Make Your Testimonials Come Alive with Video! Part 1 - Options that Won't Break the Bank

Make Your Testimonials Come Alive with Video! Part 1 - Options that Won't Break the Bank

By Colleen Francis

In all my discussions with clients, there are two basic principles of improving your conversion rates that I've never had a single person dare debate: 1. Testimonials increase conversion rates, and 2. Video testimonials increase are even better.

It makes sense - the data shows that while only 70% of people trust what you say on your web site, 90% trust what your customers say. Add video to that an that effect is amplified. In fact, in its Landing Page Survey, MarketingSherpa surveyed business-to-business companies and found that adding a Video Testimonial was the number 1 rated tool for increasing landing page conversions.

So, given those numbers, we've all got video testimonials on our web site, right?Eek! For most, this is not the case. If we all understand why video testimonials are important, why do we not use them more? In short, we perceive them as being a huge pain… Difficult to gather, difficult to publish. And if you're thinking about a professional videographer going out to a customer site or event, it also can be very expensive.

If you are concerned about how difficult and expensive it is to get a video testimonial, I've got great news: it doesn't have to be. Today, there are options available to you to get a video testimonial that don't require you to hire a video crew. I'm going to summarize your options here then explore them in more detail over the next few newsletters…

Be Your Own Videographer. If you routinely meet with your clients or see them at events or workshops you hold, it's a great opportunity to capture them on video. And the good news is that you don't have to spend a fortune! You can get very good quality results for the web with relatively inexpensive equipment. But there are some pre-requisites that you'll want to have at hand and you'll have to do a bit of video editing (I'll discuss these in the next newsletter).

Make Your Customer Your Videographer (with some help). If you don't get a chance to regularly meet with your clients or just don't want to deal with video editing, an option for you is to have your customer record their own video message. Now, that can be a pain - you probably want to send them a camera, get them to return it and edit the video. The great news is there is a small, innovative company we know that will do it all for you at a very reasonable price. Pixability will manage the whole process for you including shipping out a camera, getting it back and editing the video results. A great option.

Remotely Record Your Customer. There is an additional tool that is available to you if you don't regularly meet your customers and really want to be cost effective - remotely record your customer over their webcam. More and more, your clients have web cams at work or at home, and you can leverage that to record a video message from them. For example, our own Testimonial Director service allows you to record a video right from the customers web cam and turn around and publish it to your web site. Now, the results are not going to be as high of video quality as the other options (although audio quality is typically great), but you can use this to quickly build your testimonial video library.

Regardless of the approach you take, a key element for success is making sure that you structure what the customer says. In all these cases, make sure that you provide the customer with a set of interview style questions so that you get the feedback you need to make an effective testimonial - one where the results of the using your product or service are clearly stated (read more here for specific advice on the questions to ask).In the next articles in this series, we'll explore these in greater detail with some specific advice on techniques, equipment and web site strategies…