Here’s Why Entrepreneurs Need Explainer Videos

Despite a wave of layoffs during the pandemic, the entrepreneurial spirit remains alive and strong with many people choosing to start businesses instead of looking for traditional employment. The US saw a record 5.4 million new business applications filed in 2021, up 1 million from the applications they had in 2020, and up almost 2 million from pre-pandemic 2019 (https://www.npr.org/2022/01/12/1072057249/new-business-applications-record-high-great-resignation-pandemic-entrepreneur). Even those pre-employment are considering the entrepreneurial life, with a survey revealing 62% of Gen Zs are looking to get into creating their own business (https://www.entrepreneur.com/leadership/the-pandemic-created-the-next-generation-of-great/368352).

It’s safe to say if you’re starting a new business, you most definitely aren’t alone. Amongst this sea of new entrepreneurs, how can you and your business idea stand the best chance of success? As it turns out, explainer videos are an excellent tool in easing some of the most common burdens entrepreneurs are facing today.

1) Explainers explain your business idea for you

Sometimes the hardest part of being an entrepreneur is explaining what your new business, you know, does. Especially if you’re designing the business structure or product yourself from scratch, you need to pitch your ideas to people at all levels – investors, partners, marketers, media influencers, customers, and beyond. That’s an awful lot of explaining.

Luckily that’s exactly the job of the humble explainer video – to do the explaining for you, in all the places you need it to be. In their short, eye-catching way, an explainer video can serve as a multi-purpose pitch vehicle for your business. Play it during investor meetings. Put it on your homepage. Send it to potential collaborators. Share it on your social media. The explainer video can embody the elevator pitch, the visual branding, the ethos, the selling points, and well, the whole point of your business idea really, into a neat one- to three-minute video package.

2) Explainers share your company purpose and values

If you are a new entrepreneur with a new business, chances are nobody knows who the heck you are, let alone what you do or what you stand for. Turns out, people are way less likely to trust you or care about you when they don’t know, understand, or align with your value system. That’s why it’s important to have a platform to get your business’ purpose across to those you’re trying to reach – and it’s even more important to do it quickly (before they get bored) and tactfully (because no one likes being preached at). Explainer videos have a knack with this – after all, there is a whole lot of character you can show with video that can’t be expressed with just text or static images.

3) Explainers show your knowledge and expertise

If nobody knows who you or your business are, they’re certainly not going to know whether or not you’re a reliable source in your field. Explainer videos can help demonstrate niche knowledge of a topic, and position your company as a go-to expert in your field of business. This may take the form of: bite-sized educational videos on a subject related to your industry; product tutorial videos; how-to videos on topics adjacent to your products; fun animations on the history of your industry or product

Sharing your knowledge with useful explainer videos serves a double purpose. It not only benefits you (by positioning your brand as an expert), but also provides valuable, sharable content to your audience at no cost to them. Educational-style explainers are especially valuable to viewers as they are less directly aligned with advertising content, and therefore much more likely to be shared outside of their usual business context.

4) Explainers encourage sharing of your brand content

While we’re on the topic, organic sharing of your content is incredibly important in establishing your new business endeavours. Online sharing is the new word of mouth for brands looking to expand their customer reach, and it’s therefore incredibly important to provide highly sharable content to your potential customers. Video content is algorithmically proven to drive more engagement than images or text. But why?

For one, we modern internet users have gotten damn good at processing image information while scrolling. Video pushes users to stop scrolling for a moment longer and focus their attention in one spot to understand the meaning of the content. Once stopped from the endless scroll cycle, it is far more likely that users will engage with the content than they would mid-scroll. As the user absorbs more information, the content becomes more meaningful and they retain more of the message (95% retention in fact, versus only 10% in text). At the same time, the combination of moving images and audio keeps the viewer’s attention more effectively than static images or text. When all these points combine, we end up with a staggering statistic: social video gets 1200% more shares than text and image content combined (https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamarruda/2016/06/29/why-you-need-to-excel-at-video/?sh=2049ec3241c2). And the sharing cycle doesn’t end there, because social media algorithms almost universally tend to favour video content. This means each time your video content is shared it gets even more visibility, supported by algorithms that are working to push your content to the top. Talk about effective advertising reach.

5) Explainers enhance your search visibility

Ask any entrepreneur: starting your business from the ground up is an absolute slog (albeit a kind of addicting one). Despite your best-laid plans and products, a lack of visibility will limit your customer reach and quickly kill any new business. Set yourself up with the best chance of SEO success by using the right format for your online content.

Video is proven to give stronger search engine results, with research showing “a website with video content has 50 times higher chances of ranking on the first page of search engines” (https://www.wagento.com/top-ways-to-use-explainer-videos-to-boost-your-seo-rankings/). Users are more likely to click search results containing video thumbnails, and it’s rumoured (and generally established by research data) that Google prioritizes search results with video above those without it. Add onto this the extra time visitors will spend on your site because you used video (check our above point for more on that), and it’s a one-two punch for getting in Google’s good graces.