Bright Street Media Blog

Following our last post, we now drill down to the major components in selecting your “raving fans” and making sure they are prepared to go “soapbox” on your behalf. Keep in mind that people in general love to give advice and make suggestions when they had a great experience. Your customers will be no different, but selection is the key. Here are a few things to keep in mind when sending your customers to sell your company using video. Depending where you deliver will depend on length of the video. But technical details are for a later blog. For now here are the beginning steps.

The first step in creating a video customer testimony would be  selecting your biggest fans based this criteria.

• You are sure they will look good on camera and speak passionately about a problem and solution you (or your company) provided.
• They are more than happy to rave about you.
• They may be a client that resembles a few of your key prospects and or industry focus.

Secondly you want to organize  a minimum of two maximum three customers/clients to do the boasting, unless you plan to do a series of videos. We will talk about a series in the next blog, for now let’s stick with one video two to three testimonials. A few things to keep in mind when selecting.

• Decide whether or not you want diversity in your testimonials. I am referring  to the diversity of the problem and solution and revenue size of the client, not race etc., unless gender and race serve a specific need.
• If you need three clients ask six, if you need two ask four and so on. Don’t be upset if you are turned down. Most people hate themselves on camera… CEO’s love the camera FYI.
• That brings me to this point… be sure the raving fan has an intimate understanding of your company and the solution you provided.

Telling people how great your company is at providing products and services is “bragging”. When your customer does, it’s proof.

In my previous blog “How can customers market my business” I covered the structure of a customer testimonial as well as one way of doing it. Now we can focus on “The Customer Story” as a series of videos used to engage and accelerate the buying process. You may be paying top dollar for website  visibility to search engines and reaching more potential buyers, but what happens when they find you? Your prospects come to you with a problem looking for a solution and sharing a story or two will help them determine how you can help. ”The Customer Story” does just that.

In last week’s blog I talked about one video with two to three client testimonials. This week we take one customer and one story. This approach does require additional investment dollars, but overall will cement future sales. For this selecting your testimony is absolutely critical. Along with the testimonial, the story itself. It’s really important to have a “Reason or problem”… why did they come to you? They need to have a compelling solution and lastly a savings or better said “how my life is better”. The story should include how their problem was solved and why they would never go to anyone else. Before you get started here are a few things to consider:

• Pre-write the story to provide your customer (testimony) with some framework and guidance (not scripting)
• Prepare your customer with a list of questions prior to the date you are recording
• Location is a critical piece of the puzzle

For a five-minute “Customer Story” video figure one to two hours of on-location recording. Get all you can and get it the first time. It will save you money in the long run.

Last but not least, record the video in the highest quality format (To HD or Not to HD) and this bares repeating… “Video is all about the sound“.

I would like to read your comments or questions as well as experiences so please post!