Testimonial videos, it’s fair to say, have a very different flavour to almost any other form of marketing communication that your firm could produce – especially when compared to more obviously self-promotional content. In short, when they are executed well, such videos convey an authenticity and credibility that could be crucial to persuading a prospective customer to make the final step to purchasing your products or services.
So, what are just some of the steps that you need to take yourself to ensure your testimonial videos strike the most appropriate tone and bring you results?
1. Aim for a ‘natural’ vibe throughout
With every artistic decision that you make about your company’s testimonial videos, it’s vital to give it as ‘natural’ a feel as possible. The interviewee, in particular, needs to be seen to be giving genuinely natural and credible responses when talking about your brand, products or services.
2. Provide insightful context
One other way to give your testimonial videos a ‘natural’ feel is to set it in some kind of discernible place – perhaps a certain city or town, or even simply wherever the video is being shot. This can be useful for adding some ‘background’ to the story of your company and interviewee.
3. Prepare, but don’t use a script
Continuing with the theme of ‘naturalness’, you risk losing this quality in your video if you use a script for the person being interviewed. On the other hand, however, attempting to completely improvise the interview could mean that you fail to make good use of your time with the interviewee and don’t ask the most insightful questions.
This makes striking the right balance between the two extremes crucial. You may do this by, for example, showing the interviewee the questions that you propose to ask them in advance, but without always rigidly sticking to this in the actual interview. This way, you can keep the dialogue free-flowing and conversational.
4. Appeal to the viewer’s emotions
What are you likely to remember most from watching a testimonial video – a list of the given product’s features, or one of the brand’s customers expressing how frustrated or unhappy they were with a particular situation, and how satisfied they were with how the product made their life easier?
Capturing the emotions that underpin the whole testimonial video is crucial for ensuring you reach your target customers’ hearts, and not merely their heads.
5. Edit the video for shortness and impact
While it may be the case that you could easily keep on chatting with a given customer for an hour or more about how your product or service helped them, it is unlikely that many of your video’s viewers will have that long an attention span.
This is where it can help to undercut some of the video’s ‘naturalness’ by editing it for length and effectiveness. A two or three-minute testimonial video, in which every single element contributes to the overall message you are attempting to convey, is likely to be much more impactful than footage of the entire conversation you had with the interviewee.
Remember that with testimonial videos, the name of the game is to, above all else, connect with a potential customer. It is therefore simplicity and proven techniques that often make the difference in achieving this, rather than sophisticated production or high technology.
If you are unsure about how to achieve the results that you desire with your own testimonial videos, why not contact the TMC team – whether in London or Ayrshire – for further advice and guidance, as well as to discuss our own video production expertise?
