How to tell Powerful Stories with your Marketing Videos

What is the biggest blunder that most marketing videos make? How can you avoid it?

Videos are a most powerful medium. Yet most marketing videos are boring. How can that be? What are most marketers missing?

Wish you could give them goose bumps? Engage them emotionally and communicate convincingly? Leave them charged up to take action? You need to be a storyteller.

Facts do not win hearts. Stories do.

“If there is one piece of advice I could go back to give myself, it is to concentrate on that storytelling part”, Stewart Butterfield, Founder, Slack.

How not to do it

Why are most videos boring & ineffective? Talking about your product, features & benefits is easy. As you can see in this example (anonymized, but this is what most marketing videos look like – a powerpoint wrapped up in video with some background music slapped on):

Its easy, but nobody wants to be reminded of boring powerpoints while watching a video.

Making Magic

Talking about your product, features & benefits is easy. Making the viewer care, engaging them, telling a story is hard. Yet good story videos can create magic. 

Even enterprise technology products need to tell a story -- because ultimately they are selling to humans; with dreams, struggles and emotions. Hear Vinod Khosla, the guru of enterprise technology products, explain the importance of storytelling.

5 Habits of Great Storytellers

But what makes a great business storyteller?

You have to win their Heart. Convince their Gut. Inspire their Imagination. Then help their Mind validate, rationalize and implement the decision.

Presenting the top 5 attributes of great business storytellers.

 1.     They are Sense Makers

They explain difficult concepts so that you “get it”. They simplify.

Business is complex and getting more so. Technology is complex and getting increasingly so. Complexity kills sales. It is hard for decision makers to understand why they need a product in the first place, to evaluate similar competitive offerings, and evaluate the priority of purchases. Giving them more information does not help. What you need to do is to help them make sense of it all.

Slack (in the early days, when the product relevance was not clear) explains how the product fits into your business:

Elon Musk illustrates a great technique storytellers use – show it in context, relate it to something your audience intuitively understands. Here he explains how much space is required for solar power panels to power all of US:

2.     They seek to Inspire, not to Impress

 How many times have we seen companies trying to impress by boasting how great they are? Are worse, by clever visuals or words in their video? Do audiences care? Very few companies get it right.

Almost all the examples I have included in this post show you how to inspire, put the customer first, make the customer great. I particularly love this video by LinkedIn:

Dropbox shows how to tell a story with video:

3.    They focus on the Emotional Benefit to the audience

Every product has multiple benefits: efficiency, functionality or financial savings, for example. However, the most powerful benefits, the ones that drive humans to action, the ones that effective storytellers focus on, are emotional. Seth Godin said it best: “Customers do not buy goods & services. They buy relations, stories & magic”.

The best products make their customers feel relaxed, empowered, free. What emotional benefit are you selling?

 For a B2C example, UrbanClap puts you back in control. Who’s the boss?:

 For a B2B example, watch the Salesforce or Zendesk example below, or any of the many other examples in this post. Does this drone make you feel all-powerful? Watch the audience reaction: how often have you seen an audience appalud a demo? 

4.     They make it about the Customer, not the Offering

Instead of product features & benefits, effective storyteller focus on the customers.

The common problem I see is that most videos refer to the customer, but are really about the offering. A simple way to test: ask, two questions: (1) who is the hero of the story? and (2) does the video evoke emotion?

The hero is of the story has to be the customer. The product has to play a support role. Yes, you need to feature the product -- but as a support to the hero, as the enabler or winning edge for the hero, NOT as the hero itself.

A great example from Salesforce:

5.     They focus on our Dreams, our Struggles and our Aspirational Selves

We intuitively understand our desires and the hurdles that prevent us from achieving them, but often struggle to articulate them. The effective storytellers help the audience crystallize and understand their aspirations & our struggles. Sharing a couple of great examples.

 An adorable couple role-plays vendor & client:

Another great example of what customers desire, struggle with, and how the product helps them:

The best products transform the user, help them be their aspirational selves, bring out the best in them. How is a user transformed by your offering?

How can we not mention Jobs?

 I will end with an Iconic talk by Steve Jobs, how he made it all about the customer (rather than the product), and the video that brought Apply back to life. Enjoy.

In Summary

Engage. Simplify. Inspire.

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Have other great video examples?

Other attributes of effective videos? Powerful storytelling techniques. Would love to hear from you. Share in the comments below.

More information at https://www.storyproc.com.