We all know customer testimonials do wonders to validate your service and create more trust between your company and prospective customer. But where do you start? What should it look like? Should it feel candid or professional? Should it sell your company or your product? Can you tell a more interesting story than just your product?
Below are 10 different styles and formats you can use to give inspiration on how to tell your customer’s story and show the value your company provides them.
“Survey from the Demand Gen Report that 97% of B2B buyers say that user generated content such as peer reviews is more credible than other types of content.”
1. The Traditional Profile Story
The most common type of testimonial video for tech companies is filming 1-3 interviews in a customers office and show a bit of their operations and team in action for visuals. It’s simple, effective, and generally an easy style to reproduce with multiple companies or production teams.
In this Slack testimonial they focus on Kin+Carta and never actual show the Slack service platform, but yet rely on just the interviews and office broll footage. They film 4 interviews to tell their story with lots of footage of the office and a team. Beware that not all teams are ‘photo friendly’, if you are planning on relying on team and culture footage, be sure to have them onboard and willing or confirm staff’s schedule.
This HelpScout testimonial has similar interview/broll format, yet shows the product in both live-action video as well as screen demo. I filmed this with Tyler Bouchard, we spent most of the day filming three interviews and setting up additional broll footage and product screen shots.
Mail Chimp created a variety of short videos focused on specific features and problems solved for their customer. In this video very little of their platform is shown and the focus is on customer subject. The video becomes more ‘timeless’ as MailChimp doesn’t need to worry about an outdated platform.
2. Keep it Simple
With so many options to craft your customer story, there can be many reasons to keep it simple with a basic one camera interview. Maybe you aren’t in someone’s actual office so need a neutral background, or the product may not be visually appealing, or still under going changes, or just perhaps not relevant to the speaking points. Or you may have limited time and access with the customer and their company, so setting up in a conference room and capturing a 30 minute interview may be your only option. Either way, conducting a good interview that candidly captures your customers voice is still worth the story.
Also, if your marketing and sales funnel is very sale driven or demo heavy, and you want the prospective customer to see a more candid and genuine feedback from a customer. Having your video feel too ‘produced’ or sales-y may not be the right move for your situation.
Snowflake did a similar video and used title cards to prompt questions with some copy throughout to help move the story along and give context to the topics. A great option if you need a bit more control over the story direction or the interview was lacking structure elements.
3. The Zoom Call
Also known as the ‘covid’ testimonial now. At the end of the day no matter what you do your customers authentic voice is the most important thing and is what people connect with. Even getting simple web calls can work wonders in establishing trust and brand loyalty.
Getting ‘self filmed’ customer testimonials can also be a great way to collect a bulk of material to pull from. Check out this instagram ad by shirt company True Classic that relied on user generated content for their testimonial and advertising video
Panorama Education hosted Customer Panel webinars where after they clipped out some highlights and nods their customers gave them. With production quality expectations lower and more forgiving, now can be a great chance at creating fast low quality content at scale.
4. The Guided Host
If you really want to give it a different feel, creating a more ‘network’ type vibe can give a more produced and entertaining story. NetSuite is a software company, but they choose to look at some of the more interesting businesses they serve. The vibe comes off as a network-travel-show and feels very different than your typical B2B testimonial. They created a series with each one featuring a host who plays our narrater throughout each video.
Using a host for your videos is a great way to craft your story more. During the actual production you now have their questions to be used if needed to seque or give context around an answer. And then in post production you also have much more creative control over the storyline by using their voiceover to fill in story holes anywhere. Or cut down on time.
Here’s one by Beth Israel Hospital, they don’t have a on camera host, but rather use the “Voice of God” voiceover, a voice not on screen done by a voice actor or company employee. You are using a more narrative approach, however it can give you a lot more options for storytelling and enable you to directly get your message across.
5. The Mission
If subtlety is more your style, use your product as a backdrop to your story rather than the focus. Find a customer with a story that your audience will resonate with, or a story that supports your mission as a company. Instead of focusing on how your clients uses your software, focus on the impact that company is having in the world. And then if needed, tie into how your product is a platform for that mission to operate on.
The storage platform Box.com created a story that centered around Internal Rescue Committee, and showed their work in the field while also talking about how they work with Box to host and retrieve all their data.
SalesForce created a video around the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and the roll they played for the non profit as the challenge raised extraordinary amounts of money for the cause. The video starts off entertaining and more of a history lesson and look back at this famous internet challenge from 2014, and then shifts into the more sales message of how behind the scenes SalesForce supported the fast growth the non profit had.
6. The High Production Value
If you are looking for a ‘national’ commercial type look, then you’ll be looking at a bigger production and bit more planning. It’s also a brand decision how ‘polished’ you want to be presented. This gives more of an ‘ad’ feel, but can work if you are trying to make it more a direct sales piece and can find talent that comes off natural on screen.
8. The Animated One
If live-action is not an option, you can still get creative using graphic design, drawing, or animation. This video is heavily scripted, but you could even add some real interview audio with voiceover to help drive the message home.
9. The Bulk Interview
One of the best ways to get a ton of interviews at once - is events. Creating an interview room at events can result in dozens of interviews giving you a fast start at a library of content to use for years to come. Litmus uses their multi-city conference ever year to connect with customers and thought leaders in the email industry and use it as a chance to collect valuable content for marketing and sales efforts.
10. The Sneaky One
My favorite testimonial, the one the viewer doesn’t see coming. If you are looking for something a bit different to engage the customer more, focus on a unique story and really get to know the story’s character at an emotional level. Yeti has countless stories throughout their marketing of capturing the story of an outdoor person, and weaving their product in later. With their series “Tested” they used their brand ambassador’s as their customer voice and authority of their product’s use.
Yeti takes this to the next level with Yeti Presents and telling stories with none of their product featured or mentioned. They create multiple series and stand alone videos that dial into their audiences interests and tell compelling stories. Check out my blog post about how other companies are also creating documentary stories like this.
