In this article, I’ll show you the 10 most common explainer video mistakes you want to stay away from. And make sure you read all the way to the end, because all of those are easy fixes. Alright, let’s get straight to it!
#1: Voiceover
This one is such an obvious one that I still don’t understand how people mess it up. I’ve seen so many projects where people try to save some money and either record a voiceover themselves or have someone on their team do it. Let’s be honest, doing a great voiceover is not easy, so unless you’re a professional, it will most certainly sound amateurish, both in terms of audio quality but also the way you actually read the script.
The easy way to fix it is to just hire a professional on websites such as Fiverr, Voicebunny, or Voices.com, sites where you’ll find options for all budgets. To find more about how to choose a voiceover artist, check out this article.
#2: Call To Action
Alright, so you have a pretty good video, but you end it without any clear call to action. You can’t just expect people online to go do the exact action that you’d like without telling them what it is. So don’t be shy, work on your call to action and make it clear. Sign up for a free trial; download our free report, schedule a demo, and so on.
#3: Going For The Sale
This one is still related to the call to action at the end and it’s when people try to go for a hard sale at the end of an explainer video, with a “Buy Now” type of call to action. An explainer video is not supposed to get you sales directly, but to explain what you do and why people should care, and basically serve as one of the first points of contact in your customer’s journey from finding out about you for the first time and making a purchase. It’s like going on a date with a girl and asking her to marry you after 5 minutes, it’s just gonna be awkward.
#4: Bad Script
This is something that I see quite often as well. It’s another one of those things where people try to save some money and write the scripts themselves instead of letting a professional do it. They think it’s just a bunch of words so it has to be easy.
So what ends up happening is it turns into a sales pitch where they only talk about the company and don’t really address the consumer’s needs and problems, trying to connect it to a solution that they can offer. There’s a specific way to write for explainer scripts and take viewers through a journey and you have to follow it. To find out more about that, check out some of the scriptwriting videos on our YouTube channel.
#5: Target Audience
This one is also related to the scriptwriting process. You have to know exactly who it is that you’re talking to. What gender they are, how old, what problems they have, what’s the issue with any of the other solutions on the market, what values do they stand for, and so on. You have to investigate like a detective and put yourself in their shoes. Because with an explainer video you don’t want it to sound like you’re talking to a wide audience, because then you’re not really talking to anyone. It has to sound like a one-on-one conversation you would have with someone.
#6: Multiple Objectives
This one is not that common, but any number above zero is still too often, and I still see this one happening every now and then.
The thing is you want to have only one clear objective for each video. If you want to talk to your potential customers and get them interested in buying your product, that’s perfect, but if in the same video you want to also address potential sales partners that you want to join your affiliate program, it will just get super messy and confusing for anyone watching.
And if it’s a little bit confusing and people have a little bit of doubt then they’ll just go away.
#7: Features, Not Benefits
Think of features as the logical way to look at things and the benefits as the emotional impact of your features. Your technical features are good, but people care more about the benefits they get from them. Let me give you one example from a video we made recently.
“Our app is available in offline mode”. Cool, that’s a nice technical feature, I’m sure your developers worked hard on that, but what’s the impact of that?
You could phrase it something like “Even when you travel abroad and don’t have an internet connection, you can still access all your travel documents without having to worry about a thing!”
It’s the peace of mind that the viewer wants, not the offline mode.
#8: All About You
This one is quite annoying. I see so many videos where people or companies only talk about themselves. We do this, our company that, us, I, and so on.
Now don’t get me wrong, it’s perfectly normal to talk about yourself a little bit and mention “we” or “our” once or twice.
But people are selfish and interested in what you can do for them, so if you only talk about yourself and not about them, they’ll stop watching the video because they don’t really care.
#9: Branding
Branding is super powerful and you have to use it to your advantage. There are some brands like Coca-Cola that are probably recognisable by almost anyone on the entire planet, so would Coca-Cola ever make a piece of content for their marketing that doesn’t use their branding? Of course not!
Same for you. I’m sure you have some sort of color scheme at least, specific fonts you use all the time, and maybe even some brand guidelines. You want your content to be recognisable and familiar to your audience and keep branding consistency throughout.
And this can also apply to script and voiceover for example. If your entire company is more casual and laid back, maybe you can drop a few jokes in there or try to keep things light and funny. Whereas if you’re making a video for a banking software where the tone has to be more serious and corporate, a joke will probably not land very well or be on brand.
Novatiq Hyper ID Explainer Video – Corporate video with a very specific branding
Novatiq Zenith ID Explainer Video – Corporate video with a very specific branding
#10: Chose The Right Explainer Company
Choosing the right company to work with can be challenging for sure, especially when there are so many options to choose from. An explainer video is an important piece of content that takes a lot of resources to produce, so you want to make sure you choose the best company to bring your vision to life.
Obviously the first thing you look at is their portfolio. Do they have great videos in a wide range of industries? Are the scripts good? What about the graphics and animation?
Other things that you need to check are their testimonials, especially those on external websites, because anyone can write anything on their own website.
And one thing that gives a lot of depth to your decision is how well do they know their game? How do they talk about it on their blog or in their video content, like this one? You can also pick their brain in a meeting to see how confident they are in their abilities to deliver a great explainer video.
So there you have it, our top 10 most common mistakes we see all the time in explainer videos. You wanna stay away from all 10 of them to ensure you get a great return on investment on your explainer. Of course, if you go with a reputable explainer company, you don’t have to worry about anything!
To find out more, check out our entire Explainer Series on YouTube for free or check out our blog Explainer Guides where we go even deeper and cover everything related to Explainer Videos.
And if you want to get an amazing explainer video for your company to stand out from all the noise, produced by a professional and experienced team with over 10+ years in the industry and more than 400+ videos produced for clients all over the world, then browse our website, check out our portfolio and get in touch!
