People will always remember a good story over a sales or marketing pitch. Telling your brand story with video is simply the best experience for you and your (current and future) customers. Especially when that story is personal and generous.
But before we get deeper into how to tell your brand story with video, a brief reminder that your brand story answers:
- The reason why your company exists
- Why your team is motivated to wake up and come to work every day
- The origin of your product – what pain point it solves
- Why you love your customers and who they are
- The people that make up your company and what makes them happy
- Something that your entire team, at organizational levels, embraces
- Straightforward but not sales-y in any way
Note: The answers to all of the above always includes, “your customer.” Because, brand storytelling is not actually about your company. Great (visual) brand storytelling is about your customers and the benefits they get from engaging with your brand’s service or product.
The most powerful brand stories are the ones that prioritize customers as the stars. Think of your company as the supporting character to stories about and for your customers. And that’s where video really gets the chance to shine when telling your brand story: turning the spotlight back onto your customer and the value they get from interacting with your brand.
Got it? Okay, now let’s look at how to tell your brand story while connecting directly with current and future customer’s digital eyeballs.
Show your brand – Figuring out the above brand story bullet points is a great starting point to help know your brand in order to tell its story. Because, if you don’t know specifically who you are, no one else will care about you either. It’s also a great starting point for a video content calendar. E.g. Week one: “the story of why we started our company and how we serve our customers. ”
Now understand your brand even better – Once you understand the above and can tell that story, discover your deeper, archetypal persona. This is how to connect with your customer’s collective unconscious and embed in their culture. Know that quality video marketing will stretch your creativity and force you to clearly understand your brand’s persona in order to present it to the public. And that’s a good thing. Consider creative aspects of the brand like:
- What song would you (your customers want you to) be
- Who could be your mascot
- How do you tell the story without words
- What celebrity represents you
- What emotion does your brand elicit
- What color would you be
Then fold these metaphors into your brand story, if appropriate.
Now don’t make it about you – It is worth repeating that like any good party, spend more time focusing on and learning about who you are talking to vs. going on and on about yourself. If you can speak honestly and clearly, video will be an awesome tool that highlights the amazing people you get to serve each day while listening to how you can make their lives better.
Go the extra mile – Be creative. Tapping into storytelling via video forces us to be more creative than with traditional content or push marketing. Be sure to consider that your story will be seen on the mobile video screen too so you have to be creative to grab a viewer’s short attention span. Remember too that being creative about how you tell your story will demonstrate more about your brand than possibly the message itself. That is, by taking the time to be unique, stand out, think about how your message will be shared while being honest, you will speak volumes to your customer about your core values. Of course, you have to be real, be yourself, and show you care.
Have clear goals – Have a clear vision of what success looks like for your video marketing initiatives. Then measure your video performance to know if you have achieved those goals, on what channels and to what segment of your demographic. By looking at the metrics, you’ll discover more about your brand and how customers want to interact with you.
Then, don’t forget to measure – Once you know your goals, get your analytics figured out and ready. And you’re going to need a lot of em for now. YouTube, Vimeo, Google Analytics, Twitter, Facebook will all have to suffice. You can also look at a solution like Vidyard which is especially powerful if you use video for email marketing.
Shoot once, edit for social – This is a clear message of fail to prepare = prepare to fail. Conversely, if you understand your brand you can begin to understand what stories you want to tell and how to shape those stories for the different social channels. When you sketch out the story you are going to tell, understand how the two-minute version will play on your website, the 30 second on Twitter, 15 on Insta, 45 on Facebook, six seconds on Vine, etc.
Make something people want to watch – The old adage still applies that customer’s aren’t buying your drill bit, they’re buying the promise of a great hole. Brand storytelling with video is your best tool to bridge digital and the real world – where the best connections happen. Be sure to entertain, inform, add value, and be excellent to each other while using the appropriate amount of creativity. If you can do this you’ll have customers who engage longer with your brand story and even share it with friends and family.
And that’s a story we all want to be able to tell.
Got anything to add to this? Please let us know on Facebook or Twitter.
Here’s an amazing (re)brand story video