Nick BuchheitWhen you’re selling a SaaS product, scaling your marketing and sales is always on your mind. You know that getting users to sign up for a demo or renew their subscription requires that they fully understand the value your product brings. But keeping their attention long enough to convey that value is not easy.
Enter the SaaS explainer video. This type of video is highly effective at conveying your unique selling proposition in an engaging and memorable way.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at SaaS explainer videos, what makes them so beneficial, and how to make them as efficient as possible.
What Is a SaaS Explainer Video?
A SaaS explainer video is a short-form video used for a SaaS business’ marketing or sales program. Its purpose is to highlight and explain a SaaS company’s offering compellingly and efficiently. Many SaaS businesses host their explainer videos on the homepage of their website, use them on social media, and as part of marketing campaigns.
What Makes a Good SaaS Explainer Video?
Explainer videos come in all shapes. But most really good SaaS explainer videos have a few things in common:
- Short and to the point: Explainer videos are usually under three minutes. And the most successful ones are often even shorter than that, below two minutes.
- A clear call-to-action (CTA): There is usually a clear purpose of an explainer video, and it should be easy for the viewer to understand what that is. A good SaaS explainer video is very clear about what next action the viewer is meant to take.
- Solving a problem: The best explainer videos usually focus on addressing a specific pain point. They start by explaining the problem, and then they offer a solution.
The key to keeping your explainer video short and succinct is to focus on answering the following three questions. Nothing more, nothing less.
- What is my audience’s problem?
- How will our product fix it?
- Why should the audience choose us?
A common pitfall is that SaaS explainer videos often get tangled up in the first two questions and don’t focus enough on the why. Many videos do a good job explaining the product but fail to communicate the underlying purpose.
Related reading: Animated Explainer Videos: How To Pick The Right Style For Your Brand
5 Ways Your SaaS Business Will Benefit from an Explainer Video
Shorten your sales cycles
One of the most important business KPIs SaaS businesses look at is sales velocity. How quickly you can turn traffic into leads, and leads into paying customers, will have a massive impact on your bottom line. Explainer videos are extremely efficient vehicles of communication that can deliver your pitch in a 90-second sequence. They are highly valuable in the beginning of sales conversations. They’re also super handy for your prospects to share with their fellow stakeholders internally to get everyone on board quicker.
Related reading: How To Use Video Marketing To Simplify Your Sales Message
Create emotional connections
No other medium evokes an emotional response the same way that video does. The emotional impact you can create with video overrides all other formats. Imagine trying to get your reader to laugh when writing a blog post about some kind of B2B tech solution. We’re not saying it can’t be done, but let’s just say it doesn’t happen very often. An explainer video, on the other hand, can be just as entertaining as you want it to be. Videos allow you to help set the tone for your sales messages and turn your SaaS product into a love brand.
Leverage visuals to explain your products
People process visuals faster and more intuitively than text. This is one of the reasons why animated explainer videos have become such a staple in SaaS marketing. Videos can help you communicate information in a shorter amount of time.
Related reading: 7 styles of B2B video your brand should be using
Repurpose existing content
As all content marketers know, repurposing content is an essential tactic when scaling SaaS marketing. And an excellent way to repurpose popular content, such as blog posts or case studies, is by turning them into videos. For example, you can pick the blog posts that are the best performing on your website and turn them into explainer videos. Add the explainer videos to your blog posts, and watch traffic and conversions skyrocket. In video format, the information will be easier to access and consume. It will also have visitors stay longer on your site. Google loves all these things, so this strategy will give your website an immediate boost in rankings and traffic.
Capture and convey your brand’s essence
Video marketing is a powerful way to strengthen brand awareness and increase your visibility. Video allows you to stand out and be unique in a crowded marketplace, where many brands look quite similar, and explainer videos are no exception. A good explainer video lets you tell your brand story in a new and creative way that draws people in and makes them remember your message. No other format is as powerful for conveying brand messages and creating memorable marketing.
Related reading: 5 Reasons to Invest In Brand Video Production
SaaS Explainer Videos: Best Practices
So, we’ve concluded that explainer videos are valuable in SaaS sales and marketing. Now what?
To succeed with any video production project, you need a strategy and a creative brief. Defining your strategy and using it as a basis for your projects will help you create the right content and move you closer to your marketing goal. A detailed plan will help you move in the right direction, and a detailed creative video brief will help your video production agency shoot the videos you need.
The creative video brief is a summary describing what kind of video you want to produce. It’s where you tell your agency what you’re looking for, and it’s a document that helps keep the project and everyone involved on track and moving in the same direction. The creative brief outlines goals, budget, messaging, branding guidelines, target audience, and any other important information when planning your video production.
Related reading: Video Brief Template – How To Write a Winning Creative Brief For Your Next Video Project
5 Steps To Getting Started
- Get clear on your goals
If you don’t know what you’re looking to achieve with your video, nobody else will. To create a video that helps you reach your goals, those goals need to be ultra-clear so that they can be communicated to everyone.
- Define your target audience
Knowing who you’re targeting is crucial. By crafting a detailed ICP [Ideal Customer Profile), you will be able to address your audience in a way that resonates with them.
- Craft your message
For your video production agency to be able to communicate your message, they need to know exactly what it is and what is most important. Stick to the core message, and keep it simple.
- Set your video production budget
Before you launch production, you need to know what budget you are willing to invest in the project. Keep in mind that price is not the same as the value and that the ROI on marketing video investments is way higher than on other media.
- Partner with a creative video production agency
Find a video production agency that you feel comfortable communicating with, and that has a solid portfolio of successful projects. Don’t settle for a reel – ask about references, awards, and other things that show the agency is creative and competent.
Related reading: 5 Steps To Choosing The Right Corporate Video Production Company
7 Examples Of Really Great SaaS Explainer Videos
If you’re looking to create a SaaS explainer video, it can be helpful to look at some of the great examples in this genre made by other companies. Of course, not to copy their concepts, but to find inspiration and ideas. We’ve collected seven of our favorite SaaS explainer videos below.
Pineapple Payments
Explainer videos are not only great for delivering your elevator pitch and a high-level intro to your product. They’re also handy for explaining different features, or, as in this case, integrations. We produced a whole series of B2B videos for Pineapple Payments to help explain the unique benefits of their products. For these videos, we chose to make simple animated explainers, to educate viewers and visualize the different aspects of the product. We have produced six videos in this series, and Pineapple uses them as sales tools both in their inbound and outbound marketing.
Video: https://wearecovalent.com/projects/
AutoDraw
A simple and minimalistic style combined with a cleverly and efficiently delivered sales pitch makes this video a best-in-class example of how to make great SaaS explainer videos. This video communicates its message effortlessly and straightforwardly, which is usually the best way to go when creating explainer videos.
BookSync
Creating compelling and concise SaaS Explainer videos doesn’t have to be complicated. Sometimes it’s the simplest execution that captivates your target audience most efficiently.
For BookSync, we created this short animated video in a simple, sleek, and straight-to-the-point style. The most important message was: “Developing your team can be as easy as starting a company book club.” We wanted the copy and voiceover to be simple to match the minimalistic design and animation.
Hootsuite
Combining cute and colorful illustrations a with dynamic pace, this short video manages to communicate a lot of information in a short time. And not only does it deliver the information, it does so in a fun and captivating way. For folks looking to explain their product without using screenshots from the app, this is a really great reference video.
Mailchimp
This adorable animated explainer video from Mailchimp is an excellent example of a short and entertaining video that still manages to get the vital message across. One of the reasons this quirky and cute video works so well (apart from the beautiful illustrations) is that they’ve kept the story short and to the point, which makes the message easy to understand and remember.
StoryChief
One mistake many SaaS companies make when creating explainer videos is not making their video stand out. We’ve all seen the generic explainer videos that lack identity and personality. Storychief, on the other hand, has succeeded in creating a visually compelling design with characteristic gradient colors. The bold and unique visual style makes this video a great source of inspiration for SaaS explainer videos.
Related reading: 7 Reasons B2B Video Production Should Be Part Of Your Sales Toolkit
Asana
If you are on a budget, this type of explainer video might be right up your alley. SaaS video examples like this may not be the most exciting ones, but they get the job done very well. You see on screen the product interface being demoed, accompanied by a voiceover. It’s a quick and straightforward way to explain the value of your product to the user.
Related reading: What Is Corporate Video: Top Trends, Tactics and Strategies in 2022
Partner With Award-Winning Corporate Video Production Agency
Covalent is an experienced Pittsburgh video production company specializing in creative and authentic video production. We can help you create everything from brand videos and explainer videos to docu-style case studies and commercials. Get in touch to learn more, and explore how to make your brand come alive with sales video production!