A marketing video has a specific purpose. You want to educate and promote your business to potential clients. But, how do you ensure that your video helps connect your audience to you and your product or service?

Start With A Story

The most important thing about a marketing video is to always start with a story. But don’t fall into the trap of making it a story about yourself if you can help it. Instead, you want the story to focus on clients that you’ve helped to transform. 

If you don’t have a client story yet, you can use yourself as an example, but make sure it doesn’t come off in a way that sounds like bragging or self-promoting. Instead, focus on what you were struggling with before that made you create the thing you’re creating.

My Story

For example, if I were to tell a story that had to do with video content, I would tell the story of when I started my marketing company from scratch. I had previously been helping build up a brand with a huge following with lots of page views and podcast downloads. So, starting from scratch was a really humbling experience. 

I took the advice of an SEO expert to write a 2200 word blog post once a week. I did that for a year. That’s at least 100,000 words of content. But, It didn’t move the needle the way I wanted it to. 

Creating content like that doesn’t work if you need revenue today.

Another big problem was that I was using a blogger’s mentality. I was creating purely informational content and trying to get a bunch of page views and site visits to develop that connection with my audience. 

There were a lot of problems with this approach, but first and foremost was that it was taking up so much of my time, and I wasn’t getting paid for it. I wasn’t even trying to sell blog writing services.

The amount of time and effort that it took to get traction was way more than I had. So, I did what a lot of people do. I hired a ghostwriter. 

The ghostwriter wrote quickly and decently, but the ghostwriter created even more informational content, which I was trying to get away from.

The other problem was that the ghostwriter had their own writing personality, but it didn’t match mine. So, I was spending time removing that person’s personality and putting mine back in. 

I was potentially saving a few hours in content production, but it didn’t really feel like it. Not to mention, now I was paying someone to do work I was practically re-doing, spending hours getting it to a place where I was ready to publish it.

If that sounds similar to your story, keep listening. 

I found a better way to do all of this. It doesn’t take a lot of time. It doesn’t take a lot of equipment. 

In fact, everything that I do can be done in 10-minute chunks of time with just a smartphone, good lighting, and a microphone.

Stories Create Connection

You can see how using my story to illustrate the benefits of our content marketing amplification system helps create a connection with potential clients. 

Rather than just listing the products or services we offer, I’m allowing the audience to step into my world and compare the problems I was facing with the ones they face. 

If they feel the way I did and are looking for a better solution, it’s a good start to moving down the buyer’s journey together. It isn’t about the sale. It’s about showing people the transformation they can expect when working with you. 

That’s the power of a story.