You need a relevant audience and substantial views on your video testimonials—but how can you accomplish this if it doesn't include a baby, a cat or a celebrity?

We recently explored best practices for creating powerful video testimonials to help companies bring their customer's stories to life. Video is an excellent option to engage potential customers as it grabs their attention with relatable stories, building on the case study format of challenge/solution/benefit achieved. And a video testimonial is really a prize in your marketing content toolbox. Why? The B2B 2018 Content Marketing benchmarks report by Content Marketing Institute showed social media as the top marketing content followed by case studies and videos. If you combine all three—and do it well—you could be well on your way to a marketing home run!

Your customer testimonial may not include a celebrity holding a baby, with a trick-performing cat to ensure it will go viral, but we have four tips to help make sure the right eyes see your video testimonial.

SPARE the time to plan well

Often, a company will approach a customer for a video and for various reasons such as confidentiality, competitive edge, or the customer is just too camera shy—they may turn down your request. So, when you have a great client who is ready and willing you jump on it and take the time to do it right. Invest the necessary resources to produce a quality video and once you have your content ready, don't post and pray! Stop and ask yourself these questions:

• What are the best channels to reach my target audience?
• Does the current video format work for all channels or will a different format or shorter (teaser) version also be needed?
• How can I add context and gain reach from my website? Does a landing page or blog post (or both) need to be created?
• Have I associated the right SEO keywords and phrases with the video and created a SEO rich description that will pull in the right viewer searches?
• Did we capture the right thumbnail for the video that will make the difference of whether a person will click the play button?
• What will be the call to action once the video is viewed?

The answers to these questions may be specific to your company or industry but we've covered these topics in detail in past social media and marketing blogs to help.

SQUARE away cross promotion

If done well, your testimonial should showcase your client in a positive light and will help ensure that they want to share it too! Enlisting them to promote internally and on their social channels adds strength. Not only did they give you a testimonial on video—but they are willing to offer it up to their own employees, vendors, partners and customers.

It's best to make sharing easy by providing the following to your client:

• Sample message(s) that they can use when posting or emailing the video to their networks
• Custom, trackable links to any video formats you are asking them to share
• Thumbnails or other images to accompany the post(s) if needed
• Another hearty “Thank You” for their time and willingness to help

Getting their buy-in on the plan helps you to understand the potential reach of the video as well as set up analytics tracking. Some clients may not want to cross-promote and that is okay. They just gave you an incredible marketing tool so be thankful!

SHARE to your social channels

You now have a well-packaged testimonial video, from a customer that is happy with your product or service, with a plan to market it. Now start sharing!

• YouTube: With 5B videos watched per day and 30M active users on YouTube daily, this should be your number one destination. When uploading a video always include at a minimum: a short title, succinct description, tag keywords and phrases potential viewers might search and a relevant category.
• LinkedIn: This social channel is going to reach a higher percentage of professionals and can be a great resource for B2B video ads with many companies using video testimonials to tout their business. With video being shared 20x more often than other content formats, it just makes sense. To maximize views, keep your videos short. According to LinkedIn, a study found that videos under 30 seconds reported a 200% lift in view completion rates.
• Twitter: 82% of Twitter users watch video content on Twitter. Twitter supports MP4 and MOV video formats for mobile apps. On the web, they support the MP4 video format with H264 format with AAC audio and uploaded videos can be up to 512MB, Videos should be 2 minutes or less in length and if your video is 60 seconds or less it will automatically loop.
• Facebook: According to Facebook IQ, getting your brand in front of the consumer in the first 3 seconds is critical. Videos can be uploaded to your own page for free or spread through targeted demographics in paid for Facebook ads or sponsored content in feed. The sweet spot for mobile Facebook videos is shorter: 15-30 seconds versus the 1.5 to 2-minute sweet spot for traditional video. You may want to have a mobile “teaser” or offer a link to full video. Additionally, a square format works best.
• Instagram: Although Instagram started as a purely picture-sharing app, today videos get 21.2% more interactions compared to static images. In-feed Instagram video posts or Instagram ads can be up to 60 seconds but with no sound. Your video will need to rely on text to help tell the story – so again this may be better as a teaser with a link back to your website for the full video. Also, Instagram is going to be more about engagement so make sure you are prepared to respond to comments generated.

SWEAR by it by highlighting reviews

Customer reviews build trust with the viewer. Adding video testimonials to your overall marketing mix will amplify your thought leadership program and build credibility. By sharing third-party validation and showcasing your customers' feedback on social channels along with your videos—testimonial, product-related, or other types of videos—that trust can translate to improved conversion rates. Here are a few ways to integrate into your other marketing efforts:

• Include links to videos in marketing emails and embed in relevant landing pages
• Give reviews prominent placement on your website
• Share links and messages with employees to spread through their networks
• Play videos on a TV or monitor in your lobby for visitors to watch while they wait for appointments
• Use videos to help in your recruitment efforts; many people care about client and company reputations when looking at an employer 
• Show loops of your customer testimonials on TVs or tablets in your tradeshow booths, giving walkers-by a reason to stop and listen
• Consider paid search or display campaigns with networks that now allow video ads

If you spend time on proper promotion, your next viewer could become your next happy customer, and perhaps your next video testimonial!

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