10 Tips for Convincing Testimonial Videos (With Examples)

Tips & Tricks

10 Tips for Convincing Testimonial Videos (With Examples)

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Testimonial videos are one of the most powerful tools to help build confidence in your product or service. When others see happy and satisfied customers, it's a form of social proof that can drive sales.

In this round-up, I'm going to share some of my favorite customer testimonial videos, along with ideas that you can use to implement them in your next production. Let's dive in!

1. Show The Product in Action

Believe it or not, many customer testimonial videos skip out on showing the promoted product. Talking head videos are great, sure, but you also have to show the product. It helps potential customers envision using the product in their daily life.

A great example of this idea is the App Promo Gestures template, for After Effects: You don't have to awkwardly film someone using the app—instead, use this package to simulate the effect.

2. Tell the "Before and After" Story

When consumers are in the buying mindset, it's likely because they're out to solve a problem. That means that they want to picture using your product and their life changes after the buy it.

That's why it helps to position your customer testimonial video as a "before and after" story. Picturing the "after" can drive sales by thinking of the product as a solution to the challenge they face.

My favorite customer testimonial video is for Slack, a messaging and collaboration app. This video is the perfect example of painting the picture of how using the app solves existing problems.

3. Make Your Testimonial Authentic

We're all inundated with marketing and sales efforts these days. Your customer testimonial video should include your most passionate customers, without coming off as fake or cloying. It's important to talk to your customers and note who might be willing to appear in a video to promote your product.

If you want to bring a sense of authenticity to your customer testimonial video, consider using a lower thirds effect to introduce the on-camera personalities, like the Modern Business Lower Thirds. Particularly if you're interviewing experts, showing their credentials and info builds authenticity.

4. Address Switching Cost

One of the biggest obstacles to gaining a customer is overcoming the "switching cost"—the pain and hard dollar costs of changing products. That's why it's important that you address it in a testimonial video. Potential customers want to know how much time it takes to switch to your product instead.

Dialpad is a startup that provides a VOIP service for desk phones for businesses. Check out their testimonial below to see how they take on the inertia of switching to a new solution.

5. Keep it Short

Above all, don't forget that you have a limited amount of time to show the customer testimonial. Even the most interested customer may only have a minute or two to watch a testimonial video, so keep your commentary brief.

The target testimonial video should max out around two minutes, but is preferably shorter. Also, use upbeat effects like transitions and motion graphics to capture and hold the audience's attention.

You can also use a short template like Upbeat Testimonials to really cut to the chase when it comes to your customer testimonial video.

6. Position Your Product as a Solution

The best products solve customer pains. The product helps them get back to doing what they do best. Similar to the "before and after" tip, showing a bit of pain that the product solves is one of the most powerful sales tools that companies draw upon.

Accounting and bookkeeping is a common pain, and FreshBooks offers a solution to many freelancers and small business. Check out their example below for ideas on how you can position your product as one that makes life and business smoother.

7. Explain the Product in Detail

With so many companies and startups trying new and innovative ideas, new business concepts are emerging every day. It's exciting, but it can also be a challenge to explain new ideas to your potential customers.

One of my favorite ways to do this is with the explainer video format. Try out a template like the Hand Explainer Kit for Adobe Premiere to develop an explanatory video without hiring an animator. You can combine this with customer clips for the perfect testimonial video.

Check out the round-up below for After Effects explainer templates:

Video

Top 3: Best Explainer Video Animation Kits for After Effects

Andrew Childress

8. Focus on Differentiation

You don't have to be the first to arrive in a product niche, you just have to find ways that you can set your solution apart.

Check out the customer testimonial video below from Zoom on how Zendesk uses their video platform to make video conferencing much easier. Notice that all of the testimonial points are really about how Zoom is different than past solutions that they tried, and how much productivity it ultimately led to.

9. Consider the Audience

More than ever, content is consumed on devices that aren't traditional widescreen computer monitors. Yet, most videos are still produced in 16:9 widescreen that don't easily adapt to device trends.

One of my favorite ways to address this is to format one version of the finished video with handheld devices in mind. That means that if you think the viewer will see your testimonial on mobile, you should make it vertical.

A great way to do that is to use a Premiere template like the Instagram Stories Pack that you can see below. Not only is it vertically formatted, but it's also short enough to adapt to the attention span of mobile users. It's flexible enough to mix and match with footage and text for your customer testimonial.

10. Create a Way to Connect

Your testimonial video should lead to sales and customer connections: use the video to start the conversation by giving users a logical next step to take.

You can implement this simply with a few ideas for closing out your customer testimonial video:

List contact details, like an email address or website that customers can follow-up with.
Give product purchase info, like basic pricing or product launch date if possible.
Close with a strong finish, with a strong statement from one of your most passionate customers

Top Templates for Customer Testimonials

As you saw in the section above, you can use pre-built video templates to help you build a great customer testimonial video. You can even mix and match multiple templates to create a compelling customer testimonial video.

The best place to source these templates is Envato Elements, an all-you-can-download source for video templates. The tips list above includes several video templates that are ideal for your next customer video template.

Envato Elements video templates — All of these video templates are included with a subscription to Envato Elements.

Because you might find yourself sampling from many templates, Elements is the best value for video production. The all-you-can-download model is ideal for combining the best of several templates for a customer testimonial.