The Best Video Storytelling Guide for Small Businesses

The Best Video Storytelling Guide for Small Businesses

Visual storytelling is a marketing strategy that will help your small business tell a story, build a brand, and capture potential customers. Storytelling through the medium of videos is a way to quickly connect content with consumers. Inviting faces, trustworthy spokespeople, bright colors, animated videos -- there are many examples of different types of video techniques to market to the world.

Video production catches the audience's attention, albeit short, so target viewers locked into an engaging narrative will connect, remember your company, and use your product.

What is Video Marketing?

Searching through marketing tools, you might find a lot of buzz around video marketing. Short video ads, daily stories, local or national commercials --  video storytelling to attract new customers and reach a specific goal is video marketing.

Take into account a brand's social media page on a major online platform (keep in mind social media pages are free resources). What is the most memorable online content? Brief videos.

Views Translate to Sales

Viewers are more likely to watch a video than to read text. Only 20% read the text on a page compared to 80% that would stop and pay attention to a video. In fact, almost three-quarters of all potential customers prefer watching a video over reading about a company.

Posting videos for viewers can easily translate to increased sales. Videos push content both visually and audibly in a short amount of time. Viewers who were enticed while watching the brief video are 64% more likely to purchase the featured product.

Learning the art of marketing through the medium of videos is a proven strategy to propel a small business and create a larger customer base. People are given a taste of your brand and can consider and follow through with a purchase.

Why Should A Small Business Try Video Storytelling?

Videos create lasting impressions, and video marketing connects you to your audience. On average, people watch an hour and a half of video content daily. There's a reason that YouTube is the second most popular website worldwide, with the first most popular being Google.

There's no doubt that people enjoy this type of visual content and video storytelling is a top-tier strategy for customer interaction.

How it Works

These interactions make a viewer feel like they are experiencing your brand, which is more immersive and long-lasting compared to viewing a visual still or reading text.

Connection Matters

Video is the best medium, but you'll need an emotionally captivating marketing campaign as well. Having a target audience and demographic and playing to their emotions as humans by making them feel included in something larger or equating your products with happy nostalgia is a sure-fire way to connect.

Coca-Cola is a great example of a company that has been connecting emotions to its product for over 100 years. Their past slogans of "Open Happiness", "Taste the Feeling", "Together Tastes Better" all equate Coca-Cola products to positive feelings.

Stand Out from the Competition

Video Storytelling sets you apart. Many companies don't build in a story for themselves which reduces the ways they are experienced and remembered.

When there is storytelling used to make a connection, a layered brand with memorable slogans, characters, settings, and more, is sent out to compete. Displaying those stories through video helps them stick the most.

Video Provides Authenticity

The stories told through the lens of personal experience pose credibility to the viewer. There's believability; that believability deposits the message of your visual storytelling to the viewer's memory bank. The memory of your video content is then easily retrievable when your product or service is viewed, and it is remembered in a positive, trusted light.

Video Makes Brands More Personable

When the story told in your video marketing has elements of life relevant to the viewer, it makes the brand personable. They then can become loyal consumers

Encourage Audiences to Take an Interest

Narratives like what a company stands for, or what research, donations, charity, or green practices they have spur curiosity. Your small business with a tailored story to target the interests of your key demographic can create more talking points. The more a viewer can identify with you or create buzz about you, the more likely word and business will spread.

Best Videos for Your Small Business

Using visual marketing doesn't have to be hard. There are plenty of free resources for video editing and to learn how to create the best content, but ultimately, it's what you want to make of it.

You might choose to create video ads for your product or services or introduce your brand via video. You can even promote testimonials from your loyal existing customers.

There are many affordable ways to highlight your product or service with a target audience in mind and include elements that relate to them. Videos that explain your product or show how happy customers promote your brand and increase sales once viewers choose to purchase from your company. Here are feasible video types to make that happen:

Product Explainer Videos

As a small business, a great business video to get started with would be an explainer video. This type of video helps the audience get to know your company by explaining what you do or what product you offer.

Product explainer videos help legitimize your business. These should be quick and to the point. Focus more on providing authentic videos than having cinematic scenes or fancy gimmicks. Make them digestible and honest. They don't have to be an expensive investment to do their job.

Types of Explainer Videos Include

Animated video: Very popular option where you won't need a good camera or great lighting. These are easy to hire creators like freelancers on Fiverr, or using services like Powtoon, or Yum Yum Videos. Visual marketing is enticing and easy to follow.

Live-Action Video: Simply put, a live person is speaking during this type of video. These videos whether filmed professionally or at home are best done with a simple script to keep to the point. Using everyday language and keeping the video brief (under a minute) is best.

Screencast: If your small business is a web page-based service or product, screencasts, or commercials are easily made using screen-recording software. You can record high-quality screencasts using software like Soapbox.

Testimonial Videos

Another example of a useful video type is testimonial videos. Their video content tells a brand story, preferably through an authentic customer. Another option would be through actor portrayal, but then your small business loses authenticity and would have an additional expense.

The narrative told in this type of production shows satisfied consumers who have already experienced the great service or product your small business has to offer and walks others through their personal journey with your brand. This attracts potential consumers who want to be satisfied also since they can trust it's possible through you.

Having customer testimonials can feel awkward and small businesses might not use them much, but creating one or two videos is feasible and can help potential customers choose your company among competitors. Reach out to past happy clients for video testimonials.

To respect the time of your happy customer taking time out of their day, you want to capitalize on having them present and capture as much content as possible. You do not need to be formally interviewing them for hours on end.

Keep your meeting conversational while the camera rolls to show their personality in a way that doesn't seem too rehearsed or flat. Capture B-Roll footage like friendly and warm quick shots of the customer smiling, laughing, greeting, and leaving. Just let the camera run and search for the best shots after your session with the customer. From some of those warm smiles, you'll have an inviting video thumbnail for your webpage or social media page.

You remain top of mind to viewers when they envision themselves happy and have seen others who already are.

Company Story Video

Introduce the world to who you are and how your company got started. Share the backstory of what motivated you to start the business and how it is special and unique. Including friendly faces and inspirational stories of how your small business has been beating the odds and growing from humble beginnings will attract viewership. Company story videos put a face to the name of your business.

Types of company story videos can include crowdsourced videos featuring employees, interviews of your employees, and B-Roll footage from a company or event, or party with voiceover.

Crowdsourced video is a fun way to compile brief video clips submitted by passionate employees personally.

Interviews with employees are similar to customer testimonials but instead speak towards how great your company is with happy employees that care about the mission and vision of your brand. Similar to interviews with employees are team biographies. Depending on the anonymity or personal focus on employees and the types of questions and answers featured, you may choose either style to put out familiarity and personalization.

Voiceovers over inexpensive B-Roll share inviting moments and great examples of company culture with explanatory talking points about who you are as an entity.

Product Highlights

These videos are less organic and take a little more creativity. They should highlight your small business' product features uniquely. Especially if the product is not novel and your video must make your company stand out against other very familiar offerings. For instance, if you have an ice cream shop, focus on in-house flavors and filming your shop with higher production value.

Instructional

Viewers will be taught how to use your product or engage with your service in instructional videos. This type is normally used for products, but let’s say you’re a life coaching and counseling office. You can easily show new and potential customers how to book an appointment using Screencast.

Tips and Tricks

Teaching viewers about the relevant subject matter in your field establishes expertise. Promoting tips and tricks videos can help bring in local foot traffic. People simply trying to learn how to be successful in what you teach will be exposed to your company and possibly find additional content. At the very least, they learn you are a knowledgeable source, and with repeated visits to your page, they can become loyal customers. This is also an easy way to create inviting video content without having to focus on a creative, scripted ad.

Announcements

Announcement videos keep your company relevant and generate attention, especially during times your company pages have been quiet. They are a great way to increase posting frequency and excite new and returning customers over what is to come. Use several small quick teasers for a product launch, a brand re-imaging, a new location, or any worthy announcement content. These can be slightly altered with the bulk of the announcement repeated through these different teasers, which will double your content value with less work.

FAQ’s

Customers will always encounter questions, this allows you to answer them all quickly and easily in one place. You remain connected to old customers, ensuring they remain satisfied by understanding both product and company fully. You also may win over potential consumers when they view your brief posted FAQ video and see how you follow through and care for customers by providing clarification.

Turn to Argonaut Productions for Small Business Help

No one starts a business to be unsuccessful or irrelevant. On the contrary, every business is started with hope and hard work with no limit in sight.

Video marketing is a great use of your time and efforts to yield the best results and one day scale up your dream. Get those dreams on track by connecting an audience to your brand using a slew of online platforms and even in-person ones as well.

You might need help hashing out captivating new ideas. Enter Argonaut Productions. If creating quality content troubles you, we’re glad to offer advice. If you need tips to improve the performance of your existing content, we can do that too!

Call today, or book an appointment through our website, where you can learn more about what we do, who we do it all for, and why we love it!