Here are a few key considerations to bear in mind when you are thinking of doing a testimonial video.
Selecting the Right Client
Obviously, you should be making sure your chosen client has something good to say about your business or product. It’s likely that you have a large selection of happy clients to choose from, but do make sure to ask beforehand what they thought of you and your services.
An important consideration is finding someone who is both compelling and comfortable talking in front of a camera. A testimonial’s strength is its focus on the interviewee’s emotions. You might be able to find someone who likes your brand, but unless they can provide a compelling testimonial on camera, you will struggle to create a persuasive interview. An experienced video production agency will be able to coach the subject in good interview techniques.
Avoid these Constraints
Testimonials need to feel natural and authentic, so avoid scripts. Although ideally you want your interviewee to say something specific, putting words into their mouth will nearly always make them sound inauthentic and undermine the entire point of your testimonial. Avoiding marketing speak in general is absolutely essential.
Treating the testimonial like an interview and aiming to extract a natural and genuinely enthused response will always deliver the best results. You can always brief your interviewee on what kind of questions you’re going to ask beforehand, so they can mentally prepare themselves.
Your interviewee might also find it easier to relax and provide honest and more convincing testimonial if you aren’t in the room. Letting Heidman Definition take over here maybe a good idea.
Start with a Story Emphasizing the Why
Many testimonials are focused just on the benefits of the company’s product or service, but maybe you should do things a bit differently by emphasizing on the collaboration between you and the client.
Potential clients know that they can go to your website to learn about specific features and read product descriptions, so this type of information isn’t what they’re looking for when watching a video testimonial. Your target audience is looking for the thoughts and opinions of real people who have found genuine solutions in using your products or service.
Asking your interviewee key questions will help you to ensure that your video testimonials provide the right information. These questions might include:
• What was your challenge before you bought [our product or service]?
• Why did you decide to start looking for a solution?
• How did [our product or service] solve your problem?
• What made you choose [our product or service] over anything else you could have done?
• What exactly did you like most about [our product or service]?
• What was life like before you started using [our product or service)?
• What is life like now that you've experienced [our product or service]?
• What surprised you the most after buying [our product or service]?
• What would you say if you were to recommend [our product or service] to your best friend?
Avoiding closed questions that elicit a “yes” or “no” answer will ensure that the responses you receive are useful, detailed and allow the space for your interviewee to talk specifics.
Forging Emotional Connections
Forging emotional connections is extraordinarily powerful and should ideally underpin your video testimonial.
If a potential client can feel how overwhelmed or frustrated your interviewee was before they discovered your product or service, seeing how your business has helped them to reach their ideal resolution can be extremely persuasive.
Integrating Supporting Footage and Striving for Clarity
Even the most compelling speakers will struggle to hold an audience’s attention for several minutes at a time if the camera is solely on them (regardless of how many angles you shoot them from). Integrating supporting footage that is relevant to what is being said will help you to create a visually engaging video that will hold the attention of your audience from start to finish.
Even the most compelling supporting footage won’t save a testimonial video that quickly gets lost in technical detail however. Although it can be important to get some of the technical information across, especially in a B2B setting, getting straight to the point and talking about benefits not features will always work better.
Shaping a Marketing and Distribution Plan
It’s one thing to produce a great testimonial video, but it’s another to ensure that the right people watch it at the right time. Publishing it on your website and hoping for the best simply isn’t enough, which is why a strategic video strategy and activation plan is so important.
You should aim to promote your final product as a sales tool on all available channels for example using your testimonial videos on your lead generating landing pages, in email blasts and across Social Media channels.
Send Heidman Definition a message today and bring your testimonial video to life.