Video Testimonials: Social Proof in Motion

 

Drew: Hello, Renegade Marketers. If this is your first time, welcome. If you’re a regular listener, welcome back. You’re about to hear a bonus huddle where experts share their insights into the topics of critical importance to our flocking awesome community, CMO Huddles. When it comes to building trust and credibility, few things are more powerful than a great customer story. In this huddle, Alexander Ferguson shares how to capture compelling video testimonials, where to use them for maximum impact, and the data behind why they work, plus, we explore creative ways to get customers on board and make testimonials a seamless part of your marketing playbook. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. You’ll be helping our quest to be the number #1 B2B marketing podcast. All right, let’s dive in.

Narrator: Welcome to Renegade Marketers Unite, possibly the best weekly podcast for CMOs and everyone else looking for innovative ways to transform their brand, drive demand, and just plain cut through, proving that B2B does not mean boring to business. Here’s your host and Chief Marketing Renegade, Drew Neisser.

Drew: Hello, Huddles. I’m excited to introduce you to Alexander Ferguson, the founder of TeraLeap. Alex and his team have helped us create over 55 Huddles testimonials. So we’ve been able to tap into their expertise and can testify to the excellence of their process and execution. With that. Hello, Alex, how are you and where are you this fine day?

Alexander: I’m doing great. Excited to be here, and I’m over in Raleigh, North Carolina, East Coast, south of you.

Drew: Yes, exactly. Same time zone. We started talking about unicycles. I think we’ll come back to that, because we share that in common. But just in case, our audience has to leave early, or we need to persuade them to stick around. Can you offer three things that many marketers get wrong when they’re recording or creating customer video testimonials?

Alexander: Three things that I see many marketers are getting wrong when it comes to video testimonials. First one is they don’t understand the value of them, or really how to track the ROI on them. Second is they often find it difficult or to get them, or find it too expensive. And also, they are missing out on several key use cases that I think can really help lower cost, customer acquisition costs, accelerate sales pipeline, and that’s what I’m going to dig into more today. But those are the common things that I’m seeing.

Drew: Yeah, so let’s, let’s go, you know, go through those one at a time, and make so they don’t understand how to measure value. Talk about why that’s challenging and what the solutions are.

Alexander: Well, when it comes to video testimonials, often it’s understanding, okay, all the ways that you can leverage it and understand and a little bit I’ll unpack, kind of the top stats that I pay attention to when it comes to video and then using it for video testimonials, but also then being able to see, where are you getting the return on effort once you’ve crafted and created it. Where is it being leveraged across your marketing and sales efforts, and then you got the being too expensive and difficult. That’s been a common issue for a long time, I think, with a lot of folks.

Drew: So, you know, and I love the return on effort, because it is, that’s right, we’re going to spend some time. We got to get the customer. We got to get a camera on them, you know, record and produce. What are the top stats that you care about?

Alexander: Yeah, so the top stats that I’m constantly paying attention when it comes to video specifically, is impression to click ratio. So how many impressions are you getting that’s being loaded to then how many times you actually clicking on it? Then I’m looking at watch time and completion ratio. And then the biggest one is conversions. So wherever you’re leveraging or embedding that video piece, the video testimonial, what was the conversions before and after based on that call to action on that page? And that tells me each of those three stats are telling me different pieces of the puzzle of how it’s performing.

Drew: Well, we keep narrowing down, and I keep wanting to go deeper. So impressions to clicks. So I’ve got it on the website, but did they actually watch it? Right? So what did they click on it? Okay, that one I get watch time and completion rates that assumes that you have some software that enables you to track that right?

Alexander: Leveraging video hosting platforms, you’re going to be able to see that watch time and completion that’s going to tell you how well the stories are being told, if it’s actually captivating and pulling people in to get that conversion in the end.

Drew: So video platform, and we’re talking we, can we actually get that kind of data from from YouTube, or do we need a more sophisticated platform?

Alexander: YouTube is a place to start, but platforms like Vimeo, Wistia, Vidyard, are going to give you much, much more analytical data on the video usage.

Drew: Okay so we’re going to need, if we want to get this data, we’re going to need a better hosting plan that will enable us to do it. And obviously, completion time is, in theory, important. But really, the last thing that you talked about is, did they watch this, and ultimately, did they convert, at least move to the next step? And so, how are you tracking that? Is there a way so that we got our video and we somehow or other tag them on a HubSpot, and we could actually track that person who watched the video ended up closing kind of thing?

Alexander: Yeah, let me give you a case study here, one of the customers I work with Vitally and they have case study pages with these videos embedded on it, and then, using HubSpot, some other tools, they’re able to see the watch time based on being cookie. They can see correlation of 97% of the customers who actually closed and became prospects, who became customers, went to these pages and watched these videos so they saw a perfect correlation with this was part of the sales journey that helped accelerate it.

Drew: And is that common? That is part of the I mean, you would think it’s social proof. You would think that they’d want to watch Well, what do the customers say?

Alexander: The question is, how much are those stories perfectly embedded in that journey? Are unable to come across it and using it? Another company that I work with, ClearGov, they actually used it as intent data for their sales team to follow up on. So if they watched 50% of a customer story, their sales team used that as a nice trigger point. So if anything, these customer stories can be a tool to kind of initiate next stage of a drip campaign or sales effort.

Drew: Again, it makes sense that someone who gets 50% through it is interested enough they have some intent. Did they? Did they already know that that was the magic number, because those people converted later on, or they just sort of guessing and hoping.

Alexander: Probably the latter of assuming, if you get to 50% you’re somewhat interested. So we’ll take that as a positive signal.

Drew: Right? It feels very different than someone who says, I want a demo or ask for pricing information. Those two feel like higher intent, but I get it. It’s so funny, because I’m so conscious right now of trying to align the sales actions with the buyer interests, right? And they’re not always the same. And I think a lot of companies actually push it in the wrong way, because the buyer, in theory, wants to be in control of the journey, and isn’t asking for a call, isn’t waiting for a call unless they say, I want to talk to somebody. So all right, different topic, different person, different thing. So we’re watching for that, and then obviously we’re looking for conversions, and one would hope that that would be on that. So going back to earlier we talked about difficult to get, obviously, in some categories, it’s like, like cybersecurity. No one wants to say, Oh, we’re using this thing and it’s blocked all that. They just don’t want to talk about it. But let’s go out of industries where it wouldn’t be bad for a customer to talk how have you found helping your clients, getting these testimonials and what? What makes it work better?

Alexander: There’s, there’s a lot that we can unpack there, but at the root of it, what I’ve seen is a shift is the mentality of four years ago. Something happened 2020 and people are more that small thing. People are more ready than ever to be on video. So in many cases, it’s not being afraid to just make the request. Let’s hop on and be able to capture your story. But it depends on the flow of how you do it. I can unpack that in a little bit, but it’s like, don’t be afraid of it. That’s kind of the first part. It’s not that they’re not going to be as apprehensive as they used to be.

Drew: Right? They may even be flattered. They’re not worried. So one, they’re not worried about being on camera, because they’re, in theory, camera ready. They’re on it all the time, and you can’t be afraid. But so now we’re asking them, and they say they’re sort of thinking, God, do I have to get permission from my boss? Am I the right person? You know, there’s some who have no problem. I mean, most, like CMOs, for example, are more than willing to hop on a camera and, you know, be on video. Whether they all do a testimonial or not, is a whole another thing. So what are the sort of what else is there that the folks listening to this could do to get more customers to be… Well, other than delivering a higher quality of product and service, that would get them to do a testimonial.

Alexander: The big one is usually timing. If you’re able to capitalize on the maximum goodwill, you know the moment when they are excited for it and be able to make the request at that moment, then they have a much higher impetus. So it’s kind of a basic concept, but how often I miss it? It’s like you wait till the very end. You’re like, well, now we need some customer stories. Let’s go ask them, versus having a system in place.

Drew: Right. It’s like they’ve finally got it up and running, whatever it is, if it’s a software, they’re fully implemented. They’ve closed, it’s working for them. You know, don’t wait until the contract’s coming up for renewal.

Alexander: Yes, that’s too late.

Drew: That is too late. So it’s timing. People forget about it and don’t get around. So it’s got to be part of your built into your process. It’s almost like your customer service process, okay? And then the last thing you talked about are use cases as the thing that they get wrong. Go deeper on that.

Alexander: Oh gosh, I definitely have a lot, and we can dig into it more, but I found there’s really seven major use cases that you have an opportunity to leverage these customer stories. And essentially, I heard a stat recently that 70% of content produced specifically for sales teams goes unused. And so it’s like, we create these great stories, but often they’re collecting digital dust on the back corners of our website, and they’re not leveraged across the rest of our campaigns. Now I’m not saying that you know video testimonial, like in the video format, is the answer for everything, but I’m looking at social proof and their story of being able to repurpose it. So what I’d really love to unpack is like, Hey, why do I say video? Like, I’m such a bullish on video, because that’s gonna lead us into all the different ways we can use it, please. So I mean, there’s four major types of social proof that I see. We’ve got your written, you know, simple quotes, written case studies. They’re great, been around for ages. You have your image types of testimony, taking the text and putting alongside their photo or other graphic material of the product. You have live testimonials. So at a conference, be able to pull your customer on stage or do as a customer reference, be able to ask them to get on a call, and then you have video. Each one of them have their merits, but that’s kind of actually in the sliding scale. I would say live is the best. Nothing beats actually showing one customer talking to another one, having that in personal communication. That authentic, but it doesn’t scale. And that’s one of the reasons why I love video, is because if you capture it in video, you get everything else. You get a lot of the benefit of live, of that authentic, real humanness. I mean, we’re in an age of video where people are expecting and they want that authenticity. They’re actually more skeptical of written content more than ever before, but then being able to repurpose it and use… you still get the written content out of it, you still get the image content out of it. But then it’s like the story itself, being able to capture it in a story format. There’s so much cool science behind that I’ve started to unpack like there’s this concept of narrative transportation, so helping someone to experience a story as if it was their own. So be optimally… Will read stories or watch movies, read books, and you feel like you are the character when you see it. And you’re able to create that with these customer stories as they see themselves in the shoe of that potential prospect, say, “Ah yes, I imagine myself really evoking a lot more stronger emotions and a lot persuasive argument there.” And then it pulls into that emotional resonance where just data and facts very important. But if you can tie it in as well, there’s really some fascinating studies done on how the brain’s reliance on emotional markers really play a key role in streamlining complex decision making processes. That’s why bringing in emotion is so important on these bigger decision makings. We often call it our gut, and what our gut feels. But these stories help actually use that cognitive bias in that decision making process, and then you got memory recall, of course, video, it really plays a lot more sensory multiple sensory emotions, so pulling in a higher chance it’ll stay in the long term memory. They’ll remember your brand and a positive reference. So that’s a lot, both the science behind it.

Drew: Right? No, but I get it. I’m gonna recap just for a second. Video, good, live, better quotes, okay, right? And so you sort of had the scale, and video, in theory, is scalable, which live is not necessarily okay. So I’ve got, I think everybody listening will hopefully, just by the fact that they’re listening, will recognize that video testimonials are thing that they ideally should have. They’re probably thinking about the cost and the mechanics and the logistics in the as you said very early on, the energy that it takes to do it, the return on effort. And we actually got lost a little bit because we were talking about the seven ways you can use them. So yeah, but I’m going to stop for a second, because you’ve sort of gotten into this whole thing of social proof, right, and why that’s so important. So I’m about to buy your product. I don’t… I’m trying to take eliminate risk part one. So if I see a big customer who I admire and know and recognize, and they say, “Yeah, I’m working with Alex at Tara leap and their guys are fantastic.” That takes risk off the table.

Alexander: Yes, yes, right? And a peer validation plays such a huge role in reducing that, that perceived risk.

Drew: And then if it happens to be a testimonial in my industry with the same problem, it even makes me more comfortable, right? Because, oh my gosh, they’re in construction like we are, and then they have the same challenge that we do. Oh, my God, I know, you know. And so all of that, but we wanted to talk, so we got social proof covered. I don’t think we need to sort of sell that.

Alexander: Realizing that if you get… if you get video, if you start with video, as far as social proof, you’ll still get the rest of the social proof. That’s why I always advise… It’s like everyone understands the need for social proof, but everyone says, “Well, should I do video?” Well, yes, start with video and then you’re able to get all the rest of the content. It’s a kind of a good starting point.

Drew: Right? I mean, you could even do audio testimonial. So, I mean, there’s all sorts of different things that you can do once you have the video. So we’re gonna start with video.

Alexander: But then actually getting them is still the challenge of, how do you nurture a customer and get them to say, “Sure, we do it.” We touched on that briefly. I have one kind of the way I look at a suggestion to look at is a visual here as a kind of a framework that I can pull up. It’s looking at how much is it embedded in your overall customer journey process? I mean, ideally, it’s already in your contracts that people are signing up. They say, “Yes, I already know that I’m going to share.” It doesn’t have to be too much. I mean, our own ones are when we’ve completed and you’re happy, we’ll capture a story. You’ll be able to review it and approve it, mentioning again during onboarding. I mean, say, “Hey, we already know this is going to be great.” Your customer service is saying this is going to be what we’re going to follow back up with you to be able to capture your story. And then the big one is, is on a review call for sales team or customer service if you’re a high volume business, sending out surveys, NPS surveys, or if you’re a low volume high touch, getting on a review call, asking them there live is crucial. Most of the time, though, folks are like, “All right, we need customer stories now” as kind of a last advocacy step, send out an email. Let’s find some people, but if you’re embedding it into your customer journey like this, then you’re going to dramatically increase the likelihood you’re going to get concentration or stories coming through regularly.

Drew: It’s funny, in the I remember a number of customers who struggled to get testimonials to the point that they baked into a discount into their contract. You know, you’ll achieve a discount of whatever three to 10% if you agree to do a testimonial.

Alexander: It’s a strategy that works really well. That’s the type of incentive that can make people say, “Yeah, sure.” And I mean, these are valuable assets to help convert more. So you just have to kind of see the trade there.

Drew: Now, obviously the NPS and that thing is that you don’t want a testimonial from an unhappy customer, but it does beg a question that’s so interesting, and I don’t know how you balance this. When we look at Amazon, if we don’t see a negative review, we know the deck is stacked. There’s got to be something, you know, and having a negative review actually adds credibility on like on third party sites, it really does help. But nobody’s going to record a negative testimonial for their website. So I guess you never get that balance. It’s always going to be suspect, because these are yours, right?

Alexander: Ideally, when you’re doing a capturing this customer story, and the way we do it is you find out what their initial hesitations or objections were, and you embed that as part of the story, so people can say, “Oh, I had that same concern or issue,” and then they can share how, well, it wasn’t too much of a concern. So it brings a little bit more reality to it. But no, it won’t be. You’re not going to be posting three star reviews.

Drew: These guys sucked. I hated everything about it. Don’t work with them. If it’s the last thing, you’re probably not going to put that on your website. And you know, most people don’t want to be recorded saying negative things. They probably do it on on their own, somewhere else. So yeah, we were going to go back to some process, things that you know that came up earlier. So as we do that, and I’m trying to find the use cases, let’s go to use cases.

Alexander: Yes, so there’s a lot of powerful use cases for being able to use video testimonials. The biggest one is sales enablement. I think it’s a great, easy place to begin, where I really highly recommend is, have a customer stories showroom that’s kind of the nickname or the nomenclature I’ve given. It basically a digital repository of all your stories that sales and marketing can search through and filter by industry, by company, size, problems, experience, results achieved, basically, you’re equipping the team, both marketing sales, to have the right context of, here’s a quote, here’s a story, be able to pull it. And could be as simple as a spreadsheet where you’re pulling down all the stories, the videos, the short quotes, and being able to then make sure you get the right start of the right person as you build at that library. So that’s what I recommend. Is a great use case for sales enablement, is to have that showroom and then use it in drip campaigns and follow ups to prep calls to use to send it to decision makers, to bypass gatekeepers, is a powerful tool. Then, once you have those stories,

Drew: Okay, so it totally makes sense if you have a lot of testimonials in a library of some kind that is accessible and sortable, and I’m imagining if you’re a larger company and you have a content management system, then it’s easy to search and tag these things. I also believe, but I could be completely wrong, that you could somehow or other tag them in a HubSpot as well. So again, if we think about this as a we have a customer’s expressed interest in some level. Know their vertical market, you have a testimonial for their vertical market, and they’re doing, you know, let’s say they’re in the middle somewhere of of the font of their journey. Just, you know, your AE, pop some line and say, “Hey, thought you’d appreciate this video from a customer in your industry.” That’s like, really good and but what you’re saying is sales people don’t, often don’t do that. And I’m just wondering the tools that are needed to make this easier for them. I mean, I guess imagine, at some point this all gets automated.

Alexander: Ideally. But I so often I see it gets missed, and that’s why I often I bring it up, is because it’s like that last final her, just to make sure they have the proper context to go with. It plays a huge role. But then that’s one element is, is sales enablement, of the many different use cases I can go through all of them.

Drew: Give me a couple of them. We’ll sort of, beat them up.

Alexander: Another one is, is website for sure. That’s a common one. And make sure for Website Conversions, you’ve got a beautiful library here. So a wall of love is a common great thing to have. So you’ve got plenty of stories that you’ve pulled.

Drew: Oh, look at that. That’s like 50 plus. Look at all that love. Wow. And just for the record, we are completely under utilizing these. And this is a question that I have is, where do they and how do they live? So you know, these live on our website. But I’m curious, from a best practices standpoint, you know, Wall love is great, but it doesn’t it’s not sortable. You know that this is kind of tricky, right?

Alexander: Yes. So ideally, you’d have some functionality. So vitally, one of our customers, customers I mentioned earlier, they’re able to sort by industry, model, roles, etc. And then you’re able to quickly find and click on a story and be able to watch the video content this story behind it, and then be able to see the case study connected to it. One power is, is being able to quickly sort by that. Another use case, I actually love what prismatic did is, is pulling the data from the stories and creating a cost calculator. So then actually being able to combine both the emotional story behind it along with the logical data connected on one page is a really cool use case. Basically two data points on the same page. You see the logical data behind it, and then you see the story that backs it up.

Drew: Got it. And so again, there we go. We got the logic and the and the rational and so the emotional part of video is important. But keep going on the use cases, because this is great.

Alexander: Another one will be definitely email, email campaigns. And there’s a couple ways that you can look at that. One could be as far as for sales, how they’re leveraging it, for drip campaigns and newsletters, those would be the top ones. A lot of them, when you’re looking at using it there, it’s being it’s making sure you have a nice still image that captivates and makes them want to click on it. Gifts are even better, if you had those along with, like, a short, brief text to go with it. And there’s, there’s, there’s value in having the video testimonial people even knowing that it exists just when they see it, and they can understand before they click on but email is a big one. I know for one of our customers, ClD, every once in a while, change their newsletter to focus on one particular customer. So they’ll use that chance to unpack the story behind it. And they saw on when they put it used a customer story, they saw a 500% increase in engagement because we like, “Oh, this is a peer.” They’re interested in how they’re being leveraged. So it’s like, again, when the story is relevant to your exact market, then you can really get a lot higher engagement than some more corporate opportunities.

Drew: So on the email. And that makes sense. Obviously, it’s generally relevance wins, right? It’s why Instagram ads are so effective, because they know who we are. And they go, “Oh, look, Drew likes penguins. So we’re going to show Drew penguins.” And it’s amazing how that relevance keeps you there and makes you interested. You mentioned animated GIFs are better than a still image of the video. I mean, animated GIFs are so easy to create, why wouldn’t everybody do it?

Alexander: Another step, ideally, you’re leveraging tools that could just automate some of that process. But if you had a choice between the two, definitely choose the GIF.

Drew: Right? I mean, one of my favorite parts of Loom, when you’re creating those sort of personal videos that are sort of just, “Hey, hi,” they automatically create a GIF, which is great. It’s usually like, hey, somebody’s slightly annoying, but yeah. And the reason we’re not putting embedding the video, and it is just too damn big. It won’t go through. And, you know, right? We can’t embed, okay, correct? And embed, all right.

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Alexander: The other big two ones are ads and social media, for sure. So for there to do it well, there’s a couple things you want to keep in mind on if you’re going to use video testimonials and either ads or social media, formatting matters a lot. So content, clip choice, so what you’re selecting from the story as well as the style and the format of it. So we’re talking about aspect ratio for social media; most people are consuming on their phones. So you’re not going to want to do a wide screen, what we call 16 by 9. You’re going to want to do a square portrait, because that fills more of the smartphone as people are scrolling or going through the content. Closed captioning is an obvious one. Is kind of needed, but it’s the content clip that matters sometimes the most. There’s two ones that I’ve seen work well for ads. One is problem-focused, so it’s really just laying hard into the challenge they were facing and potentially not even telling how you solved it. It creates an open loop in their brain, a cognitive open loop where they’re like, all right? Well, tell me more. The call to action is go see the full case study and be able to unpack it. And then, of course, results-focused works well for retargeting. Great campaign is using video testimonies for objection handling. So after they come to your site, they’re looking at other pieces. Be able to find whether it’s a clip from the customer story or a highlight of multiple customers addressing that objection. Great retargeting campaign for that.

Drew: So interesting, and this is rather sophisticated, obviously, where you’re they come to the website, but they didn’t click. They didn’t watch, they didn’t do anything. But you know who they are, so you can programmatically reach them, but getting them with an objection, you’re at that point, assuming that the objection is X, Y or Z, right? You don’t know. You just know they didn’t watch a testimonial. You just know they didn’t do the ROI calculator. You know they didn’t do request a demo. So it’s fascinating. Think about it. It makes sense. And you would also have to do that in a way that you weren’t planting an objection in their mind that they hadn’t actually had.

Alexander: Yes, it’s like knowing what are the most common ones. So you can address those. Don’t create ones that are on the edge, fringe cases. But after you’ve done enough customer interviews, you’re still to hear the things that keep recurring, and you’re like, “Okay, this is a common objection or concern they often have.” Well, let’s make sure we have content around that that speaks to it. And the power of, like a lot of social platforms, whether it’s LinkedIn or Meta or YouTube, is creating video funnels. So being able for people that watch the top of the first video, you can retarget them based on whether they 50 or 75% viewing, and then they can continue to watch more of the different videos that get to address those objections or show the results.

Drew: So I seem to recall we’re not doing any LinkedIn advertising at this point, but we did for several years, and I seem to recall that we struggled to make the testimonials actually work for us. And part of it was, I think, you know, on a LinkedIn platform. You know, the first six seconds or so, it’s everything right, whether that and the testimonials are hard to structure in a way that in six seconds you get that thing. So I’m assuming that may have been the reason. I don’t know. But it is a tricky environment to use those testimonials. I mean, it does it. What are the things, if you’re going to use it as ads, what do we need to know about?

Alexander: The big one there is definitely the content choice that you’re selecting from it, and what you’re working from. I always, our mindset is doing customer interviews, we have about 20-30 minutes of customer content you’re able to pull from. And ideally, when you’re doing, you’re having them say it in a couple different ways. You have a lot to choose from, but the headline, ideally, you’re putting a headline on the video itself that grabs their attention so it stops them from scrolling. You don’t expect them to start watching the video. There’s a statement that pulls them in, and then you have in the video itself that unpacks it a little bit further. And ideally, these are 30-second videos. They’re not long, but they’re targeted to that problem or the objection they were facing.

Drew: Yeah and then I’m thinking about your vertical formatting. And like, if this were our format that we had, we’d have a tough time after we narrow it in. So all right, so it can work with ads. The good news is, like, if you’re testing these things on LinkedIn, you can test it versus control. You can keep testing it in various ways until you figure out which one is driving not just click throughs, but actual back end conversions. And in theory, LinkedIn favors videos versus other types of content because they’re competing with places that have lots and lots of video. It’s funny. I’m not finding necessarily, that videos outperform written content.

Alexander: LinkedIn is not performing video as much. I would say Meta and YouTube are definitely the higher video platforms if you’re going to post content there. But what it is, is the hooks matter more than ever before, because people are scrolling.

Drew: Yeah and it’s just this, and it’s like Instagram or TikTok have trained us just to keep going until something goes and then we get our little buzz. So speaking of, you mentioned using it as ads, and I, of course, immediately jump to using it as ads on social media. But we talked about this as social media, as social media content, organic content. Have you seen cases where this content really got a lot of engagement, and because I’m just curious, and, you know, I spent a lot of time thinking about engagement on social content.

Alexander: Yeah. So what’s interesting I just saw, it’s a mixture of social and ad. Here is a little bit more on the UGC side. So user generated content, of mentality, of make already planning ahead with a customer that wants, students willing to promote it with you. That’s where you see the most success. I just saw this post from her. Name is Stephanie Nuce and she QuickBooks. She did a testimonial for QuickBooks, and we on LinkedIn, you can do thought leadership as she posted it to her profile, but then they boosted it effectively to their target demographic. And it’s quite impressive. The engagement on this particular ad. And so I’m seeing this as the UGC testimonial mindset is probably the best performing ones right now.

Drew: Right? Well, there’s a couple factors in there. One, it was initially posted by an individual. That’s part one, right? And that’s essential. And this is where it gets really tricky, because you don’t want the company posting the testimonial and being the source, because you’re just not getting, people don’t engage with companies with rare exception. I mean, Red Bull can do it, but they have incredible content, right? Okay, so we’re individuals sharing video testimonials. We’re coordinating with the customer so they can do it. If they’re boosting it, they can do it. We’ve also seen just where you just go and share it directly with a bunch of people that you think will be interested in it. I mean, and like in LinkedIn, that’s really easy. If they’re your first contacts, you can just say, “Hey, thought you might enjoy this,” and you can send it to 50 to 100 people at a time.

Alexander: I would say sales follow like one-to-one communications is still rather than one of the best use cases. These stories being able to send to it is powerful, one of the best use cases for sure.

Drew: Okay all right. Well, we’ve, I think that’s all the use cases, right? I mean, it’s a lot.

Alexander: Yeah, there’s more, but we can, we can stop.

Drew: I mean, I think that’s really important, because this goes back to, is it, where’s the ROI on this, or return on effort ROE. And when you see that, you record one testimonial, and there’s seven or eight places and ways that you can use it, you start to say, Wow, that’s incredible. There’s tremendous value. And I know that our team is thinking about, okay, are we using all those use cases right now? Right because we’ve got the testimonies, but are we using them all? And I’m sure listeners and watchers are thinking the same thing. So interestingly, we had Sahil Patel of Spiralize on recently, I think you may have seen it or whatever, but he said that video can deplete user attention, yeah, which I thought was really interesting thing. It’s like you’re only going to get a certain amount of time if they’re watching a video and doing instead of something else. Is that the best use of your time, I guess. And again, he’s in the AB page optimization. So for Ellyn, he’s necessarily saying, Don’t put it a video on the landing page, necessarily.

Alexander: So I talked to him in depth about this. Okay, good, please. And, and we unpack this a little bit more, and he’s helped me a lot too appreciate, okay, the use of video, where does it play in for his uses? He’s talking about landing pages specific for, like an ad or for a home page. And the best social proof is often more at near the top. He’s advising its imagery or text. But it’s, it’s simple, and because, yeah, I mean, it takes time to to dig into a video where he agreed with me as we talk under and talked about it further is it’s great. Further down on the page, it actually plays a key role. If they are not Bob, they’re not ready to take action. All right, how can you further engage them and address those objections and sell them on it? So halfway to maybe two thirds down the page is the perfect place for a video testimonial. Don’t put at the top, because if you have a clear call to action and click this button, sign up for free trial, etc. Let them just take that action if they’re already sold.

Drew: Right, right? Because chances are, if they’re coming to their website, they were interested enough to learn more. And if they’re not satisfied to click for the demo or click for a call or whatever, then keep scrolling. Let them scroll, and they’ll scroll down. They go, Oh, look at testimony. Okay, maybe I could watch that.

Alexander: That’s where you hook them and you pull them in.

Drew: Right? And at that point, and I imagine I’m thinking putting my Sahil hat on, you also can have the call to action button right next to the video too. So you, you know, yes, you just keep going down the page with them.

Alexander: When you’re looking at capturing. We didn’t really talk much about it, but I can touch on it briefly, please. Let’s talk about execution, right? Yeah, there’s, there’s kind of like three ways that I see are how you can capture video testimonials today. You’ve got your traditional on location send out a video crew, highest quality, definitely there. Then you have the DIY self recording, whether it’s a link or software that they use or send back or they’re recording on their own. And then you have remote interview, so you’re talking to them, you’re live, but using technology to do it remotely. Each one of those have pros and cons. The first one, on location, definitely highest quality, but also the highest cost and the most time intensive for you, for your customer and taking up their day so that could prevent a little more barrier. The second one, self recording, probably the most affordable and the least amount of time, but then you don’t know what you’re going to get back on the quality side, the third one I find is the best mix of getting close to, like 70-80% of the potentially the quality of on location, if you’re our approach is like, we send out video crews and you can conduct using their smartphone, but you’re able to then not have the same cost of sending out a crew and take the same amount of time. So it’s looking at the different options and evaluating which one’s the best fit based on your your spot.

Drew: Right? I mean, in the classic, anybody who’s been in the business for a while, I mean, 10 years ago, or 15 years ago, you really never thought about these other options. It was about sending a crew out there, and that meant making sure you understood the story in advance. And I, you know, I just remember we’d have to have three or four interviews, and sometimes these people weren’t very good on camera, so we’d have to have prep for them over and over again. It’s like shooting a commercial in the sense that you really need professional lighting. The costs go up pretty dramatically, and if you haven’t constructed a good story, and it costs the same amount to record a bad story as it does a good one. So you know, people underspend there. Oh, we’ll just get them to talk about stuff. Well, no, that doesn’t get to your narrative arc. That doesn’t get to problem solution, it doesn’t really bring help the customer, as you described, to see themselves, yes. And, you know, there’s no drama, yes, right? And so, okay, so, and by the way, you kind of need that in almost all of these cases. You if the pressure is a little off when you’re doing it, either the do it yourself or the remote issues. But let’s talk about the remote, because I know there’s some technologies where they can download software onto their phone and you can have a remote director in control of the camera. That’s not DIY, that’s a remote interview, but that’s different than what we’re doing here on Zoom, right?

Alexander: Yeah, that’s, that’s the area that we’re focused on. All because I love, smartphones are far superior from webcams, as far as the quality goes. In many ways they rival prosumer cameras. So buying, able to use those powerful video camera right in our pocket, just giving them a couple extra, ideally tools, like we ship it like I can’t, a microphone and a tripod and a light. So it’s just, like, just a little bit extra. But then there’s, there’s now some great technology. They pop on their smartphone, they can talk seeing another person on their phone, but we’re able to adjust all the settings like ISO, resolution, brightness, etc. So you’re able to get a lot of the same quality of sending out a crew, but just using a smartphone.

Drew: Yeah, no, I’ve done it now. Hopefully you’re not sending a ring light for people like you and me with glasses, because I just never been able to work that I you, I’m assuming you, that’s not what you’re sending, right?

Alexander: It is, like, lighting is always a fun job. That’s what you have to somebody know how to do lighting. Otherwise, yeah, you’re gonna, you’re gonna get shiny lights like this.

Drew: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And it’s so funny, because I they, when I did remote interviews, I don’t know, people would send me the ring light, and it’s like, oh, God, you know, no, I’m wearing glasses, and there’s no way to angle it. So whereas these LED lights that I have, yep, right, no problem. Okay, yeah. And lighting does matter, and sound does matter, I think these external webcams like this, Logitech 4k camera is pretty damn good.

Alexander: The external ones definitely improve dramatically

Drew: But I think the key thing here is you’re putting software on the phone that is allowing you to control all the things that you want to control, so you have maximum quality, but you don’t have that person at a desk or wherever they want to be. What you don’t get in that, and you often see in these videos, is, you know, the cutaway shot of the office, the cutaway shot of people in the conference room. You know, those little things that you always see in 60 Minutes reports when they’re visiting an office? Fast it, it’s the ambient and so limited to talking head basically, right?

Alexander: Not necessarily. It’s then you just have to leverage other types of assets. Ideally, it’s product footage, it’s other visuals you can edit in later, but not the “let me pretend to pick up the phone and talk to someone.” In some ways I don’t know if that content performs like it used to. People know what you’re doing. They actually prefer the more Lo-Fi, approachable content today.

Drew: Okay, what about AI-generated video to fill in? Have you any experience, or any of the folks that, because, I mean, it’s coming along so fast.

Alexander: So well, there’s a couple of ways, but you look at AI is like, what? Okay, what is it doing? I mean, one tool could be, if you need to find stock footage right while they’re talking about key things, that could be a great use for today to, like, quickly identify and source and pull it in. And you could even use to create more theoretical concepts, more imagery and of like, alright, this is, I’m feeling this pain into it. But as far as, like, beyond that, I don’t know if there’s a whole lot of the use cases for AI in video just yet.

Drew: Yeah, I have one for you, which is, you could probably create a simulated version of what you’re planning to shoot. You give it the script, you give it the challenge, you give it the storyline. It creates this video for you, and then you can see where it’s what it’s missing. Why isn’t it working? I believe you could probably create these as tests.

Alexander: You effectively, yeah, creating a storyboard, pre-created version of it. It is great if you, if you need to put a lot of time in it. I’m more of a fan of the interview approach, so you like pulling out content, but if you want to go the scripted approach, that could be powerful way to.

Drew: Yeah, no, I agree with you that scripted is not as good, but you still have some idea of the story you’re telling. Anyway, I’m not going to push that. I bet it’s going to happen pretty quickly. I bet it’s going to have an impact, because it’s happening, an impact on everything else. Okay, amazing conversations. So much information. I think we should wrap up. Are there any other trends? Because I’ve throughout AI. Are there any other trends that we should be talking about for video testimonials in B2B land?

Alexander: So the one that I mentioned is kind of repurposing and Lo-Fi content, UGC video testimonies are definitely as far as the overall trend I’m seeing over high quality, putting it out there in ads, as far as like AI or technology tools like using AI tools for if you’re doing a customer interview format not scripted, of being able to pull out insights and repurpose that content, whether it’s GPT, Bootle Box, there’s actually one tool I like Dovetail for surfacing insights. So if you have a ton of different recordings, be able to ingest all the customer interviews and then be able to surface insights for using it. It’s powerful.

Drew: Yeah, and that just reminds me that you probably could also, you talked earlier about having, sort of your video bank. You could also use that Gen. You run all the content through it, just to sort of have that library of searchable data.

Alexander: Yes, be able to know what those pains are, hesitations, outcomes, dream state. So when you’re creating a campaign, you can quickly identify who’s the story, who’s somebody talking about X or Y. You can find that.

Drew: Right, as opposed to the old days, where you get the intern to watch all the videos again. Let’s wrap up with two do’s and one don’t. And the area of securing, producing and or distributing customer testimonials.

Alexander: Awesome. So it might be some repetition here, but that’s kind of gotta keep it stuck in. So first do is make sure you have the right team member making the request. So if you’re trying to get somebody on, don’t send that mass email out. Ideally, it’s a salesperson. I actually seen, like, if it’s a low volume business, it’s the CEO that needs to do the outreach, because they have the best relationship. Make sure you prioritize internally, that the right person is doing outreach. Second do is create that success story showroom, and that way you can actually leverage in all those other use cases. You know the right story to the right person, and it doesn’t collect digital dust. And then don’t wait. Don’t wait on getting customer stories. That’s what I gotta, I just gotta say it’s like there’s so many tools today to make it easier than ever before, people are ready. Don’t wait. Start asking your customers for video testimonials.

Drew: And of course, if you have no expertise in house and don’t know how to do it, there are great companies out there like TeraLeap and Alex Ferguson who can help you out. Alex, how can listeners find you and engage with you and your company?

Alexander: Come follow me on LinkedIn. I’m posting a lot of content, fun and all helpful content, hopefully on how to do this. Search for Alexander Ferguson, you’ll find me or on our website, TeraLeap.io and we have a copy of a free Testimonial Request guide. Can help you there too.

Drew: Awesome. All right. Well, I really appreciate you and your company and all the things that you have done to help CMO Huddles up their game with our customer testimonial. So much appreciated. Alex, thank you so much.

If you’re a B2B CMO and you want to hear more conversations like this one, find out if you qualify to join our community of sharing, caring and daring CMOs at cmohuddles.com.

Show Credits

Renegade Marketers Unite is written and directed by Drew Neisser. Hey, that’s me! This show is produced by Melissa Caffrey, Laura Parkyn, and Ishar Cuevas. The music is by the amazing Burns Twins and the intro Voice Over is Linda Cornelius. To find the transcripts of all episodes, suggest future guests, or learn more about B2B branding, CMO Huddles, or my CMO coaching service, check out renegade.com. I’m your host, Drew Neisser. And until next time, keep those Renegade thinking caps on and strong!