With so many businesses vying for video marketing space, your videos need a human connection that leads your customers through a transformation story.

Personal change is difficult and motivation for change is often lacking. Yet, people were designed to change. In fact, our whole life is compiled of a series of transformations. 

Every good story includes transformation. Think of some of your favorite movies. There is a good chance the main character starts as someone who is ill-equipped to change, full of self-doubt, and lacking in confidence. Throughout his journey he begins to uncover roadblocks and see challenges differently as he is guided around the obstacles standing in his way. By the end, the character gets the job done, feels a sense of accomplishment, and has a newfound confidence. He sees himself as a hero, because that’s exactly what he is.

If someone can change, he or she can become a hero. And you want your customers to be heroes!!

Your brand, your products, your event, or your services can produce hero-transformations by selling feelings and a transformed identity. You have the ability to take your customer from defeated to victorious, from boredom to adventure. 

Let’s move your customers ahead in their identity and their life.  

Help Them Rewrite Their Story

Humans buy character transformation. Your video can help them rewrite the story they’ve been telling themselves. 

When customers evaluate a product or service, they weigh its value by how it will change their lives. Your job is not to sell a product. It’s to move people from a before-state to an after-state. When you contribute to the positive evolution of your customers, you tap into something far more valuable than your products. The greater the value of their change, the greater the impact you’ll make, and the more product you’ll sell in the end. 

Here’s how it works… 

Staging the Before-and-After

There are three crucial questions to ask as you begin to develop a transformational story:

1.     What does your customer look like before using your product or services?

2.     What do they look like after using your product or services?

3.     How can your product or services get them there?

Here’s how to break each of those questions down so you can get the most value possible.

Identify Their Haves

What does your customer currently have (or what are they lacking) and what do they want to have (or not have)?  Evaluating this will generally reveal external features and are fairly obvious. How can your product provide something they functionally need? On the Harvard Business Review’s Element of Value Pyramid, these things add Functional Value and sit at the base, or lowest level, of transformation. While it is important to paint the “Haves and Have Nots” before-and-after picture, if you want to make a significant impact with your video story, you’ll have to move beyond Functional Value. 

Functional Value include things like:

•       Saves time
•       Simplifies life
•       Makes money
•       Reduces risk
•       Organizes
•       Reduces effort
•       Avoids hassles
•       Reduces cost
•       Quality
•       Variety
•       Integration
•       Connection
•       Sensory appeal
•       Information

Which Functional Value can you offer your customers? Take a moment to consider how you can take them from their before-state to their after-state.  

Identify Their Feelings

Now we are climbing into greater impact territory. Simply by identifying the Emotional Value you can take your marketing lightyears ahead of your competition. So many businesses are not moving their impact elevator off the ground-level. Describe how your customer is currently feel—what is his or her emotional state? How can your product or service get them to feel better?

Emotional Value include things like:

•       Reduces anxiety
•       Rewards me
•       Nostalgia
•       Wellness
•       Therapeutic value
•       Fun and entertaining
•       Attractiveness
•       Provides access

How can you transform your customer’s emotions? Make them feel something better—something different—then they’re currently feeling? Take a moment to consider how you can take them from their before-state to their after-state with Emotional Value.  

Identify Their Average Day

This is really powerful, because this is where you get into the narrative of your video story. What is your customer’s worst day? What is their best day? Write that story down, and feature the emotion someone is feeling. Deliver a better story about what life will look like after your product or services and you will sell transformation—and that’s what people really want. This adds Life-Changing Value.  

Life-Changing Value includes things like:

•       Hope
•       Self-actualization
•       Motivation 
•       Belonging
•       Legacy

What life changes can you offer your customer? Take a moment to consider how you can take them from their before-state to their after-state with Life-Changing value. 

Identify Their Status

This is the most difficult value to identify and to help change. Not all businesses will even be able to help their customers achieve it, but all should try. This is the moment that helps someone BECOME something completely different. People will fight for a greater status and self-transcendence. They want the status of the most beautiful lawn on the block or the certificate of completion that changes their name from what-they-were to who-they-are-now. 

Status goes beyond just self-gratification. The highest level of value is actually being able to say that your customer has changed someone else’s life because of their purchase or their loyalty to your product or services. One of the best examples of this is TOMS Shoes. When someone buys a pair of TOMS in the US, the company donates a pair of shoes to a child in need in a country like Haiti. There is no greater value than that! It’s the Social Impact Value.

Keep It Human

If you begin to understand that you are not a business-to-business or business-to-consumer organization, but rather an human-to-human business, your video marketing will see a dramatic uptick in engagement. You can motivate your customer to get up again, even after experiencing a failure or setback, and help them create the life of their dreams. 

Do you have any stories you would like to tell?  We would love to help you get started.