By Victor Blasco

When trying to sell your products or services online, there are a number of things you’ll want to convey to your potential customers. Things like high-quality and expertise.

And while those are indeed important, there’s one attribute that’s even more important: Trust.

You need your prospects to trust your brand and the people behind it. Fostering that trust is precisely what will make them progress through the sales funnel once they understand you have what they need — ultimately impacting your bottom line.

To that end, video testimonials (also called customer testimonials) are an invaluable tool. 

The premise is simple: Have real customers – people who’ve already found what they were looking for in your products – sharing their stories in authentic and empathetic ways. 

However, that’s easier said than done!

There are A LOT of moving pieces that go into making a perfect testimonial video, and keeping track of them all can be a challenge. Luckily for you, here are some tips and tricks from some professional video companies skilled at making them!

Preparations for Your Testimonial

Testimonials need to look flawless but feel natural… Which is a very narrow line to navigate! If you want to improve your chances of doing it successfully, you’ll want to do a lot of preparation.

Choose Your Interviewee Wisely

You’ll need to choose which one of your customers to interview in your video. Choose a handful of potentials. Ideally, you’ll want to choose charismatic and extroverted people who will do fine in front of a camera. As well as someone that represents your audience in meaningful ways – making it easier for them to identify with your interviewee.

That last part is really, really important, as customers trust other customers, which is the basis of a testimonial’s effectiveness. Your prospects will put value in seeing people just like them, that have the same type of problems as they have, and hearing how your new product or service helped them.

Once you have a few people in mind, reach out to them and see if you can get them on board!

Write Down the Questionnaire

Once you have your interviewee selection process going, you’ll want to sit down and write a list of the main ideas you’d like to cover in the video and draft a questionnaire after them. 

Developing a questionnaire this early on will give you time and ideas to refine it as you go along. A great questionnaire is vital for a great testimonial. Not only does it help you make sure that you’re not going to forget anything, but it acts as a great tool to keep things running smoothly during production.

One thing, though — think of this questionnaire as a guide, instead of something carved in stone. You want your video to feel as natural as possible, so when you’re interviewing, make sure that you’re driving a conversation instead of a fixed-list interrogation!

That includes being open to making follow-up, impromptu questions according to what the interviewee is saying (if you find something juicy, follow it!).

But Keep It A Secret!

This is important, so it bears repeating: The last thing you want is for your interview to come off as scripted!

To get genuine and candid responses, you’ll probably want to avoid sending the questionnaire too early before recording day. However, do share with them the more general topics and types of questions you will be going over during the interview.

Not only is it an appropriate courtesy, but it also helps the interviewee feel more comfortable during recording, as they won’t feel blindsided.

Choose Your Location

When choosing a spot to record your video, prioritize places where your interviewee will feel comfortable, and that will give your viewers a nice frame of reference or context. 

A popular choice is to ask the interviewee if it’s possible to conduct the recording at their own offices. Not only does this go a long way toward making them feel more comfortable during the actual shoot, but it also helps their availability for it – Not having to move into a different location.

Lights, camera, action! Time to film.

The truth is that we could spend the whole piece talking about preparations before the shoot, but as long as you mind the ones we mentioned above, you’ll be well underway. 

However, regardless of how much you over prepare, the day of the shoot will come sooner rather than later. 

So, here are the main things you’ll want to keep in mind when the time comes!

Plan Your Setup Ahead of Time

How many cameras are you using? Where will the lights be located? Do you have the necessary elements (like appropriate furniture) on-site, or will you need to bring them with you? Have you scouted your recording space in person prior to the recording?

These sound like menial concerns that might come across as secondary. They aren’t.

Appropriate planning can do wonders for your production times and quality, which in turn will translate into a better piece. So, don’t take anything for granted and try to have your recording session planned to a T way ahead of “the day of.”

Positioning Your Interviewee

Have you noticed that in interviews, it’s very common for the interviewee not to be looking right at the camera? It’s not a coincidence!

Positioning your interviewee at a 45° angle is a trick that makes your video feel even more candid and real. It gives the impression that you’re capturing a natural conversation — the alternative would be to film with the person looking right at the camera, which looks staged.

Get your gear set, position your interviewee right, and it’s time to run the interview!

Record Some Insert Takes

Make sure to shoot some extra takes that might work as inserts in your video — not only to provide context (Like, where you are speaking from) but also to have material that will help you hide those jump cuts that are bound to happen. 

These inserts could be an opening scene of the city you’re filming in, to show where your client is located or scenes of your interviewee at their work station, showing scenes of their everyday life.

Brief snippets like these help bring credibility to the piece.

Filming’s Over! Now What?

If you’ve been doing your job correctly, by now, you’ll have a lot of raw material. That’s awesome, but the job is far from over. As it is during post-production that you can turn raw stone into a shiny diamond.

Time to Edit!

By conducting your interview like a conversation, you’re probably going to find that your raw footage is quite long — and that’s perfect! It means that you have a lot of material to choose from!

It’s okay to edit the discourse that your client gave you, (after all, you have to condense all of what they said into a video a two-to-three minute video!) However, make absolutely sure that you are staying true to what they meant as you edit the piece.

Also, this is the stage to make basic color and sound correction. Taking care of these things early on helps you polish the piece, and gives you a better sense of what the final product will look like. 

Adding Branded Elements

During the post-production stage of a video, you’ll be able to include different elements – animations, logos, colors – that will give your video a look and feel that matches your overall branding. 

After all, this is branded content! Of course, it’s also a real story from one of your customers. But it’s endorsed by your brand, and it should look and feel like it!

It can be tricky, especially if you don’t have previous experience in the field. Other video marketing pieces, like animated whiteboard animations, for example, are pretty straightforward – As all the environments are animated, you can easily incorporate branded elements with color that pops.

However, that’s not to say you can’t do something similar for your live-action testimonial! You just need to know where to look.

Placing your company’s logo on the bottom right corner is a tried and true branding tactic, but that’s just the start. Name tags and inserts should use your company’s colors, style, and font. Transitions, especially when you include the questions in them, are also prime real estate for these branding techniques.

Lastly, you should use jingles and other sound elements related to your company as part of the sound design for your video.

Time to Get Going!

Making an effective testimonial can be tricky. But I hope that after reading these tips, you’ll be able to produce a piece your company can be proud of – and your customers drawn to! 

Don’t get me wrong; it is a lot of work. But, do it right, and it totally pays off! It will pay off in increased trust from your leads and prospects, which will lead to an increase in sales!

Just remember — your video needs to feel natural, be as unrehearsed as possible, and look high-quality. A high-quality video communicates that your brand has an eye for detail — for your audience, if your video is high-quality, your product or service will be of high-quality as well.

Good luck!

Victor Blasco’s an audiovisual designer, video marketing expert, and founder/CEO of the explainer video company Yum Yum Videos. Besides running the business, he’s a lifelong student of Chinese philosophy and a passionate geek for all things sci-fi.