Five Great Explainer Videos

Why these five explainer videos rocked the market.

Thanks to creativity and accessibility, it’s never been easier to introduce a new product with a fresh video.

This entry discusses five of the best explainer videos, the different approaches they use, and how they can help your business.

Type “explainer video” into Google and (ironically) you’ll get a full page of sponsored ads before any explanation of what an explainer video is. So in case you’re wondering, explainer videos are commercials that focus on how a product or business solves a particular problem. 

Explainer videos have become a sort of commodity, and for many businesses online, they’re the second thing they purchase, right after a Web site. 

Part of the reason for their growth is the rise of technology companies. Technology allows us to solve problems we didn’t know we had – but it also creates more problems to be solved. 

But they’re also popular because they’re accessible. They can be animated, live-action, or just a talking head. Prices range from $100 on Fiverr to seven figures with major agencies like Sandwich

But the other reason for their growth is that they work. They don’t even have to be great – just good. But if you’re going to learn how to create an explainer video, you may as well learn from the best. 

So today we’ll show you five of our favorites and break down their tactics into simple riffs that anyone can rock.

01: Github: Building the future

GitHub’s most epic explainer – created in San Francisco by yours truly (Slow Clap) – uses an emotional story to introduce the problem: a boy with musical dreams is held back by his immobile hand. 

Enter heroic big sister, who plays to her strength in coding by developing a robotic hand. But there’s a twist – it’s too much for her to achieve alone. So she sends her plans out to the universe via GitHub, which enables dreamers and tinkerers and coders everywhere to work together.

GitHub is a development platform with a world-famous Open Source community. As they put it, “Small experiments, inspired inventions, and the software everyone depends on—the code you write on GitHub can reach one codebase or millions.” 

Using collective effort, big sister and a variety of heroes send machines to Mars, work on engines in virtual reality, and ultimately empower little brother to become a master pianist.

The story is emotionally powerful, while the explanation is clearer than the lens of the hubble telescope: you know exactly who it’s for, and how massive its potential really is. 

How to copy it

Come up with a powerful, emotional story. Or hire a writer to help you develop that idea. Then hire a top-notch production team to make it come to life down to the last detail. 

02: Airtable: Organize Anything

sandwich.co/work/airtable/

Made by the aforementioned Sandwich agency, the Airtable explainer video puts a different twist on tackling collaborative projects: it’s told through the eyes of kids.

The kids are making a movie. And each one has big personality: a sassy director, a precocious writer, and so on. But the challenge they face is how to synchronize all of their creativity, which is visually represented as they sit in a sea of marker-drawn storyboards.

The solution is the AirTable app, which implies that it’s so easy a kid could use it – without losing a speck of their innate personality or creativity.

This explainer works because it grabs and holds your attention. The kids are sassy and perfect, the colors pop, the production is sharp, and the point is simple. 

How to copy it

Hire a comedian or a script writer with comedic chops. Riff on ideas until something consistently gets laughs. Then, hire a professional production team like Slow Clap that regularly works with actors. 

03 What is Hubspot

Created in 2013, What Is Hubspot is an early example of the animated explainer boom. But it’s a champion of the era, and if you’re considering an animated explainer, study this one.

Hubspot begins with the problem: marketing has changed. It’s not the cold-calling era anymore – a data-driven digital presence is now the best path to new sales. But because that means managing dozens of platforms, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. 

The solution is one marketing platform that connects you to every other platform and provides metrics on their effectiveness. 

This video works so well for three reasons. First, the script is crystal clear. It’s easy to follow no matter who you are, or how much you know about marketing. 

Second, the visuals are simple and intuitive. The subject of every segment moves to the center of the screen. There are no fancy patterns or distracting backgrounds. It’s the animated equivalent of a close-up, and it’s perfectly framed.

Third, the voice-over is crystal clear. The narrator is matter-of-fact, approachable, and yet compelling enough to convince the audience that this is a real problem, but the solution is also real – and within reach. 

How to copy this approach

Start with the leanest script you can make. Hire a copywriter with video experience to help, if possible. 

Then look for a video production company with animation experience – or just a specialized animation company. 

Find out: Have they tackled tough subjects effectively in other work? You may have to lean on them to creatively provide context with visuals, so their previous work must speak for itself. 

Also spend some time choosing the right voiceover artist. Not all of them can provide the right tone to match the problem and solution. And keep in mind, more than anything, the tone of the voiceover must be one that is appealing to your audience.

04 States Title

When closing home loans, mortgage brokers often lose significant time in the title underwriting process. The process is over a century old, and still uses much of the same snail-paced paperwork that requires dozens of signatures and long meetings.

So what if software could make that dramatically easier and faster?

States Title’s software can create legally-correct signable title forms with an 80% accuracy rate. It also informs the broker if it can’t hit that accuracy rate, letting them seek help from a title company when necessary.

So how do you explain something so abstract? 

Slow Clap tackled the challenge with simple animations. Visually, millions of data points converge into one document – which is something software is made to do, better than humans. That software then does the other thing it’s best at: repeating the process as much as requested. 

The video closes with a powerful question: “Can you afford to underwrite the old-fashioned way?” It declares an inevitable change in the industry but simultaneously invites you to adapt it to your advantage. 

How to copy it

States Title depends on the creative use of visual metaphor. Find an animation or production studio that has tackled really tough abstract concepts. Work with them on a script, and then let them handle the rest.

05 Dollar Shave Club

Razor blades are overpriced. Dollar Shave Club is a direct to consumer brand, possibly the first to get big. That’s still boring though. So instead of focusing just on the price difference, Dollar Shave Club chose to mock their competitors and the absurdity of overpaying for thin strips of metal. 

Easily one of the most well-known explainer videos, Dollar Shave Club’s epic breakthrough in the market was created by its founder Michael Dubin. It uses humor at its best, lining up joke after joke. And the miracle is, all of them flow together.

How to copy it

Humor is prized in modern culture, but it’s eternally tough to pull off. Therefore if you don’t have somebody who regularly gets a crowd laughing, we suggest hiring a comedian to help you write the video and act in it. That’s essentially what Dubin did.

But the other character in this video is the setting itself – a warehouse full of gags. To pull off both the staging and the filming, hire a professional video team so that the final product looks and feels like a funny commercial. 

How an explainer video can help your business

Explainer videos can answer more questions about your product – and select your audience – faster than any other media. 

To that end, you should consider adding them in the following locations:

  • On your Web site, either on the front page or a specific product page
  • On LinkedIn, in your company business page
  • As a Facebook business page banner video
  • On any platforms that you use, within your business profile and as a schedule post
  • And in emails to new clients

A Complete Guide to Understanding, Planning, and Creating B2B Videos

To make effective B2B videos, you have to think differently than B2C.

This is a guide to making B2B videos, or videos that sell from one business to another.

Is there a difference? Put simply, the B2B audience is small and practical. They are company decision-makers, managers and CEOs. They have strict budgets, stakeholders to please, and employee jobs to protect. 

B2C markets don’t have to be so methodical. While a B2B software company may have 10,000 real-world prospects, a B2C software company may have 10 million or more. And their purchase habits can be guided by logic – but they can also be for curiosity or comfort. 

Therefore, while all advertising requires emotion to sell, B2B depends heavily on concrete data to close a sale. Statistics, industry knowledge, and proven results are required. 

Sounds daunting, right? Well, in a lot of ways, we’ve found that B2B video can actually be easier than B2C, because if you know the industry, you know precisely what the players need. And creating videos to position yourself as an indispensable guide can actually be fun.

Slow Clap Productions is a San Francisco-based creative video production company that helps B2B brands like GitHub, Slack, Blue Shield of California, Capital One Small Business, and Insightly use video to its full potential. 

This article will show you: 

  • How B2B video is different. 
  • The best types of B2B content to make. 
  • How to choose which content to make. 
  • And where to deploy your videos for maximum results.

So let’s get started.


Great B2B video starts with B2B marketing fundamentals

B2B video follows the same principles as any great marketing, but differs in the where and how the message is delivered.

Start by thinking about who buys. Are they the director of marketing? Purchasing director? Or field supervisor?

Next, what does this person want? They may have a large budget, but misspending can damage the company and possibly cost them their job. A B2C customer can suffer a broken hair dryer, but a B2B customer may not be able to survive faulty software. 

Your customer’s first desire is safety (not to lose), but their hopes are pinned on products that go beyond “staying the same.” They do want software that really does save them an hour a day. 

Because these are the stakes, the goal of B2B marketing is first and foremost to build trust

To build trust, We suggest you demonstrate five things:

  1. You understand their industry. You know their operations and supply chain. You speak their language, including industry-specific lingo. Our testimonial video collaboration with GitHub, for instance, targets a very specific audience interested in cutting edge cloud computing, featuring Spotify, Google, and the Apache Foundation.
  2. You can prove your results. You gather testimonials from other customers – ideally recognizable brands, but at least companies in the same industries as your prospective customers. The video we made for NewVoiceMedia (now Vonage) about DoorDash does a great job of laying down the concrete benefits of their product.
  3. You can show relevant data. This includes test data, like “our drills lasted 40% longer in an independent study.” And related data, like “tungsten has shown to outlast other metals by as much as 90%” Our animated videos for States Title, for instance, use data points to make a strong case for their solutions.
  4. You know the culture of the industry. Like CRM, where sarcasm and color are encouraged. Or IT, where being efficient and correct are virtues. Or law, where reputation and power matter most. Stampli’s audience is Accounts Payable, one of the least sexy silos in a business. But they know their audience and know that AP teams love a good sense of humor. We made sure that shined through in our Stampli brand videos.
  5. You have a clear message that wraps the first four together. “Suppliers who use HoverTruck pay half as much in mileage costs, and it’s trusted by brands like FedEx.” Blue Shield of California did a great job of this when discussing new emerging technology, Virtual Consults, in our animated video series Health Reimagined.

How to use this knowledge in your B2B video best practices

Video is arguably the most powerful marketing short of a friend’s referral, but it faces the same problems as every other type of online marketing, including:

  • How will we get them to find it?
  • How will we get them to click on it?
  • How will it resonate with the audience?
  • How will it persuade the audience?

To tackle these, answer the following questions.

Who is the hero of the video?

More specifically, who is your customer “avatar?” What are their demographics and gender? How do they dress? How do they talk? If using actors or animated characters, you’ll need to make these decisions so you can include characters with whom your audience can identify. 

“To be good at sales, you have to be good at basically duplicating and mirroring the person you’re selling to and giving them the personality they need to feel comfortable to buy,” says Benjamin Denehy, CEO of The UK’s Most Hated Sales Trainer. 

What story does your customer need to hear?

It’s a simple formula – your customer has a problem (X), so they obtain your product/service (Y), and get a specific outcome (Z). 

Even in B2B video, most of your storytelling should be about your customer. This means skipping the office tour video unless it’s relevant – for instance, if you want to show that your employees all share a background in the same industry as your clients.

How is your customer searching for answers?

You solve a problem. Your customer asks about how to solve that problem in different and sometimes unexpected ways. 

Promising these answers is the key to being found, being watched, and (eventually) being purchased. 

This is first a problem of defining the answer, and then using keyword research to find out exactly how your audience is really asking it. For example, if you run a SaaS company, a frequent search is “software as a service vs. subscription.”

Source: Answer The Public

One way to begin is by using Answer the Public, which is sort of a reversed search engine. You type in a topic, and you’ll get questions and queries most frequently searched in Google that includes that search phrase. Be sure to try different search phrases – and consider comparing them in Google Trends to see which one(s) are searched most overall.

What proof do they need to hear and see?

According to Harvard Business Review, emotional purchase decisions are still rational – but in a complex way, where the intuition processes data faster than conscious logic, and then offers up its judgment as an emotion.

So maybe we don’t exactly “buy with emotion and justify with logic.” But either way, data is necessary to sell. Here are four easy-to-use forms of data for your B2B videos:

  • Before & after: Whenever possible, show the problem, action, and result 
  • Testimonials: “I’m director of marketing at TechCorp, and video helped us grow tremendously.” 
  • Primary data: “In our tests, video had a 20% higher conversion rate than email.” 
  • Secondary data:  “According to X, 90% of marketers say video brings them success”

During planning and scripting, consider adding every credible form of proof to your video. Rank them by how impactful they are to your avatar. Safety is always the first concern, with success coming second. 

Where will they watch this video?

The last consideration in this set is choosing where to launch your video for best results. This involves some knowledge of platforms. 

Start with these questions:

  • What platforms will you use? 
  • Is that platform’s culture best for this content?
  • What are their size limits? 
  • What are their runtime limits?
  • Should you upload the video natively on the platform, or embed it from another platform (e.g. Wistia, YouTube, or Vimeo)?

If you’re hoping to be found organically, ask these: 

  • What keywords would bring your customers there? 
  • Are the keywords found in the video? Or the video’s description?
  • Is your thumbnail eye-catching to your customer avatar?

And if you’re using advertisements, consider these:

  • Which platforms have the most professionals?
  • What keywords would target them best?

The best formats for B2B videos

Testimonials

A customer’s success story is worth… well, don’t tell them how much it’s worth, or they may invoice you. All the data in the world still doesn’t compare to a trustworthy recommendation. Even better: a human from a brand recognized in your industry. 

For instance, our case study video of how Asana’s legal operations pros use Ironclad is worth its weight in gold. It describes a story of a company department (legal ops) on the cutting edge of an industry (business contracting) all powered by Ironclad.

Ironclad x Asana Testimonial Video

To create a great testimonial:

  • Ask an outspoken customer who loves your product for help.
  • Film them in their native environment, using a professional production team.
  • Have them speak to an interviewer. It’s easier than talking to the camera.

And for basic interview questions:

  1. Who are they, and what does their business do?
  2. What was their problem?
  3. How did they know that your product had the answer?
  4. What was the result?
  5. Do they recommend you?

Explainer Videos

Explainer videos aren’t always about animated characters facing abstract problems. They can be live action, too, with a company representative talking about their methods. The common element is that they sell by explaining their unique solution to a problem.

You’ve seen a million of them – but they don’t need a million views. They only need to be seen by the right people. So targeting and promoting is just as important as creating a clear message. 

Stampli: Effortless Invoices Explainer Video

To create a great explainer video:

  1. Use an avatar that is familiar to your customer like Tony in our Stampli videos.
  2. Start with the problem. And really make them feel it.
  3. Explain the advantages of your solution.
  4. Show results with your strongest data.
  5. Target your audience with ads – be it through Google search, or through ads on specific problems.

Webinars and Live Streams

As an alternative to meeting in person, video conferencing is still rising. There are big advantages, too, beyond safety and lack of travel. 

  • It’s friendly. You’re not some faraway company in a tower nobody can enter. 
  • Customers get to learn and learn about your brand at the same time.
  • You can answer specific questions. B2B video marketing is largely about concrete answers, and you probably won’t be able to answer all of them in your other marketing. 
  • You get content you never knew you needed. Customers will raise concerns you never thought about. 

Slack Frontiers

Webinars live or die on audience participation, so we recommend you devote a large portion of time to answering questions. Lecturing through a pitch deck is boring. Keep your presentation short and open up the mic as soon as possible.

Besides planning, spend time promoting your webinars. Use your email list and your social media. And offer value. Your webinar should be worth skipping lunch. Two great methods include offering answers customers can’t get elsewhere, and offering discounts on your product.

Lastly, make sure you partner with an event production agency, or have an internal event producer, who knows the ins and outs of attendee registration, and how to turn registrants into high quality vetted sales leads.

Interviews with Experts

Often in B2B marketing, the word of an expert can be as good as a testimonial. If you make medical-grade masks, talk to a microbiologist who can verify that some masks – like yours – can stop even the tiniest of viruses from passing through.

La Crema Brand Story as an interview with experts

People understand that experts are busy and often live far away, so they don’t expect a full-scale production. Their first concern is getting answers. So your two priorities in expert interviews are good audio and good questions.

To create great expert interviews:

  1. Contact the expert with full disclosure about who you are and your intentions
  2. If they’re unwilling to host a film crew, ask them to record in a quiet area, preferably with good lighting
  3. Send them your questions in advance
  4. Set up your space for high-quality recording
  5. Respect the expert’s time and thank them

Educational Videos

Educational videos naturally include teaching your customer how to use your product or service. If you don’t show them how, somebody else will, and you don’t know what they’ll get wrong, let alone what they’ll say about you.

RepairPal Educational video

But beyond that, educational video can add value to your brand by creating industry-specific content. For example, SEO juggernaut Moz creates how-to videos on every aspect of SEO and search. And RepairPal collaborated with us to create content about commonly asked car maintenance questions.


How to choose what videos to create

If you have no video content whatsoever, this is the B2B video marketing strategy we recommend:

  1. A great explainer video. Your customer must first understand how you help them through a problem.
  2. Testimonials. Even when filmed on a phone, testimonials can build trust. But capturing them professionally demonstrates your success and reliability.
  3. Webinars. These help you build email lists, meet people interested in your product, and find out more about what they value. It’s win-win stuff.
  4. Educational videos. First, create some on how to use your product (if necessary), and second on heavily-searched topics related to your business. If you recorded a great Webinar, it can easily become an educational video.
  5. Interviews with experts. They’re essentially more educational videos, but it’s harder to predict if the content will answer specific questions your audience has. Sometimes, though, you need somebody with more authority to prove your own credibility.

Choosing the right platforms

As always, go where your audience goes. But in B2B, that’s a somewhat predictable breakdown: 

If you’re starting from scratch, build your presence in the top four platforms (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube). You can use programs like Hootsuite to post to every platform on an automated schedule. 

Remember that total views and total subscribers are nice, but they’re not the metrics you want. Your goal is engagement with actual customers. It doesn’t matter if you only get 25 views in a month if one of them is a major customer.


Tips for better videos and better outcomes

Start with a script. It’s a lot easier to change paths on paper than it is mid-filming or in post-production.

Add captions. Captions make your content friendly to hard-of-hearing and increase engagement from users scrolling down feeds. Some platforms offer them for free. Rev.com offers them at just over $1/minute. 

Hire a top-notch production company if the video is going to directly impact your sales. Reach out to us to start the conversation.

Follow the 80/20 rule. Spend 20% of your time on creation, and 80% on promotion. Use it in ads. Put it on a social media schedule. 


Further reading

Building a Brand Voice with Video (Slow Clap)

A Complete B2B SEO Strategy for 2021 (Backlinko)

Understanding the Differences Between B2B and B2C Marketing (The Balance – Small Business)

2016 B2B Benchmarks Report (Content Marketing Institute)

Four Best Practices for B2B Marketing (Uberflip)

Six type of B2B video and when to use them (LinkedIn)

The Best B2B Social Networking Channels To Grow Your Business (Shane Barker)