There’s really no overstating the importance of using explainer videos as part of your business’ content marketing campaign. It has now become the most commonly-created type of video and is used by at least 86% of businesses as a marketing tool.
Creating a stunning explainer video is one thing and choosing the right place to put it is quite another.
No matter how eye-pleasing your explainer videos are, if you don’t place them in the right place, it won’t get you anywhere.
Oh, no. All that time and effort for nothing?!
That being said, when you finally find the best place for your explainer videos, you can reap all the benefits you deserve— Boosting brand awareness? Generating more trust? Answering common questions? Increasing conversion rates?
You can achieve all of them.
But, the thing is, there are too many platforms available for your explainer videos in today’s digital world.
Social media platforms sound too convincing since there are at least 4 billion people using them. What about your website? And let’s not forget about popular video hosting sites too!
You may think that placing your explainer videos in different places means more exposure, which can translate into maximum results. The more you share, the more eyeballs you will get, right?
Nope. It doesn’t work that way, though.
Placing your explainer videos in too many different places would only make it hard for you to track the performance on each platform.
That is why you need to start to find the best place to host your explainer videos.
One question now pops up in your mind, “where is the best place to host my explainer videos, then?”
We’ve asked professional video marketers the same question.
Here are their answers…
Where
Homepage
If your website is your house, then the homepage is like the front door.
You can say that the homepage is an essential part of the website to create the first positive impression for the visitor. It acts as the entry point page visitors see when they first visit a site.
When someone lands on your website, most of them still have no clue who you are and what your brand is all about.
This is what makes explainer videos a perfect addition to the homepage. Check it out:
Not only will explainer videos show you who you are, but they will also convince visitors to go inside for more. It can grab visitors' attention right off the bat without being overbearing.
Think of your explainer videos as one of those really cool door knockers for your brand.
The first experience new potential customers have with our business and brand. Therefore, you should focus on giving them a delightful, positive browsing experience right off the bat by including an explainer video.
Explainer videos do a perfect job in providing your website visitors with crucial information they need while learning your brand without overwhelming them.
Since it also showcases our unique selling points, many marketers think that the homepage would be a perfect place to host it.
When you add an explainer video on your homepage, you don’t have to write bulky-text paragraphs that look boring to introduce and describe your business.
A single explainer video looks more eye-pleasing, makes your homepage more elegant and minimalistic, and of course, does the explanation a thousand times better.
Natasha Rei, Digital Marketing Manager at Explainerd
We place our explainer video on the homepage for one reason. We are a brand-new video production company, and our blog is the biggest information source about the business. That being said, we strive to make our page attractive and engaging for our visitors.
We believe that full written content would be too dull for our target audience. If they visit our blog, they intend to learn more about our company in a short time. Therefore, reading all the textual information can drive them away.
With videos on our homepages, visitors find it easier to know more about our business. Moreover, we find that our homepage contributed a lot to our lead generation. Most of our leads fill out the direct form right after visiting the homepage.
In addition, we also see a surge in traffic from our explainer videos, and more importantly, they are organic. That's why we love adding an explainer video on our homepage, as it helps us drive traffic and generate more leads.
Brad Smith, CEO of Wordable
We wanted to immediately communicate the benefits & end results customers would get from using our product without using too much text that would go unread or random screenshots and images that weren't actually relevant product examples.
Farzad Rashidi, Co-Founder at Respona
We put an explainer video on the homepage to help users understand what our product is all about. We can educate our visitors better using homepage explainer videos.
We believe that providing them with mediocre homepage text-heavy content wouldn't take us anywhere. Also, explainer videos can make our homepage design look more professional and catchy.
Mark Ankucic, Content Strategist at SkedSocial
Our nurture period from awareness to trial is short, so our goal is to make that journey as frictionless as possible. Having the explainer video in the hero of the homepage gives visitors an instant chance to know what they'll encounter in the product and decide more quickly if it's for them.
We've found that when a visitor knows what to expect before they start a trial, they're more likely to start a trial. I'd highly recommend this for any other products out there with a short nurture period.
Chris Makara, Founder at Bulkly
One of the best places I have used an explainer video is within an overlay/popup on the site. It allows me to visually show what the headline and messaging promise.
I sort of alluded to this in the previous answer, but it really helps reinforce the headline and messaging of the overlay.
As a result, a user can easily see exactly how this is possible and works. It has resulted in an increase of trial users that ultimately convert because they see the value of the service.
Nadiia Shevelieva, Chief marketing officer at Trust
Our home page is crucial because we had lots of cases where customers had a hard time figuring out what our product is and how it is used. That's why we place our explainer videos on our homepage.
We want our visitors to immediately realize what our product does and who our target audience is. The one minute they spend watching the explainer is usually quicker and more effective than going through several landing pages.
It gets the most traffic so reducing our bounce rate and improving conversions was crucial for this page. With a properly placed explainer video, we decreased the bounce rate by as much as 40% in some cases, and conversions picked up noticeably too.
Lindsey Allard, CEO and Co-Founder at PlaybookUX
We believe that most visitors will browse your homepage before doing anything else. We worked hard to present all relevant information on the front page so we can quickly show what we do, how we do it, and why they should work with us.
A few videos on the front page are there for whoever wants to take a deeper look and learn more. We wanted to make it as easy as possible for visitors to find these explainer videos and not have to go digging for them, or else our chance of missing out on the sale decreases.
Landing page
Landing pages are those essential pages on your website where visitors are only a few clicks away from converting.
This is where you can lead visitors to a specific product, service or offer, and encourage them to take action.
Explainer videos can be the centrepiece of your landing pages, and they will work quietly alongside copy and images to win over visitors. Therefore, they should be used on your landing pages whenever they directly support the offer at hand.
It also plays an important role in generating trust from a new visitor. They don't have to read all those text-based product descriptions; by simply clicking on the video, they will have a clear understanding of what we can do to help them and their brand in a matter of seconds.
When you include an explainer video to your landing pages, it would be much easier for you to cover and explain a lot of information in a short period of time. It helps you ensure that your visitors understand what we offer so that they have a clear expectation of what they will get.
This, in turn, will help them to generate interest and trust -- then, confidently make a purchase.
Some professional marketers who aim to increase their conversion rates often make landing pages as the best place to host their explainer videos on the website.
Tīna Druva, Video Marketing Lead at Printful
We feature our tutorials and explainer videos throughout the customer journey on our website and user dashboards. Also, our support team uses them to help customers solve issues. All our video content is available on our YouTube channels that we run in several languages.
People should find the explainer videos at the right time in their customer journey. The moment they might ask, ”How do I do that?”, they should see a video that helps them figure it out. At Printful, we work to define these crucial moments for our customers.
It’s important to make it easy for them to use our service, so they can succeed.
Video gives a great opportunity to reach new audiences, and YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. So we use video and YouTube SEO strategies to grow our channels in multiple languages, and it has solidified us as niche experts in several markets.
There’s someone out there right now googling a question related to your business or product. So why not be the one who gives them the answer?
Vikas Kalwani, Partnerships Manager at uSERP
Explainer videos generally do well on landing pages as well as product pages.
Explainer videos outperform images in terms of making the user understand the value proposition of the product. Moreover, the user is able to clearly see the product in action.
All they have to do is to click and watch the video and get a better insight into the product you offer. Therefore, we have more opportunities to convert visitors into paying customers seamlessly.
Brooks Conkle, Owner at Kea Marketing LLC
Placing the explainer on our marketing landing page allowed us to design the page in order to put 100% of the focus on the video. The goal was to reduce confusion calls to action in order to maximize views and not have our new potential customers get lost.
Azzam Sheikh, Digital Marketing Strategist at Money Advisor
Traffic was driven to the landing pages, specifically from Google Ads. The objective was for visitors to complete the 3 step lead generation form. The explainer video was placed above the fold at top but below the title and description.
The explainer video loaded immediately and above the fold, capturing the attention of visitors, and consequently, visitors spending longer on the page, but ultimately it convinced them to complete the lead generation form.
Testing the landing page with/without the explainer video in various positions proved that having the explainer video appear at the top was the best placement.
Social Media
Sometimes, you need to go beyond your own website to boost your explainer videos views and encourage more people to take actions.
And one of the best platforms for it is none other than social media.
Who’s not on social media nowadays? Huh?
There are more than 4 billion social media users worldwide (of course, the number keeps growing each day!). Those places are most likely to become a go-to place for your target audience to hang out and spend most of their time online.
It means that you have higher chances to grab more eyeballs and appeal to a broader audience.
One of the most-used social media platforms for hosting explainer videos is YouTube. The second-biggest search engine worldwide helps you to get more eyeballs and strengthen your online visibility on the platform as well as the search engine results.
That said, you might consider optimizing every explainer video you upload to make them SEO-friendly so that your audience can easily find the video.
By optimizing your videos, you also have a higher chance to appear on the top pages of Google SERPs.
It's safe to say that your explainer videos add an extra boost to your overall SEO effort in the first place. It helps you to generate more traffic to our website and collect more qualified leads.
If you use explainer videos to boost SEO performance, show your business personality, and encourage them to interact with your brand, then social media platforms are hands down the best places to host the videos.
Gaurav Sharma, CEO & Founder at Attrock
The best place to add an explainer video is on your website, either on the homepage or the product/service page.
The reason is that explainer videos help prospective customers understand your offering better and make an informed purchase decision.
Anyone who is checking out your website is already interested in your product/service, and an explainer video can nudge them in the right direction.
Joseph Ongsoyco, SEO Specialist at Clipchamp
We put our explainer video on YouTube to direct viewers to our landing page to bring our website a decent amount of traffic and better conversion.
It is good also for the visitors that they are reading from a landing page area, understand our offerings, and have a chance to make them convert -- or at least make them stay longer on the page.
Jack Zmudzinski, Senior Marketing Specialist at Future Processing
Posting explainer videos on YouTube allowed us to reach our audience through another channel. We've always aimed to build a solid online presence and get more people to recognize our brand.
Therefore, when it comes to explainer videos we post, it's mostly about brand awareness and how people perceive us.
About Us Page
The About Us page offers marketers the opportunity to let their visitors get to know their company. This is a chance for them to introduce themselves and the kind of business they do to the visitor.
But, relying on those bulky paragraphs alone to tell your brand stories won’t do any tricks.
Adding an explainer video to the About Page can put a face on your brand. It allows you to highlight your business background story, unique selling points, how you work, etc.
Therefore, it helps build a stronger and more meaningful relationship between you and visitors.
When a visitor connects with your brand, they tend to explore more about your brand. That’s how you have a higher chance to grow your audience base and increase your conversion rate.
At this point, if you want to show your company culture and show your team, -- as well as educating our website visitors about your brand and help them familiarize themselves with your offerings, an explainer video would be a great addition to your About Us page.
Cali Barnstead, SEO & Content Strategist at Foundation Marketing
Explainer videos drive results from two locations depending on their goal. First, a short platform overview video should live on your homepage; this will provide a quick and insightful look into your product or service. We've tried to put our explainer video on our homepage.
Now, we add an explainer video on the Team Page to learn more about who works behind the curtain. Therefore, they can trust our brand easily.
In addition, an overview video on the Team Page will highlight all aspects of our brand, which will encourage further site investigation to learn more. Not to mention that our explainer videos drive conversions since our online audiences love to see who they are working with rather than solely reading about it.
Email Newsletter
Email marketing isn't dead but it’s changing. It’s evolving.
No one wants to read plain, bulky, text-heavy emails from a brand bragging about their products, right?
In this sea of noise and information, today’s customers only need more motivation to open your letters and engage with your content.
This is where explainer videos can be used to give subscribers or leads an improved experience and engage them.
With simple embed explainer videos and catchy subject lines, you can build stronger relationships with your clients, generate leads, and strengthen the content behind your brand.
The stats show that adding a video on an email can increase open rates by 19%, increase click-through rates by 65%, and lower unsubscribe rates by 26%. It’s no surprise that some marketers also host and distribute their explainer videos on their email newsletter.
If you run an email newsletter campaign, embedding an explainer video may be a powerful, effortless way to improve your email performance.
Suchita Chopra, Content Marketing Manager at StoryXpress
We started inserting our explainer videos in our weekly newsletter to get the best results for our marketing campaign.
We are in the video business, and our newsletter is sent out to more than 100k users. Adding our explainer videos to the newsletter helped us in two ways. First - the videos get greater visibility, and second - the newsletter receives higher open and click-through rates.
We decided to hit two birds with one stone, and rather than crafting textual emails like everyone else; we started sending video newsletters. But yeah, as you do so, remember the pro tip - always add CTAs to your videos and make them actionable.
Others
Homepage, landing page, about us page, social media, and email newsletter can be such powerful channels to get your explainer videos seen and get your message across flawlessly.
That said, explainer video placement is not limited to those places.
Creating an explainer video and putting it on the article content can also add value. Moreover, if it's a power page—a long-form article. Let's say, for the sake of SEO.
Besides helping readers better understand what you cover, it's a win-win for those who prefer to watch videos instead of reading text.
It should come as no surprise that some marketers also put their explainer videos on their blog articles, onboarding page, application page, FAQ page, and more.
Remember, there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all platform or channel when it comes to explainer video distribution. It all boils down to the message you deliver and the purpose of your explainer video itself.
Zbigniew Drozdz, SEO Specialist at Booksy
We put explainer videos on our page about the management platform itself, not necessarily on the blog about the marketplace.
We got far longer dwell time, which contributed to our SERP rankings, which, in turn, generated more traffic. We also use YouTube for hosting—the videos can be accessed both from our site and from YouTube.
Olga Rusnak, Marketing Specialist at Coupler.io
We have tested several placements for our explainer videos:
- Our Help Center represents a collection of help articles. So, by placing this kind of video there, we wanted to improve the user experience on this page, giving our customers a choice - to watch a 4-minute video or review the tutorial.
- We also embed explainer videos in some of our blog posts. When we write a blog post, the aim of which is traffic generation, we still want to feature our product there. That's why we add a quick explainer video that will potentially grow awareness about our product (judging from our analytics, our blog readers like to review videos we embed into articles). The time users spend on these pages has increased.
- We also tested embedding explainer videos into emails (email onboarding) - the main goal of which was to help users activate (start using our product). This resulted in that videos showed the largest CTR (if compared to other clickable elements in the email).
Akash Naskar, Digital Marketing Manager at Kraftshala
We put the explainer video after the user has submitted the application, as this would give the user more information about our course and direct them to the next steps in the application process.
Out of 5700 leads, almost 50% watched the entire video. 80% of the leads who watched the video enrolled for our program. This video placement helped us convert 25% more leads than without the video.
Christopher Thoma, Marketing Manager at CareerAddict
We leveraged explainer videos to expand our audience and product awareness by publishing them on YouTube, where they could reach a broader and more diverse viewership.
What helped intensify their traction was by embedding these videos into relevant articles across our advice blog. This dual kind of approach not only enriched the content, providing readers with engaging and digestible insights, but also helped grow our YouTube audience.
This harmony between content and video helped us build a stronger, more engaged audience across both platforms — which ultimately encouraged more trust and sales.
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