Power of Explainer Videos in Marketing: Interview with Mario Mihaljev

Mario Mihaljev is the Founder of Explainly Media, a team of experts specializing in creating explainer videos.

With a background in psychology and neuroscience, Mario has been fascinated with understanding human behavior from an early age.

Mario shares his thoughts in this interview on what sets explainer videos apart from other forms of visual content and how to measure their effectiveness.

He predicts that the trend of creating shorter videos by repurposing existing content will continue to grow in popularity in the coming years.

Let’s dive in!

Can you tell us about your journey into the world of marketing?

My interest in sales and marketing originally came from my psychology and neuroscience background in academia.

From an early age, I was fascinated with understanding human behavior and why people do what they do.

Toward the end of university, I found myself more passionate and excited about being able to apply my learnings in a business sense rather than being a clinician. So I decided to make a bold pivot and launch Explainly Media with a few freelance colleagues.

Between us, we had top talent in copywriting, animation, design, sales, and marketing to quickly gather our first happy clients.

How do you define “explainer videos”? What sets them apart from other forms of visual content like product demos or ads?

Explainer videos have a different ethos from a lengthy screen capture product demo with the founder’s monotone voiceover or short, attention-grabbing ads.

An explainer aims to serve as a shareable elevator pitch with a compelling story. In other words, we want to hit that sweet spot between engagement and education with an outcome in mind.

The goal is to answer 3 main questions in 90 seconds or less:

1. Why is this relevant to me?
2. How can this solve my pain?
3. What next step do I need to take?

We de-complexify the complex!

What are some common misconceptions about explainer videos?

The most common misconceptions come from teams that have never used an explainer or used a poor-quality video.

There are thousands of freelancers on websites like Fiverr that can develop motion graphics that look great. But can they understand your business to have the video move and meaningful business metric?

Poor experiences lead teams to dismiss explainers’ power and comprehensive use cases. But explainer videos can be an evergreen company asset that amplifies so many areas of revenue.

On the sales side, reps can send over an easily digestible/shareable video during complex deal cycles where new stakeholders are introduced to quickly get them up to speed.

For top-of-funnel efforts, modern buyers want to do more research before signing up for a demo.

Video content ensures that inbound leads that do come in are “pre-qualified” and already educated about how the product solves their pain.

How do you work with companies to identify which parts of their existing demand gen efforts would benefit most from incorporating explainer videos?

I’ll ask where their leads primarily come from on every discovery call. Inbound or outbound?

For smaller companies, their inbound is usually suffering, and their reps have to source almost all their opportunities from scratch.

Another major concern is how many inbounds convert to qualified opportunities. If it’s low, it usually means there’s a clarity issue with their messaging.

This is a prime use case for an explainer video so that when a visitor lands on their website, it’s obvious that the video should be their first click to answer 90% of their questions and avoid confusion.

How do you measure the effectiveness of an explainer video campaign?

These can change depending on the outcomes in mind for the video, but a few common ones we’ll want to track are:

• View count (how many eyeballs have seen the video?)
• Retention rate (how many of those eyes are watching all the way through?)
• Click-through rate (how many viewers are taking action on the call to action?)
• Attributed revenue or pipeline generated in $ (how many dollars of closed-won or qualified pipeline has the video generated?)

What do you think sets video apart from other forms of content?

We’re inundated with content.

Text is excellent for a captive audience that actively follows a content creator. Still, most consumers will be viewing content while taking a short break, traveling, or want something they can share with colleagues without the big ask of reading paragraphs of text right away.

This is where a short and sweet educational video wins. We consume content differently. Some of us are more visual or auditory or prefer text. Therefore, a compelling explainer will be memorable.

How do you see explainer videos evolving over the next few years?

I’m seeing more clients take an interest in creating shorter videos by repurposing their existing content.

For example, you take a highly shared LinkedIn post and turn that into a video or condense a commonly cited company blog into a 30-second video.

Companies that haven’t gotten serious about the video now see that it is a must to stay in the conversation. The ones that have been embracing video from the start are looking for creative ways to generate more and more content regularly.

Can you walk us through your process for creating a compelling explainer video?

Sure.

Our first goal is to set up a kickoff call to review our discussion so far and solidify aspects of the project, like outcomes, visual style, and tone. We also gather any brand assets like logos the client has available.

Many agencies stop there, but we want to go deeper. To ensure that the resulting video sounds completely on-brand and speaks to their ideal customer profile, we’ll review buyer personas, buying triggers, common pain points, and more.

Many companies have shared call recordings from their sales reps which are invaluable to getting the tone and value propositions 100% natural-sounding.

Next, we’ll work with our professional copywriters to create a compelling script that resonates with their audience and cast a voice actor of their choice once approved.

We’ll create a series of style frames based on the script to preview what the final video will look like

Then, we’ll bring the storyboard to life and develop the animated video with stunning dynamic animation and fitting music.

Finally, we’ll optimize the video for quick upload and loading anywhere on the web for any device.

Finally, what tools and software do you typically use when creating explainer videos?

Our team generally relies on the Adobe suite of products.

After Effects is the main workhorse, but Illustrator and Premiere Pro are also used.

For more elaborate projects where 3D rendering is needed, we’ll also use Cinema 4D by Maxon.