Explainer videos are one of the most effective ways to convey your message, engage your audience, and absolutely crush your marketing goals. But you’ve probably come to the conclusion that you can’t do it yourself, so it’s time to hire a professional who can make your video vision a reality. Let’s take a close look at explainer videos, why you should hire an explainer video agency, and a few considerations before signing a contract.
What is an explainer video?
An explainer video is a short video that showcases your product, service, or company in an engaging way. To best capture the audience’s attention, they are typically quite concise and range from 30-90 seconds. While brief, this type of video is one of the most effective video marketing strategies for businesses.
Why do you need an explainer video agency?
In this day and age, you can create a very basic explainer video that resues a library of images, icons, and effects for next to nothing. While the results from using these basic softwares are unremarkable, if it just comes down to budget and expenses, that may be the right route to take. But if you want a custom, uniquely branded explainer video that engages and delights your audience on a personal level, you’ll need (professional) humans to get the job done.
Whether you need a series of videos or a single masterpiece, a video agency is essential to achieving your explainer video goals.
7 things to consider before you hire an explainer video agency
We don’t recommend hiring the first agency that pops up on Google. There are several considerations to note before you hire an explainer video agency.
1. Expertise and experience
How much experience or industry-specific knowledge does a potential agency have? While not 100% necessary, an agency with industry experience can help you uncover insights about your market and competitors.
However, that’s not to say that market experience should be a deal breaker. Every explainer video company should conduct extensive research on your company, audience, and competitors before production. The most important factor is expertise and creativity. A company that has 20+ years of experience creating high-converting explainer videos may be a better choice than a company with 2 years of experience within a specific industry. As you interview explainer video agencies, ask for a portfolio of their work to ensure that the quality and creativity of their videos are up to par.
2. Reviews and testimonials from past clients
Just like you memorize a restaurant's online menu before you eat there for the first time, you should take agency online reviews seriously. If there are alarming reviews, don’t be afraid to ask about them and learn more about why that project went south. You can tell a lot about an agency based on how they speak about past clients.
It’s also best practice to ask for references to contact (and actually contact them). A beautiful portfolio is great, but it’s even better if you can hear from the clients themselves.
3. Communication, communication, communication
Communication is the most important part of any relationship. How do you prefer to communicate with agencies? How often do you like to be updated on a project? An agency should be flexible and accommodating to your communication needs.
The communication process is critical to the success of your project. You need ample opportunity to give feedback during each stage of the process. The last thing you want to do is wait 5 weeks for an unusable video.
4. Interest in your product or service
This may seem obvious, but it doesn’t matter if an agency can make the most beautiful animations in the world, if they aren’t interested in your product, the end product will show that.
And again, this doesn’t mean that an agency needs to have experience in your industry. If you’re showcasing your product or service and they don’t seem attentive or intrigued to learn more, it’s likely not the right fit. You need to hire an explainer video agency that is just as passionate about your company as you are.
5. Understand your goals
Before you start interviewing explainer video agencies, you need to understand what goals you want to accomplish for the video. What do you want an explainer video? Do you want to simplify your product or service for users? Do you want to generate leads or increase engagement? Are you interested in improving your SEO with video search?
Creating an explainer video for the sake of making one may not be the best use of your resources. Understanding the why behind this campaign is crucial for success.
Once you decide your goals, you need to convey them to potential agencies. The right agency won’t just have incredible animators; it needs to be a group of savvy marketers who understand and can achieve marketing goals.
6. Timeframe and deadlines
Be clear about the timeframe of your video explainer and whether or not there is some wiggle room. If you have a strict deadline, communicate that with the agency upfront so they can decide whether they can realistically make that work or not.
As you discuss deadlines, remember that just because a video is short does not mean that it can be turned around quickly. A 30-second video may seem simple, but when you consider pre-production, production, and post-production activities, the process can be quite time-intensive.
7. Stick to your budget
Your choice of agency will heavily depend on your budget. Whether you have $3,000 or $30,000 to spend, there’s an agency out there that can work with your budget to produce a captivating explainer video.
So how do you choose the perfect explainer video agency?
Remember, you’re not solely searching for videomakers; you need storytellers. You want an agency that can interview and challenge you to write and produce a creative and compelling explainer video. Take a look at some of our work and get in touch with our team to get started on your organization's explainer video!
.png)