The Most Important Elements in a Customer Testimonial Video

Customer testimonial videos are an integral part of the marketing and conversion process that will influence decision making among your target audience to generate sales. But not just any customer testimonial video is going to present the award winning customer journey that is going to draw in the target audience and invoke powerful conversions for your brand. While sharing customer testimonial videos can build tons of credibility for your business, there are certain elements in a customer testimonial video that are incredibly important for success.

At Beverly Boy Productions, we explain these most important elements in a customer testimonial video to clients regularly to help them understand exactly what it is that we’re looking for when we interview a customer for their testimonial about the business or brand. You’ll notice that the best customer testimonial videos almost always have a similar structure in which they share a story, build credibility and trust, and represent a customer that has a similar core demographic to the target audience. These are just a few of the essential elements in a customer testimonial video that cannot be overlooked.

Customer Testimonial Videos Share a Similar Structure

The best customer testimonial videos almost always share a similar structure in which the business questions the customer or asks the customer to share their journey with the world. Whether you’ve seen one testimonial video or a dozen of them, you’ll likely notice rather quickly that they tend to have a similar structure about them. They all tend to go something like this:

1. Introductions – customer shares who they are and what their business is.
2. Pain Point – customer shares what their struggle or problem was.
3. Solution – customer shares how the brand provided a solution that helped them.
4. CTA – brand includes a call-to-action requesting that the audience take immediate action.

It doesn’t matter how many customer testimonial videos you watch, if they are professionally produced, they are almost certain to include these details in this order. 

A Customer that is Trustworthy

Another one of the more common elements in a customer testimonial video is the trustworthy customer or client. You want your customer to be someone that your target audience will feel like they can relate to and that they are close to. The customer testimonial video is not likely to build trust among your prospective audience is the customer sharing the testimonial isn’t very trustworthy himself or if he is not relatable to the audience.

Authenticity & No Script

Another key element in a customer testimonial video is authenticity. It goes along with the trustworthy customer but many brands go wrong by having the testimonial be too scripted. While it’s perfectly okay to ask the customer questions ahead of time or to provide them with the details about what you would like them to cover in their testimonial, you don’t want to have it come across as overly rehearsed or scripted. The best testimonials are authentic, unrehearsed, and powerfully focused on allowing the customer to build trust with the audience.

The Right Customer for the Story

You likely have many customers that have followed a unique journey as they faced challenges that made them consider purchasing from your brand. Not all of them are going to be ideal for your customer testimonial videos. The most important elements in a customer testimonial video are a customer that represents the core demographic of your target audience, is trustworthy, and is the right individual to share the story of their journey with your brand.

You need a customer that is comfortable on camera. Has a strong story to share. Is happy about their purchase from your brand. Shares the excitement that your target audience will likely have about your brand. Is able to craft an emotionally charged story that represents the journey that they’ve had in finding, purchasing from, and following your brand.

Striking Emotion

The best customer testimonials are those that strike the emotion of your audience. To do this, you need a customer that is emotionally charged and prepared to share an emotional story about your business or brand. The more you can evoke the emotional connection between a past customer and your prospect, the better. A video that is emotionally charged is going to be more likely to stick with the audience in a way that they will remember and feel more compelled to move upon.

A Real-World Use Case

We mentioned the importance of a customer that has a real world story to share about their relationship with your business, but we can’t stress enough the fact that the most important elements in a customer testimonial video are specific to credibility and authenticity. A customer that has a real world use case of their experience, the struggle the faced, their search for a brand that could solve their problem, and their decision to purchase from your business which resulted in their struggles being solved is vital. If the story is not backed by a real world use case, it’s not going to be nearly as credible as it could be.

These are the most important elements in a customer testimonial video and they’re likely to be included in virtually any professional testimonial video that is produced. Want to learn more? Give Beverly Boy Productions a call!