How to Convert Your Sales Pitch to Video
You’re making progress towards becoming a digital marketing boss! Now, it’s time to make the first video you’ll publish on your website, social media pages and beyond.
We recommend you begin this process with drafting a plan for a “sales video”. Simply put, this is an introductory video that can be used on your website, social media, or email communications that explains the value of your business and hopefully convinces people to do business with you!
As a business owner, or a professional marketer, you’ve probably mastered your “sales pitch” many times over in networking meetings, print ads, or website copy, but how do you convert your sales pitch into video? Here are 7 steps to help you plan your sales video.
1. Identify your video specific target audience
In many ways, the interaction between a viewer and a video is like a conversation, except it’s a conversation where only one person is doing the talking…(a one-versation?)
Every conversation we have with a person is completely customized to the person we are speaking to. If we think about each video we create as a single conversation with a prospective client or customer, it becomes easier to answer strategic planning questions about your video.
Such as, Who am I talking to? What am I hoping to accomplish by talking to this person? When it comes to my offer, what does this person care about most?
It’s important to remember that one video cannot be everything to everyone. If you are working in an industry that has a wide variety of clientele, you may need to have “multiple conversations” in order to get the right message across to each different type of person.
For example, the way we discuss financial responsibility with a person approaching retirement, is much different than the conversation we have with our children about money.
If we are talking about a video on our website homepage, then we need to focus our video on the largest, most relevant target audience who will be watching the video. If you have other smaller groups who you need to communicate with, consider making a separate video for them, and putting it on a web page that is designed for that audience.
It can help to write down all the different ideas you have and chunk them into different “conversations” by relevance, and use those ideas for future more specific videos. But for now, let’s get back to your first sales video.
2. Identify your desired outcome
Most videos that are created by businesses serve a dual purpose. On one hand, you want to educate, inform, or entertain your audience. On the other you need to make sales, generate leads, gather website clicks, phone calls or in person meetings. It’s important to understand the self serving purpose of the video so that your investment of time and/or money will be worthwhile. The video’s job is to achieve your desired outcome. If you have Identified your desired outcome properly, it will be easy to come up with a great call to action. It will also become easier to measure the success of your campaign, and determine if your content is working, or if you need to try something different.
3. Consider your top 3 takeaways
Make a list of all the things that are important to your audience. Narrow it down to the top 3 bullet points if you can. You will use this to inform the messaging in your script. Remember, you are selling a solution to a problem. Talk about the problem, talk about the solution, and finally, qualify your business as an authority to solve their problem.
4. Consider the emotional tone of your video
There’s a lot of different emotional tones you can use to send your message.
Here are some common emotional tones that are often used in commercials and videos: Professional, Compassionate, Humorous, Cool / Modern, Sexy, Fun Loving, Family Values, Religious, Nostalgic, Dramatic, Fearful, Heroic, Quirky. Remember, it’s important to pick one that best matches your brand!
5. Outline your message, addressing your audience’s need first
It’s important to structure your messaging in an easy to follow and understand format, and to not waste time before addressing your audience’s needs. Most businesses sell a solution to their customer’s problem. By discussing the problem first, this will engage your audience by meeting them where they’re at. You can then cast your business as the best solution to their problem.
This is a basic outline we like to use:
- Problem
- Solution we offer
- What makes us the best
- Call to action
It’s important to place the problem first in your outline because you don’t want people to check out before they hear your offer.
If a commercial starts with a 40 year history lesson about the company’s many achievements before they engage their audience, viewers will likely check out mentally or stop watching.
But don’t despair, if you were gearing up to announce your business’s 25th anniversary, that is a notable achievement that absolutely has a place in advertising. It’s an accolade to your own success and achievement, and it is a sign that you have been doing something right. It deserves a video of it’s own.
But it does not solve the problem your customer is facing. Your customer’s problem is what’s most important. First, relate with your customer on what is important to them, then explain your value offer, then qualify yourself as the one who can provide a solution, and finally, end with a call to action.
6. Plan specific visuals, audio, and music
The music you choose for your video will do most of the work for you in setting the tone.
Here is an interesting study that proves that the music you hear affects the way you perceive visuals. It’s fascinating stuff and it reinforces the importance of selecting the right music for your piece. When you’re using music in a commercial work, it’s important to get songs that are royalty free, so that you can use them commercially without legal restrictions.
Tone of voice plays a big part in the tone of your piece as well. There are many professional voice over artists available for commercial work who can knock your emotional tone out of the park.
Visuals play a supporting role in the emotional tone of your piece. A person speaking directly to the camera counts as a visual, but you also may want to add b-roll shots to visually explain what you’re discussing, titles and graphics, animation, or stock footage. Whatever your visuals are, you want them to match the messaging of the piece so that the viewer can easily follow how the visuals relate to the message.
7. Include a call to action
Once you have delivered your message don’t forget to include a clear call to action to make your entire video campaign worth while. Your video has a job to do, first it grabs their attention, persuades them of your value offer, then it calls the viewer to take an action.
Common calls to action include inviting the viewer to call a number, visit a location or website, or book an appointment.
There are some videos which don’t need a call to action, but this is specific to the purpose of the piece. For the sake of our sales video, we want to increase our number of leads, so inviting viewers to reach out is a must.
Congratulations!
You’ve planned out your first sales pitch video! All that’s left is to conduct your shoot, edit your video, and promote it online. It sounds like a lot, but don’t worry. We’ll be here every step of the way.
For more professional advice, check out our other blog posts. We’ll be posting additional guides and tips
If you have questions or would like to discuss our services with one of our creative directors, contact us. Or click the button, answer a few short questions, and we’ll reach out to you.
