If you’ve been spending a little extra time on YouTube lately (we’re just as guilty as you are), you may have noticed a few really good video ads that made you think, “I kinda want to buy that.”
As business owners and marketers, we’re a hard sell. If one of Superman’s superpowers is X-ray vision—ours is seeing right through lead magnets and funnels. We’ll happily buy products and services that make our life easier… but you’re going to have to really sell it right.
That’s why these video ads that stop us in our tracks (even when all we wanted to do was watch our chosen video) make us extraaa impressed.
What did they do that was so good?
When a video ad can show us what our lives are like before and after we use the product or service, that’s when our ears perk up.
It all comes back to taking us from our Before State (pre-product) to our After State, (post-product).
How to Figure Out Your Audience’s Before State
At DigitalMarketer, we call the state that somebody was in prior to buying your product/service the Before State. This is the state where somebody wants a solution so much that they’re daydreaming all day about it.
This Before State describes the problem that somebody is facing, so you can figure out the solution they’re looking for. When you see a video ad that makes you think—”That’s exactly the problem that I’m having! And wait… that’s also the solution I’m looking for!” This is what the video ad did.
It described your problem and showed you the solution.
And that’s how Billy Gene is creating video ads that sell. In his The Pain Process Worksheet, he figures out who he’s targeting, their 3 greatest paints, and the solution to each of these pain points.
Here’s Billy Gene’s Pain Process Worksheet:
(NOTE: Download the worksheet for FREE here!)
To figure out your audience’s Before State and the problems that they’re facing, you want to ask questions like:
- What problem do they have?
- How does it make them feel?
- What’s their average day look like with this problem?
Once you’ve figured out the problem, then you can figure out the solution to that problem.
How to Figure Out Their After State
Now that we know the problem that our customer avatar is facing without our product or service, we can build the bridge between the problem and the solution. When this problem goes away—how does their life improve?
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For each of the 3 problems that you listed in the left-hand column of Billy Gene’s Pain Process Worksheet, you’ll write the correlating solution in the right-hand column.
This solution is going to be the change this customer wants in their life from buying a product or service. To figure out what this solution looks like, ask yourself questions like:
- What does my customer have now that they’re using my product or service?
- How do they feel now that they don’t have this pain anymore?
- What does their average day look like without this pain point?
And now, we can bring it all together.
When you’re making your video ad, this is the starting point to making sure that your ad relates and interests your customer avatar. By speaking to their pain points you show how well you know the struggle they’re going through. By finding what it would be like to have that pain point relief, you show them why they should take you up on your offer.
For every customer that you have, fill out The Pain Process Worksheet so you know that your video ads are going to sell. Remember, define their problem and connect it to the solution.
That way you can create the video ads that impress even expert marketers.
