Every marketing team wants the powerful social proof and higher conversion rates that customer testimonials can give, but they often don’t know how to consistently get good customer testimonials.
There is a lot of advice online that focuses on where to find customers to ask (e.g. through Google Reviews, wherever your brand is tagged on social media, etc.), but this advice typically falls short on how to ask for testimonials and how to collect them in a way that makes it super easy for customers to actually follow through and give you a testimonial.
For example, providing written testimonials can seem like a big request for many customers who feel like composing a text-based testimonial is an anxiety-inducing and time-consuming task to get ‘right’. This is where having an easy way to collect and record video testimonials can offer a great solution that is super easy for anyone already used to shooting off-the-cuff voice and video messages on their smartphone.
Using Vocal Video is as easy for customers as recording a quick video message to send to a friend, or chatting over a video call. It can also be more fun than writing for many people, and thereby help you collect more testimonials from customers.
In this article, we’ll look at how you can get more testimonials from your customers in just a few steps:
- Decide which customers to ask for a testimonial
a. Identify customers who have already given you feedback or online reviews
b. Select satisfied customers that potential buyers can relate to - Ask for a testimonial in the right way and at the right time
a. Ask for testimonials using an email sequence template - Make the process of providing and collecting customer testimonials simple
a. Why video reviews can be easier to shoot and collect than written reviews
b. Step-by-step process that guides customers through video recording
Throughout, we’ll also show you how Vocal Video helps you complete each of these steps.
If you want to try using Vocal Video to collect, edit, and publish powerful testimonial videos, sign up and start using it for free here.
Which Customers Should You Ask for a Testimonial?
The first consideration is who to ask for a testimonial. Your instinct may be to ask everyone who has purchased your product for a review. However, focusing on your best customers and those that have already shown satisfaction with your brand, product, or service is the place to start for glowing testimonials.
Find Customers Who Have Already Said Positive Things
You can identify customers who are satisfied with your brand by searching through online reviews on Google, Yelp, Amazon, or other review sites.
If a customer has provided a five-star rating for you, they are a good bet for a great testimonial. Additionally, anyone who mentions or tags your brand on social media can be considered for a testimonial request, video review, or case study, provided they are describing a positive experience with your brand.
Select Customers That Prospects Can Identify With
Because prospective buyers view genuine and authentic testimonials to be similar to personal recommendations and referrals, it’s important to select satisfied customers that they can identify with. This is where the power of testimonials comes in.
When potential customers make an emotional connection with the subject of your testimonials — when they see themselves or their problem addressed in a testimonial — you can build trust, which makes them more likely to make a purchase.
As shown in the image above, getting a wide variety of testimonials from different customer profiles and demographics is the best way to ensure you’re covering a variety of customer profiles. These customers should also relate to a variety of relevant use cases for your product/service, which allows the widest pool of potential customers to identify with the customers who provide your online reviews.
Ask for Testimonials in the Right Way, at the Right Time
Taking time to write a well-structured message is an important step in making testimonial requests. Thank your customers for their time, make it clear what you’re asking of them, and point out any incentives or exposure they may get from providing you with a testimonial.
It’s also important to let your customers know how quick and easy the process of providing a testimonial will be for them. Give them a clear idea of how much time they should spend on providing the testimonial. Whether it’s a written testimonial, a quote testimonial, a video testimonial, or some other format, giving a timeframe shows how straightforward it should be. This means more of your customers will be willing to give it a try, and more people will actually follow through on their commitment to provide a positive testimonial.
Asking for testimonials can feel awkward, even for the most seasoned marketing professionals. You can easily remove this friction by automating the request process and triggering a testimonial request at a specific point in the customer journey.
For example, you can send out a link to ask for a testimonial just after a customer re-orders a product or extends their contract with you, since this is typically a sign they are satisfied with what your brand offers.
After you identify the best moment to ask, make this a consistent process within your teams so that the requests then become part of an established testimonial collection process.
Get More Testimonials By Using a Customized Vocal Video Template
Vocal Video’s library of 45+ video collector templates speeds up both the video testimonial request and collection process for you. Our video collector is the interface that guides your customers through recording a video testimonial on your behalf — all they have to do is click on a link you send them to start recording.
(Although you can build a video collector from scratch, we recommend using one of our templates to save yourself even more time.)
Vocal Video’s templates cover a wide range of use cases, so it’s easy to find one that will suit your needs. Once you have selected the most appropriate template, you’re guided to do the following:
- Customize the questions your customer will respond to.
- Adapt the introductory message for your organization and specific reasons you’re collecting testimonials.
- Add your colors and logo so the entire interface is in line with your business’ branding.
- Select an incentive to encourage your customers to provide a testimonial (a gift card, or discount code, for example)
- Send out an automatically-generated public link to the list of customers you’re targeting.
For more information on how the video collector works, check out our article on how to collect videos from users.
Each of our templates comes with a 3-step email sequence to request testimonials from your customers. We provide suggested texts for each email to give you a short-cut to writing your own, but these are fully customizable.
The email sequence includes:
Email #1: The Pre-Ask
This message outlines that you’re looking for video testimonials for your brand, product, or service. It provides a timeframe for collecting the testimonials and tells the customer how much time the whole process will take them (typically between 5 and 10 minutes). Finally, it asks for a response to this message.
Email #2: The Invitation
The invitation email thanks respondents for agreeing to provide a video testimonial, and provides a link to start recording. It outlines the questions that you’ll be asking, so customers can start thinking about how to answer. Plus, it gives a short tip for recording high-quality video and audio: “Pick a quiet and well-lit place”.
Email #3: The Follow-Up
The follow-up is a message to send out to any customers who have failed to respond to the previous messages. It reminds them of how long it will take and sends the link for recording the video again. This is proven to increase response rates.
Once you send your customer a recording link, they simply follow step-by-step instructions to send you their video testimonial (more on this below).
Read this article for more information on successfully getting more responses from testimonial requests.
Make It Simple for Your Customers to Give You a Testimonial
No matter the type of testimonial you’re asking for, it’s best to make it as easy as possible for your satisfied customers to provide it.
If you’re asking for quote, written, or video testimonials, you can provide customers with examples of good ones, and mention the kind of endorsement information you would like them to include, such as:
- How your product/service helped solve a specific problem for them.
- How their own lives/work processes have improved since using your brand.
- An anecdote about a time when the product/service was most useful to them.
- Specific figures to illustrate how the product/service improved their business/life (increased profits, conversion rates, amount of time saved, etc.).
Asking the right questions makes it easier to guide your customers into giving you powerful testimonials that are useful to your marketing message.
Read our in-depth article on designing video testimonial questions to get the best responses.
Here’s an example of a video testimonial recorded asynchronously by a satisfied Vocal Video customer using Vocal Video’s recording process on their own device (which also includes some of the elements suggested above):
Note how the video already includes customized branding, text overlays, and slides, animated transitions between responses, background music and more professionally-styled edits. These are all automatically added by Vocal Video.
Click here to watch more real video testimonial examples shot and produced using Vocal Video from Google, Comscore, and Martha Stoumen Wines.
Why Video Reviews Can be Easier to Record and Collect than Written Reviews
As we touched on above, video can be a great alternative to written reviews since it’s often easier for customers to follow through on. Many people feel like writing testimonials is a chore and often never complete it. If providing a video testimonial is fast and easy, it’s more likely that customers will actually give you a video review.
Traditionally, video has been expensive and time-consuming to produce, particularly for small businesses. But Vocal Video was designed to fix that: It allows you to record and collect video testimonials from your satisfied customers quickly and inexpensively.
Our asynchronous process is easy for you to set up, easy for your customers to record on their own device, and increases response rates. Using our platform also makes it quick and easy to edit and share your brand’s video testimonials whenever your content marketing strategy requires it.
Vocal Video Simplifies Testimonial Recording by Giving Customers a Step-by-Step Process
Once you’ve sent a video collector link to your targeted list of customers, as described above, they simply click on the link to be taken to your fully-branded Vocal Video landing page. The customer records on their own device within the Vocal Video platform. We never ask them to download any software or apps, or to sign up for anything — so the recording process remains as frictionless as possible.
Your Customer Answers Questions & Records (In just 5-10 minutes)
The Video Collector you created guides each respondent through shooting their video whenever they have time to do it. Each new screen, as shown in the image below, asks the customer one of the questions you customized in the template and they press record to start responding. After each question, they can review what has been recorded and opt to re-record if they would like to change anything.
After answering all the questions (you can ask between three and five), they click submit to send you their video testimonial. It’s that simple.
You Receive a Pre-edited Version of Your Video Testimonial
As soon as your user submits their video testimonials, Vocal Video goes to work on automatically editing it. When you receive your video testimonial, they are already in great shape and can be used right away on any of your marketing channels.
Vocal Video’s automatic editing saves you tons of time on getting raw footage into something that’s watchable and engaging for potential customers, which is more likely to lead to conversions. (It also saves you money from having to hire a video editor.)
Vocal Video applies the following to each video:
- Title cards
- Question cards
- Your branding, colors, and logo
- Motion graphics and animated transitions
- Automatic captions
- A computer-generated transcript
- Background music
- A call-to-action
- And all videos can be pulled into Video Galleries
Built-In Video Editing for More Impact
Even though every video you receive is “good-to-go” as soon as it hits your inbox, we also give you the option to make your own edits using our built-in editing tools.
Tightening up responses, trimming scenes, and changing default background music can make for a more impactful video. You can also splice together several of your most powerful testimonials to create a highlight reel for a promotional video, or to post in a prominent place on your website, for example.
Our video editing suite, like the rest of our process, is designed for anybody to be able to edit a video in just a few minutes using simple drag-and-drop editing tools.
For more information on the features of our editing suite, read our comprehensive guide to testimonial video editing using Vocal Video.
Vocal Video Gives You an Easy, High-Response Way to Collect Video Testimonials
We specifically designed Vocal Video to take the hassle out of requesting and getting testimonials from your customers. Over the years of developing our process, we have found that by making the customer experience relaxed and stress-free, response rates to testimonial requests have been consistently high. In fact, when we added a montage of video testimonials to our own signup page, visitor signups rose by over 200% compared to when the page only included customer quote testimonials.
By reducing the size of the request and making it easy to record a video on their phone or tablet, for example, Vocal Video’s process helps you get video testimonials from your customers consistently and repeatedly.
To start using Vocal Video to collect video testimonials from your happy customers for online marketing materials, websites, testimonials pages, landing pages, social media, and sales pages, sign up for Vocal Video for free.