Explainer videos are the bee’s knees in today’s fast-paced digital world and have become an essential tool for brands to communicate their message effectively. It’s a short, engaging video that turns complex ideas into simple concepts. The goal is to introduce your brand, product, or service to potential customers and help them understand how it can solve their problems. However, if you want to make a good one it all starts with writing a well-crafted script that keeps your audience engaged and delivers your message clearly and concisely. Before we go any further let’s break down the criteria necessary for the perfect explainer video script.
Understanding Your Target Audience
It should go without saying but before you start writing a bunch of words, it’s important to know who you’re talking to. Who are they? What makes them tick? Better yet what ticks them off? And why should they care about your brand anyway? Answering these questions will help you create a script that resonates with your audience and addresses their specific needs.
Take e-commerce giant Flipkart for example. When creating an explainer video for their mobile app, they thought hard about what pain points needed addressing with their target audience in mind.
Busy individuals who wanted an easy way to shop online without spending much time doing so were at the top of the list. Their script highlighted how the Flipkart app made shopping hassle-free with features like one-click ordering and fast delivery.
Crafting an Engaging Hook
The first few seconds of your explainer video are crucial in capturing your audience’s attention—hence why I said crafting a hook was important. You need something that grabs them by the collar and makes them say “Hey! Hold my beer—I’m invested now.” This could be anything from a shocking statistic or question, or maybe even just pointing out a problem they face every day.
Indian fintech startup Cred used a clever hook in their explainer video. The video starts with the question, “What if paying your credit card bills could be rewarding?” It’s like asking someone if they’d like to be paid for breathing—of course it’ll get their attention. And what they found out is that people are interested in how Cred can help them earn rewards by paying their normal bills.
Keeping it Simple and Sweet
If you think 60-90 seconds is enough time to give a rundown of your product then you’re probably wrong. But this doesn’t mean you should go on and on about every little thing like a lousy air freshener ad. Focus on the important information, skip the rest.
When creating an explainer video for their cloud kitchen platform, Indian foodtech startup Rebel Foods kept it simple and sweet by focusing on the key benefits of their platform.
They emphasized the ability to launch a food delivery business with minimal investment and the support of Rebel Foods‘ technology and expertise. By keeping things concise, they were able to effectively communicate their value proposition in just 90 seconds.
Highlighting Your Unique Value Proposition
This isn’t nearly as important as all the other stuff we’ve talked about but still plays a big part in getting people through your sales funnel. What makes you special? Why should customers choose you over competitors? If you don’t know these answers why would anyone else?
Your script needs to highlight these key features/benefits so your audience knows exactly what sets you apart from everyone else.
Freshworks, an Indian SaaS startup, has a great explainer video. The company does a good job of presenting its unique selling points in an easy-to-understand manner.
For instance, it highlights the fact that its customer support software helps businesses in providing top-notch customer service using multichannel support, automation and AI-powered chatbots. By honing in on these key features, Freshworks was able to effectively communicate what sets it apart from competitors.
Using storytelling techniques
It’s hard to deny the power of storytelling. A well-executed narrative can do wonders for creating an emotional connection with your audience and making your explainer video more memorable. This is something Indian edtech startup Byju’s understood when they made their explainer video.
Their video tells the story of a young girl who struggles with math but eventually overcomes her challenges and performs well academically thanks to the Byju’s app. By using relatable characters and compelling narratives, this company was able to highlight the benefits of their app and connect with their target customers on an emotional level.
Incorporating visuals and sound effects
While the script is vital to any explainer video, you shouldn’t sleep on how important visuals and sound effects are for bringing your message to life. Your script should incorporate visual cues and sound effects that help enhance your storytelling abilities and make your video more engaging.
Razorpay, an Indian fintech startup, did a great job at incorporating visuals and sound effects into their explainer video script. Using simple yet colorful animations, Razorpay was able to illustrate how its payment gateway works while adding sound effects that make the whole experience more immersive for viewers.
Ending with a strong call-to-action
No matter how great your content is up until that point, if you don’t end it properly all could be lost (or at least wasted potential). Make sure there’s always a clear call-to-action at the end of your explainer video, telling viewers what you want them to do next. If it’s visiting a website, sign up for a free trial or making an instant purchase, make sure your call-to-action is clear and concise.
Meesho, an Indian e-commerce startup understood this well when they ended their explainer video with an invitation for viewers to download their app and start selling online. By doing this and also emphasizing the benefits of using its platform, Meesho was able to successfully turn casual viewers into customers.
Testing and refining your script
At the end of the day, no one expects you to nail things on the first try. After writing your explainer video script it’s important that you take the time to test and refine it as much as possible.
Share early drafts with colleagues, friends and family members so they can give you feedback on what works and what doesn’t. Is there anything that confuses them? Does the general message come across effectively? Use this feedback to refine your script and make it even stronger.
Nykaa, an Indian beauty and wellness startup went through multiple rounds of testing and refinement before finalizing its explainer video script. The company shared early drafts with its team members as well as target customers in order to get a better understanding of how effective their messages were at conveying Nykaa’s unique features in an engaging way.
What Does the Future Hold with Ai All Around?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming video production and explainer videos are no different. AI-powered tools and techniques enable brands to create personalized, engaging, and effective explainer videos at lower costs and faster. Indian brands are taking advantage of this technology to create powerful content that connects with their audience.
Personalization
One of the biggest ways AI benefits explainer video creation especially with now SORA from Open Ai is personalization at scale. These ai tools can generate many versions of a single video that target different segments within a brand’s audience base. They do this by gathering data about demographics, behavior, interests, etc.
Myntra used AI to personalize their explainer videos for individual customers. By understanding what each person preferred and how people behaved on their site in general, Myntra was able to highlight the right products in their videos. Generic explainer videos have okay engagement rates but these personalized ones led to higher conversion rates.
Automated Video Creation
AI automates key processes in video creation like generating scripts or even editing footage. Old methods were too time-consuming for brands to produce a large amount of content but now they can go much bigger much faster.
Zoho automated the process of creating product explainer videos using NLP algorithms. The tool generated scripts based on product features then turned those into animations with voiceovers – all without any human intervention!
Emotion Analysis and Engagement Tracking
Combining emotion analysis and tracking engagement has been a huge help for brands trying to figure out what works best in terms of content creation. This kind of tech lets companies see real-time data on sentiment, viewer reaction or any other metric they may be interested in.
Vidooly uses AI to help brands track and analyze engagement. Their tool can detect emotions like happiness or confusion which helps brands improve the effectiveness of their explainer videos.
Indian fintech start-up Paytm has used translation powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to create explainer videos in 10 Indian languages. The tool automatically translated the script into different languages and generated voiceovers that sound natural. This localised approach allowed for a wider audience and made it easier for people to understand their platform.
Interactive Videos
With AI, brands can now create interactive and personalised explainer videos. Viewers have the ability to interact with the content in many ways, such as choosing what they want to watch, answering questions or giving feedback which makes the video more engaging.
Indian edtech start-up UpGrad has used AI to create learning paths that are personalised based on skills, interests and career goals. Their AI technology analyses user data and creates custom video content and assessments that adapt with each learner’s needs making it less likely for them to lose interest. This personalisation of teaching has helped UpGrad improve completion rates since users will be more satisfied with something catered towards them.
Summary
Developing the perfect script for your explainer video requires a strong understanding of who you’re targeting.
The way that I think of it, a high-performing explainer video script comes from the framework of knowing their target audience, hooking them in with something interesting, getting to the point quickly and clearly, showing what sets your product or service apart, telling an effective story, engaging them visually and through sound, having a strong call-to-action, and then testing it out till you’ve got it right.
And believe me when I say this will make such a huge difference! By following these best practices (and learning from successful Indian brands like Flipkart, Cred, Rebel Foods, Freshworks Byju’s Razorpay Meesho Nykaa) you can create an explainer video that effectively communicates your brand’s message and resonates with your target audience.
I promise that investing time into creating a good script will pay off big time for your brand. More people coming to you for business is just one positive effect; building brand awareness is another; but I can’t stress enough how important this form of marketing is. So start crafting your perfect explainer video script today and take your brand to the next level!