Do Explainer Videos Work? 7 Benefits of Showing Off Your Products and Services
Ask a marketing director whether explainer videos work and you will get a shrug and a budget line. Ask their customers and you get a much clearer answer: 96% of people say they have watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service (Wyzowl, 2026). The audience settled this argument years ago. The industry is still catching up.
So the honest answer is yes, they work, but not because video is magic. Why explainer videos work comes down to something duller and more useful: they solve the comprehension problem that kills most B2B and product marketing. If a prospect cannot picture what your product does inside thirty seconds, nothing else in your funnel matters. An explainer video is the cheapest reliable fix for that.
Below: what an explainer video actually is, the seven benefits that hold up under scrutiny, and the cases where an explainer is the wrong call and you should keep your money.
What is an explainer video?
An explainer video is a short piece of content, usually 60 to 120 seconds, that answers one question: what is this thing and why should I care? It leads with the problem, shows the product solving it, and ends with a single clear next step. It is not a brand film, not a testimonial reel, and not a feature tour.
The form varies more than people expect. A 2D animated explainer suits software and abstract services, where there is nothing physical to point a camera at. Live action suits businesses whose credibility lives in real people and real premises. 3D animation earns its keep when the product is physical, complex and impossible to film, which is exactly why we built a 3D animation for Henniker Plasma to show what happens inside a plasma treatment chamber. No camera was getting in there.
For a SaaS product the calculation is different again. When we made the Expend explainer, the job was turning an expense management platform into something a finance lead could grasp before their coffee went cold. If you are weighing up the formats, our guide to animation versus live action and our breakdown of 2D versus 3D animation go deeper than we can here.
Why explainer videos work: 7 benefits that survive scrutiny
1. They fix the understanding problem
This is the whole game. 93% of video marketers say video has helped increase user understanding of their product or service (Wyzowl, 2026). Not awareness. Understanding. Those are different problems and most companies only budget for the first one.
Complex products fail in market for boring reasons: the buyer never quite got it, so they never quite championed it internally. A written page asks the reader to assemble the picture themselves. A video hands it to them assembled. For anything technical, regulated or genuinely novel, that difference decides the deal.
2. They match how people have decided to learn
63% of consumers say they prefer watching a short video to learn about a product or service (Wyzowl, 2026). You can argue about attention spans and the decline of reading. It changes nothing. Your buyers have chosen a format and the only strategic question left is whether you meet them in it or make them work harder than your competitor does.
This is not only about preference. Video carries tone, pace and demonstration at once. A screenshot cannot show a workflow feeling fast. A paragraph cannot show a machine running quietly. Video does both without asking the viewer to imagine anything.
3. They keep people on the page
82% of video marketers say video has helped keep visitors on their website longer (Wyzowl, 2026). Dwell time is not a vanity metric: it feeds the quality signals search engines use, and it correlates with the depth of consideration that precedes a real enquiry.
A landing page with a good explainer above the fold changes the shape of the visit. People who would have bounced in eight seconds stay for ninety. That is the entire funnel improving from one asset.
4. They shorten the sales conversation
85% of people say they have been convinced to buy a product or service after watching a video, and 83% of video marketers say video has directly increased sales (Wyzowl, 2026). The mechanism is unglamorous. The explainer does the first fifteen minutes of every sales call, consistently, at three in the morning, without a rep on the clock.
Sales teams feel this before marketing measures it. When the pitch stops starting from zero, the calls get shorter and the questions get better. Ask your sales lead what they would pay for prospects who arrive already knowing what you do.
5. They generate leads rather than just impressions
85% of video marketers say video has helped them generate leads (Wyzowl, 2026). The reason is placement, not the video itself. An explainer sitting on a homepage is decoration. The same explainer gated behind a form, embedded in a nurture email, or running as a paid social asset against a defined audience is a lead engine.
Most companies produce a good explainer and then distribute it badly. Budget for the distribution when you budget for the film, or you have bought an expensive video for your own about page.
6. They carry a story, and stories move people
Feature lists inform. Stories persuade. An explainer that opens on a recognisable frustration, rather than a company name and a founding date, gives the viewer somewhere to stand. They see themselves in the problem, so they take the solution personally.
Emotional framing is not soft. Our awareness film for Epilepsy Action works because it puts the viewer inside an experience before it asks anything of them. The same structure sells software: establish the cost of the status quo, then relieve it.
7. They travel further than anything else you make
68% of video marketers made explainer videos in 2026 (Wyzowl, 2026), and the sensible ones did not make one asset. A single shoot yields the full explainer, three or four vertical cutdowns for social, a silent captioned version for LinkedIn, stills for the website, and a loop for the exhibition stand.
Judge the cost per usable asset rather than the invoice. On that basis an explainer is usually the cheapest thing in the marketing budget. Our video production cost guide sets out what the numbers actually look like in the UK.
When an explainer video is the wrong call
Three cases, and we will talk clients out of a video in all of them.
If nobody is visiting the page, an explainer will not save it. Traffic problems are not solved by improving what the absent visitor would have seen. Fix acquisition first.
If your product is genuinely simple and instantly obvious, a video adds a loading delay and a click between the buyer and the button. Some products explain themselves. Let them.
And if the budget only stretches to something cheap and generic, wait. A stock-template explainer with a synthetic voiceover signals exactly what it cost. That is worse than no video, because it tells a prospect what you think the impression is worth. We wrote about where AI genuinely helps in video production, and generating your customer-facing explainer wholesale is not on the list.
One more thing worth saying plainly. You will see a statistic claiming people retain 95% of a message from video against 10% from text. It circulates constantly and has no traceable study behind it. Do not build a business case on it. The Wyzowl figures above are survey data with a stated methodology, which is a lower ceiling and a much firmer floor.
What separates an explainer that works from one that does not
Length first. Sixty to ninety seconds for a top-of-funnel explainer. Every additional thirty seconds costs you viewers, and the drop is steepest early.
One idea, once. The explainer answers what it is and why it matters. It does not also cover pricing, integrations, the founding story and the careers page. Discipline here is what makes the difference between a film people finish and a film people scrub through.
A script written for the ear. Read it aloud. If you run out of breath, the sentence is too long. If it sounds like a brochure, it will land like one.
Sound that is not an afterthought. Audiences forgive imperfect pictures and abandon bad audio within seconds. It is the single most common failure in cheap production.
And one call to action, not four. If you have researched how to choose a video production company, this is the standard to hold them to.
Frequently asked questions
Do explainer videos actually increase conversions?
The survey evidence is strong on the mechanisms that drive conversion: 85% of people say video has convinced them to buy something and 83% of marketers report video directly increasing sales (Wyzowl, 2026). Beware anyone quoting a precise uplift percentage for your site specifically. Results vary by traffic quality, placement and offer. Measure it yourself with a proper A/B test.
How long should an explainer video be?
60 to 90 seconds for a landing page or paid social. Up to 120 seconds if the product genuinely needs it, for example something regulated or technically involved. Beyond two minutes you are making a different kind of film and should plan it as one.
Are explainer videos worth it for small businesses?
Often more so, because a small business has less brand recognition doing the explaining for it. The question is not company size but whether prospects currently understand your offer without help. If your sales calls all start with fifteen minutes of clarification, an explainer pays for itself quickly.
Should the explainer be animated or live action?
Animate when the product is abstract, digital or impossible to film, and when you want full control of the look. Shoot live action when your credibility rests on real people, real premises or real craft. Plenty of the strongest explainers combine both.
How much does an explainer video cost in the UK?
It depends on format, length and how much bespoke animation is involved, which is a dull answer but the true one. Our cost guide breaks down the ranges and what actually moves the number.
Why do explainer videos work better than a written product page?
They do not replace one, they do a different job. The page is for the reader who is already convinced and wants detail. The video is for the visitor deciding in the first ten seconds whether you are worth their attention. Most sites are well equipped for the first and defenceless against the second.
Make your mark
We are a video production company in Leeds making explainer videos for businesses across West Yorkshire and the UK, from SaaS platforms to manufacturers with products no camera can reach. If your product is better than your ability to explain it, that is a solvable problem and it is the one we solve most often.
Tell us what you make and who needs to understand it. We will tell you honestly whether an explainer is the right answer.