Rethink Your Testimonial Video Style
Testimonial video, like all common forms of commercial video, runs the risk of being formulaic. Have you noticed that every time you’re considering a new product for your business, it seems like the company sends you a testimonial video, where the same five faces tell you the same platitudes about how great the product is? Consistency in video style is important, since it helps viewers to understand the video content. Moreover, patterns tend to develop because they work. However, following patterns too closely in your testimonial video can lead potential customers to question the sincerity of the testimonials and to disengage from the content. We’ve put together a list of a few ways to make your testimonial video content unique, and drive your sales effort.
Use Numbers
Testimonial video content is often limited by the fact that you can’t feature all of your customers in just one brief video. While this means that you can focus on your best and most loyal customers, it also can make viewers question whether the testimonial is representative of all of your customers’ experiences. To correct for this limit, leverage some data about your customer relationships. For example, how many of your first-time customers come back for later purchases? How long has your average customer been with you? All of this information serves to tell your viewers that your customer experience is consistently outstanding, and make your testimonial video more convincing.
Avoid Using Online Comments
Social media is completely ubiquitous in modern society. Any person or company that isn’t on Facebook is generally regarded as being “behind the times”. With such pressure, most B2B and B2C companies use a variety of social media platforms to interact with customers and clients. On the customer side, social media is perfect for submitting testimonial videos on a company’s products and customer experience. Many firms have started to leverage these comments when creating their testimonial videos. However, these testimonials are far less effective than the classic testimonial video, and should be used sparingly.
You should assume that viewers of your testimonial video are familiar with social media practices (“netiquette”). As such, they will know that the opinions posted by social media users are often not-well thought out and aren’t ones that they might defend very strongly. Ultimately, in the mind of your user, Facebook is a forum to share cat videos, and twitter is the home of random thoughts that occurred to celebrities. While it may seem hip to feature screengrabs of social media posts in your testimonial video, it has been done before, so the novelty has worn off, and viewers are not likely to take these opinions very seriously in their considerations.
Get Testimonials from Many Customers
Often, testimonial videos are created featuring only representatives from one of your best customers. This is because it is much easier to coordinate a few people to appear in your video if they have similar schedules and work at the same company. They may also choose to use the video to promote their own business using your testimonial video. However, when you only work with one of your customers in your video, the content ultimately only represents one customer’s opinion, and doesn’t speak to the positive experience of all of your customers across the board. As such, if possible, it is value to feature the opinions of many different customers from a variety of sources.
For business services companies, it is also important to show your expertise across the different industries and with different types of customers. This way, it will be relevant to all different types of potential customers. Every firm should have a broadly-applicable testimonial video. If you already have one, then you can consider focusing your new content on a specific industry or type of customer.
Feature Customers Viewers Will Recognize
Prevailing wisdom in testimonial videos is to always work with your best customers. “Best” can be defined as your oldest, largest, or friendliest customer. However, another point to consider is whether or not your audience might recognize the featured customer. Any time that a person or their company is recognizable, it lends legitimacy to the featured individual and also engages the viewer. The goal here is to make your potential customer think “well if it’s good enough for Company X, then it’s good enough for me!” Therefore, if any of your customers are widely recognizable, then you should seriously consider working with them to be a part of your testimonial video.
Feature Representatives from your Company
Finally, most testimonial videos, for obvious reasons, focus mainly on the testimonials. However, it is important to remember that your viewers will ultimately not be working with the satisfied customers who are giving the testimonial. Whenever possible, it is wise to also feature representatives from your own company. For example, you could include B-roll footage of members of your team and that of your customer working together on a project. Alternatively, you could use a shot of your team giving a presentation to the customer. By no means should this be the centerpiece of the video, but featuring members of your team can help to engage your viewers.
Do you agree that the opinions posted by social media users are often not-well thought out and aren’t ones that your viewers might defend very strongly? I would love to hear your thoughts and opinions on this in the comments below!
