MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

We’re adding a lot of video to our web­sites now. We all know (based on what every guru I’ve stud­ied says), that videos can some­times dra­mat­i­cally boost con­ver­sion rates on sales copy, web­sites and/or land­ing pages.

Car­los Gar­cia, for exam­ple, cre­ated a report that showed how adding a video to one of his web­sites and chang­ing a cou­ple of things boosted sales rates from 1.6 to 3.3 –that’s almost dou­bling the ini­tial sales rates.

If the fig­ures are any­where close to that, we all obvi­ously have to get bet­ter at edit­ing videos for our web­sites. A Keynote video is quick and easy to make, but that’s only a Level 1 video. A Level 2 video is where you aren’t using slides, but using story telling and per­son to per­son interaction.

I’ve had to write numer­ous video scripts lately for dif­fer­ent web­sites, and because at Mind­Val­ley we like processes and automa­tion, I came up with a process for writ­ing these scripts. It inte­grates a lot of ideas from Robert Cial­dini, from Frank Kern, from Ken­neth Yu, and from Jeff Walker.

Tips to Cre­ate your Video Script

1. Know your audience’s core identity.

What does your audi­ence want? What do they secretly desire?

Exam­ple:

Let’s say you’re pro­mot­ing a par­ent­ing tool. What do par­ents want from their kids? They might want, for exam­ple, a close bond and lov­ing rela­tion­ship with their child. This gives you the first clue as to what to do with your video, and how you should frame it. Your video would include you sit­ting with your arm around your child, who will talk about how much he or she loves you. In that way, you show your­self to be in the posi­tion these par­ents want.

Frank Kern does the same thing. He knows that most of his audi­ence wants free­dom, so he a video called the beach video with him on the beach because the beach rep­re­sents freedom.

In other words, frame your video based on your audience’s core identity.

2. Repli­cate the real world

Sec­ond, you ask your­self, “What are you try­ing to reveal in this video? How would you talk to your friends? In what envi­ron­ment would you share this with your friend?” Repli­cat­ing the real world is about repro­duc­ing the fire­side chat or the cof­fee chat in your videos.

Exam­ple:

Let’s say you were a lady cre­at­ing a video tar­get­ing a female audience.

If women are talk­ing about rela­tion­ship prob­lems, where are they usu­ally sit­ting? Is the set­ting going to be an office? An ele­va­tor? Is it going to be in a pub­lic space, or at the beach? It’s prob­a­bly going to be over a cup of tea or cof­fee in their liv­ing room. That’s the fram­ing clue: you would film your video in the liv­ing room, hold­ing a cup of tea, sit­ting on your sofa.

If you were mar­ket­ing to entre­pre­neurs who are strug­gling to get their busi­ness off the ground, they prob­a­bly would have a small com­pany. There­fore, you would not film your video with your team of pro­gram­mers in the back­ground –you’d film it on a sofa, per­haps, because much of your audi­ence might be work­ing from home or in a small office with a comfy sofa inside.

3. Sto­ry­line

Here, we bring in a cou­ple of ideas from Frank Kern’s Mass Con­trol. ‘Us vs. Them’. ‘Reluc­tant hero’. ‘Home­town boy makes good’. You find a story that fits best, and you reveal it in the video.

Exam­ple:

If you were tak­ing the ‘us vs. them’ sto­ry­line, you would include phrases like, “I’m going to show you, because we are all in trou­ble here…” Or, “All of us are about to be screwed so I’m gonna show you how to pre­vent them from tak­ing over…” Note the phras­ing, espe­cially –“you”, and “them” and “us”. The ‘us vs. them’ psy­chol­ogy is about relat­ing to your audi­ence and cre­at­ing a com­mon enemy.

4. The Rev­e­la­tion

This has to be a key idea in the video that gets them addicted. You take 2 items that you’ve already observed, and you con­nect them neatly.

Exam­ple:

You can even take a trend as your rev­e­la­tion, for exam­ple. It doesn’t have to be some­thing not every­body out there knows, but you can add a spin to it by adding your fresh/new/different per­spec­tive. It auto­mat­i­cally sep­a­rates you from the crowd, espe­cially if it’s counter-intuitive to what every­one is expecting.

Now, as you are doing this, as you are giv­ing that ‘aha’ moment, there are a cou­ple of things that you can add in to make the video more effective.

5. Phrase­ol­ogy

You invent words. Such words arouse curios­ity, and they make you seem like an expert.

Exam­ple:

Mike dis­cusses mil­i­tary strat­egy, ter­rain assess­ment and the pajama posse in The Com­ing AdWords War, for exam­ple, and because of his exper­tise and expe­ri­ence in the field, he explains why most busi­ness own­ers become casu­al­ties in the rough AdWords ter­rain and gives a solution.

You will notice this even with some of the gurus –they use terms that you will not find in any dic­tio­nary because they coin their own phrases.

By using allit­er­a­tion, you can come up with catchy phrases that sound even more powerful.

Think about the fol­low­ing term: ‘Mov­ing the free line’. Where did it come from? Eben Pagan.

‘Money mag­net’ – Frank Kern. ‘Aspi­ra­tion angle’ – Vishen Lakhiani.

Here’s the thing: I’ve been talk­ing about giv­ing stuff away for free …for 4years! But along comes this guy –Eben Pagan; he gives it the name “mov­ing the free line” and now every­one asso­ciates this the­ory with him. That’s the power of phraseology.

6. Future Pac­ing

Future pac­ing is part of the phrase­ol­ogy that Jay Abra­ham invented to estab­lish him­self as a guru. Every­body talks about future pac­ing, but Jay Abra­ham invented it, and every time you hear that term, you think ‘Jay Abra­ham’. It’s a pow­er­ful brand­ing strat­egy. Here’s how you use future pacing.

Exam­ple:

You might say in your video, “So go ahead and down­load this report BUT, don’t read it yet” (which is counter-intuitive). You then ask them to do some­thing first that helps them to pic­ture what will hap­pen in a given time­frame if they get the report. Then, they can read the report. “It will take maybe, 29 min­utes of your time,” you should say. (Note the use of the exact time.)

That is future pac­ing. You get peo­ple to pic­ture future ben­e­fits after using your product.

7. Most Wanted Response

That’s phrase­ol­ogy invented by Dr. Ken Evoy in his ‘net-selling bible’ Make Your Site Sell. The MWR is what you most want your vis­i­tor to do, after review­ing your con­tent. You always end with a most wanted response.
Exam­ple:

Mike actu­ally says, “Look at the sign up form below. I want you to fill in your first name, your last name and you email address, click ‘Send me The Com­ing AdWords War report’, and I’ll see you on the next page.” Notice that he adds antic­i­pa­tion by say­ing ‘see you on the next page’, which makes peo­ple think, “Hmm, I won­der what’s going to hap­pen on the next page?” thereby encour­ag­ing peo­ple to down­load the report.

A video script is not the copy script –that is com­pletely dif­fer­ent. It is embed­ding a lot of psy­cho­log­i­cal trig­gers and ele­ments, sto­ry­lines in the video in order to:
1. Cre­ate a bond, and
2. Get peo­ple to down­load the report.

If you inte­grate these 7 things, you’ll come up with a pow­er­ful video that will improve your con­ver­sion rates and get peo­ple more inter­ested in what you have.

Last 5 posts by

• The Enlight­ened Entre­pre­neur Expe­ri­ence: How To Expe­ri­ence The “Turn­ing Point” And Com­plete Free­dom In Your Busi­ness — Jan­u­ary 25th, 2010
• Tribal Mar­ket­ing: Sur­pris­ingly Eth­i­cal Ways to Sig­nif­i­cantly Reduce Your Unsub­scribe Rate And Eas­ily Boost Prof­its — Jan­u­ary 19th, 2010
• Break­ing the Silence — August 7th, 2009
• How Rela­tion­ship Mar­ket­ing Trumps Tra­di­tional Direct Mar­ket­ing (and Why the Social Media Craze Is Mostly Hype) — March 31st, 2009
• MindValley’s Social Media Mar­ket­ing Unveiled — Decem­ber 2nd, 2008

About the Author

Vishen is a co-founder of MindValley. Before MindValley, he was an exec in Silicon Valley and New York for several internet and technology firms. He turned bedroom entrepreneur at 27 and by the time he was 31 had founded 6 web businesses and never had to work a conventional job again.

Check out other posts by Vishen Lakhiani

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