Video is the most impactful way to sell and market today. 86% of businesses use it to drive sales; 80% of marketers say it beats other media types. In studies, video has been compelled 89% of respondents to buy a product.
The only caveat?
4 in 5 professionals say they don’t have the time, budget, or resources to produce more video. Especially not personalized ones, which outperform the standard kind by a wide margin.
Enter AI.
With modern AI tools, producing compelling videos is easy and cheap. You just have to know which tools to use - and how to apply them to marketing and sales.
We’ve spent a lot of the past few months experimenting with AI for sales and marketing videos. We’ve also developed our own AI features, like dynamic video intros and an automated script generator.
On this page, we’ll share everything we learned in the process. We’ll focus on the practical ways AI is transforming video in sales and marketing. This includes coverage of different AI tools, the impact they’re having, and useful applications for customer-facing teams.
Let’s start with…
1. Automated Research for your Videos
3 in 4 Americans will only respond to personalized video messages. The problem is, revenue teams aren’t good at crafting personalized, relevant videos.
93% of sales prospects complain about sales pitches that don’t address their needs. In marketing, the picture isn’t too different; 7 in 10 consumers receive irrelevant messaging.
This problem affects all channels and media types… But it’s especially problematic with videos, which take more time and resources to produce. You want your videos to hit the mark and drive results; this means you need to know your customer.
This is an area where AI can help. Tools like ChatGPT excel at looking through - and organizing - information. They can do basic customer research in seconds, helping sales teams craft highly personalized video pitches at scale.
For example, here’s us asking ChatGPT to tell us about our co-founder - Bethany Stachenfeld - ahead of a hypothetical sales video:
The information ChatGPT returned wasn’t perfect - but it was accurate and useful. With some human fact-checking and input, it makes for an excellent brief. There were even valuable insights about what Sendspark might be interested in, which we thought was cool!
Have your own data and research about someone? Use Claude AI instead of ChatGPT. It’s able to process up to 75,000 words of pure text, turning prospect or client data into a short brief in seconds.
The exciting part? Even more powerful customer research tools are on the way. For example, SimilarAsk gives you data-based insights using natural language using Similar Web data.
In the screenshot below, a user asks if ChatGPT is still growing - and SimilarAsk uses advanced traffic data to suggest answers:
Since applications like these draw on proprietary data, they can tell us even more than a regular, public search with ChatGPT can.
2. Script Writing
To record effective sales videos consistently, you need scripts. The problem is, videos recorded from scripts can feel impersonal and irrelevant. They’re not likely to address your prospect’s specific needs and pain points.
The alternative - writing a fresh script for each prospect and conversation - takes too long. Asking your sales team to write personalized scripts tires them out, taking up valuable time and slowing down sales cycles.
The solution? Using generative AI - specifically, Sendspark’s AI Video Script Generator - to write scripts for you at scale!
Our tool writes 5 scripts for 5 use cases:
- Prospecting
- Follow-up (after not getting a reply)
- Follow-up (after a meeting)
- Welcome new users
- Customer success
Each script type is highly customizable. You can pick one of five styles, add a product description, and choose a call-to-action. You can also add relevant information about your customer and past communications, e.g.:
After you give the script generator its prompts, it returns output in the form of a video script. There’s also the ability to get AI-generated text for the accompanying email.
The more detailed your prompts and the more info you feed into the reader, the better your scripts. This makes it easy to create personalized, meaningful scripts for each and every sales conversation without overloading your team with work!
3. Idea Generation
AI can do more than just summarize. Specifically, it can generate new ideas by analyzing data at scale. This makes it a valuable brainstorming partner that can give you a lot of ideas quickly and cheaply.
Here’s a simple example. Let’s ask ChatGPT which visual hooks we can use in an outreach video for Yuengling Brewery in Pittsburgh, PA.
Here’s what we get in return. Pretty solid ideas!
Some of the ideas were very creative. We especially liked this one:
AI's output isn’t always this good… But since you’re only brainstorming at this point, that's fine. You get plenty of raw material to play with. And if you find that a particular concept has potential, you can ask AI to flesh it out or create iterations of it!
Bear in mind that this isn’t limited to visual hooks. You can also ask AI to give you ideas on how to dress, where to film, how to address the viewer, and more. You can even ask our AI script generator to write an entertaining sales pitch in the style of a rap!
4. Personalization at Scale
The longest, most painstaking part of video outreach is the recording process. This takes time, energy, and - sometimes - a number of takes. Each video requires you to look presentable, record from a quiet place, and deliver your lines with energy.
This can get incredibly tough if you’re recording 10, 20, or 50 pitches in a single day. It’s a real grind. That’s why it makes sense to record a single “main” video section, then personalize individual videos with custom intros.
The way Sendspark addressed this previously is with our combined video feature. This let users record and unique video intros to longer recordings. These could open demos, presentations, and pitches to give them a personal touch.
Now, with AI, there’s an even better way to do much of the same with 0 effort. You no longer have to record custom intros; AI personalizes for you. All you have to do is record one video where you replace the recipient’s name with our code word: “Watermelon”.
Afterwards, AI clones your voice and replaces the word “Watermelon” with individual recipients’ names. All you have to do is toggle the feature on in your back-end.
This lets you send thousands of personalized sales videos to customers in minutes. All you need to do is feed a list of emails and names into Sendspark manually or via CSV file. Our AI will use these to create customized intros for each recipient.
Want more personalization? No problem. Use our other new feature, Dynamic Videos, to add dynamically updated backgrounds to your videos with a few clicks.
Each prospect will see their own website (or another custom URL) displayed behind you in your recording. The combination of seeing your website and hearing your name feels personal and requires no extra work on your end!
5. Transcribe and Summarize Video Content
AI can save you time and effort by automatically transcribing your videos. Some of our favorite tools are Descript, Otter.ai, and CapCut, all of which turn videos into text with minimal editing required.
All you have to do to start transcribing is record a video with Sendspark, then download it to local storage. After this, it only takes a few seconds to feed recordings into a transcription tool. Just go to the video in our backend, click “share”...
Then click “Download”...
Or click this button immediately after recording a video in Chrome.
Once you’re done, use any video-to-text app to transcribe. In this case, we’re going to use a fourth app - Transkriptor - to get the job done…
And here’s the text we get back:
It’s not perfect - but it’s mostly accurate. Accurate enough for humans and AI to understand easily.
There’s a lot you can do with this text. You can use it to create graphics by copy-pasting highlights into a tool like Canva. You can use the transcripts internally to help your team create the content they need with less work.
But our favorite use case? Using video transcripts from Sendspark videos to create quick video summaries! Here’s us asking ChatGPT to summarize our Personalized Video feature announcement:
Here’s what ChatGPT returned:
This document is super handy. It makes for a good internal memo and can be added to client-facing emails to quickly summarize our new feature.
AI-generated documents like this are especially useful if you’re recording longer videos: demos, presentations, instructions.
For demos and instructions, you can combine AI-generated text with screenshots to create valuable educational content. This could be for a self-serve knowledge base, for sales collateral, or for internal use.
For presentations, AI-created text can summarize key points and takeaways. This makes it easy for prospects to remember what you said post-factum. The text can also be edited to highlight key features and benefits.
6. Translate Audio and Add Subtitles
Want to make sure your recipients understand what you’re saying?
SubtitleBee can add AI-generated subtitles to your recordings. All you have to do is download your Sendspark video…
Then upload your video into SubtitleBee, wait for it to create subtitles, and edit them if necessary.
The result? A video with custom subtitles that looks like this:
There’s a lot you can do here. You can translate text into other languages, then add it to your subtitles. You can expand on what you’re saying by adding extra text to the subtitles. Or you can leave the subtitles as they are.
Alternatively, you can take things a step further and translate your voice using AI. This is a cool new feature offered by apps like Rask.ai and Camb.ai. You feed your video into these apps, and they return it in other languages, accents, and dialects - while still preserving your voice.
We tried using Rask.ai:
Afterwards, we had a selection of languages and voices we could redub ourselves in instantly. As with SubtitleBee, editing text was fast and easy. The results were impressive; although we sounded a little robotic in Spanish, everything we said was clearly legible.
One thing to note is that AI audio translation tools are a lot more expensive than subtitle ones. SubtitleBee’s paid plans start at just $19/month. Rask.ai starts at 3x more; $60/month.
7. Create Thumbnails for Your Recordings
If you use Sendspark, you know we have a thumbnail tool. With it, you can create and customize thumbnails - still images and gifs - with just a few clicks. You can also add customizations (like overlays) to these thumbnails.
But what if you want to create a unique, new image for your video instead? Well, you can ask an illustrator or designer to help you… Or you can have AI do the job for you. Our favorite way to do this is using Canva.
The reason is that Canva has a suite of different AI apps - including OpenAI’s Dall-E, Google’s Imagen, and others - that you can choose from and play with.
You can create a completely new image. For example, here’s a “photo showing someone watching a video at work and getting excited” from Dall-E. It could potentially be useful for a video recording app like ours:
Notably the hands on this image - a frequent problem area for AI illustrations - aren’t half bad!
Want to enhance an image instead of creating a new one? No problem. You can use AI to add AI-generated elements to existing images or enhance them. Just use an app like Image Dreamer:
These features can help improve, personalize, and otherwise enhance your thumbnails. This can help increase click-through and open rates, ultimately helping you drive more sales.
The cool thing is that with modern analytics and AI, you can very quickly A/B split test different thumbnail styles. If you’re prospecting or marketing with large audiences, this can improve your performance in a matter of days by giving you valuable insights.
8. Create Custom Images to Use In Recordings
Something else you can do with AI image generators? Create visuals that help engage and persuade your prospects.
Here are a few ideas:
- Create an AI image illustrating a use case.
- Generate feel-good images of people and objects for your presentations at no cost.
- Add AI elements to existing images.
This lets you produce creative marketing and sales collateral quickly and for next-to-nothing. For example, here’s us asking Dall-E to generate a photo of “two young people enjoying a bright green beverage”.
An image like this could be used to pitch new ad creative to a client - or to sell retailers on a potential green drink your brand wants to release.
9. Turn Videos into Blog Posts
Earlier, we talked about turning your videos into summaries, notes, and other documents. But producing SEO-optimized blog posts and pages is different. It’s not enough to convert your text into written form; you need to make sure the text is optimized for search engines.
This is where AI tools like Content at Scale come in handy.
Start by, once again, downloading your Sendspark video and storing it locally.
Next, you’ll have to do one of two things: either upload your video to YouTube…
Or transcribe it using a tool like Transkriptor (see pt 5 for instructions on how to do this)
Now, the next step will vary depending on whether you’ve transcribed or uploaded your video. If you uploaded it, you can use a tool like Content at Scale to turn your YouTube video into a blog post.
You can choose your target word count, add context, and choose the keywords you’d like to rank for on the next page:
Afterwards, you just click “Write Post Now” and get your first draft.
If you’re using transcripts, you have a lot more choice. Many AI tools made for SEO content give you the option to repurpose transcripts into SEO-optimized blog posts and pages. This includes WriteSonic, Content at Scale, and many others.
One smart thing you can do is take all your old video content and bulk-repurposed it for your company blog.
Under the direction of a qualified SEO specialist, this can give you lots of free traffic quickly. Google respects publishing velocity - so pumping out high-quality pages by repurposing video and audio content is valuable.
In Summary
AI does a lot to make quality, personalized videos accessible to more salespeople and marketers.
Why not see just how easy it is to use AI with our script generator and dynamic video intros? Make a Sendspark account (they’re free) or book a meeting to discuss AI video personalization with our team!
