Human attention span is recorded at 8 seconds. That’s alarming. Are people even reading blogs? Is long-form content really the way to go? Or are we just relying too much on written content, and static imagery?
Is there a better way to tap into the mind of your audience?
Well, what if I tell you that animated explainers are the solution to all your problems.
In this blog, I’ll go on to prove my point with four noteworthy case studies. Each case study marks massive sales growth for a SaaS product. Moreover, the success story for each brand points towards one powerful tool – animated marketing.
Find out how animated marketing became a disruptive weapon for these brands.
1. CrazyEgg: Video boosts conversion by a massive 64%
CrazyEgg, owned by Neil Patel is a super popular heat map tool. It’s a clear disruption in the market as it allows business owners to find out where exactly a visitor clicks on their site.
Based on the insights you gain, you can actually revamp your landing pages, CTAs, or even rethink website design to accommodate the visitor with an even better visual experience.
While CrazyEgg seemed like an easy to understand product, and more like a must-have tool for all digital marketers, sadly it didn’t start out as desired. Conversions were not impressive at all.
As a result, the CEO Neil Patel came up with the idea of an explainer video. It was through animation that he envisioned to announce his product, and convey the message.
The explainer made was even though impressive, it had a total duration of 158 seconds. That’s too much for a product that is simple, and is just starting off. Plus, explainer videos are usually not that lengthy.
However, the result blew the critics away. The video alone captured 67% conversion rate. Not just impressive, but astronomical for an impact. That’s not all, Neil Patel even announced that the explainer was a massive success, and courtesy of this disruptive approach to marketing, the brand was now earning $210000 per month more in sales.
This is one fine case study for anyone who’s not sure if a simplistic product really requires an explainer video.
Plus, if you’re going up in duration, you don’t have to worry about whether people will watch it or not. What’s important is that the message should be precise, and compelling enough to keep everyone interested. If you’re new, learning about explainer video production could be the right starting point.
2. Rypple
This exciting little case study is in itself a case study. Rypple as you know of today is a collaboration management tool. It’s got all the exciting tools and techniques to integrate the team to achieve big with their collaborative spirit.
Early on Rypple struggled to arouse interest and engage people with the brand. The problem was sign ups. The team thought that there had to be a better way to persuade prospects. They had heard about the potential of explainer video to boost sign ups.
But, the team was rather experimental, and didn’t go all in. Instead, they took an even smarter approach. One you and any other SaaS product owner would love to try out.
Here’s what they did:
The team at Rypple performed A/B testing by creating three separate landing pages. Here’s what the landing pages looked like:
- First one included a text-based landing page
- Second landing page featured some text, and a testimonial video from the Facebook page
- Third landing page was rather simple including only an explainer video
And, to everyone’s surprise, the landing page that featured a whiteboard explainer did business. The visual story told using whiteboard animation was emotive, and resonated perfectly with the target audience.
The reward: Rypple saw success, with the conversion rate soaring to 20%! A massive feat for just a landing page that featured nothing but only an explainer video.
If you’re too skeptical about the idea of placing an explainer ad on your landing page, maybe you’re better off with the A/B testing method. You have nothing to lose. Instead, you only gain more actionable insights.
3. RankWatch: Sign ups go up by 27%
This is a really impressive one, and I love to mention it everytime I talk about how explainer videos can contribute to your brand’s growth. These are pure gems, and can literally change the trajectory of your product’s growth in no time.
The same happened with Rankwatch, a marketing software popular for digital marketing experts. The product was complex, early on people had some degree of knowledge about how it would help them. Sadly, the demonstration wasn’t vivid enough. It wasn’t compelling enough.
Digital marketers needed impersonal messaging. Reading through texts, and figuring out value was even thought as useful back then, yet it wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Not all, if any, digital marketers would prefer blog posts to learn about the new SaaS sensation.
So, the marketers of Rankwatch had to think it through. They needed to not only cut through the noise, but show exactly how they stood apart from the rest of the pack. The answer was an animated explainer video.
It was witty, funny, and was a sneak peek into the challenges of a digital marketer. The avatar was placed perfectly to show the pain points of Search marketers of the time.
It couldn’t have been any better than an explainer video walking you through a disruptive tool that would shake up the SEO industry, and skyrocket growth for thousands of brands.
It showed how agencies could white label a SaaS solution, and market it to their clients. How freelancers can manage their business, and bag more clients, with the assistance of a powerful SaaS tool in marketing, Rankwatch.
The promise was that the tool would keep an eye on a website’s search performance, and advise smartly to provide you the leverage to outdo your competitors, again watching your rank.
The Result:
The explainer brought in 27% more sign ups for Free trials, and eventually made it a lot easier for the sales team to convert more prospects. And from there on, the path to growth for both the client and the RankWatch was crystal clear.
4. CaseComplete: Conversion goes up by 23%
Our fifth case study comes from a project management tool, Case Complete. The product was immensely valuable to the target customers. However, the messaging to convey its utility was perhaps not as effective as any SaaS product would have today.
On top of that, the declining attention span of visitors also made things worse for the company. As a result of poor engagement with content, they began to lose customers. Funnel dried up. No leads were being caught.
Problem was that Case Complete had been too old school. People don’t want to read long blocks of text, and understand how the product worked. Perhaps, it was through a demonstration of the software tool that the product marketers of the time could instill the utility this task management tool had to offer.
Interestingly, the product team had already witnessed the success stories of Rypple, and DropBox with explainer creatives. Inspired by their astoundingly brilliant results, they also went out to test an explainer creative for their own product.
They expected the conversion rate to spike up by a noteworthy 5 percent.
To their surprise, the explainer video campaign went viral, and it boosted conversions up to 23 per cent for the tool. It wasn’t an overnight success.
However, the product team recalls how the explainer video got the word out, and gradually began to persuade prospects, and quash objections, which resulted in impressive growth in sales. You too can pursue a similar goal with the support of a video animation agency.
Wrap up
Let’s wrap this one up. We literally covered four interesting case studies of explainer videos. We learnt how explainer video could be your ultimate tool to outdo competitors, and immerse your target audience without much effort. Investing in an explainer video is likely to boost your sales.