An explainer video is a powerful marketing tool, summing up the advantages of your product or service in a short, entertaining format. One of the most important steps of explainer video production (and arguably one of the trickiest) is to write a great script. According to Kissmetrics, “A well-written script is the key to a successful explainer video. It’s the foundation upon which everything else is built.” While hiring outside help to write your video’s script for you is an option, if you are choosing to go at it alone, be sure and follow these 5 steps to writing the perfect explainer video script:
Step #1: Develop a Vision
Before you actually start typing out a script for your explainer video, you need to have a basic vision in mind. Will you be producing an animated explainer video, or will your video be shot in live action? What tone are you aiming for? Is it light and humorous, deep and inspiring, or strictly professional? Answering questions such as these will help you start to flesh out your video and make writing the script much simpler.
Step #2: Highlight Your Top Three Selling Points and Focus on Them
Good things come in threes. In the case of explainer videos, focusing on your three best selling points and writing the script around them is a good way to ensure you are able to drive home the advantages of your product or service without boring your audience with too much details. You definitely want to take the chance to highlight the features of your business, but long lists of advantages spouted off one right after the other have been shown to be ineffective. Instead, narrow it down to your best three selling points and build your script around those.
Step #3: Explain How Your Product or Service Works
They’re called explainer videos for a reason, and your audience needs to finish your explainer video with a deeper understanding of how your business works. This is a little different from highlighting your selling points. Instead, you are virtually explaining what the buying process looks like in an attempt to make it as easy as possible for a casual viewer to convert to a paying customer. For example, a script for an online clothing store may read something along the lines of “Simply sign up at our website, choose from our wide selection of clothing and apparel, and your amazing new outfit will arrive at your doorstep in 2-3 business days.” No matter what your sales process looks like, though, try to explain it in just 3-4 steps. You don’t want to leave your viewers with the impression that buying from you is a complicated process.
Step #4: Aim for Virality
This is without a doubt the most difficult step in writing an explainer video script. The simple truth is that no one really knows what causes some videos and images to go viral while others fall flat. It’s a wild and tricky study in human psychology, current events, online habits, and much more than even the best marketers have yet to really master. Nevertheless, one thing that most all viral content has in common is that it elicits an emotional response. Sometimes that response is humor, sometimes it’s wonder and amazement, and sometimes it is anger (though we wouldn’t recommend relying on the latter for your explainer video’s script). While there’s no sure-fire way to make your video goes viral, infusing it with emotionally-charged content gives it as good a chance as any.
Step #5: End with a CTA
Chances are you know by now that almost everything in marketing, from a blog article to a Facebook post, ends in a call-to-action, and explainer videos are no different. Once you are wrapping up the script, identify one of your most effective, relevant CTAs and end your video with it. Use it as a period on the end of what is by then the perfect explainer video script and get ready for the sales to start pouring in.
