An excellent product in the world might not be enough to grow your company. 

To build a base of loyal customers and attract more attention, every entrepreneur needs a marketing strategy based on authentic, honest messaging.

Video storytelling is the best content to meet these requirements. When you tell a story about your brand, product, mission, values, or customers – people can relate if they have similar beliefs and values. When you establish that connection with the right people, good things will happen.

In this post, you’ll see five video storytelling examples that engage people on a deeper level and build that connection. 

We’ll highlight the best features and show the essential qualities to create your own amazing video marketing content. Stick around, and you’ll become a better video marketer by the time you’re done reading.

Video Storytelling: The Best Practices

Let’s quickly show you the essentials of marketing videos that attract millions of views and bring in conversions. 

Keep in mind these best practices to make your stories as effective as possible:

• Show, don’t tell. A video with a person telling that SEO is important is good, but a video showing Google Analytics dashboard with thousands of visitors of SEO-optimized blog articles is better. 
• Follow a structure with an inciting incident. Highly engaging videos consist of (in this particular order): 1) the introduction, 2) inciting incident, 3) climax, 4) resolution, and 5) outro.
• Have a clear purpose. What do you want to convey to your viewers? What impression do you want to create?
• Make it interesting for the target audience. Who’s the primary audience of your video? What kind of video are they likely to appreciate?

Follow these practices to create a solid framework from which to operate. They ensure that you’ll take care of the video, its purpose, and the ability to engage the right people. 

Now, let’s get to the best examples.

5 Best Examples of Video Storytelling

Here are examples from well-known content creators on YouTube and why they’re the best. You can create similar videos, too, without a multi-million budget.

1. Find Your Passion, Find Your Purpose 

By Chris Do, The Futur YouTube channel

Look at your past. 

Look at the things you did in the free time when nobody was watching. 

What did you do?

This video is the definition of simple, narrative-based content that gets to the pain points and creates an emotional connection immediately. 

By asking the questions about interests right away, Chris grabs our attention. Each of us had something they wanted to do, so Chris makes the video relatable right from the start. This is a technique that vloggers, marketers, and lifestyle blogs like Adsy.com use, too – because it works.

Next, he uses a story from his family to make the video even more relatable. Chris says he feels like his cousins are living the dreams of their parents. They went to medical schools to secure a well-paying job as a doctor, only to lose interest and drive when things got hard. 

Eventually, Chris says, one of his cousins never made it to grad school, so they just stopped. Another one has chosen to become a nurse. A lack of passion was the reason, according to Chris. A person who’s passionate about the job from the start is much less likely to quit when things become more difficult.

Chris ends the video by advising people to look at their past to define their real passion. 

Takeaways from the video:

• Attract the attention of viewers with relatable questions
• Refer to personal experiences to prove your point. Use as many details as possible to make the story more engaging.
• Finish with a powerful bottom line that viewers can use.

2. iPad Pro – Float

By Apple

This video announcing the new iPad Pro is an excellent example of the “Show, not tell” approach. The company took a unique approach to tell the story of the new product (the iPad Pro and its Magic keyboard). Specifically, video creators haven’t used the voice-over and focused on the graphics.

And oh boy, did they succeed.

The visuals are hard not to look at – vivid, colorful, and engaging. Even the smallest details are amazingly well shown, proving once again how good Apple is at making quality screens.

The “hero” of the video, a small, colorful hummingbird, helps discover the features of the product. It gets interested in the iPad’s colorful screen, flies over, and the product changes viewing angles based on the bird’s position.

For you, as a marketer or a business owner, this video has several powerful takeaways:

• You don’t need video captions or voiceover narration to tell the story
• Top-quality graphics and animations can be enough to engage the viewers in a unique way
• No-voice videos are a way to engage viewers who watch them on mobile devices with sound off.

Just like with anything Apple makes, the video itself is very “clean” and elegant. Having just a few elements in the video helps to focus the attention of the viewers and adhere to the brand’s visual marketing style.

3. Reckon – 2019 Campaign Promotional

By Reckon

This video storytelling example shows how good the brand knows its customers. The video has a few stories of entrepreneurs who tell their experiences with doing accounting. They’re referring to specific pain points, such as software complexity that results in lower profits.

This way, the brand makes it easier to relate to the video. To encourage potential customers to check out the product, the video goes on to emphasize the benefits – more free time, less stress, and more transparent accounting. 

Many business owners who’d like to simplify their accounting processes will definitely stick around to watch it until the end. This way, stories help to generate an emotional response from business owners experiencing real problems.

Here are the major takeaways from the video:

• Speak to your target audience’s emotions to grab their attention
• Use the language they speak – leave out business jargon
• Refer to common pain points your customers are struggling with to show that you understand the situation (and can help fix it).

Show real situations and effective solutions, and you’ll be able to create an engaging video for any product, be it a chocolate bar or accounting software.

4. Kurzgesagt – What if Earth got Kicked Out

By Kurzgesagt

Do robots deserve rights?

What’s hiding in the deepest place on Earth?

Those are fascinating questions that make amazing video stories. A video creator can potentially collect millions of views per month… But showing these questions on a video is kinda difficult – many creators would end up making mediocre content.

Kurzgesagt has chosen animated explainer videos and hit the mark. Now, the biggest YouTube channel in Germany, Kurzgesagt shares stories and answers questions with videos with unique animation styles and colorful graphics.

What if Earth Got Kicked Out (6.5M+ views) talks about the consequences of our planet flying out from the solar system. The video follows the story from the potential reasons why Earth would change the course to the very end.

A major reason why Kurzgesagt’s videos are popular is crisp, colorful, and lively animations. Clear transitions, smooth movements, and, most importantly, fascinating content make it hard to stop the video.

Kurzgesagt’s approach to visual storytelling is unique and engaging and makes many viewers learn more. Since people love animated explainer videos so much, this video format is now becoming increasingly popular among both B2C and B2B companies. 

5. Make pasta with Nonna Nerina

By Airbnb

Airbnb is crushing it with video storytelling. This video is a part of a promotional series on “Airbnb Experiences – Cooking,” a new service where guests can cook meals with locals. An obvious way to market this service is to show how unique and fun the experience could be.

This is exactly what Airbnb did in this video. 

An Italian Airbnb host tells how important pasta making is for her and her grandmother. She says that the tradition has been in her family forever, and she’s happy to share it with others. The grandma also joins the conversation, saying that pasta making is her passion and a way to interact with new people.

Instead of actors or company representatives, Airbnb has real hosts tell the story. The video leaves a powerful impression that cooking with locals is a unique, personal experience to discover new places and connect with them.

Another great thing about this video is that it puts the viewer into the scene. You can see how being at the cooking class or sitting at the table when the food is served would look like. By the end, many viewers would want to experience the real thing, which is the effect the brand was looking for.

Video Storytelling: Summary

Video storytelling is a unique and powerful tactic to connect with customers and promote products and services. A nicely done video is a way to get customers, build a reputation, and even featured in online publications. 

The best news is that creating engaging videos is easy. Even without previous experience, you can make a stunning marketing clip with beautiful video templates. Just stay true to the essentials of video storytelling and put the needs of your customer first.

Go ahead and try editing a template – video editing has never been easier!

About the author: Bridgette Hernandez is a content writer and translator having 7 years of experience in writing about marketing, educational research, and essays. Right now, she is working at Subjecto – a reliable platform helping students with research.