Everyone has watched company videos that just fall flat. You watch a 10, 20, or 60-second video and at the end of the video you just feel empty.

No emotional spike. No interest. You just keep scrolling down to the next video.

Those videos were likely missing a strong and compelling story. Videos get much more engagement than plain text and even images, and this is what makes them very effective for telling stories.

However, you must know how to tell an effective story using video content in a short amount of time. Further, the video must be short because social media users have short attention spans. Five-minute videos to tell your company story do not work. People will generally not sit and watch a five-minute video all the way from beginning to end.

This guide will briefly explain why using compelling video content to tell your company story is great for advertising, what a company story looks like, and then four things that every successful company story contains.

Reasons to use video stories

Videos are important and just about every marketing professional agrees. They get more engagement, clicks, and conversions than any other form of marketing.

Throwing together any random video will not get views or engagement. Rather, the story told in your video is what increases engagement and can even lead to your video becoming viral.

Customers would rather watch, and share with friends, a 60-second video that has a great story about your company than reading five paragraphs of text that tells the same story. In this regard, the video simply allows the viewer to process more information in a shorter amount of time, which leads into the next point.

Using videos to tell a story gives you the opportunity to give your company a voice while playing to the emotions of the viewer. That is the strongest point of storytelling by video and why companies spend millions of pounds each year developing advertising videos.

What does a company story look like?

Telling your company story by video looks a little different than what you might expect from just normal storytelling. However, the underlying principles between the two are the same. You will still use a beginning, middle, and end to tell your company story. Most importantly, the video should answer an important question about your brand or the mission of your company.

You generally want to tap into the emotional appeal of your business for a one-minute video. You simply will not have time to effectively use logic or reason.

The 4 things you must do to successfully tell your company story

1. Focus on one simple point

This is the most important step in creating a compelling company story, especially for a 60-second video. You do not want to jump around multiple points. This just confuses the viewer and dilutes your message.

Some examples of points to make include focusing on the customer service of your business or how your product adds value. Those points are easy to understand and are easy to write a compelling story around.

2. Have a beginning, middle, and end

Every story must have those three things. Keep in mind; the sequence should blend well and seem natural.

Stories without a beginning, middle, and end just do not work. Your viewers will get confused, and this gives a bad message for your brand.

3. Show a problem and solution

This step is important for all videos but most important for videos used as advertisements.

The first part will clearly and succinctly show a problem that your target customer has. This could be acne, inefficient software, or any other type of problem you know your customer experiences. You should then mention your product and how it can help. Finally, you conclude the video by using your product as part of the solution.

4. Make the video emotional

A story that makes the viewer emotional will have the most impact and create a more successful video marketing strategy. This is simply human nature to connect with their emotions. A boring and emotionless video story will have relatively little effect on the viewer. It certainly will not give them a positive message about your brand.

Now, most marketers interpret creating an emotional video as making the viewers cry while watching the video; this certainly works but is not a requirement. Any type of emotional reaction will work well for a marketing strategy. This includes happiness, sentimentality, or anger.

The most important part is to leave the viewer thinking something about the video after watching it. The type of video that the viewer thinks about for the rest of the day.

Combining the four points together

You might have read the list and assumed that having a company story that meets one or two of the points is good enough to tell a compelling story. It might work for telling a normal story, but an advertising story requires a bit more. A good advertising video must meet all four points.

Having an emotional video is not good enough for a memorable story. Neither is a video that has a beginning, middle, and end.

Meeting all four requirements 60 seconds or less can be difficult depending on the topic. However, many of the most successful advertisements have been commercials that only last 30 seconds. They will focus on one point, show a problem and solve it, elicit an emotional response, and have a clearly defined beginning, middle, and end.

Final Thoughts

All in all, creating a compelling video story in 60 seconds is not nearly as difficult as it appears. The benefits of an excellent video story are an improved engagement rate. Even better, a compelling enough video story has the potential to become a viral video, and this could result in further engagement and people enthusiastically sharing and watching your advertisement for free.

Simply follow the four points listed above, and you will have a compelling video for online video marketing. Creating a viral video is slightly more difficult, but all viral marketing videos will tell some sort of story. Oftentimes a viral video will focus more on the emotional aspect than the storytelling aspect, but you will still see glimpses of the other three criteria in every successful online video advertisement.