Explainer videos showcase products and make complicated ideas approachable. Short, visual, and built to deliver the essentials fast, they’re now standard on websites, product pages, and social feeds.
But writing a script and commissioning some animation isn’t enough. Most underperforming explainers fail in one of a small number of predictable ways.
Here are nine, and what to do instead.
What Is an Explainer Video?
A short video that explains one thing clearly. In marketing, that usually means demonstrating what a product does and why it’s worth paying for.
They live on YouTube and social platforms, and on the homepage or product page where the buying decision actually happens.
1. Ignoring Your Target Audience
Everything starts with knowing who’s watching. Their role, their existing knowledge, and what they care about all determine the tone and the level of detail.
For a specialist audience, technical language and a more formal register are appropriate. For a general consumer audience, both are wrong. Get this backwards and the video fails to connect no matter how well it’s produced.
2. A Weak Script
The second common failure is treating the script as an afterthought — or skipping it and improvising over the visuals.
Writing one properly means understanding both the product and the market. Two rules: don’t write an advertisement, and give it a narrative. A script that just lists features has no reason for anyone to keep watching.
3. Making It Too Long
Long explainers underperform, almost without exception. Most should run 60 to 90 seconds.
Bigger companies sometimes get away with longer, but that’s brand equity doing the work, not the video. If you need five to ten minutes, that’s a demo or a tutorial — a different format with a different audience, not an explainer.
4. Over-Animating
Animation is what makes the format engaging. It’s also easy to overdo.
Constant movement and repeated effects compete with the message instead of carrying it. Every animation should be doing a job — clarifying, emphasising, transitioning. Anything else is slowing the video down.
5. Delivering No Value
The videos that convert give something before they ask for anything.
If you sell a weight loss product, the content that earns attention is about how to lose weight — the diet, the approach, the realistic timeline. That’s what builds the credibility that makes the product pitch land.
The principle generalises: lead with something useful, and the sell becomes easier.
6. Playing It Safe
A generic explainer is forgettable, and forgettable is the same as invisible.
Creative risk is what makes a video get shared and remembered. It’s worth iterating on the concept until it feels genuinely distinctive rather than shipping the first version that’s merely competent.
7. Neglecting Music
Music can carry a video or sink it.
The right track sets the tone and makes the whole thing more enjoyable to watch. The wrong one — or none at all — leaves the video feeling flat and unfinished. Choose deliberately, and mix it so it supports the narration rather than fighting it.
8. A Weak Call to Action
The CTA tells viewers what happens next. Without a clear one, even a viewer you’ve fully convinced does nothing.
Make it specific: visit the site, start a trial, buy. Put it at the end, repeat it visually if the video runs long, and make sure it follows from what you just showed.
9. Shipping Without Feedback
Show the video to people before it goes live — colleagues, customers, anyone outside the production.
Fresh eyes catch problems you’ve stopped seeing after the fifteenth review. You don’t have to act on every note, but you should hear them all before it’s public.
Conclusion
The pattern across all nine is the same: know who you’re talking to, write something worth listening to, keep it short, and be clear about what you want them to do.
Avoid these and you have a video that holds attention and earns its cost. Miss them and you have a well-produced asset nobody acts on.
Reviewing a video before it ships? We’re happy to give it a look.