Building awareness about your service or product with video marketing campaigns can rapidly increase your number of leads and potential customers, but you need to then be able to convert them!
Social proof later in the sales funnel helps you capitalize on the increase in awareness you generate with video marketing campaigns.
This social proof can take many forms– personal interaction with a sales-person, Google/Yelp reviews, reviewing past social media posts and comments, checking with online directories, etc. But one of the most powerful tools to close the deal is video testimonials.
Video testimonials provide the extra assurance many clients need to close the deal by showing them that many people have followed the same path and received extraordinary benefits from doing so.
In other words, they prove that you, as a business, can follow through on your promises.
But not all video testimonials are created or leveraged well. Hence, I created this post to help you take advantage of their awesome sales-closing power.
[For reference, when I speak of Video Testimonials, I’m referring to short videos where a past customer/client is speaking directly to the camera about their experiences using a webcam or phone camera. They’re low-quality, but this ‘on the cuff’ recording style adds a level of authenticity. These are normal people.]
How and When to Leverage Video Testimonials in your Sales process
In general, any real-life customer feedback is valuable, but the effectiveness of video testimonials (and how worthwhile they are to collect) depends, in large part, on several factors:
1. Match Product/Service with Most Effective Type of Social Proof
Video testimonials are powerful social proof, especially when establishing trust with cold prospects. However, certain products/services will benefit more from them.
Service-Based Businesses
In general, service-based industries that depend on the individual qualities, skills, and interactions of the provider benefit more from video testimonials than concrete products.
Customers/clients need to know you can deliver on your promises and that you’ll be good to work with throughout the process. Video testimonials add that extra level of confidence that you’re not just posing as an expert and that you’ve delivered for past clients.
Product-Based Businesses
Video testimonials of past clients/customers speaking about their experience tend to be less powerful than hands-on review videos when selling products. Yes, the subjective experience of users is helpful, but it’s important for customers to be able to see how the product works, before they envision themselves using it, vicariously through the reviewer.
2. Make your video testimonials relateable
Video testimonials’ effectiveness depends, in part, on how specifically potential customers relate to the people speaking in the testimonial.
For this reason, I recommend my clients ask their testimonial givers to answer the following questions:
- What was their problem was that caused them to seek a solution?
- What fears or hesitations did you feel about using our service?
- Why did you decide to work with us?
- What was the experience of working with us like?
- How has it transformed your businesses/lives since?
The more these answers match your potential customers, the more effective they’ll be. They’ll be able to overcome their hesitations, because they’ll see that other people had the same ones, pushed through, and reaped the rewards from their proactivity.
[Also: Providing testimonial-givers with these specific questions removes some of the self-consciousness many people feel when recording video. It gives them a framework]
3. Increase Credibility with Quantity
We’re all trained to be skeptical of anything that sounds too good to be true– especially on the internet. We’ve been spammed in every way, shape, and form.
You need to put your potential customers’ fears aside. (No, you DID NOT simply asked your best friend to record a glowing review!)
To add this extra level of assurance, overwhelm them with the sheer quantity of video testimonials as best you can.
Yes, it will take some time to build up the library of video testimonials, but you can develop a viable base relatively quickly.
In order to do so, it helps at first to ask past/current customers clients for a testimonial. Be transparent–
A sample e-mail could be like:
Greetings ___Awesome client___!
I’m reaching out, because I’ve really valued our ongoing/past collaboration, and I’m proud of the __specific results__ we’ve been able to achieve.
I’m looking to reach other people who could benefit from my services and was wondering if you’d be willing to record a short video testimonial (one minute, one take, no worries) with your phone and send it over to me.
All you’d need to do is answer the following questions:
[insert the questions from earlier in the blog post]
I know we’re all busy and understand if you aren’t able to complete it, but if you are, I’d be happy to take __% off you next invoice. [or if it’s a past client, omit or offer for a future service. I often build it into my contract that they’ll have the option to receive a small discount at the end of the process in exchange].
Thanks, ____. Let me know if you have any questions!
Cheers,
Kevin
This simple act, performed consistently can create a truly powerful sales tool for future prospects.
Going back several years, I purchased a 10k mastermind from a person and company I’d never heard of. It’s the most I’ve spent on anything in my life. A huge part of trusting that they’d deliver was that they had 50-100 video testimonials, in addition to what I could find elsewhere online from viable sources.
4. Placement: Where they’re presented in the sales funnel?
Part of the effectiveness of these testimonials were that the sales rep sent a link to them after our first call together. I believe the wording of the e-mail was something like:
“Hey, it was great speaking! I know you have a lot of important considerations ___(lists a couple I had mentioned on the phone) ____, and that this is a huge investment.
Just wanted to send some video testimonials of our past/current clients who were feeling the same way you were, took the dive, and really changed their lives with the results.
We’re really committed to your success, as these videos see. Let me know if I can address any other concerns that come up before our next call.”
This was pure genius. It not only showed that they were legit, but it also gave me tons of extra material to view that spoke exactly to my aspirations. It added a human element.
Quite often, leveraging video testimonials later in the sales process also feeds a hunger in the potential buyer. By that point, they’ve likely exhausted all the online marketing materials, reviews, and anything else they could find. By sending a private link with tons of extra material that speaks to them on a personal level is extremely powerful.
This is often the most overlooked, but important, consideration when using video testimonials. Most people simply put them on their website or social channels and expect them to bring in customers.
However, video testimonials are actually more powerful later in the sales funnel when your leads are at the decision-making part of the process.
An e-mail with a link to dozens of video testimonials when they’re at that critical point can be enough of an extra boost to tip the scale. Whereas using all your hard-earned testimonials during the awareness stage of the funnel will likely fade into the rest of your marketing content.
5. Relativity: What other customer feedback do you have and how good is it?
Are there already tons of reviews about your product/service out there? 5 star Google, Yelp, or YouTube reviews?
Can people find other blog posts, industry articles, or social mentions about you, your service, or your product?
If not, video testimonials may be even more important.
When we look to make a decision, we’re relying on a map of interconnected evidence that we assemble throughout the awareness/consideration process. One solid video testimonial can be worth tons of less personal reviews, because our mind doesn’t doesn’t need to consider who the writer of the reviews are. We can relate to another human.
6. Build a Niche/Problem-Related Library of Video Testimonials
Regardless of your other social proof, however, it’s still helpful/valuable to collect video testimonials whenever you’ve delivered for a client. This is because you can then pull more and more specific/relatable testimonials from your library when you’re courting a lead that matches one of your past clients in the future.
The more specifically a testimonial matches the client’s situation/needs, the more powerful it will be. It can add that extra level of trust that you may need to get the sale.
I hope this guide to video testimonials proves helpful. It’s useful to remember that, no matter how well we create powerful videos, a strong sales process needs to back them up to drive any substantial results!
