• Innovative Strategies That Create More Profits

Month: October 2019

Every Presentation Is Mission Critical

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Every business presentation that requires a decision is critical and depends on your ability to tell your story. You have one objective, persuading your audience to say yes to your call to action.

Most presentations are not stories they are lists of their product’s features and functions. Most presentations are designed to convey data, not to persuade the audience to grab your opportunity. Also, most presentations are packed with technical information, and jargon they may not understand. That means they have to think. Don’t make them think.

When the audience has to think, they are not paying attention to you, and they will soon lose interest and become irritated. Consequently, your message becomes the casualty.

The focus of your presentation must be on the story. It’s your story that makes the presentation powerful and persuasive. A compelling story will also make you more confident. How many times have you sat through a presentation counting the minutes until the pain would be over?  

According to Jerry Weissman, author and Coach, many presentations commit the following five cardinal sins,

1. No clear point. The audience wonders why they are there. This sin is called the data dump.

2. No audience benefits. The presenter talks about things the audience may not care about.

3. No clear flow. The presenter jumps from topic to topic, and the audience has to try to keep up.

4. Too detailed. Too many facts not relevant and too technical

5. Too long. The audience gives up before the presenter does.

When you commit these sins, you waste everyone’s time, and you miss your opportunity to persuade your audience.

Entrepreneurs are often absorbed in the many issues that have to deal with; they think every tree is necessary when the audience only wants to know about the forest. “They think that for the audience to understand anything, they have to be told everything.” The solution to these problems is to focus on your goal: persuading the audience to go from skeptic to evangelist.

How to find your perfect market niche

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Harry Browne was one of America’s most successful salesmen, and he only worked 15-20 hours per week. He believed sales were natural. He passed away some years ago, but he passed along the following information he called the secret to sales success. I wanted to start this
module with his analysis because it is so fundamental to sales success. We will have other articles later on additional information.

Before you spend money on marketing and advertising, you have to find your market niche, and that niche is in the mind of your customers. Following is a condensed view of Harry’s sales secret.

The customer is the object of the sales process because the only reason we produce anything is to have things to consume — to use and enjoy because of the happiness it provides. So the one who consumes an item is the one who judges its worth.

It’s the customer’s values that count. His preferences, through the prices he is willing to pay, and your success depends on the value others place on your products and services. Also, since the customer has limited resources, he is not willing to do something unprofitable to himself.

No one willingly does something unless he’s decided it is his most profitable alternative because no one has unlimited resources. There is a shortage of funds, and everyone’s desires always outnumber resources, so everyone is choosing.

So half of the success story is: you will succeed if you are providing people what they want.

However, many people produce what they think people would like and be willing to pay for, but they are wrong. People seek happiness, and happiness is relative. Each person has a different concept of what will bring them joy. Their mistake is making the judgment based on their values to determine what other people will want. It’s not what you want that determines what other people will buy — it’s what they want that matters.

You have to make it your business to find out what people want – not what you want, and give it to them. Also, find out before you make your offer. We will find out how to do this in a sales call in another article. The net of this is that your niche must include the buyer’s values and the price the buyer is willing to pay as part of your niche — not just demographics.

 

Inbound Marketing – Its Importance and Benefits

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Today, inbound marketing is viral. The terms “content marketing” and “inbound marketing” refer to the same thing and are often used interchangeably. It is a marketing strategy that uses almost no specific form of advertisement at all. Instead, this method focuses heavily on providing information or content on Internet-based media such as blogs, social media, online forums, and podcasts.

Contents can be in the forms of articles, infographics, videos on websites, or even a short, simple post on social media accounts. There are two crucial factors to consider for inbound marketing to be effective: quality and subtlety. The contents provided must be relevant and interesting
enough to keep the audience engaged. However, there cannot be an apparent sales pitches because they tend to drive the audience away. Inbound marketing is challenging but can also be very useful in the long run as it aims to build a good reputation in the market. The downside is that it takes severe investments of time and effort to produce quality content, and it takes considerable time to begin working.

Why Inbound Marketing is Important

While TV ads are still valid forms of outbound marketing, it is more difficult for companies to hone in on target customers. Email newsletters do a better job for that purpose, but there is always a chance that it ends up in the spam box and gets dismissed without being opened at all.
Internet ads can be quite annoying, too, and people try to avoid them by preventing the ads from appearing in the first place. Direct messaging in social media is probably a friendlier format of a newsletter, but you can always use additional tools to reach out to more people.

By providing relevant information based on people’s search queries, your products are integrated into the contents. The advertisement is indirect, mainly; it is so subtle that the audience doesn’t feel directed to any particular product. Of course, the point of marketing is to generate sales; it seems counterproductive at first, but the absence of sales pitches surprisingly works well.

In today’s competitive market, startups need to find effective methods to deliver their message. Providing quality relevant information in a blog or social media will keep readers and followers engaged in the long run. The unobtrusive nature of inbound marketing helps your company earn a place as an authoritative name in the niche or industry at large.

Major Benefits
Inbound marketing generates leads instead of direct sales. All the content used to launch the marketing effort help establishing a relationship with the audience. This relationship eventually drives traffic to the company’s website and can result in considerable online exposure. The more content you produce, the more significant the exposure you get. The additional benefit is word-of-mouth marketing. If people like your content, chances are they share those contents with friends, families, and colleagues on social media and messaging apps. This relationship is how you solidify your reputation as a trusted brand/company and increase visibility in the market.

 

Outbound Marketing – Its Importance and Benefits

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Advertisements come in all sorts of formats and delivered to the audience through many different methods. You see them on TV, billboards, newspapers, magazines, flyers, e-mail campaigns, banners, and website pages, or perhaps you hear similar things on radio and
podcasts. And then there are direct calls from salespeople. These advertisement formats are parts of sales strategy, commonly referred to as outbound marketing. Outbound marketing is meant to be interruptive as the audience is involuntarily exposed to the advertisements. These advertisements are directed at particular audiences as opposed to large, more general audiences.

Why It Is Important for Business
The main objective of outbound marketing is to acquire as many sales leads as possible. For startups looking to get on the map, there are very few (if any) marketing strategies that can reach more targeted people in a shorter amount of time. Small businesses generally don’t have the budget to buy advertisements on primetime shows, but they can reach their target audience via email or direct messaging. It is an affordable yet effective outbound marketing strategy anyone can use.

Outbound marketing, despite its antiquated status in the modern business landscape, remains essential for both new and established companies. For new companies, outbound marketing is vital to spread the word of their existence and what they have to offer. It helps companies develop “first contact” with potential customers. The more-established businesses also utilize the same method to introduce changes or new products to customers.

In the old days, outbound marketing mostly happened on print media, including newspapers and magazines. Now that people rarely, if ever, buy newspapers anymore, emails have become the prominent medium of choice besides TV. However, the former is much more affordable, and the result is almost certainly more measurable.

Advantages of Outbound Marketing

Familiarity is a valuable benefit of outbound marketing. People of all generations have grown accustomed to product advertisement broadcast at regular intervals on TV and radio. The audience knows that there are going to be advertisements in the middle of a broadcast. To some extent, people understand the companies behind the products provide the money to fund the show itself. In a world of social media, direct messaging and email newsletters are even more useful. Social media acts like channels to bring targeted customers to one place. People follow your account because they are interested in what you have to offer. Moreover, direct message and email always carry a personal touch, which is an indispensable element in any marketing effort.

Important Ways To Improve Your Direct Mail Marketing

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For some, direct response marketing seems old fashioned. It is not. It’s just getting more effective. More than 80% of marketers credit email as their most vital channel for customer acquisition so email marketing is not going away anytime soon. New trends are emerging that will help you increase leads and conversions and improve your relationship with your prospects and customers. For example, Personalization is becoming more and more important and you need to learn how to target potential customers and target your messages to them.

We need to gather more information about our target audience from the analytics we get from previous mailings. Also, segmenting prospects by demographics, expertise, decision-making level makes your message more personal. Are the recipients active or inactive, opening or not clicking through at all, etc. Some people are going back to plain text emails because they appear to be more personalized.
Ask for more information from responders and you will get more information allowing you to get more personal on the next mailing.

Mobile messaging is becoming more important. Mobile messages have a higher open rate and responses are much faster and easier. You can also use more casual language and people search differently when looking for information. Often in sentences rather than keywords. Lots of people are moving away from typing.

To be more effective, try to integrate your email marketing with other marketing efforts so prospects are getting a consistent message from the phone, email, website, and social media. Build a relationship with your target prospects. Show them content that tells them you are an expert and understand the challenges they are facing.

And finally, test and test again including subject lines, time of mailing, different calls to action, using emojis in subject lines (some people get much higher open rates with emojis), embedded video and graphics. You have your lists and you are continuing to add to these lists, so now is the time to experiment especially when the cost to do direct response marketing is so inexpensive. It’s a great way to build a pipeline of prospects.

Using LinkedIn,  Inbound And Outbound Marketing Program

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For every business owner, freelancer, and all sorts of budding entrepreneurs, one of the biggest challenges is to generate leads that can be converted into customers. Especially for startups – who generally have limited financial capital, to begin with – the lack of marketing budget makes the undertaking even more difficult.  

With more than 600 billion users in 200 countries, LinkedIn is almost certainly the most underrated social networking platform among digital marketers and business owners alike.

Startups should see LinkedIn as an excellent source, and maybe the first source, for their inbound marketing programs. When you are new and trying to establish yourself, LinkedIn can be a powerful program. For some, LinkedIn can be the only tool you will need to drive more customers to your business. Here are some basic methods to help you harness LinkedIn’s inbound marketing potential.

Optimize Profile

Write as much information as the platform allows in your company profile. Being concise sometimes is not enough, because you also have to consider using unique keywords and customer-focused description. Add professionally-looking images or photos and label them accordingly; instead of repetitively using the company’s name, label the images with profession-related keywords. Not only does the profile need to stand out, but it also come-up easily in search results. Slides and infographics make the profile page even more appealing.

LinkedIn is one of the top 5 sites that Google indexes on a regular basis, so using the right keywords greatly improves your chances of appearing in top Google search results as well. Bear in mind that keywords-rich profile does not necessarily mean keywords-stuffed.

Post Valuable Contents

Staying passive is the worst thing you can do on LinkedIn. Be proactive and post valuable content your prospects will likely read. This means providing useful information or updates about your industry or niche. More professionals are now using LinkedIn to share their opinions on recent issues or give different perspectives on recurrent problems.

It takes time to create valuable content attached with reputable references, but it is worth the potential benefit of being seen as a knowledgeable professional. You may even build a following if your contents are fresh and of great quality.

Direct Message

Nowhere are some of LinkedIn’s premium features including InMail and Who Viewed Your Profile tools. The former is a communication tool that allows you to send direct messages to others, whether or not you are connected to them; the latter helps track anybody who clicks and sees your profile page.

You use both in combination; after identifying potential leads, send them a message to introduce your company and offer help. There is only one rule: seek to start a conversation first, and then make your sales pitches much later in the process following an established connection. These tools are not free, but they offer excellent benefits for lead generation.

Most people believe that Facebook is the best kind of social website for startups to generate leads. While Facebook probably offers the largest amount of audience, it doesn’t have the same level of seriousness as LinkedIn. Facebook shines in terms of “quantity” but you should use LinkedIn instead when you want “quality” leads. Unlike most other social websites, LinkedIn has always been known as the online networking platform for business people and professionals, making it an invaluable resource for startups and entrepreneurs.

Generating Sales Leads Using Outbound Marketing on LinkedIn

There are more than 7 million company pages and 2 million publishers posting business-related content on LinkedIn. It is not an impressive amount compared to Twitter or Facebook indeed, but when the accounts are mostly comprised of business professionals, LinkedIn should be the first social networking site to consider for generating sales leads through outbound marketing.

Although LinkedIn’s audiences do not generally approve “unpaid-for” direct promotional contents, there are some workarounds to this limitation.

Give Genuine Responses

The key to establishing connections, hence generating leads on LinkedIn, is to build good relationships first with the right people. LinkedIn has a multitude of free features to help you find potential leads and figure out their interests, such as groups and direct messages. Once you’ve identified them, reach out without sounding overly promotional, for example by commenting on contents they’ve posted, mentioning mutual connections, congratulating them on achievements, and answering their questions.

Remember that the purpose is to establish a relationship. If you lead the conversation by providing value, they are more likely to accept your connection requests. It takes efforts, but a higher likelihood of being connected is a benefit you cannot overlook.

Follow the Potential Leads

Most business professionals on LinkedIn have learned that accepting connection requests is often followed by hard-sales pitches, especially if they’re not careful about whose requests they accept. As a result, members tend to be very cautious about every connection request. One way to sidestep such a challenge is simply to follow potential leads you’ve found. A “follower” is on a  lower level than a “connection” in the leads’ personal network. Nevertheless, you get the benefit of being able to see their posts and comment on those contents without having to request permission every time. It is the first step towards building trust.

Bring It Offline

Leverage trade shows and conferences as opportunities to meet in person and establish a professional relationship. Pay attention to scheduled events and reach out to ask if your potential leads will be attending. Assuming it is not possible to send direct messages, post your questions to comments or group discussions instead. Use the “connect nearby” feature in a LinkedIn smartphone app to meet with prospects in the event. Direct conversation remains the best way to generate leads, and you don’t have to worry about any kind of limitation that LinkedIn has.

Premium Ads

While LinkedIn does not allow unpaid for direct advertising in your posts or comments, the platform offers a premium advertising tool. LinkedIn provides the solution to create text-based ads and fine-tunes the target based on various categories including interests, work history, location, skills, and demographics. It is easy, albeit at a premium, way to spread the words about your business presence to the online professional community. LinkedIn Premium Ads is outbound marketing but with the great benefit of accurate targeting to generate quality leads.

Bear in mind that LinkedIn is hardly an advertising platform despite the aforementioned feature. The goal here is to make as many connections as possible without breaking the bank. Using nothing but Premium Ads can quickly drain your budget.

LinkedIn is filled with various free (and premium) tools specifically designed to expand your business networks. It still is essentially a social website, but its users are much more business-oriented compared to others’. To improve your chances of acquiring quality leads on LinkedIn, you need to devise an effective networking strategy, and here are some of the most efficient methods that professionals use in the platform.

Discover Common Interests

Within the “Group” settings on LinkedIn, there is a tool with which you can send messages to members of that particular group at no cost. With the Basic (free) account, LinkedIn allows you to send up to 15 direct messages only. The good thing is that the limitation only counts for the original messages, meaning any back-and-forth replies will not count towards the allotment. You can join up to 100 groups, so make sure you optimize the feature. LinkedIn Groups are often filled with people looking for answers and supports. Establish a connection with other professionals using the groups by providing your expertise freely.

In addition to being free, a massive benefit from group networking in LinkedIn is the opportunity to establish a reputation as a professional and make your brand known as an industry expert. Avoid making self-promotional answers or questions; otherwise, your comments will be deleted by the platform’s spam filter.

Keep Coming Back

A lot of people make great connections on LinkedIn, although they rarely keep in touch with each other. It may not be a problem for big business owners or popular brands, but a mistake for startups. You are still trying to connect with as many professionals as possible here, and that’s a strong reason to stay active on LinkedIn. You may not be able to provide a good answer to every question, but you can the one who asks the questions.

Posting updates and starting discussion in groups may sound simple and requires some time commitment, but it comes with a huge benefit of being easily recognized. As you post more quality content such as relevant news, industry trends, and general business questions, more professionals are aware of your presence in the network. Such passive awareness is important anytime you need to make a direct business introduction later.

Get Premium

To get the most of LinkedIn, you will need to upgrade to one of the platform’s Premium accounts. Sales Navigator is the account you need as it offers the necessary tools specific for the purpose of generating leads. In general, any premium account gives the following benefits:

  • InMail: send direct messages to people not currently in your network.
  • LinkedIn Badge: as inconsequential as it may seem, people see the little gold icon in your LinkedIn profile as a sign of business seriousness.
  • Who View Your Profile: people click on your profile to know more about you, and with a premium account you get to track those who do, giving more networking opportunities.

Thanks to digital marketing and the Internet in general, anybody can turn to social networking sites and start the leads-generation process effectively despite the budget limitation. The key is finding the right platform for the purpose.

 

 How To Tell Your Company’s Full Story, To A Stranger, In Seconds

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 How To Tell Your Company’s Full Story, To A Stranger, In Seconds

 

The Full Story….. In Seconds?  Sounds Impossible, But It’s Not, And It’s Painless

Potential customers want to know what your product is and how it solves their problems, and you only have a minute or two to convince them that finding out will be well worth their time.

Explainer Videos

Here’s how. Explainer videos are an extremely effective way to tell your overall story, from problem to solution in condensed time and in a special format that captures and holds their attention until they have heard your full story.  

Plus, if your company could benefit from this powerful marketing tool, you can now get one produced for a few hundred vs a few thousand dollars.

Potential customers want to know what your product is and how it solves their problems, and you only have a minute or two to convince them that finding out will be well worth their time.

Explainer videos are an extremely effective way to tell your overall story, from problem to solution in condensed time and in a special format that captures and holds their attention until they have heard your full story.  

Plus, if your company could benefit from one of these powerful marketing tools, you can now produce one for a few hundred vs a few thousand dollars.

Whiteboard Animation

By definition, whiteboard animation is a video that shows the process of physically drawing a story using marker pens on a whiteboard (or whiteboard-like surfaces). While the objects are still images and often attached to texts, diagrams, or additional items, the drawing process itself is recorded (animated). The result is a series of drawings displayed in sequence and added with narration.

Whiteboard animation is similar to a video explainer. Think of them as a bridge between traditional videos featuring real-life objects and a conventional slideshow presentation. It is more sophisticated than the latter but it offers more or less the same visual effects as the former.

Conclusion

If you want to tell your story in just a minute or two, videos are a good way to do it. You don’t even have to be there to do it. Also, the person viewing the video can also forward it to others. They can also be very cost-effective. You know your story. Think about writing it in 100 to 200 words. You can start with your value proposition.

 

 

 

 

In Our Video World, Whiteboard Animation Is Growing Rapidly

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The vast majority of modern whiteboard animations are created automatically using computer software, eliminating the need for manual drawings. It has now become a widely popular format for online marketing contents distributed mainly on YouTube and social media. People use whiteboard animation videos for various purposes including business presentation, how-to-use instructions, and of course online marketing to explain what the product/service is, how it works, and why it solves the problem for the prospect.

One of the biggest advantages of whiteboard animated videos is its budget-friendly production, at least when compared to traditional videos. The main elements are the script and animation, which will then combined into one digital file, animated, and timed.

Despite the absence of real-life objects, whiteboard animation is still categorized as videos as far as digital marketing is concerned. Now that YouTube is a dominant platform – to the point where it is considered a search engine of its own – it only makes sense for online marketers to maximize the use of videos in their strategies. Cisco predicted that by 2022, video contents will comprise 82% of all IP traffic at both consumer and business levels, and global video traffic will grow four-fold from 2017.

Video Whiteboards Keep The Viewer Engaged From Beginning until the End

Video has always been the most powerful format to deliver online content. People are more attracted to the dynamics of the combination of audio and visual treatments than to texts or images only. Viewers are more engaged and they receive or remember the information better because videos are usually more direct and conversational in nature.

A common style of whiteboard animation is comic-strip. It is a familiar visual format; therefore viewers unconsciously exert much less effort to relate to every object shown. The simplicity and vivid visual progression of whiteboard animation, where information is delivered in a logical drawing sequence, also help make viewers voluntarily more engaged and attentive. The wasteful wandering of attention is minimized, making it an effective content delivery format.

Very Affordable Production

Cost depends largely on quality, but it is safe to say that whiteboard animation is much less expensive than conventional videos. There is no need to hire actors because the characters are drawn (by human or software), the audio can be added later with voice-over, and everything can be done on the computer so you don’t have to build any set or background.

Using our Staff-On-Demand (our global freelancers) you can get a finished explainer video in color for a small fraction of the normal studio charge.  

 

Elements of A Whiteboard Animated Video

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Prospects want to know what your product is and how it provides a solution for their problem, and an explainer video is by far the most effective way to tell the world about what you have to offer.

Video delivers all the necessary messages in such a concise manner that viewers can receive the information without spending too much time in front of the screen. The combination of images, texts, and audio in whiteboard animation creates a comprehensive context behind the story that viewers can easily understand. The use of relatable characters and friendly voice-over makes the viewing experience more enjoyable; in a relaxed state of mind, the flow of information happens with the least resistance.

Whiteboard animation is effective because of its simplicity and familiarity. Elements of an effective whiteboard animated video are as follows:

Moving hand: remember that whiteboard animation is by definition a recording of a process of physical drawing. Even when the animation or illustrations are drawn using computers, make sure the animation still features the moving (drawing) hand. It arguably is the most important element of a whiteboard animation because the hand shows that someone is believably drawing out characters and writing noteworthy texts on the board, crafting a story right in front of the audience.

Plain background: although it is not impossible to use a different color for the background, white is the most familiar. The white background also opens the possibility to use many colored marker pens without readability issues. As long as you can maintain good readability, however, changing background color is not a terrible idea.

Styles: modern whiteboard animations come in many different styles. The basic elements of moving hand, texts, narration, and plain background remain the same, but you can modify some aspects to make the video more unique. For example, you can use blackboard or notepad as the background instead of conventional white and write the texts in different font styles.

Consistent drawing motion: this is the part that separates professionally created whiteboard animation from the DIY ones. To appear more realistic and convincing, the moving hand has to follow certain lines of the characters/objects being drawn. A simple up-and-down movement may work, but the final video will appear rough and less interesting to watch. Viewers naturally follow the movements of the hand in the video; if the hand appears to move randomly inconsistent to the drawing, the video looks rough.

Whiteboard animation traditionally has only two colors: black and white. They are great for readability, but it doesn’t have to be always created that way. Play with colors in the characters’ clothing, objects, and texts to highlight important information you want the viewers to remember. Effective use of colors also helps viewers understand the message better.

Additional Elements

As long as you keep the traditional elements intact, everything else can be modified as needed. keep in mind that readability is the most important objective to achieve. Experiment with various objects such as moving vehicles, animal interactions, water, building interiors, and everything else relevant to the project to build an interesting story and deliver your message. Just remember, the more “custom” you make the video, the more expensive it will be.

 

 

Why Create A Whiteboard Animated Video

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Whiteboard animation is a fantastic way to introduce your company, brands, and products to the audience at large. It is less expensive than conventional videos yet more effective to keep viewers attentive and engaged. Production is also easier because the animation is almost entirely made on computers; the characters are drawn and the narration (voice-over) can be added later approaching the final production step.

If your goal is to find the best format to deliver your message, online video is certainly the best format to deliver your message. People are more attracted to multimedia content and inclined to share them on their social circles as well, especially when the video provides valuable honest information and answers their problems. Whiteboard animation offers the affordability of every startup’s needs and the promise of ROI by generating more sales.

There are DIY programs available to create whiteboard animation so you can distribute them to your YouTube channel and social media accounts. When it comes to online marketing, however, DIY whiteboard animations will most likely fail due to their poor production quality and the lack of optimization (making sure they fit all platforms).

Although you can create the animation using specialized software to save even more money, hiring a professional video company is always the better option. Now, with our global Staff-on-Demand program, you can get a professional whiteboard animation created at a fraction of the cost charged by most video studios. You can also get a fixed cost based on your requirements.  In addition, you also get:

Quality

The most obvious advantage is quality. They have all the talent and the tools to produce high-quality whiteboard animation and offer their expertise for the entire process. Since you intend to use the video as a marketing tool for your business, you want it to be enjoyable, easy to understand, and on point. The video is also a representative of your company, so you should aim for the best possible quality.

Efficiency

Without helps from professionals, you have to handle all the works yourself. Even with pre-made templates available from popular software, it would take hours (if not days) to get the job done. Also, some templates are just too common – they are used by thousands of others – when what you need is something authentic and unique to stand out from the crowd. A professional video company is filled with trained scriptwriters, illustrators, music engineers, animators, and voice-over talents to name a few. In other words, the company can handle the entire production process.  

Online Visibility

You should also make sure the bundled package consists of not only the whiteboard animation video but online visibility optimization. This means the final video is constantly monitored to generate data including views, conversion, and basically whether or not it is effective in many different platforms. Adjustments and optimizations are made accordingly based on the data.