Maintaining a strong and authoritative brand identity is crucial to stay competitive in an online marketplace dominated by large brands. The best ways that brands can compete is by inspiring loyalty among their most ardent customers.
All marketers are subject to the 80/20 rule of marketing or the Pareto Principle. The Pareto principle states: 80% of your revenue will come from 20% of your customers.
This principle can be applied to almost every aspect of your marketing research. Consider that keeping an existing customer is 5x more cost-effective than acquiring a new one.
The first step to inspiring brand loyalty is to establish a brand identity and maintain consistency.
Having a strong brand identity leads to brand stickiness, which offers some residual marketing benefits in and of itself. Brand stickiness can lead to increased media coverage, word-of-mouth advertising, and greater customer loyalty.
One of the best ways to create and maintain your brand identity is through the use of animated marketing videos. Most online users demand videos in their day-to-day consumption and animation offers brands the ability to be creative without burning a hole in their pocket.
Whether you choose to outsource your animated video production or host it in-house, here are some principles to keep in mind when creating your brand identity with an animated marketing video.
Apply Your Brand Aesthetic
Animation offers attractive and familiar aesthetics that users and customers can identify with. When creating an animated video, it’s important to brand your videos, much like you would an infographic, photo, or written piece of content on your site.
Remember to incorporate these brand essentials into your animated video to maintain consistency:
- Company logo
- Color scheme
- Typography
In addition, you can incorporate your own personal touches into an animated video using motion graphics and your own personal photography. If you use illustrations, like we do, for any of your web pages then you can even incorporate your own team’s characters into a video!
The key here is to maintain consistency by leveraging the existing elements of your brand and applying them to the animation medium. This way customers can become more familiar with your brand, making it more memorable.
Animate Your Audience
The key to creating a successful brand is to define and understand your audience well.
In order to understand your audience better, you’ll need to create a buyer persona or customer avatar.
Your customer persona could include well-defined boundaries or characteristics that you discover through audience research, using tools such as Facebook and Google Ads. Your brand could be far more relevant to your audience, if you could also define how your ideal customers think, what they like to do, what they like to buy and any other psychographic information. You would tailor all your marketing communication to the persona/s you create.
You can also leverage demographic information to help target your ideal customers.
Demographics (Physical and Economic Characteristics)
- Age
- Race
- Gender
- Income level
- Geographic region
- Family size
For example, think about whether your target market is primarily male or female and how old they might be. Create a character of that persona! When people are able to identify with characters in your story, they will connect with your brands and products, helping build brand affinity.
Tell Your Brand Story
In today’s world, customers demand stories from advertisers and marketers alike. What better story do you have to tell, then the one about your brand?
Animated videos are fun and engaging and serve as the perfect medium to communicate valuable company news or milestones. These videos are also a great option if your business leaders prefer not to be on camera but still want to stay authentic to the brand.
Find the Right Medium to Represent Your Brand
Finally, it’s important to find the right medium for your story. If you choose to invest in an animated marketing video, then you need to decide what video format best suits your needs. Options for animated marketing videos include:
Choose the medium that best represents your brand and the story you want to tell. Don’t forget to include the elements we listed above to maintain brand consistency and stickiness. For an animation company that will properly represent your brand and deliver high-quality videos that engage and educate customers, contact Ripple Animation today!