Animations on your website is a powerful way to attract and inform viewers – provided it’s done right. Before starting on an animation project, there are ten questions you need to answer so that you can get the best results from the final product.
1. What makes your business unique?
You want your animation to highlight what is special about your business. What makes you stand out from the crowd? And, sorry, excellent customer care and being a full-service provider are not unique selling points. Everyone says it.
2. What is your business’s mission?
A clear sense of what you do and how you do it is vital for any business; if you cannot express that in a simple mission statement then all of your marketing efforts are going to prove unsatisfactory. After all, there is no way to successfully promote a business when no one knows what the business is truly about.
3. Who is your ideal client?
An animation targeting moms of teenagers has a completely different look, feel, and tone than one targeting single physics PhD candidates. Even though the two groups may overlap, you still address one differently than the other.
4. What are your marketing goals?
This is a question to ask generally as well as specifically for the animation. Are you trying to become a known name in your industry, inform people about your industry, inform people about you specifically, or provide precise education about an individual product or service?
5. Is your business ready for an animation?
An animation is not the first step in marketing. For that matter, marketing is not the first step in a business. Do you have enough funding? Do you have a website? Is your branding complete? Are your basics in place a ready to accept the next step of an animation? While animations can be part of a re-brand or updated website, they are part of the final process, not the decision making required.
6. How have you marketed your business in the past?
What have you done, what are you doing, what’s worked, what hasn’t worked, what are you still trying out, what might not have worked but could under different circumstances?
7. What is your vision for your business?
If you’re struggling with what makes your business unique, look to your vision. This is your grand world-changing idea of what your business can do. While changing the world may seem like too much to take on, just by being in business, you are changing your part of the world. And, you could be amazed by what big things happen because of small, local shifts.
8. Who is in charge of marketing at your company?
At last! An easy one!
OK, the answer is easy, however the question is vital to anyone who produces animations. If you are not the marketing decision maker, or the final decision maker for an animation project, that person needs to be on board and available to insure the creation process runs smoothly.
9. What is your marketing budget?
While a simple question, this is not always easy to answer. Now is not the time to become obsessed with return on investment. Marketing is not always that tangible.
10. What else do you need to figure out before creating an animation?
And this is were Squash and Stretch Productions would love to lend a hand. We know what needs to be known before beginning an animation project and we enjoy working with businesses to figure it all out.
