In this overview, we present selected business videos made at Alconost in 2022, talk about the problems these videos solved, and share observations that can help you order the best animated videos to foster your business's growth.

Alconost is an animated video agency that produces business videos for IT companies. In the past 10 years, we've created thousands of animated videos in different genres, ranging from trailers and explainer videos to presentation and branding videos to educational and advertising videos. In addition to making videos about software, games, and other digital products, we create videos about devices and concepts and provide multimedia localization services.

The best business explainer videos focus on benefits

An animated explainer video doesn't contain lengthy summaries or abstract narratives. If we look at the best explainer video examples, we see what makes them stand out: the product advertised is positioned as a tool for solving specific problems.

This approach to presenting the product makes it more accessible for the audience to imagine it in their lives, thus increasing the likelihood of converting a lead into a customer.

Following the explainer video logic allows you to make videos in other genres: trailers, presentations, and product demos. Being clearly part of one particular genre isn't so important when making a video to solve a business problem. What matters is creating a video that immerses the product in the target audience's context and focuses on the benefits of using the product. 

One of the videos made at Alconost using this logic was about Interacty, a platform for creating branded games and other interactive content that helps in marketing.

This video helped our customer show in under two minutes the variety of ways their platform offers to engage users. We also helped the customer stay within their budget by finding alternatives to expensive techniques. We incorporated the client's wishes into the script while keeping the cost of animated video production down. 

Interacty already uses this video in its marketing comms, and the product team makes an important point: "When our clients watch the video, they evaluate not the video itself, but the service on which it is focused. And that's a good thing — after all, the video is a means to an end."  

You can find other cases of people benefitting from a mobile app explainer video here.

Knowing that the video works to the customer's benefit and solves their problems is probably the best compliment for a studio that creates animated business videos! 

Marketing videos: order more, pay less

Marketing campaigns with video content are one way to generate traffic, along with search and pay-per-click advertising. Consider creating a series of short ads that show your product from different angles and bring your target audience to you. 

Ad videos can echo your main, long-form video so that the content's style is consistent and you stay within budget. 

Here are the benefits a customer receives when ordering a series of video creatives:

• Save time. Videos in a series can be worked on at the same time.
• Saving budget. Making several videos as part of one project is cheaper than starting the video production engine (script, voice-over, animation, etc.) over and over again.
• Meet your target audience's needs. In ad videos, you can showcase different features of the product or various situations it can be used in. Analyze which messages best appeal to each audience segment and optimize your campaigns with these insights in mind.
• Stretch your content. When an ad runs for a long time, it 'burns out', generating fewer clicks and conversions. Replace an old video with a new one to keep your ads looking and feeling sharp.

Take a look at the video series Alconost did for *instinctools. The series consists of 4 promotional videos showcasing different features of its business solutions and a presentation video highlighting the comprehensive benefits *instinctools' customers receive. 

Ad videos: brand awareness and conversion growth

Want to add a little sparkle to your video ads but aren't sure you'll be understood? Don't ditch that idea! You have more at your disposal than provocative humor, which can end up costing you a lot in the long run. You can break through banner blindness and make yourself memorable to viewers without going to extremes or risking hurting anyone. When choosing a target, think about laughing a little at yourself. 

Order pre-rolls for advertising that promotes your image to bridge the gap between you and the viewer without taking things too far. Check out how we do it! 

Every year, the Alconost team releases animated videos for marketing with a touch of self-deprecating humor. Here's our hen, tenderly clucking while keeping localizations warm.  

And here's our purring ginger tabby cat. He tirelessly grabs clothespins and hangs the freshly translated texts that just keep coming.

Ad videos work for both generating leads and building brand awareness. They can reinforce other marketing activities, reminding people who have visited your website about your company and its services. Funny videos are also a good fit on social media. Unlike neutral branding videos, such content has the potential to go viral. 

The best software tutorial videos take the pressure off your support team

The best software tutorial videos can replace communication with the support team and leave users completely satisfied with the product despite the difficulties they encountered.

Tutorials are more than just technical tools. After all, your users will search specifically for a tutorial when they experience an issue with your software. What could be better than timely help from a developer without waiting for an operator's response? 

A well-made video tutorial can literally save the user experience and restore shattered customer loyalty. 

Even if we look past the times users need emergency assistance for the moment, tutorials generally help make the experience of working with software convenient and predictable. They show scenarios of successfully interacting with the product and give users a clear idea about its features. This is also useful for those who are just taking a look at your product. 

Watch a tutorial on Konfuzio, which provides customized intelligent document processing solutions. This video shows a step-by-step scenario for using the service, making it easier for new users to navigate it!

Software how-to's are just one kind of video tutorial. Another popular topic for tutorials is learning processes. Sounds kind of hard? No worries, you've seen videos like this millions of times! Check out this series of videos for AliExpress, where we showed how sellers on this marketplace should pack parcels and send them by mail.

Such videos help the target audience understand the product better and learn how to use it effectively. They take the pressure off your support team and increase user loyalty to the product, making tutorial videos a win-win! 

The best B2B videos attract with simplicity

Who said that businesses appealing to businesses have to present their product in a boring, formal way? At Alconost, we think B2B videos should be as easy to understand as B2C communications. 

Business videos don't aim to praise the product. After all, they're watched by well-informed decision-makers. You can hardly win the trust of such an audience with broad generalizations and claims that your product is the best. 

We create logical, easy-to-understand B2B videos. This approach helps make our customers' products stand out against competitors that tend to hide the real value of their goods behind an overly grand presentation. 

At Alconost, we know how and love to show specialized products so that their benefits are clear to the average viewer and experts alike. To us, explaining complex technical solutions in a simple way without diminishing their value is the art of creating best business videos. 

That's exactly what we aimed to do with the video for Wattics Air, a solution to efficiently manage & balance energy, costs, and indoor air quality.

Order a video that communicates the value of your product simply and clearly. It's possible, no matter how complicated your offering may seem at first glance! 

The best game videos increase conversion and… are mesmerizing on their own!

Our video game trailer production experience in 2022 was imbued with spectacular visuals. More customers choose 3D animation, even though its production is a bit more labor-intensive than 2D. Check out this seamless and effective 3D animation for videos about backgammon and three-in-a-row games. And though the games are different, the 3D animation was equally appropriate in both trailers.

You can make a 2D video that's catchy, memorable, and leaves an impression. Just check out this series of videos we did for the JungleMix Adventure game in its signature style. The customer's eye-catching art + detailed animation from Alconost = an amazing series of game videos. 

Outsourcing animation helps game developers take the load off their team, which allows them to prioritize other tasks over creating videos.

There's usually not a clear-cut line between teasers and trailers, but in 2022, we had a chance to work on a project that had an obvious teaser — a short video for advertising — and an obvious trailer, i.e., a video that showcased the game's features. Both videos were united by a dynamic montage set to music and a slogan design that employed kinetic typography. But just take a look at how much they differed in terms of content!

Still wondering if you need a professional trailer for your game? We say, "Of course you do!" A game trailer is a great way to hook viewers and convert them to users. Game screenshots and text descriptions are also important pieces, but the video shows the game in action. The game is literally in the viewer's hands! A game trailer creates the kind of vibe that makes it easy to tap the 'Download' button. 

The best videos for apps increase installs

Videos for the App Store are made according to strict rules, and the Mac App Store is no exception. But there's still room for maneuver with technical and creative limitations in place. Check out the app promo video we were able to create for Widgetter on macOS. We helped the client visually demonstrate what their application is capable of doing.

If there aren't any technical restrictions, we can come up with anything the heart desires. That could include creating original characters to hold viewers' attention. That's just what we did for Check'NdOut App, which tracks 'field workers'. We designed neat little ants for the video. Watch them driving a tractor, having a bite of a sandwich, and fixing a water pipe.

If you're a developer, explore the app store you plan to publish in and browse the pages of products that are similar to yours. If your competitors are using videos to attract users, you definitely won't want to be left behind! And if videos aren't the most popular trend in your niche, a powerful video preview can help users choose your app. 

Entering new markets via localization

You can even flex your creativity when localizing an existing video, not just when making one from scratch. Re-voicing a video and translating the words on the screen is the bare minimum.

To increase conversions in a new market, try to make your video as relevant to the viewers in that country as possible.

Using the interface's relevant language version in a localized video is a logical move, but that's not all there is to it. For example, when we localized a video about an app for making calls into Spanish, we displayed names that Spanish speakers would expect to see in the contact list.  

Localized videos discuss a product's benefits in the audience's native language and help make the product stand out from similar ones. 

You can — and must! — localize. Not just voice-overs in videos but all voice content if it's in the product itself. One example that stands out is our experience working on WRD Learn Words, a language study app. We voiced over 2000 words in each of the 10 languages available for study in the app! 

In addition to actually recording voice actors, we cut the audio into thousands of files and gave each one an easily identifiable name. By doing so, we saved the client many hours of work and simplified the process of integrating the localized voice-overs into the product. What was most important was that the professional multilingual voice-over became a reason why users should pay for a subscription to the app.

Multimedia localization, be it audio or video content, is a one-time investment that can pay dividends in terms of installs for many months to come.

The cost of producing and localizing videos isn't as much as you might think, and the videos' value as far as attracting, converting, and retaining users is concerned shouldn't be underestimated. 

Make videos about your products to get more installs and more satisfied users who don't mind paying for your product. Localize your content to get it to bring you more downloads, grow your international audience, and foster your product's earning capabilities. 

A video could be the deciding factor when it comes to users making a choice, so if you don't have a video about your product yet… We think 2023 is the perfect time to fix that!