Storytelling Through Videos

We live in a world with so many distractions that reaching and truly connecting with our audiences is becoming increasingly challenging. Brands often feel like they have to fight for their audience’s attention, and it’s not easy.

Fortunately, videos are a great way to reach out to people, and B2B video storytelling is proving to be a successful approach. Using videos to bring your products or services to life is effective at grabbing your audience’s attention.

What Is Video Storytelling?

Video storytelling is a marketing strategy using videos and their natural way of engaging with viewers to tell a story about a company, brand, or product. 

It is like a sales pitch, but better because you’re telling a story rather than making an ad. Good video storytelling is powerful and immersive and highly effective at driving engagement.

Video storytelling helps companies to connect with their audiences and create emotional responses that have lasting effects.

How Is Storytelling Used in Videos?

B2B video storytelling is much more effective in videos because people are visual creatures — we would rather see a video about a product than read an article about it. We’re wired to be visual, and video storytelling taps into that.

By creating videos that are focused on emotions, we can tell powerful stories that will have an impact on the viewers. Look at Red Bull, for example. Most people don’t just see it as an energy drink but as a product associated with extreme sports and a busy lifestyle. Effective storytelling is how Red Bull was able to create this persona for the brand.

Whether you’re using an emotionally-packed, tear-jerking video campaign about friendship or love, or building a strategy around happiness and joy, good storytelling in your videos will boost your results.

The Power of Video Storytelling

Video storytelling is so powerful and effective because it manages to pull people in and hold their attention. A good video will make people feel invested in what they’re watching, and get them to care about what’s happening.

When people feel a connection with the content, they automatically associate that connection with the brand. Your video storytelling can be focused on education or entertainment; it doesn’t matter as long as you’re able to keep your viewers hooked.

The dialogue, sound, music, message, and quality of your videos all come together to enthrall your viewers and make them take notice of your brand.

Video Storytelling Tips

Making good videos is a lot harder than it sounds, but with the right guidance, you can nail video storytelling and pull off this marketing strategy like a professional.

Here are some tips to get you started:

1. Plan Well

Good video marketing is impossible without proper research and planning. Your stories need to have value, so they must be planned meticulously. The stories you tell must be impactful and feel authentic, so they need to have a beginning, middle, and end that makes sense.

Certainly, you can tell stories through seemingly nonsensical videos, but they need to be planned just as thoroughly. Determine what it is you want to tell with your video and build a story around that.

2. Show, Don’t Tell

Advice given to storytellers everywhere is ‘show, don’t tell’. This means you need to use visuals and sound to tell your story rather than words. Don’t state what you’re trying to say, show it with color, audio, and interesting camera angles.

Also, don’t try to force your product down your viewers’ throats. Find creative ways of working the product into the story, and don’t make it feel gimmicky. (This is different if you’re making a demo video, of course)

3. Be Creative

The foundation of good video storytelling is creativity. You shouldn’t be afraid to get creative with how you’re telling your story. Think outside the box without getting abstract, and you’ll find ways to keep your content interesting.

To do this, think about the message you’re trying to convey, and then come up with unusual ways to get this message across. Spend a lot of time brainstorming ideas and tweaking them until you’re happy.

4. Tell One Story at a Time

It’s important that you don’t overwhelm your audience. Don’t try to tell too many stories at one time, or do too much at once.

By telling one story at a time, you can focus on telling a brilliant story rather than having several flimsy stories fighting for your audience’s attention. In the end, video storytelling is most effective when you follow a concise and clear storyline that is creative without being overly complicated.

5. Use Humor

For the most part, humor is universal. That’s why you can use humor in your video marketing to make it more interesting and help your content make a lasting impression. Humor is great at engaging your audience as well.

Humor can be especially effective in industries not usually associated with light-heartedness. Formal companies can do well to incorporate humor into their video storytelling, as long as it’s done professionally and won’t offend anyone.

6. Use Emotional Triggers

Emotional triggers are fantastic for capturing your audience’s attention and making your content unforgettable. Moviemakers use many tactics to visually capture and communicate emotions and feelings, and you can use that approach in marketing as well.

Emotions like joy, trust, love, and even sadness or disappointment can make your video storytelling more effective. These emotions make people connect with the content, and they’ll remember it for longer.

7. Tap Into the Power of Music

B2B video storytelling can’t be effectively done without music. The power of music is often overlooked and therefore neglected by marketers. The right music can take your video from ‘something interesting’ to ‘something special’.

The music should complement everything happening in the video to create powerful emotions. The music you choose will also affect the mood you’re setting — music can make people feel happy, sad, excited, worried, scared, and so on.

8. Keep Things Short

While it’s important to achieve a lot of things with your content to make your video marketing efforts worth your time, you shouldn’t overdo it. Don’t make your videos too long and think that will be better for your audience.

A well-made short story can have more impact than a drawn-out video. And since people are so busy and surrounded by distractions, you’re better off making short videos. Keep it simple, short, and sweet and you’ll likely have better success.

Talk to GoingClear about your next B2B Video Project!

Video marketing plays a big role in the success of your business. If you need help with your B2B video production, we can help. Call GoingClear today for a free consultation and get started on approaching your video marketing the right way. We have experience and knowledge of story-based marketing that will help you find effective ways of connecting with your audience. Call us now to get started!