Tes­ti­mo­ni­als from happy cus­tomers on your site is very impor­tant and pow­er­ful. Video tes­ti­mo­ni­als are even that much more pow­er­ful and pro­mote reg­u­lar and long-term rec­om­men­da­tions that will deliver you sig­nif­i­cant busi­ness benefits.

Not all tes­ti­mo­ni­als are cre­ated equally. Here are some key items to keep in mind when you are col­lect­ing your tes­ti­mo­nial videos.

1) Use real cus­tomers that have had a great expe­ri­ence with your prod­uct or ser­vice. You’ve seen ads where they (say) paid actor, not an actual cus­tomer. While deliv­ery is impor­tant, don’t worry if it doesn’t sound scripted or pro­fes­sional. You want your tes­ti­mo­ni­als to be from real peo­ple and believable.

2) Be a direc­tor. Coach them to make sure they give you a per­sua­sive tes­ti­mo­nial. Since they prob­a­bly will not be that com­fort­able in front of the cam­era, giv­ing them some direc­tion as to the mes­sage you want them to deliver will be very helpful.

3) Have them give specifics not gen­er­al­i­ties about why to do busi­ness with you or buy your prod­uct. Con­sider these two state­ments. “I really liked work­ing with XYZ.” “Before I hired XYZ book­keep­ing ser­vices, I spent hours on my own books and strug­gled with learn­ing the soft­ware. Now all I need to do is look at my monthly reports and because I freed up 20 hours a month from book­keep­ing, my sales have increased by 20%.” Which one per­suades and informs you more?

4) Col­lect as many tes­ti­mo­ni­als as you can and only post the most pow­er­ful ones. And don’t stop col­lect­ing tes­ti­mo­ni­als and updat­ing them.

5) Be hon­est and upfront with your cus­tomers as to why you want them to give you a tes­ti­mo­nial and that it will be on your web­site. Hav­ing them sign a sim­ple model release is a good idea. Make sure they state their name and where they are from. You don’t have to state the exact city or town if they do not wish; you can have them state the area of their county, state or the coun­try. If they are rep­re­sent­ing a busi­ness that is endors­ing you, have them state the busi­ness name also.

A recent Niel­son Com­pany report states, “The rec­om­men­da­tion of some­one else remains the most trusted source of infor­ma­tion when con­sumers decide which prod­ucts and ser­vices to buy.” 78% of respon­dents said they trusted – either com­pletely or some­what – the rec­om­men­da­tion of other con­sumers. Video just enhances this rec­om­men­da­tion. Don’t for­get to add this key mar­ket­ing tool on your website.

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