A video script content is absolutely everything. It should be thought about carefully before any video recording takes place as it is much cheaper to edit text than edit video, or even worse be forced into a video re-shoot.
Let’s look at a simple 1 minute business pitch headings.
Who are you?
What do you do?
What is your expertise?
Why should I buy from you (instead of someone else)
What do you want me to do next? (call to action)
Your video may not involve you on the screen but be compiled with a voice over and still or moving images. These all have to fit the script, so that has to be signed off/locked off first, otherwise the work getting the accompanying imagery may be wasted, but will add to the project cost.
You need to test your script can be understood by someone that knows nothing about what you are describing, so that you can check their understanding level after reading it, it is no use writing a script that is “like wading through treacle” to try to understand the messages within, I have seen many of those, and they need to be re-written if the target audience is going to see the benefits of your offer.
Audiences don’t like long lists or complex concepts as they quickly forget what the first item was.
Keep your messages simple and succinct, write messages that can easily be illustrated with a visual images to go with it, feelings and emotions are hard to depict visually unless actors are employed to demonstrate a particular scenario, such as in a bullying in the workplace training video.
Try to appeal to all 3 main senses, spoken, written, and visual as there are people in the audience who will be biased to one of those senses.
Appealing to corporates and larger enterprises.
These often have the sound disabled on their computers by the IT department. Does your video work without sound? We recommend on screen captioning of the messages being spoken so that the video will still work in these environments.
We all often get tangled up with widgets, their specifications and features, because that’s what we sell, but have you really imparted the benefits to the client of using your product or services? It is interesting to note this next little story.
Example help the client make more money
A company sells and installs fire and security equipment from a well known manufacturer.
They quote a prospect. Their quote is 10% above another company who has quoted and they can’t meet the price on the other quote, that would mean they will make a loss.
So they try to run through a list of what makes them unique or better than the other firm. They both have friendly staff and are nice to deal with. They both deliver on time and do a neat job, and clients are satisfied with both company’s work. There are no real differences.
So after some consultancy it was suggested that they didn’t sell fire protection equipment, which is hard to take looking at the boxes of fire protection kit in the warehouse – but those boxes represent the widgets.
What they were really selling was peace of mind.
So they went into the prospect again and said to the MD, we can guarantee that if you install our kit, you can sleep at night knowing that if there was a fire at your premises, your staff could evacuate the building safely. That was the peace of mind the MD was looking for and they got the order, despite being more expensive.
So the real benefits to the viewer must come across in your script to get that buy in.
I hope this blog post has been of help and interest in creating your next video script.
Mike Sanders