Every marketer worth their salt knows that customer testimonial videos are essential for driving conversions on SaaS landing pages.
- I am not saying it’s easy to fake written testimonials, but video testimonials are more authentic and persuasive in comparison.
- Video is more immersive which makes your prospects spend more time on your landing page (also good for SEO)
- Video is more memorable as it engages both the visual and auditory senses, making your message more impactful.
Overall, a study by Nifty Marketing reveals that 25% of the highest-performing landing pages use some form of video marketing such as explainers, product demos, how-tos, and brand videos.
Yet, even with this knowledge, a report by Vidyard reveals that only 57% of marketers use video on their landing pages, and even fewer (41%) use customer testimonial videos.
This begs the question: why aren’t more markets using customer testimonial videos to increase landing page conversions?
Possible explanations: they think it’s too expensive, time-consuming, or too difficult to get customers to respond.
According to Wyzowl’s 2023 video marketing statistics, 30% of marketers don't have time to create video content. 10% feel that video is too expensive, and 18% admit that they don't know where to start.
As a marketer or a SaaS founder, you’re probably wondering:
- Who’s gonna do all the editing?
- It’s one thing to ask a customer for a written testimonial, but will they actually agree to record a video?
- How many videos do I need to put on my landing page to increase conversions?
- Can customer videos slow down my landing page loading speed?
- Where do I position them for the maximum impact?
The concerns are endless, but what if I told you that you don't need a big budget, a production team, or editing experience to collect professional customer testimonial videos?
Vocal Video Makes it Easy to Request, Record, and Edit Customer Videos
It takes more effort to record a video than to write a testimonial. Your customer has to get up, get to a place with enough light, put on their best smile, and actively engage with the screen.
Vocal Video makes this process as easy as possible both for you and for your customers.
First, you need to build a video collector (they have video collector templates to help with that) that includes your welcome message, the questions you want answered, and a thank you message.
Next, send a link to your customers inviting them to record a response. They don’t need to download or install anything—all they do is click a link and answer the prompts on the screen whenever they’re ready.
No schedules, no back and forth, no meetings, no pressure.
For users who'd rather not appear on screen, Vocal Video provides the option of recording audio which can then be turned into video by incorporating images, subtitles, audiograms, and animated transitions.
Vocal Video then automatically generates professional videos for you based on the response you get from customers. The results are complete with your brand’s colors and name, the questions you asked, auto-generated captions, your respondent’s name, soundtracks, subtitles, and animated transitions between responses.
Finally, the easy-to-use editing interface allows you to add or remove components and transform your video into an attention-grabbing marketing tool:
- Add your logo in the intro, outro, and subtly throughout the video
- Change the order of the responses
- Break up the video and make it more engaging with interesting graphics
- Add a CTA at the end of the video to prompt viewers into action
- Include subtitles to make the video more accessible
- Add animated slides that display the questions being answered by your interviewee
- The option to upload your own soundtrack or choose from the Vocal Video library
- Intersperse multiple scenes to make a customer highlight reel, or a multi-person testimonial video
Now, there are many solutions that make it easy to record customer videos; VideoPeel and VideoAsk; but my personal favorite is Vocal Video for two reasons:
- Compared to VideoPeel, Vocal Video has a cleaner and more spaced-out interface.
- The editing capabilities of VideoPeel are limited to overlays and disclaimers; you can’t do much else to manipulate the responses your customers send which may limit your engagement and conversion rates. Vocal Video allows you to do much more as outlined above.
And the best part? It’s only $49 a month for a Solo account, $33 per user per month for the Team version, which allows up to 3 users, and $39 per user per month for the Pro account, which allows up to 5 users.
Now that you know you don’t need to break the bank for professional customer testimonial videos, let’s get into it.
How SaaS (and non-SaaS) Landing Pages are Using Customer Videos to Drive Conversions.
Life360 Positioned a Customer Video Strategically
Most landing page advice will tell you to always position your videos ‘above the fold’ so prospects can see them without scrolling. Looks like Life360 flipped that script, literally, and placed a customer testimonial at the very bottom of their landing page.
This confirms that the position of a video on your landing page doesnt always matter; it’s the content you should be worried about.
If your message is impactful enough, your video will work anywhere.
Samsung Galaxy Uses Multiple Video Types
Pay attention to this one if you’re wondering how many videos to place on your landing page.
Samsung includes a product film, expert customer review highlights, and an introduction to their product’s features on their landing page.
This can increase conversions for a couple of reasons:
- First, it caters to different stages of the buyer’s journey.
A product video is a great way to introduce your product to potential customers who are in the awareness stage of the funnel. A customer video (expert review highlights in this case) can provide additional credibility and reassurance to those in the consideration stage, while an introduction film caters to those in the decision stage of the funnel.
- Second, multiple video types also provide different perspectives on the product.
In this case, prospects can get an overview of the product and see how it has helped others.
Additionally, having multiple video types can increase the time your prospects spend on your page, address different concerns about your product, and offer more engagement opportunities.
I recommend using this approach to optimize your landing page if you have a complex product or limited customer testimonial videos.
Recruit Rockstars Made a Wall of Customer Videos
An entire wall of happy customers is enough social proof to reinforce the authenticity of your product. Besides, it’s visually appealing (just look at the design, complete with brand colors and everything).
Having said that, I’d like to point out that over-reliance on video content may decrease your landing page conversion rates because videos are not easy to scan like written content. If not designed properly, too many videos can be overwhelming for prospects. It can also be redundant to include multiple videos addressing the same concerns.
Recruit Rockstars doesn't fall into the trap of over-reliance.
While they don't have any written copy on the page, they do have a clear and strong call to action that is always visible at the top of the page.
Besides, their videos reflect how their product has helped different people in multiple industries, solving the redundancy issue.
Furthermore, the videos have varying lengths; some are less than a minute, and others are longer than four minutes. Varying video lengths cater to different attention spans which provides a dynamic experience to your prospects.
Just like the video position, the length of your customer testimonials doesn’t always matter as long as the video content is relevant to the audience.
Airbnb Host Uses a Highlight Reel
A highlight reel saves you some serious real estate on your landing page. Within seconds, AirBnB Host was able to demonstrate how multiple customers use their product. Depending on your product and the context of your landing page, you can use customer video highlights to:
- Create a sense of urgency
- Highlight the most important benefits of your product
- Provide a glimpse into the typical customer experience
You’ll notice that this landing page uses autoplay which may or may not work for you depending on your product and audience. My best advice is to A/B test it and track the impact it has on conversions.
Always consider the video context when making a highlight reel. However, don’t use videos that are too similar to avoid redundancy (unless you make the reel short and snappy like AirBnB Host did).
Visme Presentation Software Uses both Animation and Live Video
Visme’s customer testimonial is visual gold because it incorporates something extra; animation that explains the product features. Essentially, it’s a mash-up of a product video and a customer testimonial.
Instead of placing your videos separately (like in Samsung Galaxy’s case) you can combine them into one.
Visme does a few things to prevent the video from being too busy or flashy:
- They overlay the animation on top of the video so the customer is always visible in the background
- The video gets bigger as you scroll the page, further grabbing the attention of prospects.
Rather than being distracting or overwhelming (the difference largely depends on design), the activity in the video adds a layer of excitement. The animation emphasizes what the customer is saying and makes the video more memorable.
Overlaying animation over the live video also caters to different learning styles that customers prefer.
Customer Videos Can Decrease Landing Page Conversions in These Instances
You’re bound to run into some challenges along the way, but it’s never anything that can’t be fixed.
Low-quality or blurry videos can turn off your prospects.
If you can’t ask the customer to re-record the video, change its encoding settings, or use editing tools to improve the brightness/ contrast, you’re better off discarding that video.
Maybe just upload the audio into Vocal Video and keep the screen busy with animations and text? It may not be as persuasive as a real customer on the screen, but it’s your next best option.
Irrelevant testimonials can cause confusion and decrease trust in your brand
...so don’t do it. It’s better to have no testimonial videos than use videos that appear out of place.
Unconvincing or scripted testimonials can bite you in the a**
Scenes that appear still or fake (read inauthentic) can reduce trust in your brand as well as damage your reputation. The trick is in the editing (lots of fun b-rolls), or you can simply write a fun script that feels personal to your prospects.
A good example of a scripted video that presents as fun and authentic is this Slack customer testimonial done by Sandwich Video, a company that makes commercials. The video does a great job of capturing the natural responses of the interviewees.
https://youtu.be/B6zVzWU95Sw?embedable=true
Video can slow down your landing page loading time
To fix this, you can compress the video file before uploading, optimize the video player you’re using, or use lazy loading which defers the loading of the video until your prospect scrolls to the section of the page where the video is located.
If you’re designing a landing page for mobile or targeting prospects with slow connections, using video might be the wrong call altogether.
Are You Ready to Increase Your Landing Page Conversions?
As a marketing professional, I understand that testimonials are just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to a successful lead generation strategy. It's essential to approach lead generation holistically and consider all of the different tactics that can help your business succeed.
For instance, you might want to optimize your web copy, strengthen your social media presence, run targeted ads and remarketing campaigns, build meaningful lead magnets, create relevant blog content that targets high-buying intent keywords, or conduct SEO audits to identify and address any issues that could be holding you back.
If you need help developing or improving your lead generation strategies, don't hesitate to reach out. I'm an experienced pro when it comes to creating copy that converts.
With a custom lead generation plan tailored just for you, we'll be able to get your business the results it needs to thrive.
First published here.