Testimonials. We all know that they are useful and that we should have them. And we know how hard it is to get them from happy customers too. They might say it but when you want it committed to written words in black and white, that’s another story. Then there’s the cynics out there who just think that you’ve made it up and put it on your website or it’s just your mate from the pub or your mum saying nice things about you. But this is where a testimonial video comes in. A well crafted testimonial video can address all of these and bring a level of authenticity to to those complimentary comments from your satisfied customers.
Testimonial videos can be a really powerful way of getting your key messages across to your audience, without it coming directly from you – so automatically they hold much more credibility. The power that a testimonial video has however goes beyond just somebody saying happy they are with your service. We currently live in a world where everyone looks for reviews and research on customer experiences with businesses and people seek validation before they make a purchase, especially with online businesses, and a testimonial video can really help in the decision making process for purchasers. In fact it could be the final piece of their research jigsaw that sees them make that commitment to your business.
It’s easy to think that a testimonial just needs to be quite one dimensional i.e. a happy customers saying good things about you and what you’ve done for them. But there can be more to it than that, if you want to be clever about it. It’s important to think about your audience and what you want to achieve and as a result think about what type of testimonial you want to do.
Customer Testimonial – The most obvious one where a customer talks about how happy they are with the service they have received and what you did for them
Employee Testimonial – These can be used for internal and external purposes and are great for attracting new people to work for you but they have an external purpose too. Consumers are more and more concerned about the ethics of a company these days and an employee testimonial video does wonders to show that a business is ethical and treats it’s staff well.
Supplier Testimonial – A supplier testimonial can have several uses, again from an internal and an external point of view depending on what you are looking to achieve and can help new suppliers to your business understand what it’s like to work with you
It might sound obvious but there can be some thought put into what the content of your testimonial needs to be. It doesn’t have to be just a simple ‘this company is brilliant’ or ‘I’m really happy with them’, you can be quite strategic and targeted in your approach to who your audience is.
Think about what your audience wants or needs to hear rather than what you want to tell them. Do you know what your customer’s pain points are in the buying process within your industry? Do you know the reasons why they don’t make a purchase? Do you know the failings of your competitors? If you know the answers to these questions and most importantly your company can address or solve these issues then this needs to be the focus of of your video content. Get the subject of your video to talk about how you solved their problems. Or how they found that you can do things that the competition can’t. In other words, speak to them directly about their own issues and how you can resolve them. Remember that the viewer is essentially looking for selfish reasons i.e.e what can you do for them so respond to thisdon’t tell them what you want to say, tell them what they want to hear.
One of the best things about a testimonial is that it’s not you saying how great you are. This gives it instantly more credibility and a video testimonial takes out the question of authenticity. If someone is willing to put themselves on camera to talk about what a great service you have provided then it demonstrates how good you are.
It’s also a crucial part of your sales funnel. As mentioned earlier, reviews and other opinions from around the web are a large part of the buying process for many consumers and a powerful testimonial video can often be the final piece of the jigsaw.
If you’re thinking of using your video on social media then it would make a great advert too. Don’t forget to add the subtitles and then use the video in a paid ad campaign. This can be targeted towards your target audience or just based around users who have interests similar to what you do. Either way, it can get your business in front of a whole new group of people. You’ll see viewing figures go through the roof and the more people who watch your advert, the more people are aware of your business which should then trickle down into engagement, followers and ultimately orders.
Your outbound communication can also benefit from a video like this. Sending the video to your mailing list, to lapsed customers or even existing ones is a great way of putting yourself in front of people. What you’ll find is that people may have forgotten about you or it will be the nudge that they needed to get in contact with you and this will be just the prompt that’s making them take action.
If you know what needs to be said and you know who will say it then now is the time to make it happen. If you can get more than one person or business to appear on camera then different people can talk about different areas that you want to address. One could be about service, one could be about price, one could be about quality of products – whatever it might be, instead of trying to cram everything into one video look at creating a series that you can drip feed out over a period of time.
Blog writer: Adam Snelleksz is a director of CMA Video and has worked in marketing for over 20 years. He has worked in video production in Birmingham for five years with CMA Video and has been using video for marketing for nearly 10 years. He also set up the video TV channel Blues TV, the official online channel of Birmingham City Football Club. Some of the projects that Adam has used promotional videos for include the Birmingham Half Marathon, the European Gymnastics Championships and the World BMX Championships. Contact Adam here.
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