Animated marketing content can go a long way to intrigue readers and help customers move along their buying journey. It can also easily add pizzazz to your already created collateral (with a minimal lift, woohoo!).
With a teaser like that, you’re probably wondering, what is the best kind of marketing animation and how does one go about using it? Read on to learn about different animations and five ways to add them to your marketing content.
Formats of marketing content animations
GIFs, lotties and videos, oh my! So you’re looking to make your content or digital marketing “pop” with some kind of motion graphics, but you are not quite sure where to start?
Three of our favorite animation formats include:
- GIF. Anyone who has spent time on social media knows people love a good GIF. (Pronounced like “gift” without the “t,” in our humble opinion). Spelled out, “Graphics Interchange Format” is a widely used image file format that can store multiple frames of images in a single file, allowing them to display animations or quick video clips without needing a separate video player. Animated GIFs are versatile for creating simple animations, memes and other short looping visual content.
- Lotties. A Lottie is an animation file format (“JSON” or JavaScript Object Notation) used in web and mobile apps. They are vector-based, which makes it easy to add complex, scalable animations created in software like Adobe After Effects without using large files. Lotties work on various devices, are interactive, and don’t slow down performance. They are open-source and widely used for creating engaging user interfaces.
- Cinemagraphs. What looks like a photo but has a small part that moves? A Cinemagraph! Marketers typically use them in ads, social media and websites. To make one, start with a video, pick the moving part, and keep the rest still. Then, you make the moving part repeat in a smooth loop. When you look at a cinemagraph, it appears like a picture with a tiny, continuous motion, making it captivating and unique. So much fun!
Animations are like potato chips—you can’t have just one! If you fall down the rabbit hole of different motion graphics and animation types, you’ll want to try them all out.
5 creative ways to add animation to marketing content
You’ve done the research, drafted something excellent and put in the hard work—but there is a missing from your marketing materials. If “This is good, but I feel like it could be better” is what you’ve thought about your content on occasion, we hear you. Let’s now discuss how to strategically use animation to make those assets pop!
1. Animated eCards: Emails that deliver maximum impact
A little bit of cheer is always in season. Whether it’s a holiday, a client anniversary, or just because, animated cards are one of our favorite marketing content materials.
As marketers, we’re always looking to create those moments of delight. It can be hard to feel the joy when your inbox is constantly bombarded with tasks to do or spammy sales emails. With an animated card, you can spread joy all year round—and increase your brand awareness and recall.
Remember to create animated email cards representing your organization’s values, and ensure the theme, design and message are directly related to your brand.
2. Turn a static document with multiple pages into a flipbook
Some folks are team whitepaper, others team eBook. At Content Matterz, we’re game to hit for both sides, but when we feel extra, we are definitely team flipbook—and those could-be whitepapers and eBooks are excellent candidates for this format.
PDF? Boring. Flipbook? Fun!
What’s a flipbook you ask? An animated flipbook, also known as a digital flipbook or e-flipbook, is a digital version of the traditional flipbook concept. Instead of physical pages, it’s typically a digital file or web application that simulates the experience of flipping through a book’s pages. It may contain a series of images or frames that create the illusion of motion or animation when “flipped” or clicked through.
Animated flipbooks work well at every stage of the sales funnel, whether you’re trying to draw people in or educate a prospect about the deeper details of your product. In an engaging way, you get to provide a more dynamic way to convey information by combining the visual appeal of traditional flipbooks with the interactivity of digital media.
Check out a flipbook we recently created for our client.
3. Turn your social media posts into showstoppers
If you are a marketer, you probably cruise over to LinkedIn every now and again. What catches your eye? Is it a boring, static post with no image? Of course not! It’s the cool animated videos that grab your attention.
Explainer videos or company culture storytelling clips are great places to leverage animation, and they perform well on social media. These kinds of marketing animations help deliver information effectively, foster human connection and authenticity, align with mobile usage and work well breaking into the platform algorithms. Leveraging video and animation strategically in your social media marketing efforts is a fun way to achieve better engagement and reach your target audience more effectively.
Pro tip: You don’t have to animate the whole video. Brand-related elements with movement are a nice way to zhuzh up your videos while letting you use live-action recordings.
4. Upcycle your evergreen content with some fresh motion graphics
If you’re scratching your head wondering when you will have time to come up with a brand new, jazzed-up campaign just to try out some animation, let us clue you in on a little secret: you can take old or existing content and update it with some fresh animations.
Have you heard about our Turkey Dinner concept? Long story short is just like how you can’t eat all that delicious Thanksgiving food in one meal, but you can be creative for days reusing all your leftovers, and you can repurpose your content! And why not repurpose it with some fresh animated graphics?
For example, pretend last year you did a blog series about using YOUR COMPANY’S PRODUCT to overcome the IRL problems it solves! And this year, all that content is still relevant. What if you make some fun, animated social media graphics to reshare this fantastic series? You could also easily update the blogs with any new info to double the impact. Boom!
5. Not your average campaign landing page
When you only have one click to make an impression (and you want to get someone on your website), a landing page that leverages animation is the way to go.
Adding animation to a landing page can be a powerful marketing strategy with several advantages. For starters, you’ll capture visitors’ attention quickly, thus making your page more engaging and memorable. Animations can be particularly helpful in explaining complex concepts or guiding users through a step-by-step process. By highlighting key messages and calls to action, animations can also increase conversion and reduce bounce rates.
When adding an animation to a landing page, make sure it aligns with your branding and messaging—you don’t want something that looks totally different from all the other marketing collateral you produce. Also, keep in mind that overly complex or distracting animations can backfire, so you’ll want to find the right balance between creativity and usability. Remember to test and gather user (or coworker) feedback to help refine your animation approach to your landing page.
Want engaging content? Marketing animation matterz!
Hopefully, we’ve got your wheels spinning about some new and cool things you can do using animation for your marketing campaigns. From flipbooks to landing pages, animation is a nice way to make your content more engaging and dynamic—and it looks good on social media.
Like the idea of animated marketing content but need assistance getting started? Reach out today, and we’ll help create dynamic and engaging content you love.