Don’t Make Another Video Without These 4 Elements.
If you’ve had a conversation around branding, marketing, or video production over the last 10 years, you’ve heard the word “story” thrown into the mix. In some ways, it can feel like the buzzword of the decade. However, if we look deeper it’s so much more than a mysterious buzzword that we use to gain appeal and look creative.
Storytelling has been around for thousands of years and has served as a form of learning and inspiration for all of us. We all love a story, from fairytales and legends to our daily anecdotes, to the latest theatre film, storytelling has grabbed our attention our entire lives.
How does this play into marketing? The fact is, we all see ourselves through the lens of story. We’re on a mission to solve some type of complex problem in our life - it’s what drives our decisions and purchasing behavior. To be the “hero” of the story around us, we need to drive a certain car, wear the right brand, and work a specific job.
The breakdown of this can feel complex, but we believe an easy intro into this is Donald Millers “Building A Story Brand”. In this book, Donald breaks down storytelling for your business through a brandscript. We highly recommend this for anyone looking to learn more about story.
We know the story is important, but how do we tell yours through video? In this blog, we’re listing out our 5 tips for crafting and telling your story.
#1 — find the pain point
The first place we look when crafting a story is the pain point or problem the audience is facing. We want to understand our demographic, what’s causing them pain, and how it’s making them feel.
An example might be a gym with a target demographic of individuals looking to get started in fitness. Their pain point might be that they feel unsatisfied with their physical ability and have low knowledge of how to make improvements. This could be hindering their confidence and leave them feeling lethargic and fatigued throughout the day.
#2 — lead to a desired emotion
Once we know how they feel today, we want to create a pathway to how they will feel after using our service. We need to show our demographic the results our product or service will help them achieve. If done appropriately video storytelling will lead the viewer towards a new emotion and action.
Some examples include
Fear will create urgency
Sadness will create compassion and generosity
Happiness will create sharing and unity
In our gym example, we want to take individuals from feeling unhealthy with low confidence and show them a picture of what might look like in the future. We want to take them from
Insecure to Confident
Lethargic & Fatigued to High Energy
If we can show them how they can be the “hero” of their own story and overcome these overwhelming pain points, we help connect the dots of their story.
#3 — Create the narrative
How do create this narrative? We quit talking about ourselves. So often we want to brag on our capabilities, longevity in business, credentials, etc. Essentially we begin to make our brand the hero of the story, rather than being the guide helping the hero overcome their problem.
We say things like “40 years in business” or “Best X in Town”. This is not helping your audience see a clear path to resolve their problem or paint point. We have to stop “selling” and start “showing” the way to the desired emotion from point #2.
We want to show how someone can go from feeling insecure with a poor self-image to feeling confident with high energy We do this through creating the right narrative, but it goes beyond the script itself.
This is where the magic happens. We take the pain point, desired emotion and script and begin pairing it with the right sounds & visuals.
How do we show the problem?
How do we show the end result?
What music will we use? Will it start somber and end high energy? Will it start dull and end vibrant?
These are all questions we’re piecing together when we begin crafting a video story for our clients.
#4 Have A Distribution Strategy
So, we’ve found the pain point, and the desired resolution, created the narrative, and we’ve captured our viewers with a great video. Now what?
We will go deeper into this in upcoming blogs, but so often we see great videos go to waste due to no distribution plan. Brands might put the video on their website or upload to youtube, but beyond that, they have no plan. In order for your video marketing to be successful you need to create a strategy for how your target audience will see the video.
We recommend creating multiple versions of your video that can live in multiple places and serve multiple audiences. Examples might include:
Personal Website & Landing Page
Social Media (Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter, Pinterest)
Streaming OTT: (Hulu, Netflix, Prime, Disney+, etc.)
Ready to build your strategy?
Curious about how to build a distribution for your video? Because we know the impact proper distribution can have on your brand video, we provide strategy at no cost for all of our clients.
You can schedule a discovery call with our team below.