Shooting testimonial videos used to be really expensive and time-consuming. You had to hire a whole video production crew, search for and rent a location, hire voiceover talent, and organize a whole team to be there on the same day — along with your interviewees.
Now, though, testimonial video production is available at a wide range of price points, using services ranging from all-in-one professional video production agencies to asynchronous video recording platforms.
How much your testimonial videos cost you will depend on a number of factors including:
- How much business do you expect your video content to generate?
- What you can afford?
- How much time can you dedicate to producing your marketing videos?
- What type of video and production quality will your audience most relate to?
In this post, we’ll look at three price levels for customer testimonial video production services that you can use to record great testimonials:
- $99-$299
- $3,500-$15,000
- $15,000-$100,000+
We’ll show you how to decide which price level makes the most sense for your client testimonial videos, starting with affordable and scalable asynchronous video testimonial recording using Vocal Video.
Note: Ready to start easily collecting, editing, and publishing customer testimonial videos to attract potential customers? Sign up for a free Vocal Video account (we don’t ask for your credit card details).
$99 to $299: Record High Quality Client Testimonials Asynchronously and Affordably Using Vocal Video
Vocal Video combines collecting, recording, editing, publishing, and hosting of video testimonials in one easy-to-use software platform.
It gives you all the tools needed to do everything mentioned above, in one simple, streamlined process that doesn’t require videographers, or an entire video production crew to get great results.
With Vocal Video, you simply send a video collector link to whoever you want. From there, they can record a high-quality video testimonial, review, or case study on their own smartphone or computer — in their own time.
They don’t need to download any apps or software. You just write a few interview questions (or use our suggested question templates) to guide them through the recording session.
Although Vocal Video comes in at the lowest price point on this list, that doesn’t mean we compromise on quality. Quite the opposite, in fact.
With over 10 years of experience collecting and recording high-quality testimonial videos, we’ve perfected the process of getting the job done easily, affordably, and at scale, while making sure you can still collect the best quality videos. This is a powerful way to provide social proof of your products or services.
With this in mind, our all-in-one video testimonial app gives you everything you need to:
- Successfully ask your customers for testimonials using our suggested three-step email sequences to improve response rates.
- Make it easy for customers to record testimonials themselves on their schedule and on their own device via a link you send them (all in less than 10 minutes). This easy process and small time investment increases the likelihood your customers will record a customer review for you in the first place.
- Receive pre-edited testimonial videos from your satisfied customers that you can use right away, including your own branding, colors, and royalty-free background music.
- Use our super intuitive editing tools, which are an integral part of our platform, to further trim, polish, and tweak your videos to make them as impactful as possible for your audience. You don’t need any experience with video production or editing to get great results, either.
If you would like to go into greater depth on how to create video testimonials without equipment, scheduled interviews, or a huge budget, see our article here.
In the meantime, here’s a great example of the kind of high-quality testimonial videos you can record and share with your potential customers by using Vocal Video.
Vocal Video’s Scalable Pricing
One of the best things about using Vocal Video is that it only costs $99 per month to get started on creating customer video testimonials (and an account costs you nothing at all).
Our pricing is very affordable compared with hiring a professional service to shoot and edit videos.
We have three pricing tiers, ranging from Starter for $99/month to $299/month for a Professional subscription. We also offer enterprise packages if the needs of your organization go further than our out-of-the-box packages provide.
Plus, the more videos you create with Vocal Video, the better the cost per video looks. You can easily create professional videos at $5 per video. That’s a steal!
When to Opt for Vocal Video
Vocal Video is a great option if you need to collect testimonial videos regularly and at scale.
Because our platform is inexpensive and also provides you with high quality videos, it’s particularly useful for small and medium-sized businesses looking to record customer stories and reviews.
Vocal Video is not only for companies working with a smaller budget, as our customers also include large enterprises.
Below is an example of how Google Cloud has been using Vocal Video to collect testimonial videos:
As shown above, even huge enterprises can make use of a video recording platform at this price point.
In fact, Google uses a blend of videos in all the pricing tiers outlined below because certain segments of their business just don’t require big budget video productions, so it’s not worth paying for studio quality videos every time.
A Note on Testimonial Videos Costing $299-$3,500
You may notice there’s a significant jump in price between our first and second tiers ($99-$299 and $3,500-$15,000).
Technically, there is also an option in the $299-$3,500 range, which is to hire somebody (a freelancer, or small agency, for example) to record remote videos on your behalf, but using tools similar to those that you could use if you decided to do it yourself.
These services are not common, however, and are often not great value for the money because the quality of the remotely captured recordings is not noticeably better than what can be achieved using a video recording platform like Vocal Video.
Rather than paying out for just one video at this price point, we would typically recommend using one studio quality video (in one of the price brackets below) alongside several Vocal Videos in your marketing campaign.
Alternatively, you can just use Vocal Video until you feel the ROI of your campaign merits the higher spend.
$3,500 to $15,000: Working with a Freelancer or Small Agency
Working with a video production freelancer or small production agency has the benefit of taking the hassle of video creation out of your hands. It will also produce significantly higher-quality results than a software-only service.
The agency you hire will usually take care of the following:
- Filming and recording
- Finding and hiring out locations
- Sourcing and hiring talent (interviewers and voiceover, if needed)
- Editing and post-production
Keep in mind: The agency will need your input on the specifics of what you want to get from the video, so you’ll need to allocate time and resources of your own on top of the fee they charge to liaise with the freelancer or agency.
The quality of these videos will be closer to what you might see on TV or other studio recorded footage.
There will be multiple camera angles (possibly including a b-roll) and the final product should be broadcast quality footage that you can use across your high-value marketing campaigns.
The pricing of these services is not always clear from the outset and because costs can easily mount up, it will be important to get a clear idea before the shoot of exactly what you will be getting for the quoted price.
When to Select This Price Bracket
Essentially, this is premium video production for companies with a smaller budget.
This price level is worth considering when you’re looking for a higher spec customer testimonial video that you expect will be used a lot and will get you a great return on your investment.
To get a solid idea of the ROI of your video, before deciding where to invest your budget, you can ask yourself:
- What level of engagement will this video testimonial have?
- How many different places will it be posted or used?
- How have previous videos we’ve produced performed?
If you have the budget and think you’ll get a decent ROI, then increasing your spend to include at least one video testimonial at this price level in your marketing budget will typically be worth the extra investment.
But it doesn’t have to be an all or nothing option, you can still use Vocal Video to include an extra layer of more candid and authentic testimonials in your marketing campaigns.
This is especially true if you have multiple customer verticals that aren’t represented in your main, high-end video.
Google’s Cloud page, for example, features high-end videos and Vocal Video-produced videos for the same product, but slightly different purposes.
$15,000 to $100,000+: Using a Full Service Agency
If you have big bucks to spend, then you also have the option to use a full-service video production agency.
Sandwich is a good example of the kind of agency we’re talking about.
These video production companies and agencies provided a turnkey solution for customer testimonial video production, commercials, and other studio quality footage. They are most often used to produce corporate videos.
They differentiate themselves from the services and platforms in the lower price brackets by offering a range of premium services, including:
- Concept and design proposals for your videos
- Pre-production logistics
- Professional videography and photo shoots
- Location scouting
- Post-production services (image and audio editing)
- Hiring talent (actors, voiceover talent, writers, designers, etc.)
- And much more.
The cost of hiring a service of this caliber can easily rack up into hundreds of thousands of dollars, which may be worthwhile if you’re Facebook or Slack (just two of Sandwich’s many high-end clients), but will be a major investment for the majority of smaller organizations.
Despite the turnkey promise of this approach, you will likely need to allocate someone full-time to handle your organization’s role in such a large production and to liaise with the production agency.
The premium quality of the result will be clear, though, and you’ll get a highly polished TV quality testimonial video that can be used in a wide variety of contexts including:
- TV commercials or clips
- Internet ads
- Social media channels
- Newsletters
- Websites
- etc.
When to Go All Out
You can only take the plunge with such an expensive production process when you have the budget for it. But even then, it is worth considering whether spending such a huge amount of your overall budget on recording a customer testimonial video will be worth it.
Once again, it’s a matter of whether you will be getting a return on your investment.
It’s easy to get carried away with the high visibility and kudos that a project like this can carry, but before shelling out, make sure it makes sense for your business.
Even massive corporations rarely make this level of investment in video production and often prefer to pay for testimonial videos in a range of prices because the target audience for each of them may not find such high production values relatable or authentic.
If a company like Slack or HubSpot, for example, were to only use fancy studio quality testimonials featuring CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, they’d be potentially alienating some of the independent business owners that could also use their products.
How to Decide Which Price Bracket Is Best for You
To decide on which budget to earmark for your testimonial campaign, you need to consider:
- What ROI do you expect to get from the video testimonial? Think about how much engagement you expect to get from the video and if it will convert into actual sales for your business. For some insight into how SME founders assess the ROI of their video testimonials, take a look at our article here.
- How many testimonials do you need to record? Do you need several on a frequent basis, or just one or two that will have a greater impact?
- Who will be giving you the testimonial? Is your respondent the CEO of a large corporation, or an end consumer of a home product?
- What level of video quality would best relate to your market? It’s important to keep video testimonials relatable so that they can have the biggest possible impact on the target audience.
- Does it make sense to use a hybrid approach? You can allocate some of your budget to one or two high quality videos to attract enterprise customers, for example, and then the remainder can be asynchronously recorded in a more hands-off way, so that you speak to the full breadth of your audience.
Vocal Video Gives You Scalable, High Quality Testimonial Videos at a Fraction of the Cost of Hiring a Professional Video Production Service
By choosing to use Vocal Video, you can easily collect dozens of testimonial videos inexpensively, and as often as you need them.
You get a highly polished video for use on your social media channels and wherever your marketing campaign needs them, whatever your budget.
If you can afford to opt for a higher value video production service, Vocal Video can still serve your needs as an additional option for showing a wider range of potential customers the most relatable testimonial videos.
Note: Ready to start easily collecting, editing, and publishing customer testimonial videos to attract potential customers? Sign up for a free Vocal Video account today (we don’t ask for your credit card details).