Yep, it’s true. Customer testimonial videos suck. I mean, if you can get a customer to talk on camera about your brand, especially if they discuss quantifiable results, it'd pretty amazing. Still, the videos themselves usually suck.
Here’s Why They Suck
B2B customer testimonial videos pretty much all look the same. They show a customer talking directly to the camera and usually looking like they are a ransom video. If it is a higher budget production, B-role or stock footage will be used showing busy people in an office with some animated graphics to make it look really slick. While the content might be great for your brand, it’s probably just as impactful in writing. "Company X saved $X," will look great on your website or a case study PDF, but does anyone really watch the video?
It’s also a huge pain to get customers to participate in testimonial videos. The bigger the company, the harder it will be to get them on video too. They have to go through legal and corporate communications in order to get the green light. Chances are they will say no. Trust me, I know from experience. When I was an analyst at Pepsi, I was using innovative technology for analytics and was given many opportunities to publicly discuss the work I was doing. This was a big deal for me because I was raising my profile in the industry and rubbing elbows with big wigs at other companies. Pepsi’s corporate communications team put an end to it real quick, and they told me I had to stop. I quit not long after.
If your customer does magically get approval, the corporate communications team will have to approve all of the content before it gets released. They'll want everything to be very vague and void of any substance. I once did a customer testimonial where the customer wasn’t allowed to say our company name…even though it was our testimonial video.
It always drove me nuts that companies wouldn't talk about the innovative work they were doing or allow their employees to show off. Wouldn't you want to attract new talent by showing how you are on the cutting edge? If I was allowed to show off my work publicly, I might not have left Pepsi. Regardless, customer testimonials end up being boring either because your customer forces you to cut anything interesting or you play it too safe and keep it traditional.
Do Customer Testimonial Videos Get Results?
If executed correctly, customer testimonial videos can get results. If you run ads targeted to a specific persona, they could drive leads. However, I’ve seen that mostly testimonials are used as social proof in the middle of the funnel by sales. I have a hypothesis that nobody actually watches the testimonial videos. Prospects just see that a logo was willing to appear on camera, and that’s probably impressive enough.
Knowing what I know, video production can be pretty expensive, and it seems like a giant waste to me to spend that kind of cash on something that won’t get a lot of views. I asked around on Reddit, Twitter, Threads, and LinkedIn to see if anyone had examples of customer testimonial videos that they thought were entertaining. It was pretty much crickets. The closest answer I got, that wasn't someone trying to sell me AI technology was a, "Maybe yes."
Cool.
So How Do We Make Customer Testimonials That Don’t Suck?
My philosophy is to get as much mileage as you can with any piece of content, including customer testimonial videos. The buying landscape has changed drastically over the past few years. I constantly see people struggling with B2B marketing and it basically comes down to nobody trying to do anything new. Everyone claims to want to be disruptive, but most just play it safe.
In my opinion, a customer testimonial should be useful in every stage: generating awareness, paid and organic traffic, the entire funnel, and maintaining retention among your customer base. If you’re going to invest time and money into testimonial videos, here are some ways to make them actually effective:
Make them entertaining: I don't understand why all testimonials look exactly the same. These videos can be a huge opportunity for awareness building. If you make something that is entertaining to watch, you could reach a large audience organically and not rely on ads.
Make them about the customer, not your brand: Nobody wants to sell for another brand, especially for free (most customers get a discount for testimonials anyway). However, if you want to get customers to want to participate, make the content about them and the work they are doing. Everyone wants to get a promotion. If a testimonial is more about how their amazing work, they’ll be much more willing to participate.
Make them as easy as possible to participate in: Keep in mind, they have their own jobs to do. Anything you ask them to participate in, they have to do in addition to their regular work. Make it as easy as possible for them to participate. Also, be flexible and adapt to what makes it easy for them. If they want you to write out what they should say, then write it out. If they want to have a conversation and riff, do that. Don’t require them to have endless tasks and meetings. Do rely on your internal team to construct the story and bring ideas to them.
Make use of opportunities: There’s so many events and conferences where brands have a lot of customers in the same location at the same time….knock out a ton of testimonial videos. Especially if you are hosting a happy hour. When people are already being social and get liquid courage, it might become easier for them to participate
Use third parties: For whatever reason, customers have a harder time when you ask them than when someone else does. I think it’s because it seems less quid pro quo that way. For example, when I worked at a B2B tech company and we asked for G2 reviews, we would get maybe a 2% conversion. However, if a third party asked on our behalf, we would see an 8%-10% conversion.
Need Some Ideas?
If you really want to create B2B customer testimonial videos that don't suck, I've created a guide that has tactics I've personally used for success. My guide How to create customer testimonials don't suck can be downloaded HERE.
Want to brainstorm together on some ideas for your customer testimonial videos? Let's chat!
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