How To Create A Powerful Animated Explainer Video For Your Product, Service Or Startup for Under $300

What You’ll Learn:

Step #1: How To Write A Powerful Script for Your Video
Step #2: How To Prepare A Creative Brief
Step #3: How To Record Your Voice-Over
Step #4: How To Create Your Own Video Or How To Get It Done Cheap
Step #5: How To Test Your Video & Get Sales

Have you ever wanted to make an explainer video? You know, one of those animated videos that explain what your product or service does and why people ought to buy it? You see them everywhere and companies are using them to explain what their product or service is in hopes that it will boost their conversion rate.

This detailed 5-step guide will teach you how to create your own explainer videos from start to finish and how you can get it done cheaply for under $300. By the end you will have all the information you will need to create an explainer video that is just as powerful and effective as their expensive counterparts.

Step #1: How To Write A Powerful Script for Your Video

The most important part of a video is the script and not the actual video quality. Whether you have a high quality video or a mediocre one, if the script isn’t good, it won’t convert well.

The goal of the video is to answer all of your potential customers’ questions and concerns and get a better understanding of what’s stopping them from purchasing.

Important note: You don’t want the company who is creating your explainer video to write the script for you. The video company doesn’t know your business like you do. They don’t know what pain points your customers are experiencing.

The following steps will guide you in writing that amazing script, even if you’ve never done it before. Let’s start with the end in mind and work our way backwards.

Pre-Script Writing Steps: Here’s what you need before you can write a script

1.) Start by defining the main objective of your video. Are you looking for purchases, subscriptions, phone calls? Great, write these objectives down and refer to it often to make sure we stay on point with our message all throughout this process.

2.) With a clear objective, narrowly define the right people that can bring you your desired results. Who are they? Where do they hang out? What types of information do they consume? What motivates them?

3.) With a clear objective and right audience in mind, dig deeper and figure out the hook that will get your prospect’s attention. What is the problem that your product solves or the prospect’s need that you aim to fulfill?

4.) If you already have an existing customer or subscriber database, survey them with the following questions (or research and brainstorm this with your team.) Knowing what all their concerns are will help you create a better script.

• What is your biggest concern about this product or service?

• What is the number 1 reason that is stopping your potential customers from buying?

• Is there anything that is confusing on our web page?

Script Writing Steps: You are now ready to start writing that script!

Take into account your buyer’s journey. Let’s say that you came to the conclusion that your target audience has a hard time understanding the benefit of your product or service when they are researching for possible solutions for their pain points.

1.) Describe their problem clearly. Just like in a normal conversation, people are more willing to listen to those who understand them. Take your time when describing your customer’s problem, and let them know that you feel their pain.

2.) Then demonstrate that you can solve it. Defining the problem is only half the equation. Eventually, you have to relieve that pain or the viewer will tune you out. So in your explainer video, be sure to let the viewer know exactly how your product solves their problem. And make sure to demonstrate how much better their lives will be once that problem is solved. Don’t assume they know these things. If your product helps them do more work in less time, show them all the things they’ll be able to do with all that extra time.

3.) What product features does your video need to highlight? Avoid feature overload. Focus on the top 3 product features that you want to highlight and resist the urge to list every feature. You may think you’re giving the viewer more reasons to love your product, but when you stuff your video with tons of features and benefits, one after another, you may actually be turning them off. So try not to be too aggressive and don’t fall into the trap of over selling. Reach your customers on a personal level and you’ll be reaping the benefits of that marketing video for years to come.

As the old adage says: people aren’t going to remember everything you tell them. What they will remember is how you make them feel.

4.) Your call to action. Refer back to the very first step in our pre-script writing checklist and craft your call to action. Tell people to sign up, call or buy. After you have explained what your product or service does, you have to tell people to sign up or buy it.

5.) Take this opportunity to answer any last objections. Do you offer a free trial? A money back guarantee? Take all of the data you’ve gathered on step #4 in your pre-writing stage and address those concerns and objections here. This is also a good opportunity to visually show proof elements such as a list of company logos that use and trust your service, any awards you’ve won or certifications of achievement.

Tip: Keep your script short. 150 words roughly translate into a one minute video. Ideally, you want to keep your video to under a minute. There are exceptions to this where longer videos can perform better. When in doubt, keep it short and use your best judgment.

Time spent: 15 – 25 hours
Cost: If you are writing the script yourself: $0
Cost: If you are hiring a professional script writer, roughly anywhere between $900 – $1,875

Step #2: How To Prepare A Creative Brief

1.) What is the style and tone that you want your video to have? Does it suit your branding? Does the visual style pop?

2.) Is the video’s branding keeping up with your brand identity (logo, font, web address)?

3.) Does the visual and audio content fit in with your marketing strategy?

4.) Does the video set your product and brand apart from your competitors’? How?

5.) Look at how your top competitors are promoting themselves and see how you can differentiate from them.

Time spent: 5 Hours
Cost: If you are doing it yourself: $0
Cost: If you are going through a video production house, roughly between $250 – $375

Step #3: How To Record Your Voice-Over

If you have a great voice, you can read your script and record it yourself. You can produce great quality audio by using your smart phone’s record feature. A great simple trick to get better quality audio recording is to record while reading your script under a blanket. Find one that is big enough to cover your entire body and thick enough to block out all the outside noise. This silly trick gets rid of all the ambient noise in your surroundings and works very well. It does sound silly but you would be surprised at the difference this simple trick makes on the quality of your audio output. Especially if you are operating on a budget.

When in doubt, use a professional voice actor. For a marketing tool that’s aimed to increase your profits and revenue, it would make a lot of sense to not scrimp on this cost. Especially when there are plenty of affordable options available.

For a wide variety of quality options, one of my favorites to use is VoiceBunny.com. Their cost can range between $69 – $300+ for a 60 second script (please check their website for current pricing.) A 150 word script roughly translate into a one minute video. Some voice actors charge more than others, so their price range can vary. However, there is a lot of talent to choose from in their network so finding a good voice actor that fits your budget shouldn’t be a problem. Their turnaround time is pretty fast, sometimes within 24 hours. And if you didn’t get what you want on the first take, you can get your voice actor to re-record your script as many times necessary to get it to match the style that you want. This comes in pretty handy specially if you’re doing work for clients with very discerning taste and wants the voice over to match a very specific style.

If you are on a really tight budget, go to Fiverr.com. Do a search for voice over services and browse around all of their options. You can find talented voice actors there for a fraction of the average cost elsewhere. For a 150 word script, you can get a professional sounding voice over for under $25-$35.

Time spent: 4 Hours
Cost: If you are doing it yourself: $0
Cost: Fiverr $25-$35 / Voice Bunny $69-$300+

Step #4: How To Create Your Video

Creating your video goes through these 4-5 stages.

1.) Storyboarding

2.) Illustration Style and Design, Character Design

3.) Animation

4.) Music Track Selection / Sound Design

5.) Sound Effects

Each of these stages having different cost range. This is where your video can get really expensive. Knowing what makes your video cost go up and down allows you to plan where you can cut cost or replace certain areas with cheaper alternatives.

1.) Storyboarding

The storyboard lets you pre-visualize how the story will develop. Split your script into scenes (like a comic book), translating the script into images that visually flow from one scene to the next. Have a setting for each scene and plot out how one scene transitions from one to the next. These transitions are important to keep the movement flowing and prevent the viewers from getting bored.

Doodles, stick figures and simple shapes are perfectly fine for sequencing how your script plays out. This is a good opportunity to spot where your script needs to be re-written or edited if the visual flow and sequence feels off. Play around with this on post it notes to find your best flow and adjust accordingly.

On each post it note, write down the section of the script, a description of what is happening in that scene and a rough doodle to represent the visual elements. It would be easier to play with the sequence, change the content or delete redundancy once everything is laid out this way.

You may find out that initial concepts don’t communicate your ideas as clearly as you thought. Re-work and trouble shoot these problem points in this phase before you move forward. It will save you a lot of time and money if this area is handled well. Preventing you from going back to re-work a concept, sequence or a line of script that isn’t working. This re-work can get costly if you’ve already gone further down the process.

Once you feel good with how everything looks, it’s time to start getting into illustration style and design.

Time spent: Up to 25 Hours
Cost: If you are doing it yourself: $0.
Approximate Cost Range if done at a studio/video production house: Up to $1,500

2.) Illustration Style and Design, Character Design

Here we move from doodles to fleshing out details of each scenes, characters and supporting elements. In our creative brief in step #2, where we’ve outlined our style, tone and brand identity fit. Now it’s time to design these elements with their corresponding style, colors and aesthetics.

If characters are involved, your illustrator needs to be familiar with preparing rig ready illustrations in layers so the animator doesn’t have to re-create a lot of these steps to make it work. Rigging is an industry term that means preparing your file so the moving parts can be animated easily. If you are hiring a freelancer, try to find someone who can do illustrations, design and animation. An all-in-one professional that can do all three will save you on cost and eliminate the added process of passing things back forth.

Another way to save is to see if stock illustrations, images and video clips can work for executing your idea. Stock images may not be make your video as unique or as in-tuned to your brand and esthetics as you would like, but if cost is an issue at this stage, try to look at some pre-made images and characters that you can buy at Pond5.com or ShutterStock.com, you may be able to find what you need for under $100. Score!

Another option is hiring students who are in their early stages of practicing their craft and looking for experience. They may be willing to take a modest fee or do a trade. You can post an ad on Craigslist or go to Upwork and post a project with your proposed budget. Please be fair with this option and offer a decent pay or trade for their time. If not, go for the stock imagery option.

Time spent: Up to 24-40 Hours
Cost: If you are buying stock: $35-$100
Approximate Cost Range: $1,440 – $3000

3.) Animation

There are plenty of ways to get your animation work done. From doing it yourself to hiring a studio and everything in between. I will attempt to list your options so you can get a feel for what is available and where you think your money will be well spent.

Animation studios. On the high end, you have animation and motion design studios. The cost here typically starts at $10,000 and can go up to over $100k. Here you’ll have amazing talent with high level technical expertise. This cost covers all of the steps we’ve covered here. From soup to nuts. You’ll have account managers to walk and guide your through the process and make sure all the steps are handled smoothly and each step is handled with a lot of thought and detail. A typical turn around time is 6-8 weeks.

Smaller studios. The mid range are smaller studios. Smaller studios can charge cheaper rates to be competitive but you’ll sometimes get what you pay for. Since they also have their overhead cost to consider, they can’t really put in labor intensive high end animations. They will however brief you on what they can and can’t do to set your expectations before hand on what can or can’t be done on a limited budget.

Freelance animators (local). If you think you don’t need the added cost of having a well managed team and feel that you can manage the project yourself, you can go for a good freelance animator. Sometimes these are the same animators that work the studios and you can get the same quality of work. If they are experienced enough, they will also know the project management process and can guide you on their process and expectations.

Offshore and market places. Same as the suggested option for finding an illustrator/designer, you can do a search on Craigslist or Upwork and find someone in these market places. These are also freelancers but could be cheaper if they are offshore workers in a country with lower rates, or students starting out, or they happen live in a city where the market is not as large and their cost of living is low enough where they can afford to charge less.

Do it yourself. You may not need the fancy animations. You can do simple transition animations and use text to break up and enforce each thought in your script. If you have the time, you can take your stock images and flow them in and out of the scene as you’ve laid out on your post-it story board. If you have a few native tools that come with your computer like iMovie for Mac or Movie Maker for PC for editing your video, or if you have Keynote or Power Point where you have the ability to create simple animations and export them out into movies. Do a quick search online for tutorials that can show you real quick how to use these software so you can play around and try to create you animated scenes yourself. It may take a bit of time and effort at first but you might be surprised at what you could learn and do in a very short amount of time.

Time spent: Up to 60+ Hours
Cost: If you are doing it yourself: $0
Student: $500+
Freelancer: $1,500 – $5,000
Small Studio: $5,000 – $10,000
Awesome Studio: $10,000 – $100,000+

4.) Music Track Selection / Sound Design

Music can set your mood and make your audience feel the emotions that you want to re-enforce while watching your video. Do you want to set the stage with a dark sinister tone to create a heavy tone when you are describing the problem that your main character is having? Do you want to transition into a high energy or epic adventure, then end on a happy note? You can choose the appropriate tracks to match the mood you are trying to express.

The range here can go from an original sound score that is composed specifically for your video, matching every inflection point within your script or a stock music that gives you the right mood all through the piece.

Since this is about saving on cost, lets go straight to the cheap to free options and skip the high-end stuff.

Cheap: Go to Pond5.com, PremiumBeat.com, or do search on Google for stock music, you’ll find a lot to choose from.

Free: Go to your Youtube channel (or create an account.) Once logged in, go to the “my channel” tab on the upper left menu. Once you are there, on the top menu, look for the “video manager” icon and click on that. On your left menu, towards the bottom, under the “Create” icon, is an audio library. There you can find music tracks that you can download and use for your project. Some may require attribution to the artist at the end of your video but there are plenty available where you are free to use their music with no attribution required.

Time spent: 4 Hours
Free: $0
Cheap: $35-$65
Approximate Cost Range If Sourced by Studio: $200 – $340

5.) Sound Effects

This is optional. You can enhance your video by adding sound effects to make it more interesting. Insert crashes, popping sounds, swooshes, keyboard taps etc. You get the picture.

Low cost options can be found on the same stock sites mentioned above.

You can find free ones at Freesound.org

Time spent: 4-5 Hours
Cost: If you are doing it yourself: $0
Approximate cost range if sourced out: $240 – $375

If you add up all of the itemized costs involved you can see how it can easily add up to over $10k for a one to two minute video. If you’ve chosen to do everything yourself, you can invest some time with a bit of elbow grease and your cost can get pretty close to $0. Congratulations!

If you had to buy a few stock images, illustrations, video clips, sound & music and hire cheap voice over work then you may be hovering around the $300 mark for total cost. Not bad.

Remember, the goal of the video is to answer all of your potential customers’ questions and concerns and get a better understanding of what’s stopping them from purchasing. If you were able to do that with your script and enforce that message with your simple video, even with all the economic constraints, you should be able to squeeze out a successful result.

Step #5: How To Test Your Video & Get Sales

Will it fly? Test your new video by placing it on a landing page. Make sure it is easy for your visitors to act on your call to action. Do they need to subscribe? – Make a subscription form available on that page. Download an app? Make a phone call? Make sure everything is on that landing page and make it easy for them to do the next step.

Then flow some traffic to that page with a little ad budget. A couple hundred dollars on Facebook or Google Adwords ads can tell you if you have a potential winner or if you still have more work to do.

Do an A/B test and try different ad variations to find out what type of messaging works well to get your target audience’s attention. Good enough for them to click through to your page and watch your video. If they are clicking on your ads and flowing into your page but you are still not getting the results you want, go back to the drawing board and tweak a few things based on your results and feedback. Maybe there is something wrong with the offer or the product and market fit isn’t quite there.

Luckily, it won’t cost much to test and tweak your video now that you have a guide to walk you through the process. When you find that you have a winner, you can justify the cost of a more refined video and double down on your efforts.

Good luck!

About

Hello, I’m Pablo Sanchez. I help businesses, startups, agencies and corporate brands create animated videos that sell. I’ve realized that a lot of businesses avoid video all together simply because they are not aware of all the options that are available to them. Hopefully this simple guide can open up some possibilities for you to try this powerful medium.

You can find and contact me at: honeyicanexplain.com

We’d Love To Hear From You

Was there anything confusing with this guide that needs more clarification? Do you have any questions or find anything that’s missing to make it better?

If you have any questions, feedback, comments, need help with creating your explainer videos, or just want to say hello. I’d love to hear from you. Please feel free to send me a note using the form below. I promise I won’t bite.