In a recent interview with a nationally renowned drone pilot and videographer the curtain was pulled back on the myth that equipment and technical expertise are the primary drivers of an effective promotional video.

While his portfolio clearly demonstrates his technical excellence at producing high quality promotional videos, it would be a mistake to presume that a mastery of the video editing platform coupled with adept piloting of expensive aircraft are the secrets to his success as a marketing video product creator.

Put simply, Nick Handley believes that the story being told in the video is far more important than collecting the raw marketing video and then skillfully producing marketing and product videos.

While he maintains that those technical skills are indeed important, they cannot make up for the lack of a good story. The promotional video and audio production space is crowded which creates noise that needs to be sifted through to find the signal, so finding the right videographer means understanding what makes for a good story. So what exactly makes for a compelling, resonate story that engages one’s target audience?

Those tasked with targeting a group of people with product marketing videos must first be very clear on what types of people are in this group: Are there common traits such as age, location, gender, income and other demographic similarities? If these traits haven’t yet been identified, this is a good first step. The relentless onslaught of companies trying to get feedback demonstrates the importance of this first step.

Once the demographics of the target market segment have been established, the next step is trying to turn this group into a single person. In the marketing world, the ‘typical’ person in the target market segment is called a persona. Often there are multiple distinct groups within a target market so there might be multiple personas to consider.

Once personas have been identified, the next step is to understand the interests and emotional needs of each persona. This insight can be established by surveying those that most closely resemble the persona, often achieved through interviews, surveys and focus groups. From there, the foundation of a good promotional video production are established.

The most compelling stories appeal to our most primitive feelings: Desire and fear. Desire can take many forms, but the most basic desires always have the greatest appeal. Desire for food, sex, and acceptance is universal. Fear is even more compelling. Our bodies and brains are wired to be far more sensitive to fear than pleasure. Look no further than our reaction to a stick that looks like a snake compared to our reaction to a delicious looking slice of chocolate cake.

An engaging story that creatively taps into these human traits creates emotion which is the most important part of a good promotional video production which of course drives engagement. The heart drives our behavior far more than our brains. This is not to say that the informational aspect of a marketing or product video isn’t important.

Human psychology demonstrates that we make our decisions largely based on emotion, yet this motivation is mostly buried in our subconscious, so it isn’t obvious to us what actually drives us to act. The factor that we think is behind our engagement tends to be our thoughts about the content of the story, but the reality is our thoughts are often driven by our emotions.

If the primal motivations of desire and fear press the buying buttons of our target market, how do we get the story in our marketing video to evoke these emotions? Just showing footage of snakes and cakes would hardly stir the feelings of too many in a target market.

Conveniently, information about the product or service can serve to provide the framework and context for the creative use of the emotional triggers. At the end of a good story in a high quality promotional video, the target audience would have both feelings about the story as they learn about the product or service. Within that framework, tailoring the emotional triggers to what is known about the target persona’s desires and fears creates the desired resonance!

Much good work is lost for a little more. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it really make any noise? Both of these pearls of wisdom apply to promotional video production. Once the work has been applied toward creating the best possible marketing videos, the final step involves a bit of effort to increase the number of people within the target market that actually see it. This involves the use of keywords. Simply put, keywords are what the target market types into a search engine to find content.

Unlike written content, a product or promotional video provides little opportunity to add keywords. However, this makes that tiny piece of keyword real estate even more critical!

The first place to add important keywords is in the HTML elements that display the video on a website, landing page, or social media platform. While there are several places to describe the video content within the video portion of the HTML, the most important is the ALT tag. This is used by browsers to display text in case the picture can’t be seen.

The other place to add keywords is in the spaces provided for the title and description when uploading to a video platform such as YouTube or Vimeo. All marketing videos need to be uploaded to at least one of these sites to increase the chances of the video showing up on the first page of a search which is vital to any video marketing strategy. There are even tools that support a call to action which is the holy grail of engagement.

Because the technology for gathering and producing video has become less expensive, creating a promotional video is something that can be done adequately by most people. However, ‘adequate’ rarely creates resonance with the target audience. This is the reason why it is advisable to hire a videographer with promotional video production experience. Look at their portfolio for signs of a good story in the service of selling a product.

When selecting a source to produce a marketing video, remember the end goal: You want the audience at the end of the video to act. With this goal in the forefront, review the portfolio of the vendor with an eye for consistency across the portfolio with the creative infusion of emotions within the telling of the details about the product or service. Also look for how the promotional and product videos utilize hyperlinks in the video to support a prospect clicking on the video which is considered a high level of engagement.

Generally resonance is felt more than known. So when selecting someone to produce your marketing video, pay more attention to your feelings than your thoughts when evaluating the portfolio.

The right vendor will shatter the wine glass.