{"id":709,"date":"2017-05-09T07:12:06","date_gmt":"2017-05-09T07:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thejigsaw.in\/blog\/?p=709"},"modified":"2022-06-23T13:30:18","modified_gmt":"2022-06-23T08:00:18","slug":"things-you-should-know-about-testimonial-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thejigsaw.in\/blog\/things-you-should-know-about-testimonial-video","title":{"rendered":"Things you should know about Testimonial Video"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"testimonial<\/a><\/p>\n

No one really trusts you or what you have to say about your own company.<\/strong>\u00a0Why would they? But people will listen to other people\u2019s opinions about your company. If they know and trust that person \u2013 so much the better. Even if they don\u2019t, they are more likely to believe a stranger (or better yet, a bunch of strangers) talking about you\u00a0rather than you talking about you. That\u2019s why testimonial videos<\/a> are so powerful.<\/p>\n

So is any testimonial video<\/a><\/strong> a good one? Not necessarily. It has to accomplish three important things:
\n1.\u00a0It has been\/feel authentic.<\/strong>\u00a0 \u2018Be\u2019 is always better, but \u2018feel\u2019 is the next best thing. (We\u2019re talking about marketing here\u2026.)
\n2.\u00a0It has to be interesting.<\/strong>\u00a0A talking head is still a talking head no matter what they are saying. Plan on having something interesting going on in the video. (Showing a customer using your product or service is a good place to start.)
\n3.\u00a0It has to\u00a0deliver\u00a0a message which is relevant and that resonates. \u00a0<\/strong>Hearing a customer say \u201cABC Inc. provided great service\u2026 \u201d is not particularly informative.<\/p>\n

Before you begin your next testimonial video here are nine things that you should consider:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Have you scheduled a pre-shoot meeting?\u00a0<\/strong>The best investment of time you can make is to schedule a pre-shoot meeting with the interviewee before the shoot to take them through the process. One of the reasons this doesn\u2019t happen is cost \u2013 often your client won\u2019t want to pay for the additional time to prepare for the shoot but this is arguably the most important time investment on the entire project. You get to know your interviewee, you get them familiar (and therefore comfortable) with you and the filming process, you get to do a site inspection prior to shooting and you get to find out the type of things that they may or may not want to say when you start shooting. All of this gives you time to plan and prepare for the shoot.<\/li>\n
  2. What is the overall style of the video?<\/strong>Is your video simply a talking head of someone sitting on their living room couch or behind their office desk or is it a video that incorporates footage of your customer actually using your product or service? Budget will dictate how much effort you put into your video but it doesn\u2019t require much more effort to shoot the person you are interviewing actually doing something. Planning is usually the problem here. Unless your talking head is truly engaging (most are not) you should at least consider using two cameras for multiple angles (which makes the video easier to watch and helps you cut between sound bites) and you should also consider getting your interviewee physically doing something.<\/li>\n
  3. Who is speaking and who is on camera?\u00a0<\/strong>This is an important decision to make upfront. Having a non-speaking spouse (as an example) or non-speaking business colleagues in a video take away from the dynamic feel of the presentation. If multiple people are speaking and contributing relatively equally \u2013 that\u2019s great. But if you have a person in the shot who isn\u2019t speaking, that person will take the energy\/attention away from the speaker. Two people are\u00a0distracting unless their interaction is interesting and complimentary. Perhaps the single biggest challenge is the speaker themselves. Are they articulate, and more important, are they comfortable in front of a camera? If your answer is \u2018no\u2019 to these first two points then they had better be good at taking direction otherwise it\u2019s going to be painful. I remember hearing comments about a testimonial video I had shot saying that my client was so lucky to have such a good speaker to represent them. \u00a0I wish the viewers could have been there during the shoot\u2026\u00a0direction and editing can cover up a world of hurt.<\/li>\n
  4. What do you want the speaker to say?<\/strong>\u00a0This is the single most important thing to\u00a0consider.\u00a0You don\u2019t just show up with a camera, ask some questions and hope for the best. Before you approach your customer for an\u00a0endorsement\u00a0you have to know exactly what you want to hear them say and you have to know that they are receptive to saying it otherwise you may end up wasting everyone\u2019s time. Just because you ask a question doesn\u2019t mean you are going to get the answer you want. Even if you get the answer you want it may not be delivered in a suitable manner (i.e. a distracted \u2018Ya\u2026 they showed up on time\u201d versus an enthusiastic \u201cThose guys were here exactly when they said would be.\u201d. Arriving equipped to an interview with the right questions is only half the battle. You also need to be equipped with the knowledge of the exact sound bites that you need to hear otherwise you might end up staring blankly at your editing screen wondering what to do with all the useless footage you just shot. The questions don\u2019t matter \u2013 it\u2019s the answers you care about. Who\u2019s responsibility is it to make sure the sound bites are exactly what you need?<\/li>\n
  5. How do you plan on structuring your SoundBits?<\/strong>Let\u2019s assume you get exactly what you wanted from your customer \u2013 great delivery and great content. Do you lead with a power statement that nicely concludes what you are going to see in the video or do you just start with the answer to the first question? What you place first is critical in video today. Online viewers today have attention spans similar to that of a house fly. You need to ensure that the message you deliver at the beginning of the video makes people think \u2013 \u2018that\u2019s\u00a0interesting, tell\u00a0me more.\u201d I\u2019ve seen too many testimonial videos that start with 30 seconds or more of preamble: \u201cWell now\u2026 Bob from ABC Inc. gave me a call on Tuesday\u2026 no, it was Wednesday\u2026 \u00a0\u2019cause that\u2019s when me and Earl go bowling, anyway, Bob gives me a call and asks me how my bowling game is doing \u2013 funny thing about that is\u2026 \u201d<\/li>\n
  6. How are the testimonial videos being presented?<\/strong>Are you doing one testimonial video or do you plan on doing a series of them. Like resume references, it\u2019s not terribly difficult to get at least one person to say something nice about you. The more voices that support your message the better. If you are planning more than one testimonial video you should try to structure the videos so there is repetition on key brand elements and there is also new information in each video. If the videos are identical people won\u2019t watch more than two because they will expect that they are all the same. If you are planning a series of testimonial videos you should label them clearly so that people can select the videos that relate to their specific concerns. (I.e \u201cBob Smith from Acme\u00a0explains\u00a0how ABC Inc saved him $4000 in research costs\u201d)<\/li>\n
  7. What is the graphic and titling structure?<\/strong>How do you start your video? \u00a0I just watch a really well produced testimonial video that had 35 seconds of introductory branding and text. I wonder if anyone other than me made it through that intro. Do you start with shots of your interviewee, b-roll shots of your interviewee or do you begin with\u00a0corporate\u00a0branding and titling? Getting to the message as quickly as possible is critical. Do you include on-screen text anywhere in the video to support what is being said in the video? Using on-screen text in your video helps to reinforce a message BUT it may also make the video look more like a corporate\/promotional video rather than a testimonial video. (I.E. Having the word \u2018Lifesaver\u2019 come up on-screen as someone uses that word to describe your service is probably too much.)<\/li>\n
  8. Do you include other support material in the video?<\/strong>As an example, if you are doing a renovation (house, car, person\u2026 etc)\u00a0testimonial\u00a0video, do you include a \u2018before\u2019 shot. Do you illustrate what the \u2018problem\u2019 that was solved by your company? It\u2019s always better to show, rather than tell the viewer what the \u2018problem\u2019 was \u2013 that\u2019s the whole reason to use video. Do you shoot b-roll to support the benefit of your product or service? (The answer is \u2018Yes\u2019). B-roll can include anything relating to the content being discussed.<\/li>\n
  9. What shooting style do you use in your interview?<\/strong>Is the interviewee sitting down or standing up? Are they in and around the thing the product or service that you delivered for them? (I.e. The most typical interview shot you see is someone sitting on a coach against the wall or someone sitting at a desk. Both are visually quite dull. It\u2019s much easier to light and frame a shot if you can get move them and have them looking engaged \u2013 people often look \u2018trapped\u2019 sitting behind a desk or in the corner of a room on a chair. \u00a0This\u00a0definitely\u00a0takes more planning and cooperation from your interviewee but if you show up at someone\u2019s office and capture a talking head interview\u00a0with your iPhone it\u2019s going to look like you showed up at someone\u2019s office and captured a talking head interview with your iPhone.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    We are ad film makers<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0if you need such services then let us know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    No one really trusts you or what you have to say about your own company.\u00a0Why would they? But people will listen to other people\u2019s opinions … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":710,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[630],"tags":[394,91,598,599,120],"class_list":["post-709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-facts","tag-ad-film-makers","tag-ad-film-makers-in-mumbai","tag-things-you-should-know-about-testimonial-video","tag-video-testimonial-makers-in-mumbai","tag-video-testimonials-maker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejigsaw.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejigsaw.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejigsaw.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejigsaw.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejigsaw.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejigsaw.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejigsaw.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejigsaw.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejigsaw.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejigsaw.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}