by Jace Vernon | May 13, 2013 | Animated Whiteboard Videos, Creative Marketing, Marketing, Memory, Video Marketing, video online marketing, Video Scribing, Whiteboard animation, Whiteboard Video, Writing a Script, Ydraw
Writing whiteboard video scripts using Ethos, Pathos and Logos
When you sit down to begin writing the script for your online marketing video, you want to keep three little words in your mind: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. These are the modes of persuasion. When trying to persuade somebody to do something – say, buy your product – you need to make sure we sound credible, appeal to the emotions, and prove certain truths about our company and product. If you’re a good marketer, you’ve obviously lived by the E.P.L mantra, but with whiteboard animation things can be a little different. Here’s some information on how using ethos, pathos and logos in a whiteboard video can work for you:
Ethos is the integrity of the presenter. It is how qualified the presenter appears to be to the audience. When writing a script for a marketing video such as a whiteboard animation video, you have to rely more heavily on everything other than body language or presence to get your message across. If you’re trying to sell something, have an image of the CEO telling viewers all about the company. Write a part with some testimonials. Whoever your main character is, make sure they look the part, and that the audience can tell they are a notable figure and have vested interest in the company or product.
Pathos is triggering emotions. In your whiteboard video, throw in a metaphor or simile, or deliver your message powerfully and passionately. Make the audience feel something, whether it is sadness for the characters who don’t have your product, joy for the characters who do, or excitement at the prospect of purchasing your product themselves. Pathos may also be used to provoke fear in order to sway viewers – but it is always better for whiteboard videos to focus on the fun, positive aspects. Try to play on viewers’ hopes and dreams by describing how their life could be when they follow the call to action.
Logos is the logical appeal used when describing facts and figures that support your cause. Logos and ethos are sort of related – in the sense that using logos can strengthen your ethos by making you look even more knowledgeable on the subject. However, be tasteful in your use of logos when making a whiteboard video – you want your audience to retain information with ease. If you use charts and figures, make sure to incorporate it into the theme of the video, and don’t throw so many statistics at them that they can’t remember why they clicked play.
These are what you need to keep in mind when writing. Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. Thanks Aristotle.
by Jace Vernon | Apr 25, 2013 | Infographic
The Key to Eliminating Video Abandonment
We live in a virtual world where a new video is just a click away. Sites like YouTube have become experts in funneling users to videos that appeal to their interests. Let’s face it, we can’t help but click on those adorable kitten videos YouTube keeps suggesting to us. This virtual environment has made it increasingly difficult to engage an audience through video. If you plan on leveraging video to boost sales and grow your business, you must be aware of video abandonment. Internet users’ attention spans have become decreasingly worse. How often do you start watching a video and only make it half way through? Maybe only a quarter of the way through? How many people get sent a video and don’t even watch it? We’re all guilty of doing it aren’t we? I personally, have had a friend send me the same video three different times this week because I click on it to watch later, and then I end up closing out of the video. So what’s the secret to keeping the attention span of your audience? Whiteboard animation! Whiteboard animation is proven to be the most interactive form of online advertising.
I’m sure by now, you’re aware of just how much we here at Ydraw love infographics. So I decided to include one that talks about video abandonment and how whiteboard animation videos can keep your audience around a lot longer.
Video Scribing Video Ydraw
Thanks for checking out our statistics on video abandonment and how whiteboard animation videos can keep your audience not only around longer, but also engaged and entertained the whole time.
Go ahead and steal our infographic. I dare ya!
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<a href=”http://ydraw.com/video/key-to-eliminating-video-abandonmen”><img alt=”The Key to Eliminating Video Abandonment” src=”http://ydraw.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/video-abandonment-549×1024.jpg” width=”549px” border=”0″ /></a>
+Wesley Bledsoe
by Ydraw | Feb 22, 2013 | video
Whiteboard animation not only has the highest viewer retention rate, it is the most flexible of video marketing mediums. It’s endlessly versatile – appealing to all kinds of learning styles – and fully ready to incorporate your company’s unique personality.
Let’s try a little experiment – read this sentence:
To successfully market a new product, ensure your brand is in the foreground by creatively inspiring customers; capturing their attention with exciting images and catering to their sense of fun and imagination.
Now, in ten days close your eyes and repeat that sentence back to me. No? Alright, get somebody to read the sentence aloud to you, and then in ten days repeat it back to them. Or, maybe you prefer to look at this:
If you are able to repeat this sentence word for word after ten days, you’re awesome. If you can repeat back the general idea of the sentence, you’re less awesome, but still pretty great. If after ten days you can’t remember it at all, join the club.
But despite whether you are a visual or auditory learner, when an element of humor is added, the general idea of that long, boring statement is much easier to remember and has the potential to be stored in our memories for much longer. Marketers need keep this in mind when creating promotional videos, as well as the different learning styles in order to make a significant impression on consumers.
There are three distinct learning categories that every person falls into: Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic. Visual learners perform best when information is brought to them in a visual manner such as text or images. They thrive on illustrations, charts, diagrams, etc. These are the note-takers; they often feel a need to convert the spoken word into text. Auditory learners do best when they can hear the instructions through a CD or cassette tape or through somebody simply talking to them. An auditory learner is able to process, comprehend and retain information given during a lecture with a high level of accuracy. These are the ones whose heads never nod during conferences. Kinesthetic learners are the goers and doers. They need to learn by touching, holding, trying and failing and trying again.
While we all have a dominant learning style, everyone benefits in some way from each. The reality is that we all have custom learning styles that vary in combinations of visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning. Ideally, your video marketing campaign would be able to incorporate each of these three styles when creating an advertisement to inform consumers of your product. However, kinesthetic is hard to put into video form, so what marketers usually have left to work with is visual and auditory. And there’s good news for marketers: video is the easiest and most effective way of combining visual and auditory learning styles in order to appeal to all consumers! Video combines auditory instruction with visual. Not only are viewers hearing about all the benefits your product or service provides, they can see those benefits with their very own eyes.
However, simply making a video won’t guarantee a boost in sales. You need a way to make your video stand out from the millions of other online videos fighting for views. After you’ve catered to consumers’ different learning styles, how are you going to keep their attention?
1. Use Whiteboard
Whiteboard animation has proven time and time again that it is the medium viewers prefer. Its viewer abandonment rate is as low as 30% for a two-minute video. This is largely due to its unique use of images and text combined with audible narration. People are fascinated with the idea of watching an illustration come to life before them, and that initially captures and then holds their attention. The images are fun, colorful and creative. The text is even fun colorful and creative, and the narration ties it all together, guiding emotion and sparking excitement throughout the scenes.
2. Never Skip Out on Background Music.
A seemingly minuscule detail, background music is pertinent to your advertisement. Music gives life to video and provides a certain rhythm that viewers crave. It fills in intentional or unintentional dead spots, making the whole video seamless and fluid. Be aware of the type of background music, though. You don’t want to play smooth jazz behind a promotion for an amusement park – that might give viewers the idea that the park was specifically designed for attendees aged 55 and up. On the other hand, you don’t want to put an ad for orthopedic shoes on top of Usher’s best selling track. You just won’t get the reception your video deserves.
3. Make ‘em Laugh
Humor is one of the most important features your video can possess. A study presented at the American Psychological Society found that the use of humor in an educational setting significantly boosts interest and participation. This is incredibly applicable to video marketing, because essentially, your video is being produced to educate consumers about your product. The study concluded by saying, “Humor is… a social lubricant. It can facilitate interactions, and that is exactly what we found.
by Ydraw | Feb 14, 2013 | Whiteboard Video
Video Abandonment and How To Stop It
The length of your online marketing video is a very important key for success; second only to creating great content. If this is surprising, you haven’t spent enough time on the web. On the internet, attention is the new currency. If you want to boost sales and watch your business grow, you need to figure out how to get people to pay attention to your company. The easiest and most convenient way for consumers to learn about your company is through video, but in order to best utilize this tool, you need to know about human online-viewing habits.
Where’d Everybody Go?
The internet has all but wiped out our patience as a species. With faster and faster internet speeds, there is no reason to wait or sit through anything when it comes to the web. There is a direct correlation between the length of a video and the abandonment rate; the longer the video the higher the drop-off rate. In a study done by the University of Massachusetts, researchers discovered that after clicking ‘play,’ roughly 6% of the audience departs every second. After only five to ten seconds a mere 80% of viewers remained. This means you’ve got less than five seconds to capture a person’s attention if you want them to hear your full message.
But wait – there’s more:
Most viewers decide quickly whether or not they want to watch, and once they’ve made their decision, usually stick around until the end. However, this varies dramatically with the length of the video. Halfway through a 30 second video, 80-90% of your viewers are still sticking around – whereas 50% of the way through a ten minute video, you’ve only retained about 30% of your audience. 
So with statistics as alarming as these, you want to do everything you can to ensure your company produces an interesting video that people will want to watch. Ideally, you would be able to pack your entire message into a brilliant, captivating, twenty second video – but let’s get real; what else we got?
Your Options
The type of video carrying your message has a large impact on viewer abandonment rates. The graphs and statistics above are generalized and include all types of video formats. Let’s look at the main types of videos in those averages and see what we’re dealing with:
Pre-roll ads – If you’re thinking about launching your video as a pre-roll ad feeding off the views of a more popular video, just know that pre-roll ads have abandonment rates as high as 70%, and that’s for a video only thirty seconds long. If you want to let people know about your company and want to better your chances of people listening to your entire message, this is not the route for you.
Live action ads – The statistics for live action ads, for the most part, parallel the graphs above. They average 6-7% drop per second viewed. This isn’t terrible, it’s the same as most videos, and if you create unique content you have a shot at your video being above average – but there is something better.
Whiteboard animation ads – Whiteboard animation is the most interactive form of online advertising. It has been proven to catch consumers’ attention quicker and keep them watching for longer. Feast your eyes on some of the statistics we’ve found specifically for whiteboard animation videos. We even put in the screen shot of our live video stats so you can see a comparison.
Live Video Drop Off Rate Is 50%
While the video engagement rate drops to 80% after 30 seconds on the average marketing video, whiteboard animation videos don’t reach that level until after the one minute mark. Viewer retention is still above 75% even after two and a half minutes.
To get a better idea of the averages we took our four most viewed videos and put the collected data into this graph:
As always, viewer retention varies with the length of the video, but on average whiteboard animation hooks viewers faster and keeps them for longer. The graph below shows the average of the combined four videos:
Whiteboard videos have a drop of 25% over two minutes of video; unlike the other types of marketing videos that see a 35-55% drop in viewers. As a matter of fact, while the average video struggles to retain viewers as length increases, we’ve found that the longer the whiteboard animation video, the better our retention rates were. Meaning a lot more people were willing to watch for a lot longer.
If you’ve got a message you just can’t squeeze into thirty seconds and feel every word is important for your target audience to hear, you need a whiteboard video. It’s your best chance to get your product or service out there without people disregarding it because of boredom or impatience. Whiteboard videos are incredibly engaging – watching an illustration materialize before your eyes is hypnotizing. It is easy to get caught up in the artwork and feel as if you are right there with the artist.
Not only are the viewer statistics above average, whiteboard animation is also very affordable. If you want your video to have the best chance of being seen without breaking your budget, you need to get in touch with us. In this world of ever-competitive internet global marketing, why wouldn’t you take advantage of all the ways available to give your company the edge?
+Jace Vernon
Video Abandonment-How to Stop It!
by Ydraw | Jan 15, 2013 | video
Don’t Forget!
Dealing with an audience is never as simple as it seems. We often take the things we know and have experienced and assume that the audience has experienced the same things. This can put up barriers of communication and can ruin any video. Complexity is the demise of corporations.
On December 4, 2012 I stopped in Vegas to get a little education at the SMX conference. I had just flown in from Dallas, where I had experienced a great workshop. The speakers were motivational. I left Dallas with a plan and some great ideas. When I arrived at the Aria in Vegas I saw an overwhelming crowd rushing into a conference room. I joined them and found myself sitting in the conference being held by Expedia, imagine that. How exciting for me to be able to listen in on a conference held by a huge corporation. I wasn’t an employee nor did I know anything about Expedia’s culture but I am a customer or should I say- I was a customer. My time in the conference room did not last. I was kicked out after the guy next to me saw I was taking notes on the speech of David Roche, the President of Hotwire.com. The reality is Expedia should have more customers sit in on their conferences. If they did, they just might change their message.
You see, I love seeing successful men get up and present in front of audiences it’s very inspiring. From what I could find on the internet, David Roche is a very successful business man. I set some high expectations for his speech and was looking to be moved. However, my expectations were quickly shut down. His speech was complicated and didn’t make much sense. Words like jargon, confusion, non-educational, and boring kept coming into my mind. He never mentioned one thing about me, the customer, nor did he mention anything about the employees. As the speech went on I became extremely bored, but I was not the only one. The audience, Expedia’s own, was yearning for entertainment and real education, which go hand in hand. He spoke nothing about making customers happy or the employees happy. He didn’t relate to them. No stories, no testimonials, no example- just plain confusion.
Remember that the audience isn’t always in on the story. Don’t make them feel like the third wheel with two friends who only speak with “inside jokes.” Speak to your audience in the way that you would want your product explained to you if it was the first time you’ve ever learned about it. Don’t be condescending either, just informative and patient. =)
