Why Customer Testimonial Videos are Marketing Rocket Fuel

7th May 2019

written by George Hughes

Why are customer testimonial videos so great for business?

Have you ever been on the receiving end of a sales call or meeting, with the salesperson going on and on about how incredible their business/product/service is? Did you find yourself thinking:

Not another one! Of course, you think your business is great. So do all salespeople”.

You aren’t alone. In fact, in more recent years, there has been a growing mistrust in businesses hyping themselves up. That is why we’ve seen such a rapid rise in marketing methods such as influencer marketing, with third party reviewers providing a more trusted opinion on a business’s offering.

 

When we think ‘influencer’, we may think of online gamers with thousands of YouTube/Twitch followers or the young, rich in-crowd on Instagram. But fundamentally, an influencer is someone with a degree of influence over others. When it comes to business, this can be anyone from a customer, supplier, or partner. At Small Films, we regularly deliver customer testimonial videos for our clients, helping them engage with new clients.

Authenticity

There is something to be said about the level of influence that can be leveraged through video testimonials for your business. This is especially true when they include clients who are respected in their field.

These respected individuals can be more powerful than the big social media influencers. In these cases, potential customers will often be aware of their expertise and respect their opinion – creating an environment of genuine trust.

Clients rarely have a reason to give a video testimonial beyond a genuine delight with your service or product. Therefore, customer testimonial videos offer a level of authenticity that is otherwise difficult to find elsewhere in marketing.

Want support with testimonial video production? Give our team a bell. 

Using key clients in testimonials will also often offer points of view that you may not have otherwise considered. For example, most businesses have their ‘go-to benefits’ of why customers should choose them. These often don’t cover the softer elements that many customers find so valuable, such as good communication, flexibility or compassion. Testimonial video production helps businesses highlight their personality as well as their capabilities.

Customer testimonials videos are highly engaging content

Let’s put the benefits of having your customers sing your praises aside for a moment and focus on the vehicle – video. After all, there are a few ways a customer could provide a testimonial…so why is video so powerful?

“Marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users.” WordStream

The keyword here is ‘engagement’. Keeping anyone’s attention for more than a moment can be easier said than done in a world where there is such a vast amount of content online. However, video provokes and captures the senses in a way that no other form of media does. Video testimonials allow your customers to expressively and concisely tell the story of why they chose to work with your business.

Video also allows businesses to distribute valuable testimonials across various platforms. Including websites, social media feeds, social media stories, emails, direct messages and can even be included in sales decks to add authenticity to presentations.

Customer testimonial videos are a fantastic way to grab your current and potential customers attention. This powerful type of marketing offers a level of authenticity and engagement which is otherwise hard to portray to new and potential clients.

If you want to see how powerful this tool could be for your business, have a browse through our video testimonials services and get in touch today.

Small Films is a video production company based in London.  We create effective and results-driven customer testimonial videos that put your brand streets ahead of the competition. 

As recently as 5 years ago, the vast majority of us would have tuned into our favourite show via our TV sets… at home… probably on the sofa. Today, the picture is very different. Almost half of adults aged 22 to 45 are not watching content on traditional TV platforms (AdAge) and 64.8 million people born between 1981 and 1996 will watch streaming videos or downloaded videos on a device at least once a month (Forbes). TV as we know is dead. Long live online streaming! Of course, TV isn’t actually dead. But the way we consume it has changed forever. Many people will still flick the TV on to catch their favourite series as it is released whether that’s X Factor or Silent Witness, but for most of us, on-demand has replaced live viewing as our preferred method of consuming any type of television content. And for Millennials and Generation Z who have come of age in a digital world,  BBC and ITV are increasingly shunned in favour of subscription based services like Netflix or Amazon or user generated content sites like Youtube. 

 

The writing has been on the wall for analogue TV for at least 2 decades and when the analogue signal was switched off in 2017 forcing every individual to access television via a digital box, it wasn’t a great surprise to the industry. The emergence of super-fast broadband that removed the need to have a sky dish or cable TV to access more than 5 channels of television was one of the biggest driving factors behind the shift in the television landscape. That… and the arrival of 3G and cheap mobile data which has allowed video streaming in the palm of your hand.

 

 

It’s surprising to find that Netflix has actually been around since 1997. It started life as a DVD rental business but began streaming online video in 2007, just 2 years after Youtube was founded. Today Netflix has 139 million paid subscribers worldwide and on Youtube, one billion hours of content are watched every single day. YouTube is ranked as the second-most popular site in the world after Google (Alexa Internet). And, whilst Netflix and Youtube may have paved the way for online video, there are now dozens of different streaming platforms from Disney+ to Apple TV, Now TV to Facebook Watch, TikTok, Instagram TV and Amazon Prime.

 

 

There’s huge money behind these platforms. Facebook will spend a “measly” $1 billion on video content this year compared to Amazon’s $4 billion spend last year and Netflix’s projected $8 billion spend for 2019 (Media Post). Also this year, Amazon and Netflix have said they will be investing in UK TV production, and will help to promote these shows on both platforms (Video News). However, the question is, will this bring traction to TV broadcasters or, will audiences be tuning into their SVOD (Streaming Video On Demand) services to watch the shows? An Ofcom report released in the summer found that huge investment in original content by digital players has seen subscriptions to SVOD services in the UK overtake subscription to pay-TV services. Ofcom also found that last year that after a period of sustained growth, pay-TV subscription revenues fell in the UK for the first time, falling by 2.7 percent to £6.4 billion. Unsurprisingly as UK consumers turn their back on conventional television viewing in favour of subscription based streaming platforms, they also turn their back on advertising. TV advertising income fell significantly last year, declining seven percent year-on-year in real terms to £3.9 billion (Video News).

 

 

So what does this mean for brands who have, in the past relied on TV advertising to reach their customers? You guessed it, they’ve started to pump more and more of their budget into online advertising. Last year, digital advertising increased by 9.5% in the UK (emarketer) with video being the fastest growing medium. The exciting thing is that marketers looking to get an edge over their competitors are putting budget behind incredible branded content that is shining a spotlight on their products and services. Volvo, Heineken and Dove are not only running heavy hitting multi-channel campaigns with a hero piece of video content at it’s heart, but many like Patagonia, Red Bull and Nike are becoming publishers in their own right with Youtube channels that include regular, engaging video content that is enjoyed by millions of people.

 

 

As we, the consumer, become accustomed to subscription TV viewing, the days of sitting through 5 minutes of TV adverts seem like a distant memory. No surprise then, that we actively avoid spending time online in places where we are being hit with constant adverts. With Youtube releasing its own subscription service, it begs the question how long we will have to wait before Facebook, Instagram and other platforms follow suit? Moving forward, brands will have to work harder and harder to get their message seen by their audience and commissioning branded content will be one of the best ways to do that.