Explainer Video

This type of video explains an offering in a simple and dynamic way, usually from the perspective of the target customer and along the customer journey. It tests how attractive the solution might be, as well as its potential for viral scaling if published online unrestricted.

An explainer video is a great tool to help you visualize your solution through a story. This type of video should be 30-90 seconds long, forcing you to create a very concrete, clear but at the same time engaging storyline for your intended target group. The most important thing is to convey that the offer is in fact real and tangible, even though it might not yet be. In order to gain feedback from it, you should always combine an explainer video with some sort of call to action, e.g. by embedding it in a survey or landing page. Explainer videos are a great way to explain your solution to a large audience without the need for your physical presence. The video can however also be shown in face-to-face interviews to generate more specific qualitative insights.

Helpful Tips

Be concrete: Explainer videos help create a common understanding about your solution which helps avoid imaginative interpretations of your intended offering. Therefore, the most important aspect is that the potential customer can relate to the story and fully understands what you are offering based on the video. Remember that most likely you will not be present with the audience explaining the video, so it must do that itself.

Focus on the result, not your offering: This is NOT a product presentation! Don’t just show off your product – display the result of using your solution, thereby showing what the potential customer can achieve with the help of your offering.

Create an engaging narrative: It’s all about storytelling. Let yourself be inspired by successful explainer videos or masters of narratives such as Disney or wildlife documentaries. Focus on a character that the audience can relate to – typically you want to present a challenge and show how your hero overcomes it using your product/offering.

Combine it with other test formats: Explainer videos don’t stand alone. It is important to implement them in your testing structure to improve engagement and understanding of formats such as Landing Pages, Surveys, Interviews, Pre-Orders or internal pitches.

Dropbox, a file hosting service, published a simple explainer video which showed how their offer worked. As they had not yet developed their solution, this was a good way of making the value of their innovation clear to the customer.

How to Guide

Clearly define your value proposition and target market: What exactly do you want to offer and what problems do you solve? Based on that, create an intriguing storyline that involves customers, their pain points, your value proposition, and how the situation is improved due to your solution.

Either create an explainer video yourself or hire a freelancer or agency to create the video for you. The style of the video should match your target audience. After creation, upload and advertise the video. Don't forget to include a call-to-action (e.g., newsletter sign-up or launch notification).

Measure the success of your offering in accordance with your set metrics, gather feedback and iterate if needed.

Tools & Guides

There are many tools available to help you create an Explainer video (e.g. Animaker, PowToon, Biteable, Adobe Spark, Moovly, Wideo). Some of them offer free (but very limited) access, which can help you get a feeling for these types of videos you can create. If you don’t want to do it yourself, you can use freelance platforms such as fiverr or UpWork to find professionals that create these videos based on your storyline and offer voice overs. If you have a larger budget, you can go for video production companies – you can find specialized ones in most countries (e.g. DemoDuck for the US, Erklärhelden for Germany, DragonFly for the UK). Our tip: start small to stay flexible for iterations and increase the quality and budget later in the process.