Engage Your Audience

How Thoughtful Video Storytelling Can Give Your Business a Competitive Advantage

January 6, 2023 6 min read1118
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When you think about storytelling, you probably think about fairy tales and bedtime as a child—but storytelling can be so much more! It’s always had the unique ability to connect people on a personal level. For businesses, these personal connections can be used to set yourself apart from the competition. A compelling story can attract your ideal customers and engage them in a way that drives growth for your business.

Storytelling itself has tremendous staying power. Think back to your childhood. You probably have a handful of stories about your friends, family, school days, and experiences you can recall quickly. When you tell these stories, you’re likely overcome with emotion. You can remember everything from the people around you, to the sights and sounds of your surroundings.

Using video to tell stories can have a similar impact. Not only is video the most effective way to disseminate your story to large masses of people at one time, but it exponentially increases the chances your story will be remembered. According to Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research, the information retained from one minute of online video is equal to 1.8 million written words — making it one of the most efficient ways to get your message across.

Here are just a few of the things video storytelling can do for your business.

Video Storytelling Helps with Brand Recall

It’s much easier to remember a story than a list of facts or promises, and it’s even more memorable when combined with the power of video imagery. Creating a visual story will keep your company at the forefront of your customer’s minds, even in the face of competition.

How do we know this? Well, we know better ad recall leads to an increase in brand awareness and brand favorability, metrics tied directly to lower funnel stages like purchase intent and consideration. In other words, the more someone remembers you and your brand, the more likely they are to buy.

So you want to make sure people not only remember your brand, but associate it with a positive emotional response. Do this by thinking about what visuals can help tell your brand’s story. They should be evocative and should correlate directly with how you want your audience to feel.

Once you’ve got some strong visuals in mind, you can tell a story that’s not only beautiful, but memorable, as well.


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Video Storytelling Creates Brand Loyalty

Stories pull us in and create long-lasting impressions. Think about your favorite television show or the last book you read and couldn’t put down. Don’t worry — your brand’s story doesn’t have to be a long, epic narrative. Just think about how they used the basic elements of storytelling (characters, plot, conflict, resolution) to draw you in. How would you use these elements in your brand story?

Because brand loyalty relies so heavily on personal and engaging customer experiences, you’ll want your story to really engage your audience. Beside beautiful imagery, think about using animation, overlays, text, and more to draw in your viewers. Then, engage with your users directly wherever you distribute your video: social media (by commenting on your posts), email (by addressing your users by name), and your website (by personalizing your landing page experiences.)

This will earn your business a place in the heart of every customer, increasing your sales and keeping your brand top of mind.

Video Storytelling Provides Valuable Information

In addition to entertaining your customers, stories have the power to educate and explain. Your customers are more likely to remember factual information when expressed within the context of a memorable story. According to Wordstream, viewers retain 95 percent of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10 percent when reading it in text.

This is what makes video such a great medium for things like recipes, how-to’s, case studies, and more. It enables the delivery of lots of information without overwhelming the viewer, helping them retain more for a longer period of time.

But that doesn’t mean you should jam-pack your video with tons of information. Use only information relevant to your story; the information you include should add, not detract, from your story. Use it to build credibility, trust, and assurance.

And, no matter what kind of video you actually make, be sure it tells a compelling story.

Where Do You Begin?

So, now you know the value of video for your brand. But what do you need to get started? If your story doesn’t make sense on paper, it probably won’t make sense on camera, so be sure to have a clear, focused process in order to ensure success.

  1. Start by conceptualizing the idea of the story you want to tell.

Remember: your creative goals, like sympathizing with your audience and increasing brand awareness, will connect directly back to the metrics you measure for success, like view-through rate and social shares. Build toward those creative goals by developing your story.

To start, outline the following, which serves as the framework of your story.

  • Protagonist with a goal – This person should align with your target demographic.
  • Conflict – This is your customer’s pain point.
  • Quest – This will be how you introduce your product or service.
  • Resolution – This is how your product or service solves the problem.
Four Elements of a Great Video

This step should include outlines, notes, and a script.

  1. Next, work on the visuals.

Now that you’ve got the framework of your video content ready, you can begin on the aesthetics and feel. This will play a major role in making that connection with your audience — the story will make your brand more relatable, but the visuals are what do a lot of the psychological lifting.

Humans are designed to process visual information more quickly and efficiently than anything else, so you’ll want to plan out all of your visual aspects, including your colors, your settings, and more.

Here’s a quick list of visual components crucial to your storytelling.

  • Colors – Use your brand colors as much as possible.
  • Setting – Pick a location that’s evocative and relevant to the problem your product solves.
  • Props – Will your product be in the video?
  • Graphics – Think about text overlays, animations, motion graphics, and more.
  • Angles – Do you want close-ups or wide shots? One camera or multiple?
  • Lighting – Natural lighting, studio lighting, or a mix of both can evoke different emotions.

Draw out your thoughts on a storyboard, or go even simpler by just jotting down ideas in a shared document.

  1. Get practical! Work on planning and execution.

Your ideas might be huge. Can you execute your vision in-house or do you need an agency to help your ideas come to life? Either is OK, just be sure you remain realistic. You can’t expect a viral video that’ll produce thousands of leads on a $500 budget (or, depending on your resources, maybe this is totally viable!)

Luckily, you can get help every step of the way. If you have every element of your project planned out and just need a film crew, there are agencies that can provide just that. If you know your audience will engage with a video, but you don’t know what your brand story should even be, a full-service video marketing agency might be the way to go. Get quotes, put together a plan, and get started!

Video marketing continues to grow, but you don’t want to add more video noise to the world. Instead, create a video you can be proud of, one your audience will love to watch and share, and one that’ll convert into sales.

Need help? If your business hasn’t capitalized on video storytelling, contact Lemonlight today! We create videos that capture the heart of your business and inspire your audience.

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