How to Script a Short Promotional Video
If you’re like many business owners, writing a script for a promotional video is something that you almost must figure out. In today’s incredibly competitive world of online video, short promotional videos are as frequent as commercials are in daytime television! Learning how to script a short promotional video that will help you achieve desired results with your video content is something that many business owners seek to achieve.
Fortunately, writing a promotional video script isn’t too difficult. These scripts tend to be short, targeted, and incredibly focused. Before you begin writing, make sure that you know your audience and you have a plan in place for what you’re trying to achieve with your promotional video.
Whether it’s greater audience awareness, increased sales, or leads – having a plan in place is important.
How Long Should the Script Be?
As you’re learning how to script a short promotional video, you’re probably wondering – how long should the script be? As a general rule of thumb, you’ll want to aim for about 1 page per finished minute for your script.
Since most promotional videos are between 2 and 3 minutes in total length, you can expect your script to be about 2 to 3 pages long.
Remember, much of your script will be made up of action items. You want to show, rather than tell, the story of your business in a way that promotes the maximum value to your intended audience.
Thus, you won’t have a lot of spoken words or narration for your video so you’ll want to be sure that every word you do include is focused and has purpose.
How to Script a Short Promotional Video
Writing a short video script is really a simple process. It all starts with your creative brief which outlines the key details of importance in regards to your promotion. Make sure you include information about your audience, your business, and your intended call to action.
Before you write your script, consider what you want your audience to think about when they see your video and what action you hope they will perform after watching. Consider what you want your audience to see and hear during the video. This will be important for your script.
Three Column Script
The simplest way to script a short promotional video is in a three column script. The first column will provide details on what you want your audience to hear. The second column includes details about what your audience will see. The third column includes notes about the scene.
Break your script down into scenes such that each line of your script includes details that will be seen, heard, and notes on why. You can get as detailed or as vague as you want with your script.
Many like to script the promotional video out in a very simple way at first, and then refine the three column script with more detailed action items and verbiage or dialogue as you edit.
This will allow you to easily plan out each of your shots or scenes so that you can achieve the desired visual and audible outcome while evoking the right emotions from your audience.
Short and Sweet
Keep the message focused, and concise. You want to be sure that you hook your audience within the first few seconds, possibly with a message that you intend to answer with your promotional video?
Much of the process involved in learning how to script a short promotional video like this is in the hook and the message that you use to keep your audience around until the very end, when you deliver your call to action.
As you learn how to script a short promotional video, focus on the ideas that you include and the visuals that you will incorporate first. Second, focus on your words.
Because words are incredibly powerful in promotional videos, you’ll want to limit your word count and make sure that every single word you include has purpose. Keep revising, and practicing until you’ve perfected the script for your promotion!