Testimonial marketing strategy is crucial in business. The same applies to video testimonials. The reason this works so well is that it combines the powerful medium of video with the testimonial aspect of the customer experience. This appeals to people looking for a reason to try your brand or products. This blog will guide you about how to increase sales with customer testimonial videos.
Hubspot reported that your brand needs video because it creates an emotional connection, it is relatively an inexpensive way to build a following, and it builds trust among your potential customers. If done well, it can also create a solid leads base for your email marketing campaigns and increase your ROI.
How effective are testimonials?
Kissmetrics,, a well-known traffic analytics tool that businesses use to increase their targeted traffic, reported on customer testimonial statistics that customers respond to testimonials due to the authenticity factor. Part of the challenge of online business is to create “social proof” that your business is worth looking into. This helps you recruit new customers and leads so that you can grow your business further. An example of importance of testimonials on a website can actually be seen below.
Kissmetrics does point out that the testimonials should be credible. You shouldn’t get only your best friends to talk about your brand in an over glorifying way. This is frowned on by many people and is considered dishonest behavior.
Be Honest and Transparent to Increase Sales
Google has reinforced the need to have ethics and honesty in business. The publishing industry has too, with companies such as Amazon that insist on “honest reviews” of books and media rather than getting people to say great things all of the time.
Get Good Comments by Building Value
The way to encourage good comments is to first create a great product and do good business. No amount of good PR or advertising can hide a multitude of bad business practices. But if you are honest and recruit your satisfied customers to tell others about their experience, it will create a win-win situation.
You should build value in what you do every day within your business. Don’t depend on sales tactics to get you customers. People are tired of being “sold to.” They want authentic information about what your brand or service can do for them. The sad truth is they don’t care about your brand. They don’t care if you get rich online. They only care if you can provide them with enough value to justify doing business with you. If you can, they will love you. But you have to win them over.
Techniques in Getting Positive Testimonials
One way you can focus on getting positive testimonials is by contacting people from your “good review” list. In other words, once you have received positive reviews from customers on a product, they have made positive comments on your blog, or if they are repeat customers, they will be great prospects to contact for doing a video testimonial.
Once you get your list of people, you only need one at a time in most cases. Go through your list of brand evangelists who don’t mind sharing their positive experience and ask them questions in an interview format about your brand. Alternately, you can have them just talk about what they like most about your brand or their experience on your site.
Creating an Animated Video Testimonial
The animated video is the most effective type of video for ad campaigns. This video by Mowglymx Digital Services illustrates many of the statistics on animated video and why it is such a powerful medium. One of the statistics mentioned is that Nielson reported that around 36% of online consumers trust video ads as being true or credible.
With that being said, it is important that you do include valid and up-to-date information within your video so that you won’t take advantage of your viewers’ trust factor. By being transparent and faithful to your ethics in business, you will do more than win a customer for a day. You’ll win a brand evangelist for a lifetime.
Benefits of testimony: Tips in Creating Great Video Testimonials
If you are working on creating a video testimonial to promote your brand, here are a few tips to keep in mind.
- Be transparent.– As mentioned before, you should never forget about ethics when creating video testimonials. People trust video, according to the Nielson study. Don’t give them a reason not to trust your video. Don’t make the testimonial overly scripted. It will come off as “staged.” Instead, just ask your actors to speak naturally about their experience with your brand and why they liked it so much.
- Find people who appear genuine.– When looking for people to sit in on the videos and talk about your brand, make sure they are believable. Don’t get people who are too off-the-wall or overpowering, unless that appeals to your target audience. Always consider your target audience when creating any media that you are presenting to the public. The testimonial video should be total authentic.
- Watch the appearance of your actors.– You may think it’s “hip” to include a tattoo-bearing muscle man from a bike shop, but, unless you are selling motorcycles, it may backfire on you. Think of your target audience and how they will relate to your actors in the video.
- Use animation for full creative control.– If you want total control over your video while still including honest testimonials, you could use animated characters to tell your story. Create a story line that shows someone shopping at your store and then show the happy customer telling about your store in the last frames. For a full testimonial, have the character face the camera within your animation and have them tell the good aspects of their experience. Remember not to overdo the script.
- Use real voices to increase the level of authenticity.– By using real voice actors who sound authentic, you can capture the mood and message of your customer testimonials in an authentic way.
Bringing it All Together
By focusing on the message rather than the process, you can create a winning video testimonial that will be believable and engaging. People respond to animation better than talking head. So consider having a character animation or a whiteboard animation video created that captures your brand in its best light.
Enter Stage Left: Animated Video
That’s where we come in (no pun intended). We are AnimatedVideo.com and we have been creating amazing and original video content for businesses and brands of all sizes. You can see some of our best work here.
After you look over our work, ask yourself what you want your brand ambassadors to say to your target audience. Then consult with us and we can work up a great animated video that includes all of the things your testimonial is about.
Keep in mind that we are not just making up testimonials. This would not be ethical. It is extremely important for sustainability that you are honest with your customers and visitors. This will increase your revenue and conversions.
Instead, we can take a statement from one of your customers who has agreed to be a brand cheerleader for your company and include and incorporate that within your animated video.
That way, you are honest with people just the way your customers said it. It is just in another form that people respond to more.
AnimatedVideo.com can help you capture the essence of your client testimonials in a way that will make a lasting impression.
Contact us today to get started.
