Using Animation to Boost Your Business

If it wasn’t clear before the virtual world of 2020, it is now: digital has become an indispensable marketing space—with more businesses relying on nimble social media strategies, intuitive websites and other tactics to get messaging out and drive new traffic. But with everyone vying for screen dominance, how does anyone stand out? Animation has proven to be one of the most effective and time-tested answers to that question—blending motion, education and entertainment (AKA “edutainment”) to catch viewers’ eyes.

Here are a variety of ways you can leverage animation for your business.

Rotating Product Photography

If your business is driven by dazzling product photography (for example, if you’re in real estate or the auto industry), then creating a short slideshow or GIF with rotating frames is an easy way to add movement, display inventory and grab people’s attention. While this is one of the faster tactics to deploy if you’ve got a library of high-resolution images to pull from, you’ll still need to make sure files have the correct social media sizes and aspect ratios. This may require creating different sizes for each platform. This tactic is also most effective when you’re able to add contextual copy around the animation, like standard text fields on Instagram or Facebook posts.

Animated Text Overlay

This is another simple tactic if you have excellent product or lifestyle photography, designing moving text over a still image to tell a mini-story about your mission or product value, and with a prominent call to action for viewers to learn more or take the next step.

Note: Social media platforms have different requirements for text overlay. For example, Facebook requires less than 20% text over an ad image.

Full Animation Video

This is your truest blank slate, allowing you to convey your message using a number of animation tools—from kinetic typography and character animation to iconography and more. You can also use this format to condense otherwise tall and static infographics that require a lot of scroll, allowing you to take viewers on a deeper dive through complex topics—charts and graphs included—in a way that’s accessible and easy to digest.

All of these are assets that can be deployed across a wide variety of channels, and you can use them strategically to make your other content stand out even stronger. For example, you might build a web page or create a blog that uses animations alongside SEO-rich, long-form web content, helping you to drive additional organic traffic while providing an enhanced, more educational user experience.

To learn how Kelley & Associates can help boost your business with animation, contact us today.