A testimonial video has many benefits over a standard promo video. The major one is that it builds trust. Reviews are always a great thing to share because they’re trusted by consumers, whether they’re good or bad. And if you can get your reviews on camera, you’ll be able to make an effective piece of video content that can boost brand trust and translate that trust into brand loyalty. 

Overall, a testimonial video is a more personable approach to marketing. It leverages the power of customer reviews to engage your prospects and persuade them that your solution is right for their problem.

Plus, a customer testimonial video really shows social proof, it shows off your real customers!

We’ve got 10 examples of excellent testimonial videos coming up, but first… how do you make one of your own?

Let’s take a look:

How to Make a Testimonial Video

There are many different ways to design a testimonial video. Here are some general pointers in the form of three major steps: 

1. Decide on the story you want to tell

Your testimonial video should generally follow a specific storyline. Typically, you want to identify the problem that the customer was facing, go over how they came to your solution, and then confirm how exactly your solution helped them. This story will be different for every customer-product relationship, so feel free to tweak this so it reflects your customer’s journey.

2. Decide what customers you’ll use 

You’ll want to choose clients who have a particularly high affinity for your product and ones for whom your solution has really made an impact. 

3. Decide on your approach

This is where you need to figure out what your video will look like and how you will create it. 

Crowdsourcing video footage from your customers is a great way to not blow up your budget and produce an authentic video at the same time.

By doing this, you can collect videos from customers no matter where they are in the world without hiring video crews in multiple locations. It also allows your customers to contribute something meaningful and authentic. 

EditMate’s streamlined platform provides an easy way to collect video clips from your customers and if you need help with editing, EditMate can help with that too.

Additionally, make sure to think about what extra visual elements will be required to effectively tell your story. Do you want to include text graphics? What b-roll can you utilize? Will you need stock imagery? Make a wish list and share it with your Editor to ensure they bring your dream testimonial video to life.

If you’d like to see what some experts have done with their videos, check out our top ten testimonial video examples…

Ten Best Video Testimonial Examples

1. PayPal

This is the perfect example of a low-budget, authentic testimonial video. It’s short, it’s clearly self-recorded, and there are no bells and whistles. It’s simply a bank manager talking about how they use PayPal and how it helps them and their customers. This is a review-style testimonial.

The testimonial video uses three simple questions, and even includes information on the limitations of its use from the perspective of the bank. This is another way in which the video is more than just a promotional video; it’s framed as an honest account of how the product works. 

2. Salesforce

This is a bold move by Salesforce. Its music and cinematography build suspense and support the emotional connection with the narrator as she tells her story. The personal tales of being inspired are engaging from the start, and although there’s no mention of the company until right at the end, the video is designed well enough to keep the audience following up to that point. 

This is a good example of a slightly higher-budget testimonial video that leans on the other dimensions of the medium to support the story. There is no direct mention of the company, it’s simply a personal story of the people the company has helped. 

3. CodeAcademy

This testimonial video is the most straightforward example of a customer testimonial. It’s the shortest video on our list and relies on a simple, yet powerful message. The enthusiasm and sincerity of the customers are undeniable, and this is what carries the video. 

It also provides a success story of a direct product of the use of the service and is well-edited to include clips and images with plenty of information, without crowding the video and making it too fast-paced. This is a concise, informative, and engaging video testimonial.

4. Amazon

This is a different approach from the one above, as it isn’t so much an appeal to emotion as an act of reasoning with the audience. This is a shoutout to the efficacy of the FBA program to businesses and uses a lot of the relevant terminology that small businesses or marketers will recognize. 

It also inter-weaves lots of company imagery with the testimonials, which helps promote brand awareness, and it follows up with some statistics and some footage of the products from the companies that the program has helped. 

5. Samsung

Another smaller program from an industry giant on display here is Samsung’s testimonial about the big screens they’ve provided to a store in Norway. The staff offers their testimonials and the short is followed by a representative from the company listing some of the key features of the product. 

This is a very low-budget and easy testimonial video to make and ticks a lot of the boxes of a classic testimonial. It has good visuals of the product, user experiences, the backstory of the store, and a qualified person to fill in the technical gaps for the audience.

6. Zoom

Another one of the shortest videos on the list, this is a great example of a well-made testimonial. Hubspot is immediately recognizable in its branding and represents a trusted name, so having a representative from this company testifying to the quality of your product goes a long way. 

This testimonial video is professionally made, with crisp visuals and clean audio, and the narrator tells a story of the challenges and the solutions that Zoom provides to them. 

7. Dove RealCare

This is a great short using plenty of opinions from different qualified professionals on the product that Dove is promoting here. It’s immediately obvious that the testimonials aren’t scripted, are given by genuine people, and there’s even a lot of footage of them trying out the product as their recommendations are overlaid in the audio. 

Dove has its branding clear and present in the foreground, and the interviewees do a good job of expressing just how effective the product is at creating the desired effect. This video has a strong emphasis on empathy, and that reached out to the audience too. This is both a product-specific case and a good example of brand awareness for Dove. 

8. Hootsuite

This testimonial video tells a story from start to finish. It’s a little longer than many on this list at 2:23, but it gets a lot done in that time too. Setting the stage with classic outdoorsy vibes, they go into detail about the issues MEC are facing, and how they’re using Hootsuite to help them solve them. 

They then go into detail about the features of Hootsuite and finish with a note on how they were able to manage the scalability of their project, as a statement of success. 

9. On Demand

This video aims to show the customer interacting with the service that On Demand is providing for them. It’s a series of well-lit shots, with staged, yet representative shots of clients being coached by the On Demand team. 

The whole clip is narrated by the customer, and they also talk about mistakes that the company made in its early days of inexperience, and how the support they received from On Demand took them from their previous state to their much higher rate of success. It’s a good example of a relatable tale from a startup founder that would be engaging for On Demand’s prospects.

10. EditMate

We of course had to include our own!

For our own customer testimonial video, we focused on sharing our customer’s experiences in the most straightforward way possible. That meant no b-roll and minimal text graphics. We really wanted to show off our real customers’ faces and voices and let them speak for themselves about their experience working with EditMate.

To do this, we simply sent them an email with this request “say why you like working with EditMate and how it’s made your work easier. Just a couple of sentences in a casual video would be great!”. And we shared with them a link to this Uploader (notice our old branding?!) that we created for the project. (Note: on the EditMate Dashboard, you can create an unlimited number of custom-branded Uploaders, to crowdsource videos for your own projects). 

From there we cut up our customer’s submissions and stitched them together to create a short testimonial video that shows off our real customers in a genuine, authentic way.

Conclusion

A testimonial video can be designed in several different styles depending on your audience and your product, but the one thing that definitely needs to come across is authenticity. 

Testimonial videos are a perfect way to build trust with your prospects and therefore, your video must be genuine and come from a truly authentic place. Do this by using real customers, ensuring they’re not reading from a script, and that they have real, honest opinions to share. 

From there, establish your story, plan what “extras” you want to add to visually illustrate your story, and edit together an engaging, dynamic, on-brand, and shareable video that will capture and keep your audience’s attention.

Need help creating a customer testimonial video? Contact Us!