Every year there’s a new trend that industry insiders declare as the future of marketing. Motion Graphics was championed in 2014, but unlike most fleeting trends, motion graphics are still very much in vogue.
Primarily because motion graphics are the video marketing era’s answer to the infographic. An accessible and entertaining way to disseminate complex information, infographics allowed you to capture consumer information in a way that a wall of text could not.
Now, in an era where Video has dethroned Content for the crown, motion graphics do the same.
Essentially, motion graphics are just graphic design in movement. The practice of taking a still, flat design and adding dimension to it using the laws of time and space.
But even if that description doesn’t ring any bells, you would have definitely seen them. Across TV, film, apps, advertising and virtually any medium that requires some sort of kinesis, motion graphics are ubiquitous.
The Rise of Video Marketing
By 2020, Cisco predicted that 80% of all internet traffic will be video – so the potential market for your video content is huge.
Especially when considering the influential reach the medium has. Web users spend an average of 19 hours a month watching videos, with a 60% of shoppers watching product videos while making decisions to buy, with a 174% of shoppers actually making a purchase after watching a video.
With video galvanising the content marketing industry over the last two years, you would have thought that every business would be populating their websites and social media with moving pictures.
However, despite 72% of content marketers saying that creating video content is their number one priority – they are struggling to make content that is original, compelling and effective.
But creating solid video content is difficult. Unless you have the budget to invest in great equipment, or better yet, a team specialised in scripting, designing, editing and creating video content, it’s going to come across more Blair Witch than Coca Cola.
Good video content should do 5 of 5 things.
- It should guide your leads all the way through the buyer journey.
- It should understand what your audience wants, and it should give it to them in the most consumable way possible. Video is so shareable because it is inherently passive for the viewer, serve them what they want on a platter and cut it up into bite-size chunks.
- It should be worth the watch. Whether that’s because your video is funny, engaging, useful or inspirational, your video needs to provide value.
- It needs to be able to be distributed easily and effectively. Your video should be able to reach your audience where they spend the majority of their time and engage them there.
- It creates a consistent brand identity. Every bit of your marketing should make up a cohesive narrative that tells the audience exactly who you are and what you stand for.
Easy, right?
Not so much. But, this is where motion graphics can help you.
Motion graphics enables you to consistently hit all five bases in a way that is not only far more cost-effective than traditional live action video content but also more effective overall.
In fact, if you’ve got an old infographic lying around and an hour spare, you might be able to make a fairly rudimentary motion graphics video before the end of office hours today.
But if you’re still not picking up what we’re laying down, here are the ways motion graphics can revolutionise your marketing campaigns.
The Reasons Why You Should Be Using Motion Graphics in Your Marketing
1. It creates a cohesive brand identity
Live action has its constraints, and one of those is in the way it can present your brand identity. Unless your budget is endless, there are only so many ways you can incorporate your branding into your video without it coming across as too much.
Brand awareness and association is the real muscle power behind driving conversions. After all, if a customer has never heard of your brand, how can they buy from it?
With motion graphics, there are no limits to the number of ways you can subtly incorporate your brand into your content. Presenting your brand’s message in not only the script, but also the choice of music, shape, colour, design and even the movement can culminate in a very powerful impression.
In an oversaturated marketplace, simply being visible doesn’t cut it anymore. You need to be instantly recognisable, and more importantly, memorable. By allowing you to seed your brand message through every aspect of your video content, motion graphics presents you with a level of control simply not feasible in live action.
2. It makes the boring, exciting
If your audience enjoys your video ads, it increases brand association by 139% and purchase intent by a whopping 97%.
What do you think your audience would enjoy more? A video of a person explaining your company to the camera – or what motion graphics can create, which is a world without limitations where you can craft a truly engaging narrative. Even the dry-est technical copy can become an Oscar-worthy story with the aid of a little design. Especially when you integrate motion graphics with other complementary mediums, such as animation.
Evoking emotion in marketing has been proven to positively impact consumer decision-making, even in B2B markets.
And with people’s attention spans getting shorter, a 1000-word blog post won’t cut it. You need to get their attention – and keep it, fast.
3. Higher retention and engagement rates
65% of viewers watch more than ¾ of a video, which is more than we can say about text-based content. So, if you have a message to get across (and why wouldn’t you if you’re creating content?), motion graphics and video might be the way to go.
On top of that your audience is 10 times more likely to share and engage with your video content than your blog posts or photos.
Video continuously shows to be the medium that would drive engagement higher. Motion graphics are no exception from this. Facebook videos, for one, have 135% more organic reach than their image counterparts.
4. It’s shareable
Today, the world is shifting from laptops and desktops to mobile devices for content consumption.
In fact, more than 50% of users watch videos using their smartphones or tablets, and the great thing about motion graphics content is that any device can play it (unlike Flash videos that cannot be played on iPhones and iPads). This then gives you more opportunities to reach your target market with user-friendly content.
With 100 million hours of videos watched on Facebook every day, and 10 billion daily video views on Snapchat, social media offers a vast opportunities to get your content seen and shared. And motion graphics enables you to make great, viral content, far easier than any other medium – why? Because it just looks cool.
5. It offers big return for little investment
One of the most important things your content has to offer is value. It needs to be both informative and entertaining.
In the current media landscape, people want facts more than conjecture, data over opinion. If you can provide this effectively and consistently in your content, they will trust you more and want to build a relationship with you.
Motion graphics enable you to distil down complex data into into bigger-picture stories and insights that people can understand and apply to their own lives. After all, you may be saying that sales tripled, but actually seeing the chart grow makes a stronger and more memorable impact.
Best of all, viewers love motion graphics because watching video is an inherently passive experience that requires little investment on their part. Rather than actively sifting through a 1500 word article, viewers can sit back, relax and enjoy the show.
Motion graphics content isn’t just a brand building exercise, it has been proven time and time again to successfully drive through conversions. Whether it’s in the form of an explainer video, a social video or even a presentation, embedding motion graphics content onto your website has been proven to increase the chance of a front page Google result by 53 times, and shown to double click-through rates when utilised in email campaigns.
But the number one reason for using video in your content marketing plan? Motion graphics and video convert more customers, with recent research showing that 71% of marketers say video conversion rates outperform other marketing content.
Need we say more?
Author Bio:
Paul Silcox is the creative mind behind Ocula Motion Graphics. An energetic and creative Bristol motion graphics and 3D animation company, with a passion and a talent for amazing visual design Ocula has been creating inspirational visual design since 2007.
