Create Testimonial Videos that Convince in 4 Steps [+ Examples]

In today’s marketing landscape, a brand’s ‘trust me’ line is no longer valid to many customers. 

Even if you claim your product can work miracles, clients will take one look and say…

But get another customer to say the same thing and they’ll be rushing to check your page. 

Why?

People trust their fellow customers more than they trust brands. So if you want to build trust with them or get them to listen, you need to go through other customers.  

That’s what many brands like yours are doing already. 

They’re getting existing clients to share their testimony on video so others can hear about the brand’s ‘good news.’ 

And guess what?

That’s precisely the strategy you’re set to learn all about in this guide.

We’ll take you through:

• What testimonial videos are.
• Why you need them.
• How to ask customers for them.
• How to create them.

It’s the full package!

So c’mon people, let’s get to it.

What Is a Testimonial Video?

A video testimonial is a short video where customers share personal stories of how your product has transformed their work, lives, or processes. 

It’s like written customer reviews, yeah? The kind you see on G2 or Capterra. 

But in this case, your customers agree to go on video and provide more detailed testimonies of their experience with your product or service. 

A good example is this testimony for Slack from Adam of the Sandwich Video team. 

Adam and his team went on to say how they weren’t interested in using Slack at first. 

Then, they tried it.

And the rest, as they say, is history. 

Testimonial videos give potential customers a different perspective on your product. They get to see it as effective and valuable. 

A “this brand knows what they’re doing” kinda vibe. 

Now it’s way different from unboxing videos, explainer videos, before-and-after visuals, and product demos. 

All those types of videos are great. 

But their main goal? 

It’s about highlighting the main features of a product, the transformation experienced because of it, and what it can do. 

Testimonials, on the other hand, focus on personal experiences of what the product has done. 

They are also different from review videos too, and here’s how…

Testimonial video vs. review video

Review videos are like an evaluation of your product or services. Here, the reviewer is trying to assess your product’s quality or features. 

Does it truly have everything you claim it has? 

It’s basically putting your product through the wringer. And the aim is to provide the audience with an unbiased opinion of your product. 

If you think about it, review videos are like music reaction videos where a creator shares their unfiltered opinion while listening to music. 

How about testimonial videos?

They’re stories, literally. 

A story about how a customer stumbled on your product. 

What they were facing before they came across your brand. 

Their experience afterward. 

How transformative the product has been. 

In testimonial videos, a customer has seen firsthand what your product has to offer and is willing to share that experience in detail with others.

Why Customer Testimonial Videos Matter

Three words: Human connection. Trust. 

Customer testimonials have an effect on customers that reviews don’t. Sure, reviews are objective and you do need them.

But in some cases, they’re kinda vague. Or they’re written by people who use the product for purposes other than what it’s designed for. 

Prospects read it but don’t get the clarity they need. 

Client testimonials, on the other hand, take prospects on a journey using real-life stories. 

And you know what those stories do?

Help prospects trust and develop a connection with your brand. They hear customers like them talk about you and just feel they’re in the right place. 

Then before you know it, conversion rates begin to go through the roof. 

According to a Wyzowl report, 2 out of every 3 people in their survey said they’re more likely to buy a product after watching a testimonial video. 

Another 77% said watching testimonials have convinced them to buy a brand’s product. 

That’s just a report on the consumer’s side.  

On the marketer’s side, here’s what we found. 

Seventy-two percent of marketers in a survey said they got a return on investment (RO) of between 50% and 500% when using video testimonials in their marketing campaigns. 

More than half of marketers surveyed said they’ve witnessed an increase in conversions of more than 25% in campaigns with testimonials. 

Here’s one of those marketers after checking their return on ad spend (ROAS)...

Sounds like something you’ll wanna invest in too, right?

Well if you’re gonna pull that off, you need to have willing customers ready to go on camera.

Let’s show you how to get them involved in your video magic.

How to Ask Customers to Create Testimonial Videos

It’s a big ask, to be honest. 

While it can be as simple as saying, “Do you mind recording a video of how helpful our product has been?”, it’s not always that easy.

Your best bet is to have a structure in place so you get the right responses when you ask. 

Here’s a format to help you create that structure. 

Choose the right moment

When asking for favors, it’s super important to pick the right moment. 

Too soon and you’ll scare customers away. Too late and you may not get the right vibe. 

So, what is the right moment? 

It’s when the stars of delight, sincerity, and enthusiasm are twinkling in your customer’s eyes. 🙃

…And how do you know when that is?

• When the customer has been around for a while. Approaching new customers is not a great idea. 
• When the customer is fresh off a positive interaction with your brand, like a great sales experience, product delivery, etc.
• When it’s a happy moment, like a brand anniversary or other milestone. 
• When you’ve just had positive feedback from the customer.

Personalize your outreach

The way you ask customers can affect the kind of response you get. 

If it’s generic, your request will sound like a choice they can overlook. That means limited responses, if any. 

How do you avoid this?

By adding personality to your messages.

Start your email or Instagram DM by addressing the customer by their name. For the record, ‘Hello there’ or ‘Greetings’ is generic. Go with ‘Hi Daryl’ instead.

Reference a few transactions they’ve made with you in the past, so they know they’re on your mind. 

You also wanna highlight why you picked them specifically and how you think their message will help.

Provide guidelines, not scripts

In making your request, giving out scripts for their stories will likely do more harm than good. 

How so?

Well, the final video might come off as biased and stilted. 

While wanting to create a script for them might come from a good place, it will influence their testimony. 

Your best bet is to provide a guideline. 

This will help them tell their stories and stay focused without drifting away. 

The guideline could be a set of questions. 

• What were you trying to solve with our product or service?
• What was your previous solution like?
• Which of our product’s features stood out for you?
• What’s the one thing you’ve really enjoyed about working with us? 

Questions like these are straightforward. 

Think of them as pointers that allow customers to express their thoughts without sounding biased. 

Highlight ease of participation

When you reach out, be sure to inform them how to create the video. 

Perhaps give them options. 

If you’ve got an in-person office, they either come in and you record them or they do it themselves. 

And if they decide to go the DIY route, here’s what you wanna do:

• Recommend easy-to-use apps they can use. 
• Share clear step-by-step instructions on how to record the video.  
• Show them how to submit the testimonial video. 
• Offer tech support to assist them every step of the way. 

Essentially, if you think of anything that can help out, share it with them. 

Express gratitude and follow up

Once they’ve agreed to record the video, let them know how much that means to you and the brand. 

You wanna, again, highlight the impact their testimonial will have on your brand. 

Why is this important?

You’ll be strengthening your relationship with them. They’ll see themselves as part of the family. 

A certified stakeholder if you will. 

With this approach, they’ll be more motivated. 

And then you also wanna encourage them to share their testimonial online so it has more reach and views. 

Finally, follow up with a personalized thank-you note as the icing on the cake. 

But what if they decide they’ll come in so you can record them?

How do you go about that?

Here’s how…

How to Create Compelling Testimonial Videos in 4 Steps

To create high-quality testimonial videos that’ll have a magical impact on your audience, here are four steps to follow. 

Step #1: Identify your target audience

First thing you wanna do is define who gets to see your video content. 

Sure, you probably have a good idea of your ideal customer, but the video may not be for them. 

Let’s say you run a cosmetic brand. 

If the customer sharing their testimonial is a professional model, their experience may not resonate well with your average customer. Although both can be your customers, they’re in different places. 

So, what’s the solution? 

Identify the right audience for the video to be certain you’re reaching them.  

How do you do that?

• Identify and categorize the pain points your primary audience faces. 
• Create customer personas based on these classifications. 
• Highlight where they’re located and note their interests.

This way, when a customer from any category shares their testimony you know just whom to target within your community.

Step #2: Choose the right subjects

Before you ask a customer to record a testimonial, you need to ensure they can deliver the kind of storytelling experience you want. 

To know if they can, here are some questions to answer:

• Do they love your product or service well enough to do that?
• Can they properly articulate their experiences?

Now, you’ll know the answer to these questions if you’ve:

• Spoken to them about their experience with your product. Were they eloquent enough?
• Reviewed their recent feedback. Was it mostly positive? 

If the answer to both questions is yes, you’ve got yourself a winner. 

Also, if you can have a variety of these ‘winners’, even better. So instead of one customer, you collaborate with several of them to connect with real people across the board. 

Not sure how to pull off working with multiple customers?

You can collaborate with influencers using a platform like Insense. You just need to send your product over so they can give a testimonial that’s not biased.

Step #3: Tell a story

Even though a testimonial is a form of video marketing strategy, it’s primarily a story.  

A story told by satisfied customers of their journey in using your product. 

And that should be the focus every step of the way. 

To pull that off, you need to allow customers to speak in their own words. That’s why we talked earlier about only providing guidelines, not scripts. 

Step #4: Highlight benefits and features

At the same time, the story needs to follow a pattern. 

In telling their story, ensure customers are specific about the actual ways your product was helpful. 

That means drilling down about the features they used that transformed their experience. 

You get the point. 

To make the video more captivating, you might wanna throw in clips of the product in action when the customer is highlighting a feature. 

Now that’s a short template on how to create a testimonial video. 

But aside from these steps, there are other tips that, when followed, will give you the kinda success-story video you want.  

Let’s go over some of them.

Best Practices for Authentic Video Testimonials

A testimonial can help you develop an emotional connection with your audience. 

It provides social proof that’ll get them to trust you. 

However, achieving that is beyond just asking customers to come in and hitting the record button on your camera. 

Here are some tips that can help in producing a great testimonial video:

Record subjects in their natural environment

Wanna get the best version of the customer’s experience on video?

Meet them in an environment they’re comfortable in. 

Their happy place if they’ve got one — their own office, home, or favorite park. 

Doing this kinda reaffirms the positive experience they have with your brand. As such, they’ll be more than willing to do all they can to ensure you’ve got a high-quality video. 

It’s a case of happy customers, amazing customer testimonial videos.

Capture genuine emotions 

Do you know why stories and movies are always such a delight?

Because people can express their emotions through them. 

They see a character that resonates with them and just like that, they form a connection. 

If you want the video to have that kinda impact on prospective customers, you need to apply a similar strategy. 

What does that mean?

Shooting the video in a way that appropriately conveys the customer's emotions. 

It also means taking shots from different angles so you have quality B-rolls that’ll make the video engaging. 

Zoom in at intervals so viewers can find that connection. 

Clients are the heroes in this product/service film. Make it easy for people to relate to them.

Collaborate with creators and influencers

If you don’t have the resources to record a video or hire a production company, go for this next great thing. 

Okay, truth be told, it’s perhaps ‘the great thing’. 

Working with influencers or creators is a very straightforward process. They’re experienced in recording videos on their own so you won’t have to go through the stress of giving instructions on how to record or things like that. 

All you gotta do is:

• Find influencers to work with. 
• Provide guidelines you want them to follow (creative brief).
• Hire them. 
• Send products so they have first-hand experience. 
• Get videos. 

Easy-peasy…and guess what?

With Insense, you can get all of that done in just three steps after you log in. 

1. Create a brief. 
2. We match you with creators who are aligned with your target audience. 
3. Get your content.

All without leaving the platform. It’s much easier to get customer stories this way.

Recommended Tools & Platforms for Testimonial Videos

Creating magical video testimonials requires the right tools in your tech stack. 

Whether you want customers to produce the videos themselves, invite them in to be recorded, or outsource the production process, there are tools for any option. 

Here are some of them.

Boast.io: This is a platform designed specifically to help brands collect video testimonials from their real customers. With Boast.io, you can send requests to clients. They, in turn, can record videos and submit them with ease. 

Vocal Video: Another platform to consider if you want clients to produce the videos themselves. On Vocal Video, you create a video collector interface that will guide clients through the process. You just provide guiding questions for them to follow and Vocal Video will take it from there. 

Davinci Resolve: If you decide to handle the recording yourself, you’ll need a video editing tool when you’re done. Davinci Resolve is one software tool you can trust. Whether you’re a beginner or a pro, this tool comes with everything you need to create a masterpiece. From audio mastering to color grading; the whole process. 

Insense: Thinking of outsourcing the video production process? Insense is your best bet. With this tool, you get to find professional creators who can produce content for you at scale. You’ll be getting an unlimited supply of videos to use for your digital marketing strategies. 

It’s both a content creation and marketing tool. Plus, all of the creators you’ll find here are more than willing to post the video on their social media profiles. And if you want, you can promote it as a branded content ad on Instagram or Facebook.

Alright, we’re about to wrap. 

But before we do, how about we share a few testimonial video examples for inspiration on your content marketing journey?

Customer Testimonial Video Examples & Case Studies

Sometimes, looking at examples of what brands like yours have done can be all the spark you need to get started. 

In this section, we curated a couple of examples from DTC businesses to hopefully give you ideas for streamlining the customer’s journey as you go on.

Example #1: Aliver Beauty

This testimonial video for Aliver Beauty was done in partnership with health enthusiast creator, Inside-out Beauty. 

She began the video by telling a story of what she’d experienced in the past (bloating and constipation) and then proceeded to share her results with Aliver Beauty’s product. 

In the video, she said she’s been using the product for six months. So you can imagine that anyone viewing will probably wanna listen well, especially if they’re in a similar situation.

Key takeaways from this example: 

• Leveraging customers or creators whose story resonates with the audience is key.
• Personal storytelling will always catch people’s attention.
• Posting the content on the customers' or creators’ page will give you more reach. 

Example #2: Hairburst

For this testimonial, Hairburst asked one of their customers Asher Mary-Lou to create a video of her experience with its products.

Her focus here involved sharing the routine with the brand’s product that helped her achieve transformation.

Key takeaways from this example: 

• Storytelling can take different forms. In this video, it was streamlined to what resulted in a transformation without her uttering a word. 
• Testimonials should answer your audience’s pain points. If you claim your product can give them a specific result, let the testimonial video answer how it can do that. 
• Include a strong call to action (CTA). If there’s no time to say it in the video, add it to the caption or description. That’s how people can take action. 

***

And that’s it!

Now, we can wrap up, seeing you’ve been armed with all the tools in our arsenal.

Scale Up Your Testimonial Video Production

In the words of Philip Stanhope, “Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.”

If you’re going to make the most testimonial videos, recording just one or two is a drop in the ocean of content marketing. 

How would you be able to test which content is performing well or what platform is giving you more engagements?

Bottom line is you need a variety to create the right impact. 

Now you’re probably thinking “That feels like a lot of work.” 

Well, not really. 

Not if you use Insense for testimonial video production. 

We can help you handle the whole process so you just receive content as soon as it’s ready. 

And it’s something you can experience in a few moments. 

Just book a demo with Insense and we’ll take it up from there.