Video marketing scripts cement focal points, highlight project requirements and provide the entire video production team with a clear understanding of the objectives and core message of the video shoot.
Know your audience
Detailed knowledge of your ideal customers will help you customise a video script to address their needs and interests.
Ask yourself these simple questions to develop the initial framework for your script:
- Who is my target persona?
- Where are they in the buyer’s journey?
- What is the primary purpose of our video?
- What value will it bring to our viewers?
- What should the viewer’s next steps be?
Don’t waste time
Analysis of drop-off times for video shows that wherever viewers remain beyond the first 3 - 10 seconds, it becomes more likely that they’ll still be watching around 30 seconds in.
Incidentally, one of the most potent video marketing metrics is “watch time” - i.e. how much of the video your viewers consume - so there is plenty of incentive to try and keep viewers glued.
One way to hook viewers from the start is to indicate what’s in it for them. Are you solving a specific problem, promoting your brand or telling a story? What information is your audience looking for, and what will they find here?
Tell a story
Powerful stories are the best way to pique viewer interest. They can also function as a segue to bigger, more complicated ideas.
Kicking off videos with a story compels people to stay with you and witness what will unfold. We love closure, and personal tales help to build an emotional connection with the viewer.
Small touchpoints help humanise corporate video. Use your script to break down barriers by sharing something personal.
Show consistency
Your videos need to remain consistent. Treat your video projects as an extension of your branding. Develop a ‘look’ and stay true to it.
Before you begin writing your script, revisit your video marketing strategy and choose a format to work with - this will help you stay consistent.
Whatever style you choose, break your script into manageable sections. Following a classical narrative structure (beginning, middle, end) will help you clarify your ideas and improve your writing process.
Write for the spoken word
A video script is written to be spoken.
Limit your sentences to no more than 15 words and use an active voice as opposed to a passive voice - this will help streamline your point.
Storyboards and visual references will help the production team visualise the scene. Explicit notation regarding camera angles, soundtrack, animations, overlays and other elements will help enormously in production.
Remember, the narrative tone of your video should mirror your project goal. Keep your buyer personas in mind and write as if you were in conversation with them.
Try reading your script aloud, slowly and with natural pauses. This will help highlight tongue twisters and give you an approximate video duration.
Your script isn’t finished until you can read it without a stumble.
Optimise your script
It’s important to optimise your video script for search engines.
Your title is an obvious place to describe your video and demonstrate relevance - it is also a metric that improves rankings on both Google and YouTube.
Include your main keyword and keep your title under 66 characters, this will ensure your descriptive text doesn’t become truncated in search results.
Videos including transcripts rank higher and provide more substance for crawlers to glean information from. That means your video script will benefit greatly from a sprinkling of
relevant keywords.
Your video description is another convenient place to include the long-tail keywords and backlinks that fortify your rank.
Include a compelling CTA
Prompt your audience to engage by using a relevant CTA. Here are some popular examples:
- Contact us
- Subscribe to channel
- Follow / Like page
- Share
- Comment
- Visit blog
- Landing pages
Ending with a CTA is a non-interruptive way to usher your prospects forward.
By understanding your target audience’s needs and making it easy for them to take the next step, you will motivate your audience to progress along their buyer journey.
The success of your video marketing is greatly affected by the quality of your script so don’t scrimp on the time and energy you assign to writing it.
Now, you understand the importance of having a video marketing strategy, and how to produce a script, let’s look at different video styles for each stage of the inbound methodology.