Capturing the attention of your audience in the midst of today’s digital clutter is a challenging feat to beat. While video marketing is a strong medium to help increase exposure, there’s no better way to stand out than with video storytelling.
So what’s the difference?
Video storytelling is more than leveraging visuals and sound. Storytelling involves the bigger picture of what you’re trying to achieve by captivating emotion and bringing your product to life. It is more than just selling with video. It involves delivering an impactful emotional experience that resonates with the viewer long after the video has been watched.
Here are 6 tips to help your video storytelling make your business irresistible:
Create a Structured Timeline
As an elementary refresher, every story has a beginning, middle, and end. This same rule should apply to the structure of your video. Without an organized timeline, videos will feel incomplete, fruitless, and even confusing.
The beginning of your story should introduce characters and set the scene by establishing scenarios and hint at the main idea. The middle of the video should include the action being taken to solve a certain problem, while events simultaneously build off one another. Revealing the outcome and unmasking a solution is the best way to conclude your video storytelling.
While that sounds like a task for a motion picture screen writer, it’s not. Approach every storytelling project the same way you’d write a paper. Start by documenting the goal of the video, who it should speak to, and what the action should be. Continue with an outline that defines the individual steps (or scenes) in the video and define how the video should perform during each part of the composition. From there you can build out the entire piece.
Lighting and Backdrops Matter
There’s nothing worse than watching a low-quality video with distracting backgrounds. All too often, people attempt to use their mobile devices to create a video without controlling the lighting or surrounding scene. The result is an inferior video piece that fails to capture the full attention of the viewer.
If your story takes place outdoors, be sure the weather conditions are ideal; if there are high winds, dark clouds, or rain, it’s best to reschedule. If you’re shooting indoors, consider investing in lighting equipment and use the three point lighting technique. Good lighting can take your video from looking amateurish to looking clean and professional.
Also think about your backdrop before diving in. Backdrops can make or break a video, so be sure they’re not distracting or too busy. For example, if you’re interviewing someone, it’s safest to stick to a solid background with muted colors such as gray or dark blue. Don’t attempt to conduct an interview on a busy street unless you have the right sound and lighting to keep the focus on your subject.
Strategically picking your background can save you a ton of time and make all the difference in the quality of your video.
Simplicity is Best
While shooting elaborate scenes with intricate dialogue may sound ideal, communicating a singular idea with a straightforward approach can often be more effective.
Beautiful footage isn’t essential in video storytelling, especially for beginners. Focus on the product and people in your video rather than capturing irrelevant scenes. This can cause too much “noise” and distract viewers from your the problem you’re trying to solve.
Additionally, don’t fill your entire video with dialogue. Sometimes fewer words have greater power. Try selecting the most meaningful and influential sound bites that efficiently deliver your message. Clean shots, good audio and powerful music can help tell the rest of the story.
Be Human and Evoke Emotion
One of the most crucial – and perhaps the most difficult – elements to video storytelling is inducing emotion to assist in how to portray a powerful message
Drawing out feelings of empathy will elicit feelings of trust and loyalty to your brand, so before shooting, ask yourself the following questions:
- How does your message and brand impacts real lives?
- What emotions are the customers faces with before being introduced to your product?
- What emotions do you want them to feel when they find the solution?
- How do you alter your customer’s skepticism and turn it into hopefulness and joy?
These questions will establish a baseline to your story’s itinerary and keep viewers engaged and invested. Portraying a powerful message through emotion is essential. It makes a lasting impression, as opposed to simply conveying a marketing message.
Become a Master Editor
One of the best ways to enhance your video lies in the editing process. Be sure your cuts are clean and distinct. Don’t get too fancy with transitions. Focusing on lavish transitions may detract from the valuable points you are trying to get across. Additionally, try and pick music that matches the tone of the rest of the story to bring your product to vivid life.
Determining the length of your video is also imperative. Based off over 564,000 video, Wistia determined the ideal length to be 2 minutes. They also found that engagement is steady up to 2 minutes, meaning a 90-second video will hold a someone’s attention as much as a 30-second one. Naturally, you have to consider where this video will be viewed. Platforms like Instagram and Facebook require shorter video lengths.
Include a Call To Action
Like other marketing assets, you’ll want to end your video by prompting your viewer to take action. If they’ve watched your video to the end, they’ve already demonstrated a clear interest. Providing a call to action – or CTA – will drive viewers to take an action. Ideally you’d drive the viewer to a designated landing page where they will provide their contact information, thereby turning them into a lead.
Other CTA ideas can include inviting viewers to your social media pages, entering contests, free trials, webinars, short forms, or another video. Whatever the end goal is, this is your chance to gather further interest and transition them from a viewer to a customer.
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