FYI, storytelling is the difference between reciting facts about your product and making a lasting, emotional connection with a potential customer.

Why Brands Should Embrace Video for Storytelling | Union

Why Brands Should Embrace Video for Storytelling

In a<a href="https://union.co/articles/digital-marketing-trends-to-watch-in-2016"> recent article</a> on digital marketing trends, we forecasted that content marketing was going to make a shift towards video and away from the traditional blog post. More specifically, the shift will be towards storytelling through video. So what exactly is storytelling and why is it critical for your business? 

Storytelling is the difference between reciting facts about your product and making a lasting, emotional connection with a potential customer. Storytelling is the difference between someone forgetting about your message 15 minutes after they saw it, and someone sharing it with hundreds or thousands of their friends or followers. Whether or not most people are aware of it,<a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/inside-the-consumer-mind/201302/how-emotions-influence-what-we-buy"> we make most of our purchasing decisions based on emotion</a>. Storytelling connects to a consumer on a personal basis, and the effects of a strong story will resonate with a potential customer much longer than an informative, fact-based message. <a href="https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/b2b-content-storytelling-infographic?__hstc=69631439.cb5265a0bdcc5e36924187a0c093b9ad.1547917304129.1547917304129.1547917304129.1&amp;__hssc=69631439.1.1547917304130&amp;__hsfp=3784026306"> Think about this:</a>
<ul>
<li>Every 60 seconds, 700,000 Google searches are performed</li>
<li>5.3 trillion ads are shown online each year</li>
<li>The average consumer processes 100,500 digital words daily</li>
<li>79 percent of people scan the web rather than reading it word by word</li>
</ul>
It’s easy to recognize that if you want to stand out in people’s minds you have to distinguish your message from the crowd and follow the classic literary advice of “show don’t tell.” People want to relate to stories to feel innately human. With traditional and disruptive marketing becoming less effective each day, your content has to develop far beyond a well-worded sales pitch if you intend to succeed in today’s market.
“Brands that understand and embrace this shift are leveraging digital to run more targeted and effective marketing campaigns”
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You Can't Escape The Future of Video
Whether or not you want to admit it, the future of sharing and storytelling is video. In fact,<a href="http://syndacast.com/video-marketing-statistics-trends-2015/"> Syndacast has estimated</a> that 74% of all internet traffic in 2017 will be video. While there will always be a need for informative, evergreen, text-based content on your site’s blog, video is the way to stay in the forefront of people’s minds and to increase your brand awareness. Beyond just recognition, video marketing has concrete results:
<ul>
<li>Shoppers who view video are nearly TWICE more likely to purchase than non-viewers</li>
<li>Blog posts with videos are linked to THREE TIMES more often than text-only posts</li>
</ul>
We also must take into consideration how much of this video is going to be consumed via mobile.<a href="http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/the-future-of-content-marketing-is-online-video/626021"> Cisco has predicted</a> mobile data traffic will grow at three times the rate of fixed IP traffic through 2019. More and more people are viewing mobile video as they walk down the street, wait for the bus or watch television.
Developing Your Digital Story
When imagining your brand’s story for video, it’s critical to place yourself in the life of your potential customer and clearly articulate why you belong there. Here at UNION we recently produced our own series of storytelling videos asserting the importance of digital marketing both today and in the future.
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As you can see, this video offers far more than statistics about our success. It showcases who we are as a firm, what we believe in, and what we can do for our clients. It expresses not just our purpose and our services, but our culture as well. Obviously, using digital marketing to sell digital marketing may look different than a traditional B2C video. Recognizing your target audience and exhibiting something they want or need in a personal, compelling manner is the single standard that needs to be met.
We all know the old adage, “A picture is worth 1,000 words.” Recently you may have also heard, “A video is worth 1.8 million words.” This seemingly ubiquitous “statistic” actually comes from multiplying those 1,000 words per picture by 30 frames per second and 60 seconds per minute. No marketing studies were completed to arrive at this magic valuation. But despite its adagial nature, this sentiment reflects an important truth about the future of marketing. Telling your brand’s story through video gives you the ability to express infinitely more about your product and its place in the market than any print ad or brochure ever could.
The harsh truth is this: if you’re not embracing video for your marketing strategy in the coming year, you’re going to see yourself falling behind those competitors who are.
Stay tuned next week as we delve into the details of creating a successful storytelling campaign for your business.

Why Brands Should Embrace Video for Storytelling

Valtech Union is a creative &amp; performance marketing agency that creates omni-channel campaigns, unleashing creativity on a data-driven world, helping brands produce memorable, measurable and repeatable results. Obsessed with data-driven performance, we believe every marketing dollar should be viewed as an investment. Our clients expect a meaningful return and we prove the ROI of our work with quantifiable data.