30+ Experts Reveal How Explainer Videos Help Closing More Deals

Explainer videos are a great way to give potential customers a sneak peek into a product or service, without needing the manpower that scheduling and showing demos requires. At Visme, we keep our product explainer video right on our home page and several other transactional landing pages to help give potential users an exciting view into what they can expect from our graphic design software.

Since launching this video a few months ago, it's gotten hundreds of thousands of views from both existing and potential customers, helping us to improve conversions and get more people ready to sign up for our software. The upbeat background music also helps create a positive connection between us and the user.

Explainer videos are a great asset to any landing page as they're able to provide both audio and visual explanations into a product or service in a variety of different ways. Brands can easily inject their voice and personality into an explainer video to create a really fabulous introduction to what they offer.

We’ve seen many of our customers report that they increased their sales email response rates and conversion rates using personalized explainer videos in emails.

Personalization in sales is critical to rising above the noise and building a stronger relationship with customers. Sales Reps who spend time learning about the prospect they are emailing tend to see the best results. It’s obvious when you think about the cold emails you probably receive on a daily basis – they’re usually invasive, un-personalized, and obnoxiously generic.

An explainer video empowers a sales rep to make a short, sweet, and engaging pitch that stands out, builds trust, and tells a compelling story that leaves prospects wanting more and interested in your product or service.

The results? Research shows that Sales Reps who use video for prospecting, relationship-building, and sales emails see 5x higher open rates and 8x higher open-to-reply rates!

Here at ReferralCandy, we’ve seen the importance of explainer videos as a way to educate existing customers (which removes part of the workload of our customer success team!) and potential clients browsing different referral marketing options. We have two main types of explainer videos: A long demo webinar and a collection of short explainer videos.

The long demo webinar is the place where we cover referral marketing as a whole of how ReferralCandy works. It lasts slightly over 25 minutes, and it’s mostly aimed at those prospects who are considering the idea of starting a referral program but don’t even know what this strategy is about. On the other hand, the shorter explainer videos cover specific use cases of our software (how to integrate, how to test it, best practices, etc.) and don’t last more than 2 or 3 minutes each. These videos are mostly aimed towards customers who are going through their setup process and want to learn more about the tool or need to fix one specific problem.

I bet you know this phrase: a picture is worth a thousand words. But video is even better, and 54% of consumers absolutely agree with me. Although some products are quite easy to sell without video, services and SaaS products can increase their conversion by as much as 144% thanks to well-delivered explanation videos.

I’m a big fan of Dollar Shave Club, which delivered one of the best explanation videos (in fact, has been wildly viral, with nearly 27 million views). Thanks to this video, they sold 10x more products as people were watching it on their websites and sharing it with friends across their social networks.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that having a video that demonstrates the key features of your product or service will always pay off from an SEO standpoint. The more time users are spending on your page, the better the chance that page has to rank higher on Google. When they’re done well, explanation videos can become a great attention grabber and prevent a user from leaving your page. While written content is easy to scroll through in just a few seconds, video is far more engaging and, as a result, helps you improve the average time a visitor spends on your page.

Explainer videos are a great way to attract and engage people. An engaging explainer video makes people stay on the page for long and increase their chances of signing up for the product/service. This helps in better website performance and also results in a higher conversion rate.

Explainer videos make the users visualize the product in action smartly and more quickly. They can relate to their requirements and can visually analyze the solutions offered. The video demos that show the product in action help make the users comfortable using the product and make faster decisions. This results in increased sales.

Our support team also uses videos tutorials to respond to common queries and product demos. It has resulted in increased customer satisfaction. At the same time, as these videos are self-explanatory, sometimes users get their questions answered by watching these videos on our support page.

If you want the users to stay on your website for a longer period of time, provide them with something that will attract their attention – an image, a chart, an infographic or a video that is more engaging than plain text.

In fact, if it is a video that explains your product in an accessible way and conveys in the language tailored to the user, getting a lead can be several times higher.

Actions such as writing a script dedicated to the persona (the model client) and making an explainer video are worth serious consideration. An explainer video is also more accessible than a block of text. Therefore, users will be more willing to distribute it, which will help gain greater brand visibility and, of course, more links to the website.

Like any media, format, or platform, businesses shouldn't just jump into the next trend. Most businesses are obsessed with the next big thing rather than the biggest thing, which is the customer. Businesses shouldn't just jump into creating an explainer video just because a lot of businesses are doing so. Take blogging, for example. Businesses and people jumped onto the trend because they didn't want to miss out as they saw everyone doing the same thing. There are even two terms for this, 'jumping on the bandwagon' and FOMO - Fear of missing out.

Businesses need to understand why they are doing it and then figure out how it applies to their business. A purchase decision funnel is Awareness > Footfall > Conversion. The content you are creating, such as explainer videos, should fit into one of those steps. If it doesn't, then it's probably not worth doing. This is why businesses should question everything before they get an answer. The questions businesses should be asking is, will it get the business noticed and remembered more? Will it nurture the lead and move them along the lead funnel? If the answer is yes, then maybe it's worth pursuing.

If your potential customers don’t understand your product, how to use it, and why it’s the best solution out on the saturated market, chances are they won’t want to buy it. Hence, while you’re pouring a lot of enthusiasm and resources to ensure your product or service is the best offer on the market, remember to explain it to your audience, too.

Why explainer videos are the best means of doing it? Here’re 3 good reasons:

• Video is a powerful educational tool appealing to 2 main channels of perception – vision and audition – at once. Thus, it is a convenient and appealing source of information for people with various learning styles.
• An explainer video is fast and easy to consume.
• These videos are good for building trustworthy relationships with your audience as people see you being eager to share expertise and willing to help.

As a result, explainer videos help increase conversions and close more deals because they facilitate and accelerate customer journey on the ‘awareness’ and ‘consideration’ stages, making your prospects more interested in and confident about your offering.

Buyers will never choose your company unless you can prove to them that you can solve THEIR problems and concerns. With a short attention span of eight seconds, chances are cold emails and calls won't work well for your target audience. The solution? Explainer videos! Not only do dynamic and engaging videos keep your audience hooked, but they also help to tell more about your product and therefore convince your visitors to buy from you.

Want to know the best part? This content format works well for any business as 95% of people have watched an explainer video to learn about the product or service. At MC2, we often deal with people who are afraid of making the first purchase, so we need to help them overcome their concerns and explainer videos help a lot!

Plus, as a freelance SMM manager with several clients, I see that the popularity of explainer videos is on its rise and more and more brands give this content form a try to convince customers to buy from them. Additionally, it's easy to repurpose your explainer video and therefore make the most out of it, no matter what platforms you use for closing deals: website, social media profiles, landing pages, etc.

Numbers speak volumes: Consumers (85%) expect more video content from brands. More than that, 79% of them say they'd rather watch a video about a product than read a text on a homepage. And given that including a video on a landing page can boost conversion rate by up to 80%, it's no wonder that businesses have high hopes for explainer videos:

• They hook the audience, especially those visiting your website for the first time.
• They keep attention thanks to visual nature. And given that our attention span is short, videos are the best at keeping it.
• They quickly explain who you are and why you're great, influencing the buying decisions. At Bid4Papers, we've accomplished it by adding a "Watch Video" button so that users unwilling to read could learn about the service quickly.
• Thanks to their storytelling nature, videos help create an emotional bond with the audience, which is excellent for brand awareness and trust.
• Videos influence your search engines' visibility, attracting more traffic and, consequently, potential lead to your website. Plus, they are among the most shareable online content types, which can influence the number of closed deals in the long term.

In many cases with CRM clients, customers are looking for a specific set of features, working in a very specific way. Even though many CRMs offer similar functionalities, but they need change based on industry.

Explainer videos are the perfect way to let prospects know how a particular feature works. When the video shows the ease of using the feature, the customer is looking for, that can trigger an instant conversion. Explainer videos shorten the conversion process. Prospects, in many cases, don't have to sign up for a free trial and try how the features work. Videos can directly provide them with walkthroughs and save them a lot of time to make the decision.

Customers are more likely to buy a product if they truly understand it. By using explainer videos you can demonstrate functionality, and encourage the customer to imagine themselves using the product. A picture is worth a thousand words, as the saying goes, but a video is worth much more than that when trying to close a deal.

The age of businesses differentiating themselves through text alone is over. The internet has become too competitive for that. In the 6 businesses I have started, I've seen the growing marketing impact of video content first-hand. Video increases engagement and time spent on page significantly. More touch points inevitably lead to higher conversions.

Getting Branded explainer videos in the blended search results have produced great results for our ISP company, as it gives the user a unique option to answer a question they may be having. Explainer videos are a great way to educate your customer, soothe pain points, and create a compelling Call-to-Action all within an entertaining video.

We have produced many explainer videos about our rural high-speed internet technology to inform and excite our customers about our 30 Day Free Trial and get more subscribers. Technology can be confusing to some consumers, so easing some tension with a complete walk-through video or tutorial on how to set up a Router is key for people to adopt your brand.

If you know some basic YouTube SEO, you can gain traction quickly, and get even more traffic to your website to make sales. The other amazing part of using short elevator pitch, style videos for your business is how to repurpose them. Once you have produced an animation or explainer video, you can embed that video in Press Releases, News Stories, Online Directories, Your Website, and your companies Social Media Profiles. This type of marketing pays you back on Return on Investment as digital videos are very cost-effective with a lot of options for media delivery.

Explainer videos provide a pivotal tool for staff training and upskilling. Internally, we use video resources for education on complex topics.

1. Education. From copywriting to graphic design, an explainer video can help an employee improve their skills. This can be seen through the rise in MasterClass and Skillshare, which are two mediums leading the way when it comes to premium online video education. Video resources like these can help educate employees across a wide range of topics, from beginner to advanced techniques. In turn, these can be used in their day to day work to help businesses achieve higher production outcomes — both in quality and speed.
2. Staff upskilling. Upskilling is an important aspect of any workplace and is often more effective when a demonstration occurs. Using explainer videos through screen recording and voice over can quickly educate others on processes that would be difficult to explain through text or verbal communication. Through education and upskilling, businesses can invest in their employees and maximise their potential. Explainer videos are one of the best ways to do this and should be a core part of any onboarding or upskilling program within a company.

As marketers, we often focus on data and statistics a little bit too much and forget about the human element of what we do. Quite simply, explainer videos make the customer journey friendlier and easier to digest.

By nature, our eyes are going to be drawn to a video more so than to an image. In this case, from a simple numbers perspective, you're already better off. Lastly, most people are lazy and don't want to read your website or ad content anymore. They want to be told what they should know.

When looking to use an explainer video to improve your conversion rate, your best bet is to ditch all the fancy graphics and special effects and keep your message simple and informative. The most successful explainer videos are the ones which demonstrate a product or service clearly and in a way that’s easy to understand. Most importantly, the video ends with the website address as a clear, concise call to action.

A successful explainer video for conversion rate impact will grab customer attention with an eye-catching introduction, get the message across within two minutes, demonstrate the product or service clearly so that the customer can imagine him or herself using it and end with a strong call to action. Explainer videos that convert are those which excel at just one thing - demonstrating a great product or service.

Having an explainer video for your product/service increases your chances of getting more potential customers as it is perfect for explaining clearly – how it makes people’s life easier by solving a particular problem. It can convince your audience why they should choose your product instead of anything else.

Every business wants visitors to stay on their page for the longest time possible to increase ROI. An explainer video can help you attain this goal by attracting users, increasing the average time of their visits, and decreasing the bounce rate.

• While producing the video, make sure that you think from your audience’s point of view. Imagine the questions or confusion they might have about your product/service.
• Keep it short. People get bored easily, so it’s best to keep your video within the 2 min mark.
• Having one or more Call-to-Actions (CTAs) is a must. Also, try placing them at various points in the video to see which one works the best.
• Make your video’s thumbnail enticing, so that would make the users want to click on it.

Explainer videos give a unique opportunity to talk to people without being in the room with them. If it’s done right, the conversions can be instant with it. The secret to that is to highlight the problem rather than the solution at the start of the video.

Good explainer videos come in a story format, where you highlight (and amplify) the issue to connect with the right audience. Then move to present the solution in a one-liner and follow with its unique selling points and key features. Depending on the product, you would either provide info that increases the trust of your message or key results and then finish with a clear call to action.

While there is no perfect video duration for an explainer video as it depends on product, problem, and industry, I tend to like short ones (45-90 seconds) and, if needed, divert people to a website where they can find all other information.

We start our clients out with top of funnel ads where we share their stories and reasons why. We purposely keep these very light and do not include calls to actions in them in order to boost engagement.

The prospects who watch these videos past 15 seconds or longer are then fed our explainer videos. This is an essential step in establishing authority for our clients in the minds of their prospects. Then the folks who watch the explainer videos are then fed our offer videos.

Once a prospect is fed a few explainer videos, we send them to the bottom of funnel ads with our offers. In a nutshell, this is what we found works best for our agency and clients:

1. The story videos capture the attention of the prospect and funnel them to our explainer videos.
2. While the explainer videos build up authority.
3. They offer videos are where we get the prospects to buy our clients' products or services.

If we removed either the story or explainer videos from the funnel, I would be taking your order at Taco Bell because my agency would be in a world of hurt without them.

When it comes to conversion rate optimization, I tend to follow the LIFT model. And from my experience, improving the clarity of your offering is one of the most important factors in CRO. One way to improve clarity is creating an explainer video for your product or service.

An explainer video can capture everything you want to say and convey it in a more digestible way to your audience. Many studies have shown that making your service or products clearer to your audience improves your conversion rate. In this day and age, being too sophisticated with your copywriting will confuse your target audience and make you unwilling to take action.

In the past few years, the rise of youtube is another indicator that we prefer to watch a 2 min video about a topic than spending 10-15min scrolling up and down on a landing page trying to understand what’s in it for me? Generally speaking, if you have the resource of passion for being in front of a camera, video content is the way to go for your brand moving forward.

Video content is magnetic in a way that plain text isn't. Our own experience with a simple SMS explainer video completely backs this up. Before we created our 1-minute explainer video, we were struggling to get across our core USP effectively. To make our point, we needed about two paragraphs of text, which most people couldn't be bothered to read. Before we created the explainer video, the conversion rate to our sign up page was a modest 3.5%.

We felt sure that we could improve this and used a simple video template from Theme Forest to create a professional and low-cost video. After three months of the video appearing in a prominent position on our home page, our conversion to the signup page had jumped to 14.1% and had been viewed more than 2600 times.

A common mistake that many companies make is trying to be too creative or original. No one is interested in watching a spinning logo or elaborate, time consuming intro. Explainer videos should get quickly to the point and last no more than 2 or 3 minutes. The key is to keep things short and simple which will keep your costs down too.

Explainer videos are the secret weapon used by many marketing agencies. One of the best examples that I have ever seen online is at Kingkong. They have developed a super clever and catchy landing page. This simple 2-minute video reveals just one of the strategies we use to explode sales.

Imagine what all 5 of them could do for your business? And they have a giant animated play button that, when we clicked, brings the 2-minute video up. From an SEO perspective, this gives amazing dwell time, I mean your site loaded, and they stay for 2 minutes, and that is before they even read a word on your site.

But here is where the best part is yet to come, by using an explainer video you have wowed the visitor in minutes and pre-framed them for your services. And then, by positioning a strong call to action below and repeating this CTA throughout your website, you have a huge chance to convert the visitor to take the action you want.

Explainer videos help businesses close more deals in 4 ways.

• They are memorable. Study after study shows that people remember explainer videos better than any other type of advertising.
• They help with the authenticity of your product. Good explainer videos don't sound like ads. In fact, they look more like a necessary add-on to the product; that serves to showcase what the product can do and the amazing results that come from using it.
• They build an emotional attachment with their target audience. It's partly because of all the audience research that went into making the video, and partly because explainer videos use language and visuals designed to "target" the audience's pain points and soft spots.
• They're more memorable (compared to their text counterpart). Explainer videos do a better job in passing the message, compared to their text counterpart, even if the message is exactly the same.

It's a matter of content format, and people prefer watching videos when they have a choice.

Think of 'explainer videos' as a first introduction. Your video allows you to set the stage, tone, and tell a compelling story in a creative light. Consumers are increasingly relying on explainer videos to find the right product, so it is vital you do it right.

Quality, conciseness, and transparency are king. This means you need to organically highlight your product, provide concrete data (case studies), and compare your superior product to your competitors. Why? This is a chance for you to persuade your consumers. In fact, this may be the only chance you get, so make it count.

Our biggest uptick in conversions has come from nurturing our existing audience with explainer videos and articles. We spend more time creating content to educate our audience than we do try to sell to them. Whether it's explaining how to achieve a particular outcome like buying your first home or explaining a concept within our niche, you can waste a lot of money driving traffic to your site.

And I see so many of our competitors constantly spending more and more money to bring in new leads. But it's way more cost-effective to re-target your existing leads and nurture them – especially when it comes to products or services with a longer sales cycle. And if I can capture someone just as they begin to explore a subject, I don't have to compete with others for that client when they transition to a stage where they're ready to buy.

We at Qualzz use Hubspot as our CRM tool. Of late we observed that we no more reach to the Hubspot support team for any queries or clarifications. We just head to their website content section and look for the instruction videos.

Due to this approach, we not only saved our time and resources but also started exploring more features and options available in the application. Such is the power of videos. We started following the same approach for Qualzz and emphasizing on creating more video content for our product. This has helped us not only in SEO rankings but also reduced our support tickets. I would suggest any startups to start creating video content right from the beginning of their journey. Over a period of time, they become very good assets for the organization.

Video is the best format for conveying information effectively because it can grab attention much better and hold it for much longer. Merely conveying factual information is not enough. It has to be educating and entertaining. Smart business owners are figuring this out and using videos to educate, entertain, and introduce their products using webinars.

Webinars are essentially live videos supercharged with interactive components. Webinar platforms usually have specifically designed tools to make the offer attractive and prominent. To conclude, explainer videos are the most effective and entertaining way to communicate product value. By hosting webinars, you can add an interactive element on top of that.

Video is versatile, engaging, and easy to share across multiple platforms. But it’s very easy to mess up. In our 15 years of experience in video production and motion graphics, we have come up with a few key pieces of advice for our clients.

• Create a strong script. To make the most of a product or service sales video, you need to start with a STRONG script.
• Use a voiceover. We have noticed that videos with voiceover have much better engagement because they are easier to follow. You have a voice guiding you through the video and feel more friendly, so viewers connect to them more easily.
• Keep it short. One to two minutes is the sweet spot for explainer videos. Anything less can leave your viewers without enough info; anything longer will bore them.
• Keep it simple. We’ve realized that keeping it clean, simple and to the point works best in terms of conversions.
• Format it for all the platforms. Don’t use the same video across all platforms. Adapt everywhere.

In conclusion, video is a powerful medium that creates engagement, and with it growing and evolving daily, entrepreneurs need to take it seriously and use the full potential of it to drive their sales.

Explainer videos can help take abstract concepts and summarize them down to much simpler, more concise summaries. Explainer videos can help take concepts that might take paragraphs to explain and boil them down into 30, 60, or 90 second soundbites. The best explainer videos are less than 2 minutes in length in order to distill things to an amount of information that people have the patience to consume.

Quality of explainer videos is also very important. A video, no matter what kind, will serve as a representation of your brand and oftentimes the first impression a prospect or potential user will see. They are an excellent way to simplify things down and to raise conversion rates in both B2B and B2C contexts, mainly because they serve as supportive tools in an overall process instead of making the sale itself.

With an explainer video, companies can leverage these videos to highlight new and existing products, services, or convey an idea to their customers.

These videos typically last around 2 minutes and can be shown as pre-roll ads for those less click savvy users on YouTube. This format provides the viewer with an alternative to reading traditional explanation text found scattered across your website.

Videos are easier to digest and far more memorable than 'wall of text' explanations. Thus, it's well worth investing in explainer videos as they will lead you to improved conversion rates.

They are a great way to visually communicate the benefits of what you offer, and they can be especially helpful in engaging potential customers who are still on the fence about buying.

Since around 80% of all purchase decisions are made subconsciously, an explainer video can help tip the scales in your favor by appealing to people's emotions and providing a visual demonstration of how your product or service works. In addition, research shows that including a call-to-action in your video can increase conversion rates significantly. So don't forget to ask viewers to take the next step after watching!

Not only do explainer videos grab your audience's attention, they are also a great tool for establishing your expertise and making the whole process more fun and interactive. It's one of our go-to methods whenever we launch a new product and it's made a huge difference.

Sometimes explaining what you do or who you are is difficult. Let alone making that information engaging, educational, and memorable. A good explainer video does all the heavy-lifting for you. It takes complex subjects and relays them in an entertaining but informative way. Some people just aren’t willing to read paragraph after paragraph. And those that are often resort to skim reading. An explainer video is so much more digestible and easy to consume. You can rest easy knowing visitors to your site will leave with the key messages you wanted to get across.

Explainer videos help by quickly and efficiently communicating what your product or service is and how it works. In just a few minutes, an explainer video can convey complex information in a way that is easy for potential customers to understand.

This makes it an invaluable tool for businesses looking to close more deals. When potential customers can see exactly how your product or service works, they are much more likely to be interested in purchasing it. It also helps to build trust with potential customers by showing them that you are an expert in your field.

Spending in an explainer video sends a strong signal that you are confident in your product or service and are committed to providing a high-quality experience for your customers.

It’s easy to find in your newsfeed, blogs, websites, and news stories. And while there is no question that video drives views, can it help you convert more leads? The short answer is yes, it absolutely can. But that doesn’t mean you can just publish any video anywhere you want and expect the leads just to start flowing in. A video marketing strategy is essential to any successful marketing plan.

In my opinion, there are at least three important steps to follow:

1. Boost Landing Page Conversion (And Increase Engagement),  A good landing page is a foundation for a successful lead generation strategy. To convert leads, it’s essential that your landing pages communicate the value of your offer, establish trust with the viewer and reduce any barriers your ideal audience might have about submitting the form.

2. Increase Webinar Registrations and Attendance,  Webinars are a great resource for people trying to learn something online. However, they are a large investment of time for you and your audience. Like landing page videos, webinar promotion videos can showcase the webinar presenter and help the viewer understand what they might take away from the content.

3. Utilize Lead Capture Forms from Your Video Player, Lead capture capability is not just for landing pages. When you are ready for a video hosting platform, looking at alternatives to YouTube might be wise. One of the major benefits of other hosting platforms, like Wistia, Brightcove or Vidyard, is that they have the ability to capture leads right in the video player.

At Narrato, we prefer creating an explainer video for every key feature on our content workflow platform. We have videos explaining how to use the content calendar, how to generate SEO content briefs, how to create custom content workflows, and more. This approach helps us answer our users’ questions much more elaborately, rather than sharing an FAQ page or a knowledge base article. When users can see the feature in action, following the instructions becomes so much easier.

We’ve also found that keeping these videos short but crisp has a better impact. So instead of talking about multiple features or giving an overview of the entire platform, we’ve stuck to individual feature-based explainer videos. If they are short enough, we may even post them as an Instagram Reel or YouTube Shorts for better reach. Explainer videos also work great as demo videos when we are pursuing a deal with a new prospect.

Wherever possible, we embed these videos in relevant blog posts to help our audience understand how they can solve a problem using a Narrato feature, supporting our product-led content marketing strategy.

So they are helping our sales, customer success, and marketing teams simultaneously.

We incorporate a brief explainer video (no longer than 60 seconds) into one of our follow-up emails. We chose to add videos in the follow-ups rather than in the initial email primarily due to concerns about email deliverability. If we notice that recipients are opening our initial emails multiple times, this indicates an opportunity to send a more personalized follow-up email that includes the video.

It's crucial to produce a concise, clear video that swiftly addresses the recipients' pain points and highlights the benefits of collaborating with us. I have invested in a better microphone and improved the background setting to enhance professionalism. Additionally, focusing on creating an engaging video thumbnail could significantly increase clicks and views.