Video Testimonials: Powerful, But Painful To Produce, Until Now

Today’s customers are built differently. They are tuning out sales messages, resistant to marketing speak and prefer self-serve over hour-long demos.

They’ve also got more choice than ever before when picking what products and services to use. We’re in the age of content, attention spans are shrinking and it feels like everyone is constantly trying to cut through the noise to get their message across.  

However, there is one piece of content that trumps all others: a happy, raving customer review (affectionately known as a testimonial). And there’s no better medium to deliver these testimonials than with video content.

But capturing these moments of customer delight on video quickly and authentically is a challenge many teams face. We throw video into the “too hard” basket and stick to the stock standard quotes, names and headshots on our website instead.

All the while, your sales team is yelling, “more customer content!” into the abyss, month-by-month, quarter-on-quarter, forever.

It makes sense that a good sales or marketing team is hungry for testimonial content: 72% of consumers say positive testimonials boost their trust in a business. And adding video into the mix supercharges this impact, with two thirds of consumers saying they’re more likely to make a purchase after watching a testimonial video.

The good news is that capturing authentic video testimonials isn’t as hard as it used to be. Enter Vouch: a delightful platform that helps you brief, capture, manage and share customer videos remotely, all within one browser tab.

So now that we’ve found the right tool for the job, let’s have a look at some of the best ways to increase response rates and start building your library of high-quality customer video testimonials.

Top Tips for Powerful Video Testimonials

Tip 1: Consistent collection is the key

Like any marketing activity, video testimonials shouldn’t be a one-off push. Instead, we see the best results from teams that focus on building a collection of customer testimonials that your sales and marketing teams can dip into and use whenever they need it.

The bigger the library of testimonials, the better you’ll be able to match the right testimonial to each use case and customer profile.

One team doing this exceptionally well is Airwallex - Phil de Winter, Head of Partnerships, has developed a process of asking partners  for a short video testimonial. He says it means his team now have a highly relevant testimonial for every new potential partner, which 'which has removed all the logistics and admin for the team’.

Using async video collection tools like Vouch ditch the barriers to entry (like getting your customers to jump in front of the camera) to make this process a breeze.

We’ve seen teams have success with gathering testimonials at many different points through the customer relationship, too. For example,  if you’ve just finished a great onboarding session, send a link out to capture feedback or the positive sentiment from your customer.

Or,  if a customer has given you an awesome NPS, this is a great time to ask for a video testimonial (which we can automate for you with Vouch).  

There are stacks of moments in every customer relationship where it’s a perfect inflection point to gather a customer story. Let’s use them! Remember, ongoing collection of customer stories is the goal, not a mad dash once a year.

Tip 2: Great questions make great answers

Your job is to make the video testimonial process as frictionless and easy as possible. And that means providing a clear list of questions for your customers to respond to.

Be intentional about what kind of feedback you want to capture and what message you want your customers to communicate.

But that doesn’t mean scripting responses either. Instead, keep things authentic and brief them with a list of hand picked questions that can help you produce a much better piece of content. We recommend somewhere between three to seven questions and prompts depending on your goal.

Need a hand? Check out our list of testimonial questions right here.

Tip 3: Standardised questions make great edits

Editing and compiling testimonial videos doesn’t have to be a headache. With a set of three to four standard questions, you’ll make your life a whole lot easier (and your videos more consistent, too).

With these standard questions, you can stitch together responses from multiple customers on the same question to build an edit that highlights a specific product benefit.

Here are a couple of ideas to get you started:

Question one: ‘How are you using [YOUR PRODUCT] in your business?’

This is a good question to gather a broad range of use cases from your customers. You can then edit your favourite responses together to use on your ‘use cases’ page or section of your website, or in your onboarding flow.

Question two: ‘How has [YOUR PRODUCT] helped your business?’

This is a good, open-ended question to gather benefit-focused messaging from your customers. You can even make the question more pointed to a specific benefit in your product messaging, for example:

• ‘How has [YOUR PRODUCT] helped your business close more sales?’
• ‘How has [YOUR PRODUCT] helped your business run more efficiently?’

You get the idea...

Tip 4:  Use video testimonial software

“Well of course a video testimonial platform would suggest this!”.

Yeah, we know. But truthfully, spending five figures (or even six figures, as we’ve heard through the rumour mill *gasps*) on one testimonial video feels a bit nuts with the tech that is available today.

Keep it short, keep it authentic and don’t make your customer sit in a room for hours on end while you put a spotlight on top of them, a mic under their shirt and tell them “just one more take!”.

Login to a tool like Vouch, set up your questions, send a link and let them record wherever and whenever it suits them. We promise it’s the future.

Tip 5: Share examples of previous testimonial videos

Let them check out what the end result will look like! It’s so much easier for clients to get their head around what’s expected of them, and be motivated to join in, if they can see examples from your other customers.

This is easy to do if you have a testimonials page, wall of fame, or a similar published space for these. But if not, you can always send them a couple of links to previous Vouch recordings or shared folders of videos you have.

If you have testimonials from impressive, top-tier companies in your line up, even better. It’s always more motivating to join in if the most aspirational brands have already taken part.

Even if you don’t have any video testimonials to share yet, check out these example video testimonials here - you can grab a real Vouch example from us.

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Tip 6: Make your clients feel valued

We’re always amazed by how much our clients want to help us grow Vouch. If you’re one of them, thank you!

For us, adding a personal message to let them know why we want them in the mix and how it’s going to add value has been met with nothing but enthusiasm.  Usually, it’s just a simple one liner and it’s enough to get a great response back.

We’ve tried to avoid sending bulk emails to our entire customer base, instead opting for ways to customise our request for each customer.  This sounds time consuming and not particularly scalable - but if you think about the data sitting in your CRM, you can still create a highly personalised but automated request that delivers that 1:1, real and human style to every customer.

One last learning we have to share is to be upfront about why you’re asking for a testimonial and where it’ll be used. It’s nice to help your customers feel in control about where they may see their face pop up once they’ve recorded the video.

Tip 7: Think about what will incentivise them

We’re not huge fans of the gift cards and discount codes - although we get that they have a role to play on certain occasions.

Often, the best incentives don’t have a dollar sign attached, especially for customers who are power users or highly loyal to your company. The opportunity to strengthen their connection to you is often enough. Whether it’s early access to new features, adding them to a customer advisory board or other VIP connections to your business.

It’s pretty logical, when we think of it in the context of our last tip. This step is all about making your happy customers feel valued and part of your team. So, it’s worth thinking about incentives that turn your customers into loyal brand advocates.

When it comes to nailing video testimonials, the bigger your library grows, the better quality of response you’re likely to gather. It’s the small learnings you keep gathering each time that helps you create a well-polished system that outputs incredible social proof that you can use right across your business.  We hope these tips help you as you’re scaling, and as you nail the process, send your tips back our way so we can level up.
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Like to try Vouch?

Loved by companies like Canva, Nike, Cisco, Stryker, HubSpot, Amazon and more, tools like Vouch make leveraging video in your business remarkably easy.

Be sure to book a Vouch demo today and chat with a video content expert.