There are various reasons why a would-be customer may choose not to buy from you. They may have doubts about the cost or effectiveness of your product. They may be weighing up whether to go with one of your competitors, or whether it’s worth making the purchase at all.
Customer testimonials and case studies can help to overcome those barriers, particularly for high-value sales, with 89% of marketers saying that these are the most effective types of content for converting and nurturing leads.
Case studies are generally granular, data-led accounts of how you helped a customer solve a problem, while testimonials are more emotive conversations with customers about their experience of the product or working with you.
Traditionally, both customer testimonials and case studies were written – with customer quotes, images and perhaps charts describing what happened. They would usually be printed in a mini-brochure and sent to potential customers on request, or distributed to leads speculatively. Today, they are more often available on websites, either in html or as downloadable pdfs.
Why video is the ideal medium for case studies and testimonials
The strengths of video align perfectly with case studies and customer testimonials:
Videos have much greater reach than text
This may not immediately seem relevant so far down the marketing funnel, where you’ve already generated awareness, but would-be customers aren’t always on your landing page, waiting to be converted.
Some are browsing generally – searching for ‘electric car reviews’, say, rather than ‘Tesla reviews’. Others may be mulling over a decision to buy one when they get an email or see a social media post about electric cars and decide to take a look. In both cases, clearly, it’s better if this lands them on your website rather than your competitors’.
Choosing a video format brings significant advantages to social, search and email reach. Just adding the word ‘video’ to a subject line can increase email open rates by 7-13%, and sales conversions by 21%, according to MediaPost. Pages with video are 50 times more likely to attain a high organic search ranking, according to ImpactPlus.
In social media land, videos are the ultimate sharable content, for both paid and organic. Take a look at this video from L’Oreal, collating short clips of users, shot on their own phones. It achieved 2 million views on YouTube alone in its first two weeks:
Videos are more engaging
Emotions play an important role in purchasing decisions, even in sectors like healthcare that are typically assumed to be all about the facts. People won’t read or watch your case study if it’s boring, and video is very good at not being boring.
Video case studies and testimonials are able to bring the story of a customer’s experience to life, which keeps them engaged longer – viewers spend 2.6 times longer on pages with videos than text-only pages.
One key way to make testimonials or case studies engaging is to make them relatable, and there’s little more relatable than watching and listening to a customer talk about their own story and how a product helped them overcome a familiar challenge. Make your case study an effective case through a compelling story that highlights the challenges and the success of solutions. The interview narrative should reveal the benefits of working with your brand.
Take a look at this video example for SME accounting software FreshBooks, and imagine how much flatter it would be to read a transcript of protagonist Sarah’s story instead:
Videos establish the credibility of your product or service
While a good case study or testimonial will include lots of detail about how a product helped a customer solve a problem, this is not the time for a hard sell. One of the key barriers that potential customers have is that they don’t necessarily trust your description of your own product.
To showcase reliability to your target audience, you need to make your case.
Testimonials and case studies add credibility by offering social proof to back up your claims. This simple video below from 1-800 Hansons, a windows and exteriors company in the US midwest, has customers talking about how happy they were with the service.
Note how quickly they get to addressing the key message in their video, you can trust them – assuaging doubts by talking about the lifetime guarantee:
Conclusion: Case Study Videos
Video is uniquely effective at bringing to life your value proposition. It is more memorable, engaging, relatable and capable of reaching the most relevant people. Text can complement video – and a multimedia approach may indeed be best for you – but in the digital age, it doesn’t quite cut it on its own.
Whichever format you use for marketing your business, even if it’s a blog post, just remember to create an honest example backed with research. Customer testimonials and case studies rely on the satisfaction of existing customers to convert new ones, so even the best-produced video won’t help you if your product doesn’t work. Ensure your interviews highlight real prospects within your business.
Wooshii is an innovative video production company with the capacity to create video anywhere in the world, in any format, using a talent network of over 16,000 plus experts. Wooshii works with world-leading organisations across multiple industry sectors to enable consistent and reliable video production at scale, supporting a wide variety of internal and external marketing and communication functions.
Need help devising your video strategy or perhaps want to discuss your productions needs, give Wooshii a call today.
