voiceover script.
5 - Turn your script into visual thinking and ideas
With the script signed-off, you can take your message to the next level - the visuals. Taking literal or metaphorical inspiration from your script, you can pick the right props and visual style, or design the perfect illustrations and visual metaphors, that bring your points and messages to life in an engaging, memorable and relevant way. Knowing your audience and referring to the creative brief will help to focus your ideas here.
One of the reasons we love whiteboard animation is that is gives you a blank canvas, on which you can create anything. This makes it perfect for complex and abstract topics, and for topics that aren’t always naturally engaging.
6 - Get your brand and personality in
A strong and recognisable brand takes a long time to build. From logos, colour and word choices to capturing your tone and personality in locations, illustrations, characters and voiceovers. Explainers, and whiteboard explainer videos in particular, offer ways to incorporate your essence throughout. Our blog on expressing your business voice goes into this in more detail.
Doing this can help your explainer to feel more familiar and lets you celebrate who you are alongside the messages within your explainer. This has another very practical benefit; it allows your explainer video to sit comfortably alongside your other marketing.
7 - Focus on Visual Storytelling
This is a must. It keeps up the energy and momentum within your explainer video while also focussing the attention of the viewer where it needs to be. This means you can make sure your video is engaging, beating the other distractions that fight for our attention, and help the key points and information within your video to be taken onboard by viewers by directing their attention.
In animated explainer videos, the animation goes hand in hand with the illustrations to give them even more impact, engagement and explanatory power.
8 - Consider subtitle, translation and accessibility factors
Making sure your whiteboard animation is designed with your audience in mind is another must. Whether it’s a matter of translation or accessibility, these factors will play a big part in the way your audience is able to connect with your message. We’ve spoken more about translation here and this website offers some great advice on accessibility.
9 - Optimise for Mobile
With the rise of mobile usage, it's essential to optimise your explainer videos for viewing on smartphones and tablets. Keep text and visuals clear and legible, and avoid cluttering the screen with too much information. Additionally, ensure your video is formatted for various social media platforms to maximise reach and engagement.
10 - Include a Strong Call-to-Action
Don't forget to include a clear and compelling call-to-action at the end of your explainer video. Whether it's prompting viewers to visit your website, sign up for a free trial, or make a purchase, a strong CTA can significantly impact your video's conversion rate and drive action from your audience.
11 - Launch your explainer video in style!
Last, but no means least, make sure you give your whiteboard animation a strong launch! A lot of effort has gone into it, so your video deserves to showcased in style. This gives it the best start, as it takes your messages and lands them with your audience. Just some of the options include:
Mentioning it in your newsletter
Trailing the launch on social media
Interacting with comments it receives
Newsjacking relevant stories and sending it to people you think will appreciate it
Making sure it has a presence on your website and on YouTube
Uploading it natively to each social network you use
We hope you have found this list of explainer video production tips useful, and we’d love to see the videos you create with it! Since we made the RSA Animates, whiteboard animation and animated explainer videos have been our passion. We love using it to share messages and supercharge stories! We’d love to help you share your story. Book your free discovery call today to tell us about your project or to ask any other questions about whiteboard animation!
This peculiar proportion, approximately 1.618, has been lurking in the shadows of human creativity for millennia, like a mathematical James Bond, seducing architects, artists, and designers with its promise of perfection.