Yes, you too can create an Epic Story for your company and your Video Marketing efforts, and it all starts with the tried and true Hero’s Journey.
The Hero’s Journey is a common trope used in all storytelling, especially big time blockbuster movies. Normally, it follows a 10 to 15 step process. But you can boil it down to create an ad, an explainer video, landing page videos, product videos, and culture videos, so that you can tell stories concisely on your website, at trade shows and so forth.
The good news is you can create an epic story on your own. The first part is Empathy. You must build empathy with the viewer. You have to have something in common. You have to do something good, you have to do something interesting. You have to capture their attention at the beginning and get them to relate to you so they’re empathetic and open to what’s coming next.
One of the biggest rules of stories is to get people to ask, “What happens next?” If they’re asking what happens next, they’ll watch the next 10 or 15 seconds of the video. And you have to keep doing that to get to the problem.
The Problem isn’t necessarily your problem for the business video. It’s the problem that you solve for your customers. If they have accounting software, for example, you know your audience, you know the issues that they’re facing and how your product or software solves their problem.
So bring up the problem, make sure they’re going through some pitfalls, and then move to Integrity. Integrity is where you’re going to talk about the solutions you bring to the market, but you’re doing it to solve their problem.
They don’t care about you and your company necessarily. They relate to you because they have empathy. They also are now looking to solve the “what’s in it for me,” the WIFM problem that they have. Now you’re building a little bit of integrity.
You bring a solution to the market. And then there’s a Change. A change in their lives, a change that you can make that makes them better, faster, stronger, healthier, whatever it might be. And the C is also for Call to Action because at the end of each video you need to ask a question that’s going to ask your customer to do something for you. It might be enter an email address so that you can keep in touch with them and move them through the customer journey. It might be hit “Like,” it might be connect on LinkedIn.
However you sell, whether it’s B to B or B to C, there’s something that you want your customers to do. So if you go through the empathy problem, integrity, and change with a call to action, you’re on your way to creating a really solid story and videos for your website and other areas that you go.
If you want to learn more on how to build your own epic story or how Rip Media Group can help you with your video marketing needs, contact us today.