It’s clear that using customer reviews in marketing is a great idea but exactly how to go about it isn't always as straightforward. Most advice you find online gives you an obvious list of where to post customer reviews (e.g. on your homepage), but doesn’t usually get into how effective each location will be or how it will improve conversions.
What most people don’t discuss is the type and format of reviews and testimonials to use in your marketing for the best impact; whether that be engagement, or an increase in conversion rate.
While simple written testimonials — a short quote attributed to a name and a face — are a good start, they are so commonplace that they don’t help your brand stand out and, frankly, their authenticity can be doubted.
Finding more authentic and more engaging testimonial formats can be valuable for your brand. Three testimonial formats we think stand out and should be considered are:
- Video Reviews
- User-Generated Content on Social Media
- Case Studies
At Vocal Video, we specialize in helping brands create video customer reviews because we know what a powerful tool video is for marketing campaigns.
Video reviews take authenticity up a notch by showing real people talking about how your brand helped them. This is far more effective to build trust with your potential customers; putting a face to the name makes the review feel authentic.
Below, we’ll show you 5 real world examples of how and where our customers successfully use customer reviews — specifically video reviews — in their marketing. All the customer review videos featured below were recorded using the Vocal Video testimonial app to attract new customers, improve engagement, and increase conversions. While the examples below show video customer reviews, you can use written testimonials in almost all of the same ways as these examples.
If after reading this post you want to give video customer reviews a try, you can sign up for a free Vocal Video account.
5 Examples of Where and How to Use Video Customer Reviews in Your Marketing
We’ve selected five examples of Vocal Video users who have successfully used our platform to collect and record positive reviews from their own satisfied customers.
Each of these users has utilized the videos as social proof of their product or service in different ways and in different locations of their website or social media, catering to what’s best for their own marketing strategy.
These videos have a similar effect on customers’ purchasing decisions as personal recommendations and word-of-mouth do. They build consumers’ trust and raise brand awareness in an impactful way.
Create a Dedicated Testimonial Page on Your Website
1. Natural Acne Clinic: Huge Wall of Reviews for Online Skincare Program
On its “Clear Skin Stories” webpage, the Natural Acne Clinic includes almost 20 customer experience videos recorded using Vocal Video.
Although the company also uses Yelp, Google, and Trustpilot reviews, star ratings, and other types of testimonials across its website, it has dedicated a specific page to these video reviews. The sheer number of reviews featured on the page immediately demonstrates how successful the program has been for its users.
In his own testimonial for Vocal Video, Natural Acne Clinic’s VP of Marketing, Shaun Whynacht, explains why his brand is so fond of using video customer reviews in its digital marketing:
“Nothing beats our happy clients talking about the experience they’ve had with us, and recommending us to other people who are in the same situation.”
Shaun also says that Vocal Video is intuitive to use, and customers can record their product reviews asynchronously on their smartphone or tablet, which makes it extra useful for his business:
“Being in this industry for many years, the ability to capture testimonials so easily for our clients — who mostly don't have a lot of technology background — Vocal Video is a must have. If you're in any business, whether you're selling products, running a service, or even a consulting business, you need testimonials. [...] It is hands down one of the top tools in our marketing toolbox.”
He adds that because he can so easily collect numerous positive reviews, the company now also has a “great library of content to use for organic social posts and video ads.”
Click here to see our Natural Acne Clinic customer case study.
Organic winemaker Martha Stoumen has a dedicated video testimonials page aptly named “Community Love”.
Their Community Love page includes a whole wall of authentic video customer reviews, collected using Vocal Video, from a wide range of existing customers. This helps provide authenticity for future buyers and makes their purchase decision even easier.
Lorren Butterwick — the Sales and Marketing manager at Martha Stoumen Wines — explains in her review of Vocal Video how important positive reviews and personal recommendations are to the brand, and in particular, how video reviews allow the brand to build a community:
“Testimonial videos are very important to Martha Stoumen Wines because it is a way for us to connect with our community in a more personal way. This is especially important because we are a small winery that really values authenticity and bringing people together.”
Additionally, she notes, “They allow our customers to genuinely share stories and experiences, to dive deeper into their wine reviews and to connect with us and the entire Martha Stoumen Wines community in a very unique way.”
“No one wants to hear directly from the winery itself that their product is great. It's not a believable story,” winery owner Martha Stoumen adds.
Click here to see our Martha Stoumen Wines customer case study.
On a Landing Page or Homepage with Other Types of Testimonial
Sales, marketing, and sales enablement company ClozeLoop uses video customer reviews on their homepage, alongside links to written case studies. They also pull snippets of text for each testimonial video — generated from the Vocal Video transcripts — to use as highlighted quotes.
“We find that video testimonials are the greatest way to get the voice of our customer immediately in the hands of folks who are considering us,” says Hilmon Sorey, Clozeloop’s managing director and co-founder.
“It's great because people actually get to hear the voice of the customer, which allows other folks that we might have a potential to work with to look and see,” he explains.
Hilmon adds that along with nudging new customers towards buying decisions, video testimonials are also useful for building a stronger relationship with existing customers:
“You win because you get to share this with a new audience. The audience wins because they get to hear customer feedback directly from the customer's mouth. The customer wins because they get to share their experience. [...] So I can't think of a better tool in a low friction way to be able to have that kind of an interaction.”
Click here to see our ClozeLoop customer case study.
On Your Website as Embedded Highlight Reels
4. Ada: Adds Impact with Multiple Customer Reviews in One Video
Chatbot and customer interaction software company, Ada, has made the most of Vocal Video’s highlight reel feature to add a compilation of customer reviews to its website.
By editing the best snippets of several video reviews together, Ada increases the impact of the video testimonials it has collected.
Click here for more info on how to create a highlight reel using Vocal Video.
Tutoring company Gideon Math and Reading used Facebook to ask for testimonials (by posting a video collector link on their FB page) and then posted the resulting customer reviews.
The general call out for testimonial videos from satisfied customers gave the company a huge number of reviews to post across social media channels, and to use in their digital marketing efforts.
How to Collect and Record Your Own Customer Reviews Using Vocal Video
Vocal Video’s video collection and recording process has been designed so that anyone can record a customer testimonial, even if they have no video recording or editing experience.
We’ll give you a brief description of how it’s done below, but if you want full details, see our in-depth article: How to Record High-Quality Video Reviews.
It takes just a few minutes for marketers to set up and less than 10 minutes for customers to record a video testimonial using our platform. To start, you put together a “video collector” in just a few steps:
- Give your video collector a name and add a welcome message or video.
- Include an optional incentive. Vocal Video offers a free monthly prize drawing, or you can choose your own incentive.
- Write three to five questions for customers to answer. Our ready-to-use templates include customizable questions.
- Add your logo, colors, and branding to be featured in the testimonial video.
- Send out a link for your satisfied customers to record their video testimonial.
Click here to watch our detailed 5-minute video on how to build a video collector.
The customized link takes customers to a Vocal Video landing page which is fully branded with your logo and colors. From there, they record the answers to the questions you set using a smartphone, tablet, or computer.
Customers get a chance to replay what they have recorded and submit it, or redo it if they want to change something. When they’ve recorded answers to all the questions, they click ‘submit’ and the video is sent to you.
Each testimonial video arrives in your inbox with several pre-edited features:
- Your brand colors and logo as set in the video collector.
- Text overlays for names and company roles.
- Interstitial text slides for introduction, questions, and CTA.
- Animated transitions between each response.
- Computer-generated captions and a transcript which is useful for readability and SEO.
- Royalty-free background music.
The video customer reviews are ready to use across your marketing channels, but if you want to make additional changes, Vocal Video also includes a comprehensive range of video editing tools within the platform.
Our in-built editing suite, like the rest of our process, is designed for anybody to use, even if they have no video editing expertise. It’s a much simpler process than using professional video editing software.
Vocal Video’s editing tools make it easy to:
- Rearrange the order of the responses.
- Alter colors, branding, and logos.
- Trim scenes and edit down responses.
- Change the default background music.
- Edit and correct computer-generated captions.
- Modulate music and audio volume for easier listening.
See our article Testimonial Video Editing Made Easy: Create High-Quality Videos without Professional Expertise for more details on how to use our editing tools.
Vocal Video: An Accessible Way to Use Video Customer Reviews Across Your Marketing Channels
Vocal Video’s simple video testimonial collection and recording system gives a straightforward process for collecting video testimonials that can be used in all your marketing campaigns.
Whether you plan to use video testimonials on dedicated product review pages, as a more impactful alternative to written reviews, or share them on social media, with Vocal Video, you can build a library of videos to use whenever your marketing needs them.
Note: Ready to start using video customer reviews in your marketing campaigns? Vocal Video gives you all the tools you need to easily record, collect, and edit video testimonials. Sign up for a free Vocal Video account — no credit card required.