A SaaS explainer video script template is a timed grid of six beats: hook, problem, solution, how it works, proof and call to action. Each beat has a time slot, a word budget, a voiceover line and a matching visual. Fill in the grid below, read it aloud against a timer, and you have a script an animator can storyboard.
We use this structure on almost every SaaS project because it keeps one idea per beat and stops the script from turning into a feature list. Below you’ll find the 60-second and 90-second versions, a worked example, and a way to cut the same script into 6, 15 and 30-second versions for ads and social.
Key numbers at a glance
The figures behind this template
How many words does each beat of the script need?
Plan on about 150 words per minute of voiceover. The National Center for Voice and Speech puts average American English conversation at about 150 words per minute, and audiobooks and radio at 150–160 (VirtualSpeech). That makes a 60-second script about 130–150 words once you leave a few silent seconds for the opening visual and the end card.
Most teams should start with 60 seconds. In Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing 2026, 51% of marketers named 30–60 seconds as the most effective video length. If you are unsure which length you need, our guide to how long a SaaS explainer video should be breaks it down by placement.
The 60-second SaaS explainer script template
The 60-second template has six beats and about 130–150 words. Copy the table into a doc or spreadsheet, keep the time and word columns, and replace the guidance in the last three columns with your own lines.
| Time | Beat | Words | Voiceover (what you say) | Visual (what we see) | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0:00–0:05 | 1. Hook | 10–15 | One line naming the viewer’s problem or the result they want | The problem as a single clear image | 3–5 word headline |
| 0:05–0:15 | 2. Problem | 20–25 | What goes wrong today, in your buyer’s own words | The messy “before” state | None, or one label |
| 0:15–0:25 | 3. Solution | 20–25 | Your product name and what it does, in one sentence | Logo reveal into the product | Product name + one-line promise |
| 0:25–0:47 | 4. How it works | 50–55 | Three steps or three benefits, one sentence each | Simplified UI for each step | Step labels: 1, 2, 3 |
| 0:47–0:55 | 5. Proof | 10–20 | A real customer, number or before/after | The “after” state, customer logos | The proof point |
| 0:55–1:00 | 6. Call to action | 8–12 | One next step | End card with URL | URL + button text |
- Hook 0:00–0:05 10–15 words
- Problem 0:05–0:15 20–25 words
- Solution 0:15–0:25 20–25 words
- How it works 0:25–0:47 50–55 words
- Proof 0:47–0:55 10–20 words
- Call to action 0:55–1:00 8–12 words
Three rules make this grid work:
- One idea per beat. If a beat needs “and also”, it is two beats, and one of them belongs in a longer video.
- Every voiceover line has a visual. If the right-hand column is empty, the line is either filler or a sign you need a product shot.
- Proof must be real. If you don’t have a customer result you can publish yet, use a clear before/after of the workflow instead. Never invent a number.
The 90-second template: what changes?
A 90-second script adds one beat, the cost of the problem, and gives “how it works” more room. It does not add more features. Plan on about 210–235 words.
| Time | Beat | Words | What to write |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0:00–0:06 | 1. Hook | 15–18 | The problem or desired result in one line |
| 0:06–0:18 | 2. Problem | 28–32 | What breaks today, in the buyer’s words |
| 0:18–0:28 | 3. Cost of the problem | 22–25 | What it costs in time, money, risk or stress |
| 0:28–0:38 | 4. Solution | 22–25 | Product name plus one-sentence promise |
| 0:38–1:10 | 5. How it works | 75–85 | Three steps, each with a short “so that” benefit |
| 1:10–1:22 | 6. Proof | 28–30 | A real result, customer type or integration list |
| 1:22–1:30 | 7. Call to action | 15–20 | One next step, said once and shown on screen |
Use 90 seconds when the buyer needs context before the product makes sense: a new category, a regulated workflow in fintech or healthtech, or an AI product that replaces a manual process. For the word math behind both templates, see how many words fit in a 60-second explainer script.
What does a filled-in 60-second script look like?
Here is the 60-second template filled in for a made-up product, “Acme Desk”, a shared inbox for support teams. The product, its features and the URL are invented to show the format; the proof line is left as a placeholder on purpose.
| Time | Voiceover | Visual |
|---|---|---|
| 0:00–0:05 | “Your support team answered hundreds of emails today. How many got answered twice?” | Two agents typing replies to the same email, side by side |
| 0:05–0:15 | “Shared inboxes get messy fast. Two people reply to one customer, another email sits unread for days, and nobody knows who owns what.” | An inbox overflowing; one email ages from “1 hour” to “3 days” |
| 0:15–0:25 | “Acme Desk turns your shared inbox into a simple to-do list for the whole team, so every email has one owner.” | Logo; the inbox snaps into a tidy list with an avatar on each row |
| 0:25–0:47 | “First, connect your support address in two clicks. Second, Acme Desk assigns each new email to the right person, based on rules you set. Third, everyone sees who’s replying in real time, so no customer gets two answers or none. Managers see what’s waiting, and for how long, at a glance.” | Step 1: connect screen. Step 2: an email slides to an agent. Step 3: a “Sam is replying” tag. A simple overview panel |
| 0:47–0:55 | “Teams like [real customer] use it to [real, publishable result].” | Customer logo and the result as a large number |
| 0:55–1:00 | “Try Acme Desk free at acmedesk.com.” | End card: URL and “Start free” button |
That is about 125 words, at the low end of the budget on purpose: it leaves room for a two-second logo sting and a pause before the end card. Notice what is missing: no founding story, no list of ten integrations, no “revolutionary”. Each line earns its seconds.
Now try your own. Paste your draft into the timer: it counts the words and tells you whether it fits the length you chose.
Try it
Script timer
Paste your script. We’ll estimate how long the voiceover runs and whether it fits.
What is happening now with explainer scripts?
More scripts are now drafted with AI and produced in-house, and the same script has to feed a homepage, LinkedIn and paid social. That makes a fixed, timed structure more useful, not less.
The numbers from the last year show the shift:
- AI is in the workflow. In Wyzowl’s survey, published for 2026, 63% of video marketers said they have used AI video tools to create or edit marketing videos, up from 51% a year earlier (Wyzowl). Wistia’s April 2026 State of Video recap reports that 62% of teams use AI in their video workflows or plan to start soon, and that most use it to brainstorm, plan and script (Wistia).
- More teams make video themselves. The same Wistia recap says companies with in-house video teams rose from 36% to 54% in two years, based on a survey of nearly 1,000 marketers and 13 million+ videos (Wistia).
- LinkedIn is the main B2B channel, and it rewards short cuts. Wistia names LinkedIn the top channel for B2B video. LinkedIn’s own ads guidance cites 2025 data showing “7–15 second videos seeing up to a 300% lift in completion rates”, while noting longer videos still drove as many clicks for demand generation (LinkedIn Marketing Solutions).
- The homepage is still the best spot. Homepage videos on Wistia have a 24% play rate, higher than product, contact and thank-you pages (Wistia).
What this means this quarter: an AI draft gets you words quickly, but it rarely gets you timing, a single idea per beat, or lines that can be shown on screen. Wistia’s team puts it plainly about AI voices: they “tend to underperform human voices”, but a strong script and pacing narrow the gap, so “get those right first” (Wistia). The template is how you get those right.
How do you write a hook for the first 5 seconds?
Open with the viewer’s problem or the outcome they want, in one short line, before your logo. Platforms judge you in seconds: YouTube viewers can skip a skippable ad “after the initial 5 seconds” (Google Ads Help), and LinkedIn advises: “Show what you want your audience to see in the first 10 seconds of the video” (LinkedIn).
Google’s ABCD framework for YouTube creative starts with the same idea: “Attract: Draw attention from the beginning.” Ads that follow the ABCDs showed a 30% lift in short-term sales likelihood in Google and Kantar’s 2021 analysis of 11,000 ads (Think with Google). On your own channel, YouTube Studio’s “intro” metric shows what share of viewers are still watching after 30 seconds, and YouTube suggests testing different styles for that opening (YouTube Help).
Four hook patterns that fit SaaS:
- The question: “How many hours did your team spend on reports this week?”
- The before/after: “Month-end close used to take ten days. Here’s what it looks like now.” (Only with a real figure.)
- The named pain: “Spreadsheets weren’t built to run payroll.”
- The outcome: “Ship release notes your customers actually read.”
How do you make each line easy to follow?
Write the voiceover the way your buyer talks: short sentences, everyday words, one claim at a time. Learning research backs this. Mayer’s personalization principle says “people learn better from a multimedia lesson when words are in conversational style rather than formal style” (Mayer, 2008, summarised by the National University of Singapore).
Use these checks on your draft:
- Keep sentences under 25 words. The UK government’s style guidance says: “Try to split up sentences that are over 25 words long” (GOV.UK). For voiceover, shorter is better still.
- Keep on-screen text short. Mayer’s redundancy principle says narration plus full on-screen text hurts learning, except when the text is short and “highlights the key action described in the narration” (Mayer, 2008, NUS). Use labels, not sentences.
- Cut what doesn’t serve the one idea. The coherence principle: people learn better “when extraneous material such as words, pictures and sounds are excluded” (NUS).
- Plan for sound off. LinkedIn notes “a large portion of LinkedIn members will watch your ad with the sound off” and recommends burned-in subtitles (LinkedIn). Read your script as captions only: does it still make sense?
How do you cut one script into 6, 15 and 30-second versions?
Write the 60-second script first, then cut down by keeping the hook and call to action and dropping the middle beats in order. This way every version shares the same message and visuals, which saves animation time.
| Version | Keep | Words | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6 s | Hook (as text) + logo | 0–12 | YouTube bumper ads (6 s maximum, per Google Ads Help) |
| 15 s | Hook + solution + CTA | 30–38 | LinkedIn and Meta feeds, retargeting |
| 30 s | Hook + problem + solution + one step + CTA | 70–80 | Paid social, YouTube in-stream |
| 60 s | All six beats | 130–150 | Homepage, landing pages, sales emails |
| 90 s | All seven beats | 210–235 | New categories, regulated products, demos |
Upper end of each budget, at about 150 spoken words per minute.
Source: NCVS, via VirtualSpeech
Tell your animator about the cutdowns before the storyboard stage. If each beat is designed as a self-contained scene, the short versions are an edit, not a new project.
Script template checklist
Before you send the script to an animator or voice actor:
- The first line names the viewer’s problem or outcome, not your company
- Each beat has one idea and sits inside its word budget
- Every voiceover line has a matching visual in the right-hand column
- No sentence is over 25 words
- On-screen text is labels and key phrases only
- The proof is real and publishable, or replaced by a clear before/after
- There is exactly one call to action, said and shown
- You read it aloud with a timer and didn’t have to rush
- You marked which beats survive in the 30, 15 and 6-second cuts
How we help
On our SaaS explainer video projects, the script comes first. We start from your positioning, your product and the words your customers use, and write a timed two-column script like the one above. Once you approve it, we lock it before design so the storyboard, style frames and animation build on a fixed message. We plan the 15 and 30-second cutdowns at the storyboard stage, so the social and ad versions come from the same scenes.
Sources
- VirtualSpeech, “Average Speaking Rate and Words per Minute” (citing the National Center for Voice and Speech)
- Wyzowl, State of Video Marketing 2026 (266 respondents, surveyed late 2025)
- Wistia, “The Key Takeaways From Wistia’s 2026 State of Video Webinar” (22 Apr 2026; ~1,000 marketers, 13M+ videos)
- LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, “Best practices for video ads” (2026 page; cites 2025 LinkedIn data)
- Google Ads Help, “How video ads work”
- Think with Google, “Creative best practices for YouTube ads: the ABCDs” (2021; Google/Kantar, 11,000 ads)
- YouTube Help, “Measure key moments for audience retention”
- National University of Singapore, “Mayer’s 12 Principles of Multimedia Instruction” (Mayer, American Psychologist, 2008)
- GOV.UK, “Use clear language” (content and publishing guidance)
