If you want to build trust with potential clients, there’s no better way to do it than by showcasing the outstanding experiences that your former clients have had.While concise written testimonials, detailed reviews on external websites, and other positive, text-based commentary about your firm all have value, video testimonials are one of the best tools for catching the attention of potential clients, establishing your credibility, and building trust.
Video testimonials can be used in a wide variety of ways for marketing purposes. For example, they can:
- Be used as featured video on your website to draw in and hold the attention of visitors
- Serve as powerful persuasive elements on your landing pages
- Strengthen and reinforce the messaging of your e-mails
- Redirect potential clients to your site from places like YouTube
- Play in your office to inspire confidence among prospective, current, and former clients alike
Of course, even the most glowing testimonial can be undercut or ignored if the quality of the video is poor. With that in mind, we have put together a few simple tips that even novice videographers can use to create high-quality testimonial videos.
Essential Preparations before Filming:
- Make clear plans with an interviewee – While just about anyone who has had an outstanding experience with your firm is a good candidate for interviewing, some former clients are more outgoing, more enthusiastic about their experience, and/or more willing to be interviewed. Make sure you make clear plans, communicate openly, and continue to provide the same kind of personal and professional service that you’ll be interviewing them about.
- Prepare interview questions – You want to make sure that you have prepared a list of questions before the interview begins. It’s a good idea to develop some standard questions with your colleagues that you can use for any interview, but it’s also pertinent to generate some specific questions that relate to the interviewee’s experience.
- Choose a suitable location for filming – An ideal location will have soft, indirect lighting; a neutral background (or a green screen); and good acoustics (rooms with hard, flat surfaces on the floor, walls, and ceiling tend to have poor acoustics).
- Get the filming location ready – It’s rare for offices to have a space that is solely dedicated to filming testimonials, which means it’s not uncommon for the filming location to be in frequent use between video sessions. In order to get the space ready for filming, tidy up the area, set up any necessary equipment ahead of time, and make sure anyone involved knows their role so that everything can work as smoothly as possible.
Simple Tips during Filming:
- Make any necessary adjustments to your equipment or the room early on – Position the camera on your tripod, frame the shot using the rule of thirds, and make sure everything is working properly before you get started so that you can just hit record once at the beginning and leave the equipment running until the end.
- Guide the interviewee – Be sure to explain what is going on to the person being interviewed, and provide them with guidance both before getting started and throughout the interview process. For example, tell them to look at you and not the camera while they’re speaking, and encourage them to rephrase your question as part of their answer when they respond.
- Be mindful of the editing process – Ultimately, the video footage you take should be edited so that the primary (or sole) focus of the testimonial is the interviewee. In order to make editing easier and produce a better final product, eliminate as much ambient noise as possible, make sure to provide ample quiet time (about 3 seconds) between questions and answers, and never interrupt the person speaking.
With these straightforward and simple tips, your raw video footage should be in excellent shape, and editing it down into an impressive testimonial video will be much easier. Of course, if creating great testimonial videos from scratch as well as editing, post-production, and optimizing them for YouTube sounds a bit daunting, you can always call LaFleur. We have the skills and resources to help you produce high quality video. From simple technology and setup consultations and training to ongoing production, editing, and online optimization services, LaFleur can help you take your video marketing to the next level. Call us at 888-222-1512 today to learn how!