Testimonial Video Tips Guaranteed to Grow Your Business

Key Takeaways

I'm gonna give you all my best tips for making the most compelling testimonial video possible and we're starting right now if you want to transform your website into a customer or lead generation machine I'll show you all my best tips tactics and secrets to get their best let's dive in hey guys I'm West McDowell web strategist for the deep end and if you're not subscribed to our channel yet you're definitely gonna want to do that just click the subscribe button and the little bell icon next to it so you never miss another video you need to succeed online so we're living in an online world and every business needs testimonials that's just the bare minimum but smart businesses take it one step further and get really compelling testimonial videos now these videos can do a lot of the heavy lifting for your marketing and your sales because praise coming directly from you as a business is never gonna be as powerful as if it's coming from other people just like your customers who you've already helped so really a compelling customer testimonial video can move more people down through your sales funnel in a shorter amount of time moving them much closer to a closed deal so what goes into making it one of these compelling customer testimonial videos and how can you actually produce one yourself without spending a fortune well you know from a high-level perspective it really has to accomplish two things it has to show how a previous or current customer was changed for the better by your product or service and the second objective is it has to be watchable now we're going to talk about both points in detail starting with telling that complete story and the best way to do that is to make sure that your customer is the hero of that story the hero is not you or your business it has to be your customer so essentially they're the hero and your business is the guide that gets them to where they want to be so essentially your customer is the Marty and you are the duck so let's go to the basic story arc that you want your customer testimonial video to follow so first you want to introduce the main character which is of course your customer next what do they want or what did they want going into it then like in any good story there's an obstacle that they have to overcome so what is that obstacle how did they overcome it which is where your business comes into play so how did your business finally help them get what they wanted and then in the end how were they transformed as a result now if this sounds complicated don't worry I'm gonna give you a very simple 90 second framework that you can use to make this work so in the first 30 seconds just introduce your customer and what they want it then the next 30 seconds they'll just talk about the remain obstacle maybe it's other things they tried that didn't work or they just one weren't what they were looking for then the final 30 seconds they're just gonna talk about how your business came in and saved the day and how that impacted them for the better now how do you actually get your customer to tell this kind of story well the biggest trap I see businesses fall into when they're making a video like this is they just let their customer kind of talk freeform at length which can really result in a meandering kind of video in a really soft testimonial instead you want to ask very specific questions which are gonna allow this story to be told once you edit it together and edit out the parts we're actually asking the questions now I'm actually gonna leave all of the questions in the description below I'm not gonna get into all of them here but you can find them all right below this video now it's really important that you actually get these questions to your customer in advance so they aren't caught off guard when you ask any of them and then I would even say when you get to the shoot before you get started just ask make sure they made all the questions made sense to them or if they need any guidance before you get started and just coach your customer up to know to rephrase the question into their answer so if you're to ask them what's your name you don't want them just to say John you want them to say my name is John because in the end video you don't want any of your questions to be asked you just want it to appear as if the customer is speaking on their own so then what's the interviews over yours gonna isolate the best parts that tell the most compelling story using that 30 30 30 second framework okay so that's how you get the story but how do we make this video watchable you know most people unfortunately have an attention span of somewhere around 8 seconds so it's really important to hold their attention for the entire 90 seconds of your video testimonial which means you want to make it as visually appealing and interesting and varied as you possibly can now of course there's a lot of really pro level things that I could recommend that would just be expensive and likely confusing and make you just want to give up on the whole thing so I'm not gonna do that my aim here today is to show you a few really great ways to get as close as possible to that pro level look without spending much if anything at all so let's start with the camera you know you could usually spend a lot of money on a new camera but it's not necessary you probably have a smartphone right in your pocket and almost all of them have a great camera built into it so by all means just use your smartphone and if you wanted to get a little fancier with that there are apps you can buy it'll give your smartphone footage a little bit more of a cinematic film like look there's one called filmic Pro that costs $14.99 in the App Store it's totally not required but if you want to go for it the much more important thing I want you to focus on is actually audio most people are much more likely to put up with bad video than audio so if you're gonna spend money anywhere here's where I recommend spending it now the sound that comes out of your iPhone by itself isn't horrible but it can be much improved with a simple lavalier mic like the one I'm wearing right now and I will leave a link to that in the description below on Amazon just to compare here's how it sounds with the mic and then here's how it sounds with the audio were picked up just by my camera maybe not necessarily a deal-breaker but you can definitely tell the difference and it sounds much better with the microphone next try to choose a setting that has a decent looking background and really good lighting so maybe just make sure it looks professional in the background you clear out all the clutter if there is any and try to get your subject to be facing a window because that's generally the cheapest way of getting really good quality light natural light always looks really good on camera next you'll probably want to stabilize the image and you can get a simple little tripod like this on Amazon that will hold a smartphone and you can set it on a tabletop next you want to vary the angles up you know so between questions try moving the camera to a different spot or at least to get closer or further away you might notice periodically in my videos that I'll zoom in here and there and the reason I do that is just to keep attention by changing it up every now and then now my next point has to do with the subject themselves your customer be sure you only ask people who you think are actually going to be engaging on camera if someone comes across as super boring it's really gonna get people to tune out so you want to make sure you get people who are kind of more high-energy and before you get started even people that do have good energy you'll find do get a little bit nervous once the camera comes out so you might have to spend a few minutes with the camera out just kind of talking to them joking with them having a fun conversation and that'll likely get their guard down a little bit once it's time to actually start rolling then once the interview is over you're definitely going to want to get a good amount of b-roll footage which is basically just cutaway shots of objects in their office or in their house of them working and finally of them you know enjoying your product or service then you're just gonna want to kind of cut some of that footage into the final video over them talking because it is hard just looking at a talking head for an extended period of time this keeps the action moving and varied and interesting then lastly I definitely recommend including some royalty-free music to play underneath the video you know if you've ever watched a movie I'm sure you have you know that music definitely can enhance them even if it's on a subconscious level so be sure you choose music that really goes with the mood of the testimonial so if it's kind of a heartfelt testimonial for a doctor you might want something that's more uplifting and emotional versus if you're a doggie daycare you might want something that's just kind of more fun and upbeat and no matter what kind of vibe you're going for you can find a lot of pretty good royalty-free music right here on YouTube and I will leave a link to that in the description below as well now in the end you've got a few options you can cut this all together yourself if you feel confident enough to do that you can use a pretty consumer-level program like iMovie that will most likely do the job for you but if you'd rather outsource this and it's something you don't want to handle you can go to a site like upwork and find somebody who is pretty skilled at this and you give them all the footage and you kind of let them know which parts of the video you want to use you'll be able to get a finished video for under $100 in most cases ok I know that was a lot to cover but now I want to hear from you and I want to know specifically what was the biggest takeaway that you got from this video I really want to know so leave that or any questions you have in the comments below I will read through all of them and I'll answer any questions that I can all right so if you're not subscribed to our channel yet you're definitely gonna want to not miss out so just click the circle icon or right over here to instantly subscribe and if I can help you out with any of this kind of stuff strategic website or anything I want you to book a strategy session just between you and me and you can get that by clicking this box right over here alright guys West McDowell here for the deep end I'll see you next time