Video testimonials and case-studies are a highly personal way of showcasing your brand and it's values. When prospects can actually see and hear customers talk about their positive experience, it allows prospects to have their questions answered and to visualise themselves leveraging your products or services.
In this way, case-study videos can significantly nurture your lead through the buyer's journey and contribute to the decision to invest in your brand. As HubSpot states: “a powerful testimonial has the potential to convert a lead into a customer!” Having video testimonials within your marketing content and on your website demonstrates to your prospects that your company is in the business of putting the customer first! By creating video content that showcases your happy customers you are allowing a third-party member to champion your brand for you and answer possible questions and challenges that the prospects are facing. You are therefore changing the sales pitch into a more personalized, and tailored conversation to meet your prospect's needs.
So What Are Case-Study Videos?
Video testimonials are an are honest endorsements of your product or services and are posted on your company's website and used in marketing materials. The power of video testimonials is that they offer a highly personal way of promoting your brand through a third party. When customers can actually see and hear other customers talk about their positive experience, it’s significantly more compelling than just reading words on a page. It allows your potential customer to engage with a real customer who is similar to them – and it makes the testimonial more relatable. In fact according to Wyzol “89% of marketers say that customer testimonials and case studies are the most effective content forms for influencing purchases”. 
So what should a successful video testimonial include:
- The primary subject or protagonist of the story is of course: the customer!
- Use this opportunity to demonstrate how your business solves a specific customer problem or pain point
- Include stats and figures to back up the customer’s story
- Remember to focus on the benefits of your services or products, not the features i.e. this is not a how-to video rather it’s about the customer’s experience with your brand!
Video testimonials are an incredibly important video to have in your tool kit and can be leveraged at different occasions throughout your marketing efforts and sales process. The key to engaging your prospect is meeting them where they are at and in today’s digital landscape it means providing them with options on how to connect, learn and explore your brand. Prospects today are used to video content and therefore expect this option, in fact according to Vidyard: “72% of customers prefer to learn about your brand through video compared to any other medium”.
So Where Should You Include Case-Study Videos?
As you can already guess these video testimonials are valuable assets to the be leveraged by both your marketing and sales team. So where to use them? Think of all the moments where a customer needs to feel reassured, or to better understand how your products and services address their needs. This tells you that video testimonials really do have a place right from the beginning, in your lead generation strategy, through to the final stages of decision-making. Here are just a few examples of where to include video testimonials:
- Have a dedicated video testimonials page. You should have a page on your website dedicated exclusively for housing your case studies. Whether you call this page "Case Studies, "Success Stories," or "Examples of Our Work" be sure it's easy for visitors to find.
- Include case study videos in email marketing. Marketers can use video testimonials in email campaigns targeting a specific industry and sales reps can utilize these assets in demonstrations, in follow-ups, or to show solutions to a client’s pain points.
- Use case-study videos within your webinars to show your viewers how to be successful with your products or services. This allows the prospect to visualize themselves with the product or service and can help encourage them further down the sales funnel towards becoming a sales qualified lead.
- Share video testimonials in your social media posts or use quotes that link back to the video on your website. This helps to build your brand image overtime and nurture your prospects journey.
- Use video testimonials to announce product updates or launches, this works for both organic and paid marketing.
- Use video testimonials to “bookend” the key points in your next speech or presentation delivered at industry events or trade shows
- Include video testimonials within your blog posts. You can even create content pillars by having multiple video testimonials that speak to the same challenge or to a specific industry
- Sneak a video testimonial into your email signature, this is particularly useful for salespeople.
- Equip your sales team with video testimonials and encourage your sales team to leverage them. Video testimonials are valuable assets when it comes to showing prospects how other successful companies within a similar industry have benefited from your products or services and your prospect is more likely to trust a third party than your sales rep.
- Put a video testimonial on your home page. Give website visitors every chance you can to stumble upon evidence of your happy customers. And your home page is the perfect place to do this.
As you can see there are so many places to include video testimonials, as they are valuable assets to that can be incorporated into your marketing efforts, consolidate your reputation in the industry and providing encouraging and rewarding touchpoints with your prospect throughout their buyer’s journey.
Boosting Conversions!
Video testimonials are also a proven way to increase your conversion rate. As reviews have continued to grow in the local search ranking factor aka how and what Google ranks highly in terms of content for business’s products and services. Google has increasingly put an emphasis on ‘reviews’ and in particular videos.
Just think about when you are searching for products or restaurants to go to, you are automatically drawn to those that have a high star rating and have lots of reviews. What better way than to hear than directly from a customer? As HubSpot says: “Video testimonials give consumers important information without being “salesy” and give potential customers the opportunity to do their own research and due diligence”.
