Video Sales Letter
Video sales letters (VSLs) are one of the most effective forms of digital marketing today. However, it can be a challenge to get the message of your VSL to the point where it achieves maximum conversion. Many companies are turning to AI presenters as a way of automating video sales letter creation to save time and money, while achieving results on the level of manual processes.
What Is a Video Sales Letter?
A video sales letter is a form of online advertising designed to sell a product, service, or idea. You probably see them frequently on social media channels and website landing pages. The goal of a VSL is to attract your attention immediately so that you watch the rest of the video and hopefully convert.
With so much advertising on the media channels that we watch daily, any successful VSL campaign needs to set itself apart with eye-catching visuals, a “hook” (see below), quality production, and the right messaging strategy that leads to conversion.
Key Components of a Successful VSL
Here are a few basic rules for creating effective video sales letters:
Grab Attention Quickly
There is no standard recommendation for the length of a VSL. A properly edited script should get across whatever information is necessary and nothing more (or less). But it is essential to use a “hook” that motivates the viewer to keep watching within seconds of the video beginning, and that means an interesting opening segment. There are many copywriting formulas such as AIDA and PAS that can help VSL creators accomplish this.
Provide Incentives
In addition to an interesting opening, it’s important to encourage viewers to keep watching until the end. A VSL should include some sort of immediate benefit for the viewer. This might be a product discount, free information, or a reward. Secondly, there should be a long-term benefit for the viewer, in the form of the value proposition on which your product is based. A VSL should establish itself as being published by some sort of authority or strong brand, which lets the viewer know they are investing their time in watching valuable information.
Encourage Conversion
VSLs should always include a “next step” for viewers to take as a way to move them further down the sales funnel. This might be an opportunity to watch a sales webinar, speak with a sales representative, download more information, etc. There are several tools for converting VSL viewers, such as:
- Annotation – a link to access information or a landing page
- Call to Action – a link that puts you directly in touch with a resource, for example, an automatic download or a contact page for a sales rep
- Email form – a page to fill out the viewer’s contact details so that they can receive emails and other types of information
Why Is a VSL an Effective Marketing Tool?
When it comes to internet and social media marketing, video is the king of content. Compared to static images and text, video is a more engaging and informative medium for audiences that have a short attention span and who are constantly being exposed to it.
A VSL also offers a powerful array of advantages inherent in digital media marketing that can elevate your brand and engage your audience effectively. The VSL can be triggered in response to the subject of a user’s content so that it is seen only by an audience with a relatively high chance of interest and conversion. In addition, analytical tools can be applied to understand which channels deliver the greatest response. In all, these steps enable the marketer to get a better return on investment for the resources they spent on creating the video and paying social media channel advertising fees.
For these reasons and more, Video Sales Letters are highly popular with marketers. According to this report, 91% of marketers use video as an advertising and branding medium. About half of them focus on using video for brand awareness, and the other half on promoting sales.
One of the interesting aspects of VSL marketing is conversion rates. The most popular conversion tool is annotation, followed by CTAs and then an email form. However, the top performer among these three – i.e. what users actually engage with – is an email form, followed by CTAs, with annotation coming last.
Video Sales Letter Creation: The Main Challenge
Assuming that the production of a VSL is wholly professional, a major consideration is the quality of the content. Here are just a few of the factors that will determine the success of a VSL campaign:
- Clarity of message
- Tone of message (i.e. an approach that is too aggressive, or not aggressive enough)
- Sufficient value proposition
- Too much / too little information
For this reason, any business that wants to optimize its ROI for a VSL will conduct A/B testing (AKA split testing). This means creating and publishing several versions of a VSL, each with a variation on one or more of the above factors. For instance, you might have a three-, five-, and seven-minute version of a VSL, which means that each one will provide different amounts of information to the viewer. The next step is to use analytics to see which version converts the most. Then you continue tweaking the factors until you reach the highest conversion rate.
Virtual Humans and Video Sales Letters
The problem with traditional video production for companies that use A/B testing is the expense and effort. Hypothetically, to implement thorough split testing, a new video would have to be made for every version (unless the video is only edited for duration). For this reason, companies tend to try noticeably different videos in their channels and ultimately delete all but the best performers.
An AI video presenter offers a great solution for this challenge. In an AI person video, a realistic-looking digital human takes the place of an actual human. Through a natural-sounding voice, and accompanied by common gestures and facial expressions, the virtual presenter delivers the VSL’s value proposition.
Because the production is entirely digital and supported by artificial intelligence, dozens of video versions can be created simply by altering the VSL’s text. AI automatically translates audio output and physical movements according to the new text. This makes optimizing VSLs a fast and easy process regardless of how many changes are desired. In addition, virtual presenters give marketers a range of abilities. They can easily change the language of a VSL for international audiences; use the same technology for personalized email campaigns; create interactive experiences; and more. An AI video presenter can be built with a generic human-like appearance or created from the image of an actual person.
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