The heart and soul of a marketing video are not the typical bells and whistles. It’s not the diagrams, infographics, or layout. It definitely has nothing to do with how smooth, flawless, or sharp the images are.
Instead, what makes a video truly effective is its content. I am of course talking about its script. If you don’t get this right, you have just wasted your money on creating a marketing video.
How do you write highly effective scripts? How do you outsource it? How can you tell whether the video script that have for your marketing video is solid? It will have the following five hallmarks. Ideally, you should insist on all five.
Tip #1 – Use Plain English – Eighth-grade English has very few five-dollar words. Most words are short, easy to understand and very accessible.
Highly effective video scripts are written in plain English. They don’t try to dazzle or impress the viewer by blasting them with all sorts of jargon terms and acronyms. You come off as somebody who is trying to hide ignorance when you do that. You end up looking like somebody who is trying too hard to impress the viewer.
Tip #2 – Keep It Short – Most people do not have the time of day to listen to a long speech. This is the reason why most people don’t even read online articles. They just scan for keywords. If they see what they’re looking for, that’s when they will read a little bit more of the article. Otherwise, they’re just scanning through. It’s kind of like going through your Facebook feed on your mobile device. You don’t have the time to thoroughly read every link. The same applies to video. Highly effective marketing videos are short and to the point.
They communicate a wide range of benefits tied to the solution the video promotes. They do this using many different signals and it operates on many different levels. It operates on an emotional level, a logical level as well as a conceptual level. You have to understand that the ability to tell a story quickly enables you to communicate clearly in a very short period of time.
Tip #3 – It’s Easy to Vocally Emote – Well-written video marketing scripts are very easy to vocally act out. You just need to read a word and read the next word that follows it in the sentence to instantly know that you have to raise your voice a little bit, sound concerned, sound suspicious, sound excited, and a hundred other emotional signals you can send with your voice.
Great scripts are very clear as to the kind of emotional twists and turns they demand. Bad scripts make you sound like you’re just reading off a TelePrompter or you’re just reading a book. It’s dull, lifeless, and very generic. You run the risk of sounding like some sort of robot.
Tip #4 – Mention Case Studies or Stories – If you are able to tell a story you will be able to connect with people on a very personal note. People are not convinced by just raw data. You have to at least present that data in a form people can engage with. People use a story form to make sense of the world. You should do the same with your marketing videos. By including a case study or tool in the video, you make it clear to the prospect that you’re not just making stuff, but there is some hard science or hard numbers behind the claims of benefits the video is talking about.
Tip #5 – Have an Emotional Call to Action – Highly effective video marketing scripts tie the benefit the prospect would get from buying a product with the call to action. Effective scripts don’t just say, “Click the order button” or “Click subscribe now”. Instead, they talk about the benefit and tie it to that action. For example, the script would say, “Gain the confidence you felt you’ve lost by losing the spare tire around your midsection. Take action today”. That’s much better than just saying, “Click here” or “Click the link in the description below”.
Whether you are writing your own video or having it written by somebody else, make sure the five tips listed above are present in the script.
