There is no doubt that video is the most powerful medium for businesses to showcase the success stories of their clients/customers. Written testimonials are nice, but nothing beats testimonial videos for making a deep emotional connection with prospects and showing the public how current customers truly feel about your business.

That said, there’s a right way and a wrong way to create a video testimonial. Get this right, and your business could see a phenomenal ROI from your marketing efforts. Get this wrong and, well…you know the rest. 

With this in mind, here are some testimonial video tips to get you started. Before you begin your testimonial video production, you need to get your prospect to know, like and trust your brand.

So the first thing is to be sure you are using real customers. Do not hire actors or use some FiveRR gig for this! Find real customers or clients who have had a positive experience with your business and are willing to put their face on camera to share their experience. In addition, you don’t want to use a script for your customer doing the video testimonial, but you will want to coach them a little about how they should structure their presentation.

Here are the 5 steps you need to use with your customer to create a winning video testimonial that will bring in positive results for your business:

        1. Establish an Emotional Connection

The first thing you want your video testimonial customer to do is connect with potential prospects on an emotional level. After all, this is the primary purpose of using video, right? What this means is to discuss the problem they were having before coming in contact with your business. Using their own words, instruct your customer to talk freely about what they were fearing, what they were concerned about, and the (poor) results they were getting before coming across your solution. Do not overdo it on the emotional side, just tell them to be real and let people know what they were going through before they found your business.

        2. Discuss the Positive Results of Working with your Business

 Once your customer has made a strong connection with the target audience and talked about the problems they were having in a way others in a similar situation can relate to, it’s time to segue into discussing the solution. In other words, what happened when the customer came across your business? How did your service solve their problem? How were they treated by you and your staff? Was your company easy to work with? Have them share (in as much detail as they are comfortable with) the positive results they received after deciding to work with you.

        3. Discuss how they felt about Working with You

 Once the customer has given the audience the facts – what happened when they decided to work with your company – the next step is to communicate how they felt about it. This gives them the opportunity to connect emotionally again with the audience, and to let them know the positive feelings they have about your service and your company. This is the step that really sells the testimonial. It’s where the customer gives the audience the key selling points of your business in a way that relates to their personal situation, allowing other prospects to picture the end result for them if they decide to work with you.

        4. Ask for Additional Input

Once the customer has had the opportunity to highlight the benefits of dealing with your company, you’ll want to give them one more chance to add anything else that is on their mind that they believe is important for the audience to know. This is where customers often build on step 3 with something like “I just want to say that I tried several different services, but XYZ Company was the only one that really took the time to understand my problem and how to fix it. I would not recommend any other service except XYZ.” You may or may not want to keep the additional footage from step 4, but often times it gives the audience a “clincher” that really helps seal the deal. Not only that, but it gives you extra footage to work with when editing your testimonial ideos.

        5. Put Everything in Writing

When you have an enthusiastic customer that is more than willing to give a testimonial, it is easy to forget to take care of the legal end of things. But believe it or not, people can sometimes change their minds, and there may come a day when someone claims they never agreed to appear on camera. For this reason, always protect yourself by having your video testimonial customer sign a written release.