3 short video script conversion skills, the sooner you get them the better!

“I’ve watched tens of thousands of short videos, but I still can’t write a hit script.” This is the pain in the hearts of many directors.

Many people attribute the lack of video volume to a trick of fate, but if I may be frank, many short video advertising scripts on the market pursue logical perfection rather than true communication with the market.

Many of your scripts are good content in the traditional sense, but they are difficult to resonate with users. If we want to write a short video script that can trigger user resonance and form conversions, we need to complete the triple transformation of dialogue method, dialogue context, and product value.

01. Conversation mode conversion

“The way content is communicated has shifted from being public to being private.”

The target audience of a product can be a group of people, but the dialogue context of our short video content should be more personalized and targeted. A sentence, when said to one person, can easily attract his attention, but when a sentence can be said to everyone, it will largely become nonsense.

To convert the conversation audience, we can follow the following steps in sequence:

First, after receiving the script brief, we first sort out the product selling points, and then reversely infer the user needs and pain points based on the product selling points.

For example, the selling points of Chando's small purple bottle of late-night essence are: it contains three star ingredients: 4% niacinamide, bifida yeast, and Himalayan Haematococcus, which can fight against late-night skin problems. In reverse order, people who need this product may be in the following situations: Often stay up late, their skin may become dull and yellow, which may affect the results of their dates, interviews, etc.

Second, after finding the user’s pain points, you need to list the user attributes.

Users of Chando's small purple bottle essence may be women aged 18 to 28, students, office workers, mothers, etc. After listing, you will find that people of the same age group and with the same job label may live different lives. If we want our short video content to resonate with the target audience, we must extract the common needs of the group from it.

For example, women aged 18 to 28 may be students, office workers, or mothers, but they may all stay up late at night. In order to fight their skin problems caused by staying up late, they will choose Chando's small purple bottle of late-night essence.

Third: Create a conversation environment where conversations are personal. The reason for narrowing the scope of the conversation is actually very simple. Most people are actually not interested in things that are not related to them. If we want to attract users' attention within the golden 3 seconds, we have to find a point with high relevance to the user and directly communicate with a real, specific user.

Let’s take Chando’s Late-Night Essence as an example. After we have identified the common needs of users, can we still communicate with them in this way:

• You can't throw away this bottle of essence if you work overtime every day to pursue your career!

In short video scripts, personalized dialogues include not only lines, but also personalized communication through visual language. In the dialogue between information flow ads and users, try to break the limitations of the screen as much as possible, use subjective lenses to interact with individual users, and form one-to-one or many-to-one communication, which can greatly improve communication efficiency. Especially in the order guidance stage, it is necessary to use a subjective lens to communicate with users.

02. Conversational context transformation

“Transform the written context into the living context.”

Our education system is accustomed to teaching students to output content in a written context, but short videos need to convert the script content into language to communicate directly with people. The written content must be smooth and it should adapt to the context of life.

How to transform written context into living context?

1. Avoid using complex professional vocabulary, short sentences are king

Overly long sentences and professional and complex vocabulary have two disadvantages in the dissemination of short video content: first, it is not smooth to read; second, it increases the user's understanding cost. Therefore, when we are creating short video scripts, we should try to avoid using very complex vocabulary. Even if the client requires us to explain a certain professional term, we must give it a concrete interpretation.

For example, many cosmetics contain an ingredient called phosphine. Many users actually have no idea what it is and what its functions are. So how do we interpret it in the script? Just explain its function and value clearly: Bossagra is a star ingredient for moisturizing and anti-aging, and many big brands are using it!

In addition to avoiding professional vocabulary as much as possible, you should also try to communicate with users using short sentences that are colloquial and have a strong internet feel. If you can say "What is this?", don't say "What is this?"; if you can say "Awesome!", don't say "Awesome!"

2. Reduce the amount of adjectives when constructing pictures

As mentioned earlier, the script of a short video mainly covers two parts: dialogue and picture description. In literary creation, adjectives can make the article more full and colorful. However, in short video scripts, especially when describing pictures, you should reduce the use of adjectives, because adjectives are difficult to inspire picture inspiration. Try to use nouns and verbs to construct the picture intuitively. The most important advantage of doing this is that it can reduce the cost of short video directors' understanding of the script and more accurately grasp the key points that the creator wants to express.

Take the "beautiful life scene" for example. There may be a thousand Hamlets in the hearts of a thousand people, resulting in various different pictures. If we construct a picture of a beautiful life scene, we can write: Panorama, night, the old grandfather holds the old grandmother's hand and walks slowly forward, the grandfather holds a rose in his hand, and the camera gives the backs of the two old people.

3. The lines should be able to create an atmosphere

The purpose of short video ads in information streams is to sell goods. Since they are selling goods, we have to plant the seeds in people’s hearts and find ways to make them feel itchy. The visual language is straightforward, but the dialogue copy must be able to create feelings, atmosphere, colors, and activate the user's sensory cells. Never imagine that dry dialogues can awaken the user's desire to buy.

Let’s take Li Jiaqi’s video as an example. When he introduced a lipstick, what did he say:

• Create a crazy rush atmosphere: colors that are hard to buy even if you have money;
• Create a sense of luxury: the color of the mouth is very expensive;
• Describing the upper lip effect: It feels like your mouth is a fruit, and all men want to take a bite; it’s such a heart-warming feeling, you are the peach of the world; ah, so dazzling! Five carat mouth!

4. Read aloud

How can we be sure that our script has completed the transformation from written context to living context?

I suggest that you read your script more often and find someone to listen. If it comes out smoothly and sounds good to the ears, the script's language sense is basically OK.

03. Value Conversion

“Manage the customer’s “psychological account” well, and make the customer feel that the product will be gone if they miss it!”

In the short video script for selling goods, guiding users to form conversions is a very important part. In regular information flow ads, what we see most often is: after introducing the product selling points, they begin to urge users to click below the video to buy, click below the video to get details, etc. This kind of conversion guidance cannot be said to be weak, but it can also be said to be not very outstanding. In the process of conversion guidance, learning to manage users' psychological accounts and making good value conversion is a very useful skill.

In marketing, every customer has a "psychological account" in his mind. Expensive and cheap are relative concepts and can be converted freely. What we need to do is to manage the customers’ “psychological accounts” so that they feel that the products are worth buying and will be gone if they miss them!

1. Strengthen the value of available benefits and time urgency

There are two situations that make customers feel that a product is worth buying: one is when the unit price of the product is relatively high. In this case, the brand will either increase the number of gifts or offer discounts when placing information flow ads. We want customers to feel that their purchase is worth it.

It can be said that:

• Buy one XX, you will lose a lot if you don’t buy it!
• XX, which never has a discount, is on sale today and you can take it home for only XX!
• XXX, with X discount, even if you earn 3000 a month, you won’t have to break the bank if you buy it!

Another situation is that the unit price of the product is not high, and it is difficult to form a high sense of value. If the product has a spokesperson and the brand has obtained channel authorization, we can use the celebrity value to enhance the sense of product value. It can be said that:

• Click below the video, and the same style as Xiao Zhan’s can be yours for only XX yuan!

You can also say:

• Although it looks very expensive, you can take it home for only XX yuan!
• The clothes you can wear out to show off your style are only this price! If you don’t buy it, you will lose a lot!
• This awesome XXX is only XX yuan for a limited time! If you don’t buy it now, you won’t be able to get it!

What needs attention here is: if the unit price of the product is less than 100 yuan, we can say that there is XX discount and emphasize the percentage, because if the product is priced at 100 yuan, even if the price is reduced by 60 yuan, users will still feel that it is not much cheaper psychologically. If we emphasize that it is 40% off, it will make people feel that it is more favorable. However, if the unit price of the product exceeds 100 yuan, directly stating that it is reduced by XX yuan will make people feel that the discount is greater.

2. Strengthen emotional value

When guiding users to place orders, we can not only enhance the product's potential profit value, but also enhance the product value for food, fast-moving consumer goods, clothing, beauty and other categories. It can also enhance the emotional value it can bring to people.

Taking beauty products as an example, we can try to say this:

• Whatever others have, my little fairy will also arrange for it!
• Ladies who want to turn their luck around at the end of the year, you must have it!
• It's like the high-end perfume that a chaebol daughter would use. Who can refuse it as a gift to friends, bosses, or clients? And now the price is even cheaper than XX!
• If you want to steal the show at the annual meeting, buy this!

3. Amplify future value

For some products with long-term returns, we can also activate the psychological account of the product's future value by magnifying the product's future value, making them feel that they will lose out if they don't place an order!

for example:

• Financial management: With an average of less than 0.3 cents a day, you can have the opportunity to have a savings of 1 million yuan!
• Online education: Order now for only XX yuan, don’t let your child lose at the starting line!
• Beauty: Click below the video and you can get a chance to become a male god for the price of 2 cups of milk tea!

Amplifying the future value of a product is equivalent to strengthening future profits. If we want to improve the decision-making efficiency of users in this link, we basically have to do one thing: strengthen the value of future profits and weaken the costs that users have to pay. In contrast to high returns and low costs, people are more likely to place orders enthusiastically.

Conclusion: Short videos have entered a stage of survival of the fittest. The popularity of a short video is indeed the result of the combined effect of many factors. Leaving aside the uncontrollable factors, the script, as a key link in the output of short video content, connects multiple occupations in the video industry chain, such as cameramen, actors, and editors. If we want to output scripts that can effectively communicate with the market, we must break away from the logic of written content output and communicate with users with more real and lifelike content.

Author: Xiaowu

Source: Brand Reality Institute