What is the first thing you see when opening a social media app? Do you consume long forms or pictures, or are those videos more enticing to watch? The answer is simple – video content is the new king. Not only celebrities and influencers but also tech giants and startups alike have taken a keen interest in exploring this medium to communicate with their audiences.
One of those video formats that brands swear by is a testimonial video. Testimonial videos are an effective way to advertise your brand and instil trust among potential customers. They provide real-life stories and experiences from existing customers that can help to attract new ones.
Creating customer testimonial videos can help you advocate for your customers’ positive experiences. It puts a face to your business. It gives your brand the credibility it needs within your target group. You can present your goals, products, and overall mission and give examples of customer experiences that support each point.
This article will cover how to create compelling video testimonials for brand advertising. In addition, we will discuss the importance of customer testimonial videos and give tips on making them.
1. Choose Video Testimonials Over Written Testimonials
When marketing your brand, a testimonial video can be an extremely powerful tool in your arsenal. A testimonial video allows you to showcase your happy customers and their experiences with your product or service, which can help to build trust and credibility with potential new customers.
If you have a written testimonial from a satisfied customer, you may wonder if converting it into a video is worth the effort. The answer is YES, ABSOLUTELY! A video testimonial is much more engaging and persuasive than a written testimonial, so you need not think twice.
Instead of flashing plain, simple text testimonials, choose a group of your happy customers and let them speak freely in front of a camera. These bytes can be clubbed together or kept individually based on your needs.
Watching your customers share their experiences also adds a human element to your advertisement. Getting first-hand information directly from your customers increases the chances of your audience opting for your brand.
2. Keep It Crisp And Engaging
Understand that your audience has a short attention span, so you must keep these video testimonials crisp and to the point. While creating a testimonial video, remember that a good video testimonial is short (less than two minutes).
Compiling these bytes into a single video is one of the best techniques to utilize these short and sweet testimonials. You can utilize such compilations for long video platforms or publish the crisper bytes on other platforms one after another.
Now let’s talk about why testimonial video compilation is an excellent way of engaging your potential customers. Think of it as a song playlist – you don’t have to keep switching between songs; instead, you sit back and listen to your favourite music one after another. Likewise, compiling all your sweet, short testimonial videos lets your audience sit back and gain insight into multiple customers’ experiences without having to hover through individual testimonial videos or text slides.
3. Address Your TG
Your target audience is anyone who might be interested in your product or service. To create a testimonial that focuses on their problem statement, you’ll need first to identify the problem. Once you know what it is, then you can craft a message that directly addresses the pain point of your potential customer.
For example, let’s say your target audience is college students. Their problem statement might be something along the lines of low academic performance or lack of resources to prepare better for exams etc. You could then create a testimonial video that addresses their concerns and offers information on how your product or services can help them overcome their problem.
Remember, your testimonial videos are a testament to what you can do for your potential customers, supported by a group of happy customers who can vouch for it.
Try not to stray from the core objective of these testimonial videos, which is to encourage your audience to opt for your products or services. Instead, keep these video testimonials focused on how your offerings can help bring a change in your TG’s current situation.
4. Identify Your Target Age Group
Video content can be great but can still fail to capture the audience’s attention. Why? That’s because of the lack of relatability.
Identify your TG’s age group even before you set out to create a video testimonial. When selecting customers to speak on camera about their experience with your product or service, be sure to choose people who are in the same age group as your target audience. This will help connect the viewer and the person on screen and make it more likely that they’ll relate to what’s being said.
Certainly, you’d want to ensure that your customer is articulate and well-spoken so that their testimonial comes across as genuine and sincere. Therefore, try to find someone who is enthusiastic about your brand and is capable of delivering their experience on camera. It will ensure maximum viewership that will help drive brand marketing and boost sales.
5. Build An Emotional Connection
It is crucial to convince your potential customers with stats and facts about your business. For example, the fact that you helped a certain number of people overcome their problems or your offerings are made to fit the pocket size of those in utmost need is important to be conveyed. However, you need to understand that most of your potential users are looking for a solution to their problems.
That’s where the emotional connection comes into play.
If your viewers connect with your testimonial video subjects, there’s a great chance they will convert. In addition, you’ll have a great marketing tool if there is an emotional quotient underpinning the testimonials.
While it’s good to know what great offers you have for your potential customers, getting first-hand information about your existing customers’ experience with your offerings adds the cherry to the cake. Seeing that your customers were overwhelmed or frustrated or struggling with certain problems and how your products or services have helped them overcome their problems sparks hope in your viewers. They are more likely to trust your brand to help them overcome their pain points.
Remember this when you are outlining the basic structure of your video testimonial. Even when editing the video, ensure that it flows from the problem statement to how your offerings helped them and then what difference it made in your customer’s journey.
6. Online Tools For Customer Testimonials
Creating video testimonials can be tedious and time-consuming. Creating a video that may only help your brand if done right often involves a lot of dollars and hours. The best part is these can be avoided easily.
There are various tools available online that can help you create compelling video testimonials. Right from helping you collect testimonials from your customers to collating them in the form of a video, these tools can come in handy. You can also add additional visual elements to your testimonial videos to make them appealing to your potential customers.
Some of these online tools are (in no particular order):
- StoryPrompt
It is a unique video messaging platform that helps collect videos from your customers in minutes. You can also exchange interactive video messages with them and receive their video responses. These video responses can be combined in the form of a video or embedded into emails or websites at a single click of a button.
- VideoAsk
It allows you to request testimonial videos from your customers that can be downloaded and used in several ways of your liking. VideoAsk collects these testimonial videos in one place, transcribes them and even includes your customers’ consent, thus making the entire user experience seamless and convenient.
- VideoPeel
Using this tool, you can send requests to your customers and receive responses. So what’s new, right? This tool’s unique feature is that it compiles and edits the reactions and creates a high-quality video testimonial ready to use while you sit back and sip coffee. Once you have the video testimonial, head to the online platforms and start publishing! That easy!
Some other online tools you can explore are Bonjoro, Boast.io, Testimonial, and GlimpseVideo. Check them out and see which device fits your requirement and budget, and you’ll have great-quality and informative video testimonials in no time!
7. Master the Editing
The quality of your final output will depend entirely on how you edit the video testimonial. This is why it becomes necessary to maintain a keen eye on the entire editing process. If you need to be better-versed in video editing, you can outsource it and get it done by leading professionals.
There’s a saying that goes like this – editing starts on paper. Yes, that’s right. To be able to master your editing process, you need to draw a clear layout to capture the following:
- The flow of the testimonial
- The video shots and angles
- Customer demographics
- Supers to be included
- B-rolls, if any
- USPs to be featured
- Location
- Platforms to be leveraged, and
- The mood of the video
Define these pointers well in advance, even before you pick up your shooting equipment. Then, storyboard the entire testimonial video and see if that appeals to you if you were in your viewers’ shoes. If not, do it all over again and keep at it until you have a storyboard that would work perfectly for your brand advertising.
But do not script it. That’s a big NO-NO.
Once you have a convincing storyboard, it’s time for action.
Now that you are on the editing table start visualizing the storyboard as a video. You want to choose the best takes of the interview and place them in a manner that sets the right mood and tells a story. Create a video with a good rhythm and a seamless flow of information.
Editing can be a daunting task. If you face any obstacle, referring to the original storyboard and reconnecting with your initial thought is always a good idea. It is easy to stray from the core idea by the time you enter the post-production phase. And therefore, reconnecting with the original idea or thought helps to a great extent.
Remember to insert some interesting takes to make your testimonial video dynamic, exciting and light for your viewers.
8. Different Sizes for Different Platforms
When creating video testimonials, it’s essential to consider the different sizes of videos based on the platforms to be utilized. Other platforms support different dimensions and durations of videos. For example, you can create a 30-second long testimonial video for an Instagram reel, whereas a two-minute video can be uploaded on Youtube. However, reiterating, short-duration videos work best in retaining the audience’s attention.
Not only duration but even the dimension of the video testimonials must also be adhered to while creating them. For example, Instagram recommends using portrait-style video formats for reels, whereas a landscape-format video can be uploaded on YouTube. Similarly, other platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest have their own native prescribed aspect ratios for videos as well the duration of it.
A key point to remember is that your testimonial videos should complement the platform’s style guidelines to gain maximum eyeballs. And that’s where your direction techniques come into play.
Ensure that your subject, your happy customer, is placed at an angle where they are visible in the frame regardless of how you treat the video dimension in post-production. Another way to do this is by taking multiple footages, each supporting a different dimension.
Therefore, it is advised that you do thorough research on all the platforms where you plan to upload these testimonial videos well in advance.
9. Use Visual Aids in Your Video Testimonials
This is an easy hack to highlight your USPs and ensure that your audience gets the core messaging without going through the entire video.
It’s no secret that we all have a short attention span. So imagine if your audience gets distracted while watching the testimonial video. How would you get your message across? The most convenient way to do that is with ‘SUPERS’.
Supers are the texts that appear in the video at intervals. These supers can be anything from statements to quotes or words.
While editing the video testimonial, insert supers between each byte. You can use the supers to highlight your key offering, stats on how you have helped your existing customers, pain points that you have tackled, happy customer remarks, etc.
That way, even if the viewer gets distracted or is mute, they can still gain insight by reading the supers. Not to mention, your video gets a breather, making them light on content and yet informative.
10. Add Product Ratings
Including a product rating in your testimonial video is a great way to add credibility and value for your viewers. By including a product rating, you are letting your viewers know that your customers have used the product or service and that they recommend it. This can be a very effective way to drive brand advertising for your company.
It is also a great way to increase the testimonial video’s impact and encourage viewers to buy the product or service. By including a short clip of the customer using and enjoying the product, followed by a quick rating of the product on a scale of 1-5, you can create a more informative and persuasive video that will help boost your sales.
When customers are happy with your product or service, they’re likely to tell their friends and family about it. But you can also harness the power of customer testimonials in your digital campaigns to help drive brand advertising and boost sales.
Video testimonials are a great way to advertise your brand more personally and engagingly than written testimonials. And when done right, they can effectively convince potential customers to try your brand.
Here are some quick tips for creating high-engagement social media campaigns using video testimonials:
- Keep them short and sweet
Nobody wants to watch a long, drawn-out video testimonial. Keep your testimonial video short and sweet, highlighting the key points that will resonate with viewers. A 1-2 minute video length would be ideal for keeping your viewers engaged.
- Make them relatable
Your video testimonials should be relatable to your target audience. Choose customers that reflect the demographics of the people you’re trying to reach with your campaign.
- Use engaging visuals and audio
Ensure your video testimonials are well-lit and shot in an exciting and visually appealing location. In addition, the audio should be clear so viewers can easily understand what’s being said.
- Tell a story
People love stories, so make sure your video testimonials have a flow and tell a story.
Are you looking to create video testimonials that help drive brand advertising? If so, you have come to the right place. With Buzzproof, you can easily collect video testimonials from your clients. Reach out to our experts, and we’d be happy to assist you in extending the reach of your business in more ways than one!
