As we look ahead to 2024, it’s important to recognise the evolving landscape of events. In the wake of 2020, event organisers and attendees have swiftly adapted to a new digital paradigm, transforming internal events and trade shows. While some events have returned to in-person formats, others have embraced the benefits of a fully digital experience. This virtual environment presents opportunities for professionals to participate from anywhere globally, although it does pose challenges when it comes to establishing a distinct identity in an online space that lacks the personal touch of face-to-face interactions.
Irrespective of whether you are hosting or attending an in-person or virtual event, the key lies in preparing a range of high-quality digital assets to support you throughout the event – before, during, and after. Animated videos, in particular, play a crucial role in event promotion, offering an engaging and branded approach to capture and maintain audience attention, convey information effectively, and encourage meaningful discussions. The beauty of animation lies in its versatility, allowing you to tailor it to your unique messaging and unleashing your creativity to its fullest potential.
To help you embark on the journey of creating a successful promotional video for your event, we have delved into detailed guidelines below. Additionally, we have compiled a list of best practices to ensure that your investment yields maximum returns. Let’s dive in and make your event shine in the vibrant landscape of 2024.
Promote your event with animated video: best-practice tips
- Incorporate your brand identity
- Keep videos short
- Consider optimal video formats for different platforms
- Tailor the messaging to the audience
Incorporate your brand identity
By using animated promotional videos, you are giving your brand a voice. Because it’s important to maintain brand consistency across all platforms, you may need to develop an on-screen brand identity to ensure your brand’s look and feel works in both a physical and digital space. As this is an introduction to who you are, this stage is important.
Your corporate brand identity and your event branding may in some cases not be the same. This is particularly true for internal events where a new, fresh look and feel may be needed to disrupt the status quo or reward employees with something distinct and different.
However, using your corporate brand as an endorsement for the event is a possibility and can add more weight to the event. Whatever you decide, ensuring the videos you commission embody your brand is key. It will help you distinguish yourself from every other experience (if you are hosting an event) or tailor your message to the purpose of the event (if you are attending).
If you are interested in learning more about branded content, you can read about the power of branded content using video in one of our recent blog articles. You can also have a look at the striking motion brand identity system we created for Hayfin.
Keep videos short
As a brand, you have a story to tell. But when it comes to video, you will want to keep it short and to the point, so that you maintain engagement with your audience, especially during an event where their attention can be easily lost.
Imagine a video like a good story, it needs a hook to capture the audience’s attention, a narrative that is clear to follow and moments that evoke an emotional reaction in the viewer. A well-structured, well-written, well-produced animated video can pack in a lot of digestible information and be a pleasure to watch. This makes them an asset to have in your arsenal when you are hosting or attending an event
Content and form are important to a successful animated video, but so is restricting the duration. The rule of thumb is to keep animations under two minutes each, as this tends to be the length that gets the best engagement rates.
Consider optimal video formats for different platforms
When considering optimal video formats for different platforms, it’s crucial to keep in mind the specific ways you’ll be utilizing the videos. Whether it’s for an event, a social media post, or direct promotion on a website, various formats tend to work best on different platforms, including TikTok and Instagram, which continue to gain popularity among the 2024 audience.
For instance, when creating videos for Facebook promotion, dimensions of 1280 x 720 pixels with a minimum width of 600 pixels are recommended for landscape and portrait orientations.
For Linkedin, you will need to keep your animated video to an aspect ratio of 1:2.4 to 2.4:1 and max file size of 5GB for organic posts, whereas you have many more options for paid campaigns, but a file size limit of 200 MB.
On TikTok, it’s advisable to adhere to an aspect ratio of 9:16 or 16:9, and ensure the video files do not exceed 500MB in size.
Instagram, on the other hand, presents more versatility. For organic posts, aim for an aspect ratio between 1.91:1 and 4:5, and restrict the file size to a maximum of 200MB. Paid campaigns offer additional options, but still maintain the maximum file size limitation.
By considering the intended platforms and their specific requirements prior to, during, and after the event, you can streamline the production process, ensuring that all assets are designed accordingly. This foresight will lead to cost savings for you, your marketing team, and your social media efforts in the long term.
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Tailor the messaging to the audience
Like anything in the world of digital marketing, putting yourself in the shoes of your target audience, and tailoring the messaging around what will grab their interest, is what will allow you to make the most of your investment.
For example, if you are hosting a virtual event, then you will want to tailor your messaging around the aims and goals of the event itself and how it will benefit attendees.
If you are attending an event as a vendor, then you are better to focus on why someone should chat with you and what value your product/service offers that would solve an attendee’s problems.
To make sure you get this step right, we highly recommend involving an animation studio (like us!) with knowledge in event branding, as they are often set up in-house with professional scriptwriters.
Plus, it’s important to note that when it comes to event branding, experts in physical event branding won’t always be the experts in digital/virtual event branding. If you choose to work with an external agency to help you prepare for an online event, motion branding and video experience are key capabilities to look for.
Where & how to use your promotional videos
Now that we have covered some of the best practice tips to follow when creating animated video content for an event, we will now look at the different ways you can use video to support a virtual event.
During the event
First and foremost, you will be using your video during the event itself. You still need to think about where you will be using video i.e. as presentation graphics behind a panel or as inserts in a webinar-style conference but more importantly, you will need to think about how you will be using them, which will help you decide on how many you need overall.
For example, you may need a series of videos that cover different topics, including an explainer video that acts as the perfect introduction to your brand, a video that supports a complex topic during a presentation, or a video that you send to a lead who requests more detailed information about a product or a service.
Plus, by planning the different types of content you need for the event, you can then work backwards to how you can use the videos for marketing purposes. Having the core event template in place for your videos means you can easily reuse assets, making it easier and more cost-effective. Below, we’ve covered a few of the different ways you can incorporate your videos into your marketing for the event.
As part of your email marketing
Email marketing is a great marketing tool, especially for brands who are hosting an event, as they can be used as timely reminders and highlight how attendees can prepare for the day.
An excellent way to incorporate your animated videos into your emails is by adding short snippets of the full version, which are easy and quick to make when you already have the full asset. If you choose to do this, just make sure that the video is able to be converted into a GIF with a text overlay, as not all email providers support video formats.
As a social media post
Similar to your email campaigns, you can repurpose shorter versions of videos you have prepared for the online event on your social media channels.
If you choose to advertise on social media, make sure you include LinkedIn as a key platform, as video campaigns tend to have around 50% view rates, which is high compared to other platforms.
Plus, social media videos get shared 1200% more than text and images combined, so you are greatly increasing your likelihood of your network sharing your video, which essentially gives you ‘free’ advertising.
On your event landing page
If you are hosting an event, designing a landing page where people can easily register their attendance will be one of the most important elements of your online presence.
Your design should be simple and should always include at least an introduction about the event, details of the schedule, date and times, and a form that allows you to sign up in a few simple steps. But by adding a video on this landing page, you can boost your conversion rate by up to 80%, so you will want to also factor this into your design.
Let’s create an animated promotional video for your event
Working with a creative content agency will ensure not only do you get promotional video content that fits your brand, but you will find that it also delivers the desired results.
We are passionate about using our expertise to bring brands to life and have a wealth of content for you to explore.
For a start, you can download our free Creative Brief Template which includes all the questions you need to formulate clear brief for any project:
Free Creative Brief Template
Or you can check out pages on related services that may be of interest:
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If you are considering a video content for a virtual event, we’d love to hear from you.
