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How To Make Video Testimonials That Boost Sales

how-to-make-video-testimonials-that-boost-sales

Customer acquisition is an ever-changing process that brands in all industries are striving to perfect. With the rise of short-form videos on social media, 86% of businesses are already using video as a marketing tool, and including a video on a company landing page can increase conversion by up to 80%. 

People trust other consumers over brands; user-generated content (UGC) is 35% more memorable than other media, and 50% more trusted. That’s why many businesses turn to video testimonials in their marketing efforts. After all, they’re direct recommendations from real people using their products.

Let’s explore what your brand should focus on when creating user-friendly videos loaded with social proof to not only attract new customers, but also to improve conversion rate and customer loyalty.

1. Understand the Full Scope of your Video Content

Many brands realize there is a need for video content, but aren’t aware of the breadth of content already available to them from their existing community. What’s more – many brands also don’t realize how many different channels this content can be impactful for. Start by figuring out what kind of video testimonial is best for your brand and what type of specific content you’d like to encourage from your fans. 

Here are a few things you need to consider when scoping:

  • Testimonial format: Start by brainstorming what format caters most to your audience. If your customers are active on TikTok, a casual, short-form video might work best. Some industries may find longer-form videos are best.  You can also explore various testimonial templates to get an idea of what might work best.

Auto care brand Chemical Guys has a robust YouTube following, so the brand encourages fans to showcase their products in-action and their praise for the brand through tutorial videos on YouTube.

  • Creation process: Once you have a couple of ideas ready, it’s time to empower your customers to share their experiences with your brand. You can run a social media contest around product unboxing videos, or urge customers to share a personal video showing how they use your products in everyday life. Get creative with what you encourage from them!
  • Tracking Analytics: One of the key factors that’ll help you boost sales is analytics. Set clear goals about the metrics you’d like to target, like social media engagement rate or sales.

Once you have a strategy in place, you’ll be ready to move forward and figure out your ROI once your campaign is underway.

2. Collect UGC from Passionate Customers

Instead of (or in addition to) urging customers to create new testimonials, you can also head to social media and see what kind of UGC is already out there within your brand community. Often, your most passionate fans will already be praising your brand without any incentive. This provides you with valuable content right out of the gate to propel your campaign forward.

Give customers a way to easily share their videos with your brand, whether that be through a unique hashtag on social media or direct uploader on your site. Instead of manually sifting through this content, you can utilize a CRM platform like Pixlee’s that automatically pulls in all UGC mentioning your brand and products. This is a powerful way to collect, curate, get permission to share, and publish your customer’s video testimonials from within one platform.

Milani Cosmetics uses brand-specific hashtags to source and share video testimonials on Instagram with Pixlee.

Customers who are already using and loving your brand have high potential to become brand advocates long after you garner a single video testimonial from them. Nurturing these relationships by celebrating and sharing the content they already post related to your brand will be beneficial in the long run.

3. Work with Influencers in Your Niche

One of the most effective ways of sharing your video testimonials is by collaborating with various social media influencers and online creators. Influencer marketing is effective because:

  • Influencers have a loyal audience that trusts their recommendations
  • You can increase brand awareness within different target audiences
  • With over 50 million content creators today, you’re bound to find an influencer whose style, size, and audience matches your campaign goals

Search for influencers that can naturally introduce your product in their videos. Pixlee’s influencer discovery feature allows you to find influencers who match customizable criteria like location, follower count, and engagement rate. You can also measure individual influencer campaign metrics and manage relationships with your creators from within the platform.

Hair care brand Madison Reed lets influencer @drdendy take creative control in this walkthrough of her hair appointment as a testimonial video.

If possible, start working with creators who are already using your products. A great way to do this is by tapping into micro-influencers, creators with smaller followings but often higher engagement rates and ROI because of their focused, devoted audience. These individuals can often be more cost-effective and your brand can work with many of them instead of one higher-profile celebrity.

Partner with diverse influencers and give them the creative freedom to share videos that match their unique social media presence. After giving it a go, you’ll see which collaborations benefit you the most.

4. Share Across the most Impactful Channels

You can share your video testimonials in a live UGC gallery on your brand’s website, or you can post them on your company TikTok, Instagram Reels and stories, or IGTV. Look for where your most engaged customers already are and make your new videos easy to access.

Tile has a dedicated “Community” Instagram highlight to share video and photo testimonials from customers who found their way with the brand’s location-tracking tools.

5. Analyze and Amplify Approaches that Work

You can create everything and begin with your video testimonials advertising strategy, but you won’t get far ahead without analytics. From the moment you start making plans, figure out how you will track your progress. Keep the following in mind:

  • Social media following: One of the key ways to follow the effectiveness of your video testimonials is to pay more attention to your social media following. Check out your growth and engagement metrics before, during, and after your campaign to see what content performs best.
  • Engagement statistics: How are people behaving on your landing pages? Follow what’ll happen to your visitors’ behavior. The same applies to engagement with testimonial videos. Do they watch the entire video or stop at a certain point? This data will show you how compelling your videos are.  
  • Overall video testimonial costs: Figure out all the expenses related to your video testimonials and note them down. As time passes and your sales start going up, you’ll be able to calculate your ROI quickly.

This is where using a UGC platform comes in handy; all of the metrics you need will already be in the same place you collected and published your customer video testimonials! This approach also allows you to see top-ranking video UGC you’ve shared so you can identify potential brand advocates to encourage content from in the future.

The most significant benefit of keeping track of your progress is that you can notice what’s working best. Then, it’s time to find a way to amplify the effectiveness of that approach to maximize your sales figures. Always be on the lookout for things to improve and monitor what’s working — it’s an ongoing process to figure out what strikes the right chord with your audience.

Creating video testimonials that boost sales is an ongoing process that’ll take some time. However, with a UGC and influencer management platform, optimizing this strategy can significantly improve your sales figures.

Finding the perfect formula might take some time, but shining the spotlight on customers who love your brand is a proven way to promote growth and brand awareness.

Sam Shepler is the founder and CEO of Testimonial Hero. 150+ B2B revenue teams at Google, UiPath, Medallia, InsightSquared, and many others use Testimonial Hero to easily create customer videos that engage prospects, reduce friction in the sales cycle, and drive more revenue faster.

Special thanks to our friends at Pixlee for their insights on this topic.
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