A story doesn’t give you the answers. A story makes you ask better questions. It makes you think. It makes you feel. Great marketers know this and use it to transform their marketing video production.
Is video storytelling in your future? It’s one of the best ways to connect and engage with your audience. It goes beyond simplified messages and gets to the root of the issue.
You know it when you see it. Storytelling is different than merely recording a message. While it doesn’t always need a full-blown production crew, it does require a little foresight and planning.
What Is Video Storytelling?
It’s no secret that videos are becoming the most popular content of choice online. You only have to visit your favorite social media site to see everything from shorts to reels to long-form content. People may stop to read content along the way, but they absorb video in much greater quantity.
If you’re a marketer, you can’t ignore that for 66 percent of people, video is their primary source of information. They are online at their desktops and with their mobile devices, watching up to 17 hours of video per week.
That makes video irresistible as a marketing tool. Not just any video will do. Marketers who master storytelling will find more engagement and reach a more refined audience.
Video storytelling uses relatable narrative-based content to reach an audience, capturing pain points, igniting connection, and leading the viewer to a solution to a problem. People are attracted from the moment they see it, feeling the emotion in the camera angles, resonating with the characters, listening to the soundtrack, and falling for the interaction of the story.
This isn’t a sales pitch. Instead, it shows your brand as a main character in the story. It’s part of the process. It’s part of the solution. People use all their senses to understand how it plays a part. The result is a very effective tool used to drive engagement.
Building Your Story
Before entering the marketing video production phase, you must define your story. All great writers know you can’t sit down and write without plotting the storyline.
It starts with a beginning, middle, and end. How will you capture viewers’ attention? How will you hold it throughout the video? What message do you want to leave your audience with? This is what gives you your story. Storytelling always has:
- A great beginning—it sets the stage for what’s to come, captures attention, and makes people want more.
- A protagonist—the main character. This doesn’t have to be a person; your product can steal the show.
- A problem—it’s the whole reason you watch the video. You want to see the protagonist win. The viewer is invested in the outcome.
- A resolution—your feel-good moment. It’s what highlights your brand or makes your product the star of the show. This can be subtle; it doesn’t need to be over the top.
Storytelling is so much better than a sales pitch. As a collective, we’re tired of being sold to, yet we still love to buy. Today’s marketers understand this and build storytelling into their strategy. They utilize it before moving to video production to ensure their audience is captivated as they scroll or click.
Tips for Building Stories
Not a storyteller at heart? Haven’t written a bestseller? No worries; we all have a story within us. Before you start, consider these storytelling tips to maximize the video’s plot and better captivate an audience.
Start With a Proven Plotline
Analyze a few stories. When you storyboard them, you’ll discover they tend to follow specific plotlines. You’ll find “Overcoming the Monster” a frequent storyline, where the underdog fights to conquer their challenges.
We love heroes. We want to see people win, even when faced with significant challenges. It’s in our nature, and we like to think anyone can overcome whatever challenges they face. This doesn’t have to be huge, which is why it works so well in advertising. How can your brand or product save the day?
Use Emotional Stimuli
It takes skill to use emotion in writing. For video, you can engage more of an audience’s senses to capture emotionally stimulating situations.
A sad character can tug at the heartstrings, and exaggerated facial expressions can bring out compassion. Ads might not have the same timeframe as a feature film, but with the proper video production process, it uses the same emotional stimuli to bring the audience along.
Go Natural
If you’re thinking “big production” here, take it down a notch. People don’t want a theatrical performance. What they want is to feel heard.
Many businesses are pulling back from video production, saying it takes too much time and bandwidth for the production process, or they aren’t sure how to find resources or gain the technical know-how to implement. We say go natural instead. Be yourself; it wins every time.
Tell One Story at a Time
It’s easy to go broad with your first video. Resist the urge. With video, you can tell lots of short stories that will grab attention and gain traction on a bigger scale. You have short time slots. Your viewer has a short attention span. How can you get through the “beginning, middle, and end” in the shortest and most engaging way possible? By thinking smaller.
What’s the one thing you want your audience to know? What’s one issue they have trouble with? Or one message you want to convey? When done right, short stories have just as great of a chance of holding your viewers’ attention. Maybe more so, depending on where your content is consumed.
It’s Time to Begin
There’s no better time to start your video production than today. Whether your marketing strategy has included video for years or you’re ready to start your first one, let your first step be to create a storyline.
Storytelling works because it draws people in, holds their attention, and engages their senses. If they feel invested from the beginning, they’ll watch every second. If done right, they’ll also take action.
It will take time and effort to implement this into your marketing strategy. Need help or advice? We’re just a phone call away.
