How To Create Compelling Testimonial Videos
Testimonial videos are more than just a ‘nice to have’ film for your business’s website or social media pages.
They are powerful, visual narratives that can significantly enhance your brand’s credibility and influence potential clients.
Creating compelling testimonial videos for your business is an art that requires careful planning, the correct questions, genuine storytelling and professional execution.
Here’s how your business can craft testimonials videos that truly resonate with your audience.
Identify the Goal Of Your Testimonial Film
There are two approaches to testimonial videos. The first is to showcase the success of your customers. This can be done through building a story arch that communicates the result achieved by your customers, because of using your brand’s product or service. For example, in B2B, achieving 10x sales, or in B2C running a sub-20-minute 5km. These types of testimonial films are often more human-centric, they follow the client’s journey and are highly relatable.
The second approach is to highlight the impact of your product or service. This can be achieved by narrowing communication around the product or service’s specific features and benefits, and how these impact the lives of customers. These types of testimonial videos are more technical based and are product centric. They tend to be highly informative and persuasive and discuss how the product or service unique selling points directly contributed to the customer’s success.
Select The Right Clients For Your Testimonial Video
Your customer is going to make or break your testimonial video. So it’s important to select the right one.
Identify clients who have had a truly positive and impactful experience with your brand. Reach out to clients who are enthusiastic (but not too enthusiastic, as this can be seen as inauthentic by people who do not know the individual), and who are comfortable being in front of camera.
Provide A Comfortable Experience
To get the best results, and to receive the most open, authentic responses from your customers, you’ll need to make them comfortable from the get go. Here’s some ways you can make your customer comfortable ahead of, and during, a testimonial video.
Give Plenty Of Notice
The worst time you can ask a customer to do a testimonial film is right at the end of a trade expo, or as they need to head out the door of your store to pick up their kids from school.
Instead, send your customer an email, asking them if they’d be happy to take part in a quick testimonial video. Advise them there is no rush to get the filming done, and that you are flexible with dates and times. This way, your customer doesn’t feel like they are being rushed.
When it comes to the day of filming, they will have blocked out their calendar, and will be able to give you all their time and attention that you require from them to create a compelling testimonial video.
Have Everything Ready To Go
On the day of filming, make sure you have your film set ready to go, before your customer arrives.
This includes all lights, cameras and audio equipment, ready to go, only requiring minor adjustments once your customer arrives.
In doing so, your client will be walking into a clean, calm environment, where no one is rushing around. In turn, this will also calm your customer, as they may be feeling nervous. Furthermore, it shows that you appreciate their time, and don’t want to waste their time by having them standing around whilst you’re setting up.
Ease Your Customer Into The Experience
To ease your customer into the testimonial experience, don’t hit them straight away with the hard hitting questions such as:
“How has XYZ Company helped you to achieve ABC?”
Instead, make your customer feel comfortable by asking them some simple questions about themselves such as “What do you do?”, “What is your role within ABC company?”.
Everyone likes to talk about themselves, so these questions are a terrific starting point to ease your customer into the testimonial video questions.
Capture B-Roll Footage
B-roll footage is what will make your testimonial video come to life. It is the tool in which you can take the words spoken by your customer and make them have feeling.
B-roll footage is crucial in forging emotional connections with the potential customers watching your testimonial film.
Not only this, but b-roll footage will keep viewers engaged. Keeping on the same 2 or 3 camera angles (or even worse, 1-camera angle) for an entire 60 or 90 second testimonial video, will quickly bore your viewers out.
By adding b-roll, you additionally can boost engagement and viewer retention by providing new context, experiences and meaning to the words being spoken by your customer.
The best b-roll shots will show your customer using your product or service, show their life before and after using your product or service, and are highly emotive, with shots of faces, smiles, and laughter.
Include A Call To Action
Every testimonial film should include a call to action at the end of the film.
The call to action is used to urge the potential customers viewing the film to get in touch with your business and enquire about purchasing your product or service.
Remember, typically speaking, a potential customer will watch testimonial videos when they are in a purchasing mindset. They’ll watch the films just before they are about to buy.
The reason for this is psychological. As humans, we often doubt our judgements and choices. But if we see others who are (or were) in the same situation as us, and they act in the way we think we should be, then we are more likely to take the same action.
So, the testimonial film is a fantastic tool to reinforce this feeling, and act as the final little push in getting a prospect to buy.
An important thing to remember when it comes to your call to action, is to have it occur before your business’s logo is shown on screen.
The logo should not be seen till the closing few seconds of the film – after the call to action.
The reason for this, is that we want to attribute the feeling of taking action with our business. If the logo is shown before the call to action, your viewers will become disconnected with the storyline, and the call to action will not be communicated to the viewer.
If we have the call to action occur before the logo highlight, the call to action can be absorbed by the viewer, they will feel empowered to take action, and this feeling of empowerment is then sub-consciously attributed to your business when your logo appears on screen.
You Can Create Compelling Testimonial Films
Creating compelling testimonial videos requires a blend of strategic planning, storytelling, and technical expertise. By following these steps, you can craft videos that authentically showcase your clients’ success stories and highlight the value of your brand.
Need A Hand Bringing Your Customer's Stories To Life?
At our Melbourne-based video production company, we are experts in creating high-quality testimonial videos that resonate with audiences and drive results. Contact us today to learn how we can help bring your client stories to life.
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