In the age of the Internet, every business has an online reputation ‒ and how your customers converse about their experiences online can make or break people’s decisions to choose your products or services.
The good news: Your online reputation isn’t completely out of your control. But if negative, two-star reviews are hindering your image, what’s the most effective way to restore trust in your brand?
Video content dominates the world of digital marketing, and when combined with reputation management, video has the power to portray your company in the most authentic and positive light.
So, how exactly can you make video content work for your online reputation? NEXT! Ad Agency, along with our sister company, ReviewTube, are here to explain how!
You Can’t Fake Real Reviews
84% of consumers trust online reviews as much as word-of-mouth recommendations. Chances are your target customer is out there right now searching for your products or services, perusing through a sea of online text reviews, and opting for the company with four or five-star reviews.
While online text reviews do hold merit, they are not always reliable or 100% trustworthy. After all, it’s just as easy for an individual to hide behind an anonymous online persona and slander a company’s name as it is for a disgruntled customer to leave a negative review.
There’s also a limit to how much context and emotion text reviews can convey. Unlike text, video invokes more of the senses, and it can communicate more than written words alone.
With video, viewers can see, hear, and feel the experience of the person speaking to them through the camera lens. They can pick up on their expressions, tone of voice, and body language, allowing them to forge an emotional connection to a brand before they pick up the phone or walk into the brick-and-mortar.
Simply put: You can’t fake real testimonials caught on camera. If you’re ready to make testimonial videos work for your company’s reputation, we’ll show you how!
How to Create Video Testimonials
Getting a customer to speak on camera sounds simple enough. Still, if you want to effectively communicate to your audience and generate new business, there are best practices to make your video testimonials successful.
Strike a Balance between Scripting vs. Improvising
The beautiful thing about a video testimonial is it can be genuine and relatable, which are probably qualities you want customers to use to describe your business. A video that relies heavily on a script can sound unnatural and fake ‒ and consumers can pick up on the difference more easily than you’d think.
So, while you should strive for your video testimonials to be as authentic as possible, you don’t want to walk into the project completely unprepared, either.
First, consider whom you’ll interview in the video. What is so special about this customer’s experience that others need to hear about it, up close and personal?
Does your interviewee embody your ideal customer? Do they fall within the same demographics as your target audience? If you cater to more than one demographic, consider creating a series of video testimonials that reflect the varying experiences of different customers.
Decide where the interviews should take place. Should they occur inside or outside your physical storefront, or in a quiet location with a lot of natural light?
Once you’ve laid out the who’s and where’s, create a series of questions that will answer the why’s and how’s to your target audience.
Ask the Right Questions
Your target audience wants to know how your business can help them and why they should choose you. You can drive the most impact by presenting powerful questions in your video testimonials that make viewers realize they’re wearing the same shoes as the interviewees.
Here are some types of questions you can ask in a video testimonial:
- What were some of the challenges you faced before seeking out our products/services?
- How did you discover our business?
- What made you consider our business?
- How do our products/services help you to do things differently?
- How do our products/services compare to other companies?
- What has your experience been like with our company?
- If someone weren’t convinced to use our business, what would you tell them?
Steer away from yes and no questions. When editing your footage, keep it short and simple and focus on the scenes where you can drive home the strongest emotional connections.
You can also try directing your interviewees to speak like they’re giving SAT answers. For example: “I’d recommend X business because…”
High-Quality Testimonials Speak Volumes
With the accessibility of smartphone cameras and social media, anyone can become a director ‒ but that doesn’t mean the video content you create will make a solid first impression on your audience.
Because in their eyes, the quality of your video reviews can reflect the quality of your business. If your video quality is poor, grainy, or off-center, it could potentially translate to a shoddy, last-minute job on your part ‒ and who is to say your products or services will be any different?
That doesn’t mean you need to shell out tens of thousands of dollars to create a 45-second video testimonial, either.
Drive New Growth with Video & Reputation Management
Online text reviews are slowly becoming practices of the past. Because with video content, there’s more opportunity for companies to be authentic and personal ‒ and consumers seek that now more than ever.
Are you ready to build and improve your online reputation with video? If you’re ready to create video testimonials for your company’s marketing campaign, contact ReviewTube today. We KNOW video, and we’re here to help you discover how video testimonials can make your company stand out and positively influence your audience’s decision-making.
Interested in discovering other ways you can improve your online reputation? Would you like to combine your video efforts with other reputation management practices? Contact NEXT! Ad Agency today!
