Video testimonials strengthen your business’s credibility by advertising relatable and sharable content. Since 2020, video watch time has increased by 84%. This uptick in video consumption shows that your customers are trending towards video as the go-to medium for consuming and producing content.
In other posts, we’ve made it clear that video testimonials are valuable for your business. However, your customers may hesitate when asked to leave a video review, so we’ve brainstormed several ways to remove the friction.
As a rule of thumb, the offer needs to match the ask. A video review requires time and energy on behalf of your customer, so what you're offering in return should be equally compelling. And it's easy to tell if your prize is not attractive enough: you're not generating as many reviews as you need. In this case, try upping the offer until you find the right value.
Incentivizing reviews on Google, Facebook and others is against TOS: While incentivizing customers to leave video testimonials is a great way to ramp up the volume of video testimonials you collect for your own marketing materials, keep in mind that we don’t talk about this practice for written reviews (often referred to as "review gating") because most review platforms prohibit offering rewards in exchange for reviews.
Who doesn’t love a little friendly competition? Contests and giveaways are a sure-fire way to boost customer engagement and help promote user-created content. To enter, all your customers would have to do is leave a quick video review explaining why they love your product and/or services. Take the time to think about what content is most valuable to your business, and then prompt customers to answer that question in the video. After they’ve signed the agreement and hit submit, one lucky video is now up for a chance to win a prize of your company’s choice.
You can structure giveaways in a variety of ways. You can set a deadline and randomly select however many winners you want at the end of the determined timeframe. If you really want to fire your customers up, you can give prizes based on judgment criteria like most creative or funniest video, but reviewing and determining winners will be a larger time commitment on your end.
In order to get your consumer base to make a move and submit a video testimonial, you may want to run a promotion that motivates them to do so, and quickly! The urgency of a timed promotion can drive customers to act now so they can take advantage of the limited-time offer, whether it be a certain percentage off of your product or a chance to receive a gift card or a free gift.
You may take “timed” literally and just set a deadline that customers must submit Google reviews by to receive the promotion, but there is no telling how much you’ll be on the hook for in terms of rewards. Instead, we’ve built the Widewail Incentive Engine to be configured to serve incentives to the first handful of people who submit (however many you would like to offer up) to avoid any exploitation of your promotion and potentially owing customers more than you would have liked to give out. And you can set this to reset on a specific cadence if you would like to keep the offer running in accordance with your monthly budget.
Tip: Put your promotion into motion by using scarcity urgency like “First 10 customers get a gift card,” “First come first serve,” or “Offer expires in 24 hours.”
If you do not have the resources to offer prizes or discounts at this time, all is not lost. Give your customers some motivation just by letting them know that their video review might be prominent in your ads or shared on your website. Everyone wants their 30 seconds of fame so this might be all the incentive they need.
What your past and current customers have to say is ultimately going to shape the narrative for your company’s future success. Using your satisfied customer’s feedback to market to a larger consumer base is a great way to tap into the trust economy.
Tip: Outsource promotional opportunities such as ‘unboxing videos’ or demonstrations. This will pique engagement on multiple platforms and can be beneficial for each party involved. A brand partnership with supporters of your service and product help you promote engagement and gain trust.
We all know your customers can’t pass up a freebie. Encouraging your customers to leave you a video review by tempting them with a treat is an excellent way to ensure that your business generates more video testimonials. Wondering what to do with all your videos? We’ve got tips for that, too.
It’s worth noting that there are laws around how giveaways and sweepstakes promotions must be run, so make sure to check what those laws are in your state before you announce a giveaway.
Another important consideration, you will need to make sure you have your customers’ consent to use their videos in your marketing. Widewail’s Invite Video software takes that issue off your plate by requiring all video submissions to include consent signatures so you always know the content being collected is legally available for you to use.