How to Build Customer Trust Using Explainer Videos

Explainer videos are one of the most used types of marketing videos out there. They’re a concise, straightforward, and engaging form of multimedia storytelling—making them a good way for marketers to appeal to today's busy, impatient consumers. They're also a powerful tool for generating audience trust, which can lead to an increase in conversions.

That said, just like any other marketing tactic, explainer videos need to be well-crafted and well-executed to bring these results. A poorly made, mediocre explainer video can do more harm than good to your business. It can hurt your online reputation, make your business appear unprofessional, and ultimately scare your prospects away. In this post, we’ll break down several ways to ensure your explainer videos are a trust-building tool.

What Is an Explainer Video?

Before we get into the nitty-gritty details, we want to make sure that we’re all on the same page about the definition of the explainer video. 

An explainer video is a short-form type of marketing video (ideally, around 30 to 90 seconds) many businesses use to highlight their products or services or summarize the basics of their products in a compelling way.

More often than not, explainer videos use animation to break down complex topics into more manageable chunks and ensure that viewers get the key messages. Engaging animated characters, combined with a story-driven voiceover, are effective to increase retention and create top-in-mind awareness.

Here is a good example of an explainer video from CrazyEgg:

How to Use Explainer Videos to Establish Trust

Here are eight ways to ensure your explainer video builds trust with your target audience: 

1. Highlight your audiences’ problems. Today’s consumers are savvy, selective, and more than a bit cynical in their purchasing decisions. Instead of bragging about the awesome features of your product, it's better empathize with your buyer's pain points and offer a solution that shows you care. Make them the hero of the story, not your product.
2. Research your competitors. Your competitors are your best teachers. When they're using explainer videos as a marketing tool, you can analyze their strategy: how they use the video, when they use it, how their audiences interact with it, and the results they’ve gotten. Find out what they're lacking in their videos and try to improve on their efforts. When you take your video one step further, you give your customers a reason to choose you and not your competitors.
3. Emotions are key. Humans are emotional beings.  That's why it's important to consider the power of emotions that are triggered by color schemes or music choices. It’s always better to use an emotionally engaging color palette for your background design while applying related music, voiceover and sound effects. The right combination of visual and audio elements can produce the same kinds of feelings you want your customers to feel when they use your product—whether excitement, relief, happiness or something else. 
4. Include your business expertise. While explainer videos are best known for demonstrating how a product works, they are also an opportunity to showcase the knowledge and expertise of your company and its leadership. When you include broader insights on your industry or the business world in your video, your customers will understand that you are not just selling your products or services, but are giving them a fuller perspective on the business landscape. 
5. Showcase your brand's personality. Explainer videos let you show off your personality—what your business is like, what customers can expect of you, what it's like to interact with you. You can use the video's characters, pace, tone and language to align with your brand. For one business, it might mean a funny, informal video; another brand might take a more serious approach. But be sure to be consistent across all your marketing touchpoints. If your video is lighthearted and irreverent but your website and other marketing communications are not, it creates a disconnect that diminishes trust. 
6. Use a storytelling approach. Most marketers know that storytelling is an effective form of communication, but do you know the science behind this fact? Research by neuroscientists has shown that when we hear a compelling story, our brains react as if we are experiencing the events in the story ourselves. We put ourselves inside the story. That makes it more memorable and more likely to influence our behavior.
7. Make it honest. Don’t make your explainer video promise something you can’t deliver, or make claims that seem too good to be true. Be straightforward in telling your brand's story and explaining the benefits of your product or service. Should you make assertions in your video that consumers don't believe are credible,  they will rarely give you a second chance. 
8. Show how your product works. Typically, the No. 1 job of explainer videos is to demonstrate how a product or service works—especially when it's difficult to communicate this in words.  You want to define the problem, elaborate on the problem, and then explain how your product solves the problem. Video and audio together have been proven to help audiences understand how things work better than the written word alone.

Building customer trust doesn't happen overnight. But a well-executed explainer video is a great way to introduce your brand to new audiences, turning first-time viewers into prospects who are eager to learn more about your products or services.