Many people ask us, what are video testimonials? A video testimonial is a video recording of a person, typically a customer, that is giving a review of their experience working with a company, product, or person. Typically this video will tell a short story about who the customer is, what issue they were experiencing that caused them to seek out a solution, why they decided to choose that particular product or service, and how their life is different now that they’ve purchased that solution. This is similar to a review, but a testimonial typically dives deeper into the customer’s story than a simple review does, and a Video Testimonial does this with video content which is typically more engaging than a simple text-based testimonial.
Key Elements to Include in a Video Testimonial
Customer’s Background and Pain Points
As consumers we are driven to seek out products or services because of a certain need. Whether this is searching out a plumber because you have a broken pipe and you NEED to get it replaced or purchasing a new iPhone because you NEED to stay connected with friends and family, everything comes back to this specific pain point that you are trying to solve.
The customer’s background also helps to illustrate this pain point. Potential new customers want to feel comfortable purchasing from your company so seeing a happy customer with a relatable background to themselves who had a similar pain point makes them more likely to become a customer.
Why the Customer Chose Your Offer
When marketing your products and services, it is vital to have a differentiator. There are millions of different things this could be, but consider it as something like cheapest price, best quality, some unique feature, instant availability, etc. Your customers choose your offer for a few of these reasons, and this is where you should highlight WHY the customer sharing the testimonial chose you over a competitor.
How the Offer Changed the Customer’s Life
It might sound excessive, but if you have a happy customer, your Offer LITERALLY changed their life. Even if it’s a really small change in their life, the fact that they are happy with your product or service means that it accomplished their goal and helped them to solve a problem that they were experiencing. In the video testimonial you need to make sure that they share how their life is better now that they have solved this problem they were experiencing (thanks to your offer).
Understanding this part is very similar to the concept in sales where we discuss selling features vs selling BENEFITS. You can easily say that your iPhone has 128GB of storage, but you will get far more customer conversions through messaging that is about the benefit of that amount of storage such as how you can store many movies for watching on long trips, or all of your photos stored in one place, etc.
Creating a Video Testimonial
There are many different levels to creating video testimonials.
On the simple end, you can just grab your phone and record your happy customers talking about the product or service.
One step up would be hiring a videographer with a nicer camera to capture the same testimonial.
Typically though, the best route when planning a video testimonial project is to find a production company with extensive experience producing video testimonials (and their own video testimonials haha). The right company will not only know how to make the video and audio be technically perfect, but they will also be able to work with you strategically to identify these key points in your offer that should be communicated in the video testimonial. They will then be able to help guide the customer on-camera to get the proper messaging based on the strategy that you’ve developed together.
If you are interested in seeing what a proper video testimonial production would look like, feel free to reach out to us for a no pressure quote. We’d love to chat through what you’re trying to accomplish and how we at Chromatic Digital Cinema might be able to help.
