April 10, 2018 |
Consumers love video content. Last year, 8 billion videos were watched every day just on Facebook. People engage with video content thanks to their interesting topics, emotional message, or popular artists who lend their voices for voice overs.
Better than that, people often watch the video, share it on social media, and interact with the brand that publishes it. As a matter of fact, as much as 81 percent of people make a purchasing decision after watching a brand’s video content.
Video helps people learn faster, which makes this type of content very useful for e-learning, as well. When you use video, you get to upgrade the learning experience. Users are more motivated, understand the information better and remember it for longer.
Yet, to obtain all these benefits, you must provide quality for both image and sound. Nothing ruins a video like bad sound. If the background music is too loud or the voice over is flat, no one will have the patience to watch your full video. Which means less engagement, fewer reactions, and lower chances of meeting your goals.
Whether you use it for business communication, marketing, or e-learning, sound is an essential element in your video content. That’s why you need a professional for your voice overs. Let’s take a closer look.
Video means you get to see and hear information. These two elements should complement each other perfectly, to help you send an effective message. For how engaging your images are, they won’t reach the public without good background sounds and a persuasive voice to keep people hooked.
A flat voice discourages the audience. Whatever you hoped to obtain, won’t happen. People are less likely to trust a voice with no inflections. Because no one listens to someone who loses his/her breath halfway through a sentence – which usually happens to all amateurs speaking in front of a microphone.
When people pay more attention to the wrong voice than to your actual content, they won’t understand a word of what they’ve heard. And they’re more likely to leave the video after just a few seconds.
When you use a professional voice over, your public can connect with your content at a deeper level. Professionals know how to keep the right rhythm, in order to guide your viewers from beginning to the end. They create context, build trust and convince people to act – whether that action is to buy, download, register, or follow some instructions.
Better than that, professional voice overs use the right tone to emphasize those parts of the script that allow the audience to identify themselves with the message. In the long run, your public learns to associate the strong voice with the authority and professionalism of your brand.
Most people are visual learners. That’s why four times more customers prefer watching a video about a product instead of reading about it. However, when sounds are involved, they have an effect as well on how our brains receive and remember information.
The quality of the sound influences our phonological processing. In simple words, the better the listening conditions, the higher the chances of processing the information, understanding it and remembering it in the long run.
When you use a professional voice over, you deliver a video that favors information retention. A pro knows how to control breath to deliver a consistent message. Your video doesn’t have those disturbing pauses caused by a voice that loses its strength with every new word that comes out.
Professional voice overs don’t have a geographical accent – unless you want them to. This is very important when you register video content. Just think about how your webinar or commercial would sound if your voice over had a strong Australian accent.
When your video must reach large audiences, you need a ‘global’ sound. You need a person whose English (or Spanish, Chinese, or Arabic) is easy to follow and understand, no matter where the audience comes from.
Professional voice overs train themselves for years to lose accents and particular inflections that belong to a specific geographical area. This helps them speak a neutral language and allows them to build bridges with native speakers from all regions.
Professional voice overs give dynamism and consistency to the script. The result is that people who watch don’t get bored and don’t stop the video half way through–which means they arrive at your call to action.
If the voice behind your video is passionate, confident and positive, people are more likely to engage and do what you tell them to do with your CTA. Because professionals know when to insert pauses to create emotions and to generate engagement.
Imagine an insecure voice, with no air left, that tells you to download an ebook at the end of a video. Most probably, you wouldn’t press that CTA button.
But what if the voice behind the image was bold and convinced about the quality of the book? What if that voice knew how to use the tempo and pitch to make you curious enough?
Professionals adapt their voices to the topic and to your audience. This gives them power over the public. People are more likely to trust someone who maintains consistent speech during the video, or someone who pronounces all words well – even the long ones.
It’s hard to believe, but working with a professional voice over costs less than registering with amateurs.
Most professionals have their own studio, so you don’t need to invest in hardware and software for sound editing. Better than that, professional voice overs do the job in time, as a result of their experience in the field.
They don’t need to register several times to correct missed words. And, your copywriters won’t have to change the text to get rid of complicated terms that keep things from moving according to the initial plan.
In the end, you have your sound delivered directly to your Inbox, in the format you need, exactly when you need it.
A good voice adds personality to your video. It helps you send more than just a plain message to your audience. Because a professional voice over builds emotions and inspires your audience. Pros have acting skills, which help them create anticipation among the audience.
In the end, maybe your public won’t remember everything that you’ve told them. But they’ll sure remember how you’ve made them feel. And to make this memory a pleasant one, you need to have a professional reading your script.