One of the most effective ways to persuade your prospective clients is to show them real-life examples of how your product or service has positively impacted others lives. The significance of weaving authentic customer experiences into your narrative cannot be understated. In this guide, we are going to examine the steps of high-converting testimonial videos, and at the end of this article, you’ll have a clear roadmap to mastering testimonial videos.
First and foremost, it is crucial to understand why testimonial videos are such a powerful tool. Not only can testimonial videos help improve conversions by revealing the truth behind your promises, but they also allow viewers to hear reactions in their voices and see their customers’ faces while connecting to their narratives on a deeper psychological level. This is critical in a world where customers are inundated with unlimited options and learn how to live with untested assumptions.
At that point, testimonial videos are a powerful bridge as they convert engagement into action. They work on a principle of psychology termed social proof, when we look to others for advice on the best course of action based on their experiences.
In this article, we are going to delve into the strategic details behind making powerful testimonial videos—not just the ones that showcase good vibes left by your satisfied clients, but the videos that convert. No matter how experienced you are, there are enough details shared in this article for anyone to make testimonial videos that work.
Why Testimonial Videos Are So Effective?
Testimonial videos are successful due to the use of social evidence and storytelling, two primal factors of human beings that influence people’s decision-making.They present achievable, real-life stories to potential clients about the influence of a product or service on a person’s life or business, demonstrating the positive impact it has on them. Unlike advertisement materials, testimonials enhance credibility and cause the viewer to witness and listen to singing firsthand before and after tales of triumph and happiness. Additionally, the emotional link generated by the visual and auditory components of any video material can remarkably increase participation and retention rates.
Then this testimonial video is strategically placed on the landing page of the SaaS company, allowing potential clients to conveniently watch it. Watching a reputable business person endorse the viability of the software and the benefits their company has enjoyed from it is a solid argument. Think for a moment about the impact this type of video will have on your potential customers’ evaluation phase.
For prospective client’s, this connection between seeing similar success stories and visualizing potential outcomes for their own operations significantly increases SaaS company conversion rates—potential customers tend to take action after witnessing reliable, positive results from companies similar to theirs.
Examples of Great Testimonial Videos
Testimonial videos are an effective way to establish credibility and trust in the ever changing world of digital marketing. The testimonial videos that challenge the conventions of traditional narrative are the most creative. Creative ways are used in innovative testimonial videos to interest viewers and create a lasting impression, going beyond the conventional “talking head” model. They make use of video’s ability to emotionally engage viewers by presenting real-life stories and emphasizing the influence your business has on actual people.
We at 7 Hills Productions have put together a testimonial video—appreciated by The company’s Chief Financial Officer, that focused on PrimeTime Produce’s flagship solar project. This narrative, focusing on the CFO’s approval, proved crucial for the solar company and helped close numerous deals by leveraging his credibility. We used creative storytelling and cinematic elements to overcoming challenges to authentically capture the project’s success and its positive reception. This particular video demonstrated both our skills and the impact of authentic testimonials in the business world.
The cinematic project, completed by 7 Hills Productions, substantially expanded the client’s digital assets, especially YouTube. The prudent investment in this online asset resulted not only in a more prevalent presence of the client online but also contributed to a growing surge of merchandise purchases. The client has also drawn a deep line of praise between their team and our story-building and project-leading capabilities. At 7 Hills Productions, we pride ourselves on weaving compelling stories that resonate with audiences, thereby fostering our clients’ success.
How to Create Your Testimonial Video in 11-Steps?
Creating testimonial videos from scratch involves careful planning and execution processes to ensure the message resonates with your target audience. Below are the 11 steps of creating testimonial videos that convert, followed by detailed explanations of each step:
- Identify Your Objectives
- Select Your Testimonial Candidates
- Prepare Your Questions
- Choose the Right Equipment and Setting
- Coordinate Schedules and Logistics
- Conduct the Interview
- Edit the Video
- Incorporate Branding Elements
- Optimize for Different Platforms
- Publish and Promote
- Measuring Success
1. Identify Your Objectives
Determine what you want to achieve with your testimonial video before embarking on the creation process. Defining your objective is crucial because it determines the direction and focus of your entire project, from selecting the right testimonial candidates to choosing the platforms for distribution. Think about which is your main goal, whether increasing brand awareness, boosting sales or building trust. Setting clear objectives will guide your testimonial video, including the choice of customer stories you want to tell and the key messages you want to highlight foremost.
Ensure your objectives for the testimonial video align with your overall marketing strategy. If your marketing strategy emphasizes building trust, your testimonial video should focus on highlighting the long-term customer satisfaction and the reliability of your product or service.
Consider your main target audience when setting your objectives. Understanding who they are and what they want will help you create a video that resonates with their wants or needs. For instance, if your target audience values sustainability, featuring testimonials from customers who have benefited from the eco-friendly aspects of your product could be a powerful approach.
2. Select Your Testimonial Candidates
Everything starts with the right testimonial candiadate! It is one of the most critical components to create an effective testimonial video. Customers who have seen real value from your product or service and are equally excited about sharing their journey make the best candidates . Look for candidates who appeals to different audiences and stands out with their unique stories are crucial to cover a greater audience.
Start by clearly identifying the different segments of your customer base. These segments could vary based on the industry they work, company size, role within their company, geographical location, or the specific pain points they have faced that your product helped them to overcome. Understanding these customer segments properly will help you to choose the candidates who appeals to your target audience accurately.
The best testimonial candidates are those who can share unique detais about your product or service, tell people how your offering solve their problem and enhanced their quality of life. Through the potential customers perspective, when someone testifyng about your product or service, it is crucical to touch on details that only someone who has actually experienced the product or service can explain and not to remain superficial. Such stories will resonate more with prospective clients. Look for customers who are also enthusiastic about sharing their unique and positive experiences. Enthusiastic customers are more likely to convey genuine passion in their testimonial, making the video more engaging.
Once you have the potential candidates, reach out them personally to ask them if they want to make collaboration for testimonial video. It is important to reach them out personally, it shows that you value them and their story. Explain the purpose, what’s involved in the process, and how their story can help others. Make sure to address their potential concerns they might have about participating the testimonial video.
Although most customers who love your product or service will participate your the video voluntarily, you could give them some small token of appreciation can be nice gesture. This may be a future discount, other forms of a feature on your website or even access to a top tier of your service.
Important Note: Ensure you have the legal aspects covered by obtaining written consent from your testimonial candidates to use their image, video, voice and story in your marketing efforts.
When everyhting is ready, prepare your candidates for the video shoot. Make their task easy, by providing guideliness on what to wear, what to expect during the shoot, and tips for speaking on camera. You may also share the questions you’ll be asking in advance to give them time to think about them.
3. Prepare Your Questions
Create a set of questions that makes your candidate they will tell about compelling stroies as an answer. Start with general questions about their experience, then delve into specific ones about how your product or service solved their problem or improved their situation.
The objective is to showcase responses that verify the benefits of your offering in a relatable and reliable way. Here are some quick tips about what kind of questions can lead you a very-well interview:
- Ask questions that encourage your subjects to offer concrete examples and results. For instance “Do you have any specific outcomes or metrics that show how our product or service has affected your business?” Specific outcomes are the most convincing part of testimonials.
- Stay away from technical terms or overly complicated inquiries that could deter those who are tuned in. The idea is to make the coversation accesible and understanding for everyone.
- Structure your questions in a way that builds up the conversation in a logical flow. You should begin with open-ended questions that slowly turn into more specific inquiries.
- Depending on the respondent’s answer, consider asking follow-up questions. This can lead to dig deeper into the subject and help your provide additional context to readers.
- Before the interview, review your questions with your colleagues who know the candidate to ensure they are clear, concise, and aligned with your marketing objectives.
4. Choose the Right Equipment and Setting
Before the interview, ensure you have the right equipment in place to execute your testimonial video professionally.
The camera you use for the clips is one of the most critical equipment, considering high quality videos provide a more professional touch to your content. While there are different type of cameras to choose from, such as DSLR, mirrorless, and high-end smartphones, you should choose what best meets your needs, for example, a camera for a low light environment.
The quality of the audio also cannot be underestimated. People need to clearly hear everything that’s been said; otherwise, you can quickly lose their limited interest. A high-quality microphone, whether it is a lavalier for good close-up sounding or a shotgun for general voice recording, will help you deliver your message loud and clear.
Lighting and stability are also crucial factors to create more profesional looking testimonial videos. Natural light may look soft and flattering, but professional lighting equipments will provide a consistent brightness level and prevent unwanted shadows. And a stable picture with no to little unwanted shoves will be ensured by using a tripod, gimbal or any stabilizing gear.
The setting of your testimonial video is just as vital as the equipment. The background needs to be fittingly significant yet not draw attention away from the subject. Similarly, the lighting should be controlled to prevent backlighting. Moreover, the location chosen must be quiet to avoid disruptive ambient noise while preserving the integrity and intention of the testimonial giver’s words.
Each of these elements—camera, audio, lighting, stability, and setting—plays a significant role in creating a successful testimonial video. Making decent selections may seem like a lot to take in, but grasp the essentials of what you’re looking for in equipment and settings, and it becomes relatively straightforward to produce something attractive and refined.
You don’t have to spend a fortune; many smartphones are adequate if utilized correctly. We’ll go over the specifics of equipment and setting selection more closely in a future article, but for now, it’s a good idea to keep these more generalized ideas in mind.
5. Coordinate Schedules and Logistics
One of the most important phase of creating a testimonial video is to coordinate schedules and logistics for the day of the film, which ensures that everything runs smoothly once the cameras start rolling.This necessitates extensive levels of forethought and coordination to ensure that your testimonial candidates, crew, and any other relevant stakeholders can be on site at the same time.
Contact your selected testimonial candidates to determine their schedules first. If you have dates in mind, put them to your production team and see what can work for everyone present. For a remote shoot, you must ensure that the candidates have access to cameras and stable internet connections.
Choose a place that suits both the aesthetic and feeling of your video as well as somewhere that is easily accessible and convenient for all parties. Ensure you have the necessary permission to film is required if you are filming on-site at a business or in a public location.
Once you have confirmed the date and location, prepare a detailed schedule for the shoot day as follows:
- Arrival times for all the participants and crew members
- Time for setting up the equipment
- The order of interviews or shots
- Breaks, especially if all the work cannot be done in a few hours
- A buffer to account for any delays or unexpected difficulties.
Sort all the equipment you will need, such as cameras, microphones, lights, and other items you may need to set the scene. Additionally, take spare batteries, memory cards, and backup equipment to avoid potential disasters.
Important Note: Always have a contingency plan for unforeseen circumstances, such as bad weather, technical difficulties, or last-minute cancellations. Having alternative dates, backup locations, or additional equipment ready can help you adapt to any situation.
6. Conduct the Interview
The interview process is the most critical moment of the testimonial video creation. The content of your video is born at this stage, where we hear the experiences and testimonials of our participants.
During the interview; ensure your subjects feel comfortable, provide them a relaxed environment and ask them the questions as per your list. Spend a few minutes to introducing yourself to the interviewee and building rapport before the camera starts rolling. Researchers say that social cognitive theory allows for a reduction in anxiety at the time of the interview.
As for the introduction, begin the interview with simple open-ended questions to let the interviewee talk and follow his/her narrative easily. Afterward, interviewers should stick to the questions based on the previous answers but still motivate their subjects to share personal examples and feelings.
This aspect is very important, as the right emotions and viewers’ responses are connected only when the latter see their lives and experiences in those of the interviewee. To end the interview, it is always good to thank the person for his/her time and efforts. Ask them if there’s anything they’d like to add, which can sometimes lead to valuable insights that weren’t covered in the set of questions.
7. Edit the Video
Now that you have gathered all the necessary footage, make sure the final video grasps your audience’s attention rather than overwhelming them. As you transform the raw footage into an engaging narrative, you would like the video to have a sense of the journey your product or services take its user to.
In addition, make sure to include appealing b-roll footage that provides more depth and context to the video. Keep an eye on the timing – do not allow the video to be boring by avoiding long periods dedicated to the same topic. Lastly, use text overlays and graphics sparingly to emphasize key points or convey essential information, always aligned with your brand’s visual identity. Color correction and grading can make your video not only good but also professional. At last, finalize your video with a call-to-action to show what exactly should be done after it.
Do not forget about audio. You should edit it as well: enhance the clarity of your voice and reduce the background noise.
Editing is the part where your video comes to life. Since the success of your testimonial video is highly dependent on its editing, a more detailed article dedicated to this matter will come next.
8. Incorporate Branding Elements
Integrating branding elements is crucial for affirming your brand identity and maintaining consistency in your overall marketing efforts. To achieve this, determine which elements of your branding need to be incorporated. It could be your logo or brand colors, perhaps specific fonts, slogans or any noticeable motifs and patterns that serve as a branding trigger . Here are a few insights to help you:
- Put your logo strategically within the video to maximize visibility, and make sure that it is not intrusive.
- Utilize your brand’s colors and fonts in titles, subtitles, graphics, and text overlays to provide consistency.
- If your brand has unique messaging or a slogan that aligns with the content of the testimonial video, find a way to represent it in the video.
- The video’s style and tone should be representative of your brand’s personality. Based on the nature of your brand, that can mean formal and professional, or it can mean casual and friendly.These things should be reflected through the music and editing, as well as how the people giving interviews are framed.
- Use b-roll footage that involves your product, service, or other brand representation.
- Utilize music and sounds that reflect your brand. The audio represents your visuals in cohesion and contributes, together with them, to a better viewer’s recognition of the brand they are dealing with.
- End your video with a brand-directed call to action: whether that’s visiting your website, following your brand on social media, or signing up for a newsletter, it’s up to you.
Incorporating branding elements effectively requires a balance between visibility and subtlety.
9. Optimize for Different Platforms
Being able to optimize your testimonial video appropriately for every platform is another important tool in ensuring that your message can reach and connect with your audience – regardless of where they might be.
Each social media platform or digital platform has certain constraints and rules around the optimal video format, dimensions, length, and even type of content that is most popular.
By starting your initial planning with a good understanding and awareness of these factors, you can help ensure that your effort will have the desired impact. For instance, formats that are short, and fast-paced and that work for Instagram and Twitter, might need to be made longer or slower depending on your selected platform. This can also mean changing the aspect ratio of video footage—for instance, cutting and editing one’s work to fit square feed aesthetic.
Depending on these characteristics of the target audience on each platform, your testimonial video content may not require any drastic changes, but only slight adaptations.
The option that highlights professional benefits might be more suited to LinkedIn, while the other option focuses on the enhancements it makes to your lifestyle may be more popular on Instagram.
Besides the content that you put in the video, you can make use of the potential each platform offers you as a content creator, such as interactive elements and links. These are likely to provoke the audience to take more direct action as opposed to indirect interaction with the content. It is purely for you and your aim of creating the content that enables you to take maximum advantage of the potential that online platforms offer. However, the appearance of your video message could be the same with a consistent brand message across all its versions. It is necessary to ensure that this is aligned, and the video maintains a consistent brand image.
In essence, multiple modifications like technical adjustments or content adaptation take place to change the video to fit into different platforms.
10. Publish and Promote
This stage ensures that your testimonial video’s potential works to its full extent when it comes to increasing your brand’s exposure and credibility. Since the video has already been adjusted to publish on the various platforms, you will know exactly how to make its impact even stronger.
First, publish it in the spots that are most impactful for your target audience. This includes uploading the video to various places on your website – for example, the testimonial video page or the homepage – in an attempt to engage every visitor to the site. At the same time, the video needs to be distributed to the followers on your social media channels to increase the number of viewers even more.
Combine this step with your email marketing strategy, meaning that you can embed the video post into your newsletters, or send a link to a targeted segment of your audience that is most likely to respond to the testimonial.
Remember that the video’s content has to be adjusted to meet the results expected from each platform. If professional outcomes are more in focus, make this version more suitable for the LinkedIn audience; if the improvements in lifestyle can seem more relevant, use Instagram as a distribution channel.
Use platform-based functions to encourage the viewers to take action and do it now. Keep your typical brand language principles across the different versions. It will allow the views to strengthen the association with your brand and will make sure they get the message you intended to convey, regardless of the channel they watched your video on.
In addition to direct publishing, consider paid efforts to get your video in front of more eyes. Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube have options for advertising—allowing you to define your video’s intended audience—making it probable that new potential customers will see the film, even if they haven’t been exposed to your brand at this point.
Furthermore, consider extending your film’s reach through influencers or partners. Influencers with a strong following in your sector will introduce your product to a broader but still designated audience. Additionally, permitting pleased clients to share the video will increase its authenticity by virtue of this personal endorsement. Ultimately, during the publishing and promoting stage of your video, use a mixture of paid and organic strategies to most successfully get your testimonial video in front of the right people.
11. Measuring Success
To understand how successful your testimonial video is and to what extent it contributes to your marketing goals, you need to measure its success.
First, you need to define key performance indicators that reflect the goals you set at the beginning of your project. These KPIs might include the number of views, the level of engagement expressed in the form of likes, shares, and comments, and conversion rates – how many people your video leads to your website or how many of them converted into clients. Moreover, understanding the video’s watch time metric is also important because it shows you how much of your video your viewers find engaging or when they are bored enough to close it.
To learn these metrics, you need access to YouTube Analytics, Facebook Insights, or other platforms that provide you with the data mentioned.
Here, you can also see demographics on your viewers’ age, gender, location, and much more. It is also important to understand that the data alone does not determine the video’s success. Because of this, you might also read the comments or direct messages your viewers left under the video – this might give you valuable feedback you will not find in the numbers.
To sum up, measuring how successful your testimonial video is means understanding how engaging it is and what percentage of viewers it leads to take action. An overview of measuring the success message is not enough, and in an upcoming article, we will address the topic in greater depth with regards to numerous additional metrics and analytics approaches.
To Sum Up…
Crafting high-converting testimonial videos is a combination of art and science. There are multiple critical steps, each of which is key for the final product to resonate with the audience and lead to the desired outcomes.
From identifying clear goals, choosing testimonial candidates, to recording their stories, all stages need to be meticulously planned and executed.
This guide offered a comprehensive roadmap for businesses to plan creating their first testimonial video and then use these seven steps to craft a video that not only shows real, positive customer experiences with your brand but also leads to engagement and conversion.
Over the next few weeks, we will publish in-depth articles on each of the steps, giving you the tools and knowledge to truly master the art of high-converting testimonial videos.
If you want a professional team to help you flourish your testimonial videos, contact 7 Hill Productions. With our experience in video production and in-depth knowledge of the art of making content convert, our proficient team will transfigure your customer success stories into stories that don’t just inspire but compel people to take action.
Contact 7 Hill Productions today to make your testimonial videos a catalyst for conversion.
