Word-of-mouth is still considered one of the most effective forms of marketing out there with 73% of customers saying they trust a business more after reading positive reviews. 

Customer testimonial videos (also known as, customer success stories) are a piece of persuasive content you can use to illustrate the value of your product or service. They are essentially a review in video form, typically showing your customers talking about your brand and the experience of working with your company, giving your prospects an unbiased opinion.

When properly executed, customer testimonial videos can contextualise your product or service and help prospects better understand how it can solve a real-world problem. It can be an extremely powerful sales and marketing tool.

Why are customer testimonial videos so powerful?

1. Customer testimonials are a great way to build brand trust and authenticity
2. They are a great way to highlight customer successes and show a wide portfolio of clients, showing prospects how diverse your company can be
3. Having customer testimonials as part of your prospects journey can speed up the sales process, making prospects decisions easier

Over the years we have produced many testimonial videos for our clients, so have learnt a lot from strategising, planning and creating these pieces of video content. Executed well, testimonial videos showcase the value of your work and help grow your business.

But, what makes a good testimonial video?

Here are a few key things to remember when creating a testimonial:

1. Capture a real moment

The whole point of a testimonial video is showing the human side of your business, so you don't want your customer to be reading like a robot off a script. Capturing a real-time reaction will make your video feel authentic and not staged, only enhancing the testimonial and its impact.

But at the same time, going in totally unscripted and with no plan is a recipe for disaster. You need to make sure you have an idea of what you want your customer to talk about before you start the process.

It can be difficult to find a balance between improvising and planning everything, but it is crucial to show your clients brand and personality as this is what is going to make your testimonial have an impact.

2. Talk about the why

It can be really tempting to get your customer to list off all the cool features of your product or service. But this is not what your audience cares about. They can find that information on your website.

Instead, use your customer testimonial video to talk about how those features will benefit them. What is your customer's pain point and how does your product or service solve them?

That is what will connect with and convince your audience.

3. Show tangible results

Following on from the previous point, when talking about the "why" be sure to support it with some tangible results.

Whilst having your client/customer sing your praises is important, specificity is one of the most powerful elements to a strong testimonial. Providing evidence and data for your prospect to digest will help them see how your product or service could help them in a tangible way and, of course, provide some credibility. 

So get your facts together!

4. Use a single customer

The most effective testimonials focus on one customer case study and go into more detail. We're talking about quality, not quantity. 

Having an in-depth case study that focuses on one customer and their experience of your product or service, helps prospects better understand the customers unique perspective and better understand how your product or service works and could work for them.

5. Feature different target audiences

Consumers prefer to see videos from people they can relate to, meaning you need to consider using testimonials from different types of customers to appeal to all of your prospective leads. Have a think about who your prospects are, their personas and what different testimonials you could create to target each of them.

This could mean creating multiple testimonial videos from different customers perspectives. Or it could mean you feature different users of your product or service from within one company. How does your product or service benefit different people within that business?

6. Quality production matters

It goes without saying that high quality production is vital to the success of any video, but too often, customer testimonials fall short of this. 

By taking the time and effort to produce a higher quality corporate video you are showing your prospects the care you invest in all aspects of your business.

See how it's done...

Box is a world famous content management, workflow and collaboration tool, that is used by enterprise level clients to manage, secure, share and govern content for internal and external purposes.

Venture was commissioned to create a customer success story about Eurostar, and communicate the transformation that the Box product offering has had to their business.

Here at Venture, we pride ourselves on creating high-quality customer testimonial videos in a variety of industries. If you'd like to check out some of our latest work, simply click here. You'll find animations for world famous brands such as Amazon, Natwest and Airbus.

If you want to know more about customer testimonial video production or want a quote for your business, please get in touch!