Apparently, less than a third of all business owners are actively seeking and collecting customer reviews on a continuous basis. An even smaller percentage does so for video testimonials. This makes including (video) testimonials in your sales strategy a great opportunity for you and your business to stand out.

But when do you ask your clients to create a video testimonial that will actually convert potential clients? And how?

I’ll discuss my own experiences and suggestions in this article.

When is the right time to ask? 🕒

If you’re mainly doing project work, I’d say it’s a good idea to ask for a video testimonial in the final call with your client. If they say yes, I usually send them an email afterwards with clear instructions (see my template below).

I would schedule this final call with your client for the purpose of gathering feedback on the product you delivered and on the delivery process – the collaboration, essentially. If the feedback is positive overall, you can easily make a segway into asking for a video testimonial. 

For ongoing projects, or memberships, it’s probably best to wait until your clients were able to fully experience the benefits and value of whatever it is you offer.

But just like with project work, try to ask for it when the momentum is still high – ideally not more than a few days after they had their last experience with your product. Then their emotional connection to what you offer is still high, which increases the chance that they will actually deliver a (good) video testimonial for you.

How to ask? 🙋

Drawing from my own experiences, I feel like it’s always best to ask for a video testimonial over a face-to-face meeting or a video call. It’s easier to explain why this way and it would be hard to say no to a request like this on a personal call. Emails or text messages are simply much easier to ignore.

If you’re in a group meeting, be sure to ask specific people for the video testimonial, because saying yes to something as a group often means that no one in particular will take responsibility for the job to get done. 

As soon as a client agrees to make a video testimonial, I like to send them an email follow-up as soon as possible with the details. If you have a standard checklist or workflow per client – which I highly recommend – this is a step you can include in there.

For more information on the value of checklists and setting up systems for your business, I highly recommend the book The Emyth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber. The title may sound a little boring, but the book was great fun for me to read and an absolute game changer in terms of how I look at my business in general.

Below, you’ll find my personal email template for asking a client for a video testimonial. And below that, you’ll find two video testimonial examples.

Email template ✉️

Hi [name],

Thanks again for agreeing to create a video testimonial about our collaboration! In this mail, I’ll give you a few quick pointers on how to proceed.

How to prepare?

• Recording gear: your smartphone is fine. You can hold it to film yourself or you can use the back camera by placing your phone on a stable surface.
• Shooting location: anywhere you feel comfortable, but please try to limit any sudden background noises.
• Script: not needed, at most a few bullet points on what you want to say.

Video guidelines

• Duration: about 1 to 5 minutes. 
• State of being: just be your authentic and honest self. 
• Content: 1) introduce yourself and the project we worked on together, 2) describe your experience with the collaboration overall, 3) share moments or results that stood out to you (as in: what made this collaboration different/unique) and 4) end with a short recommendation or closing statement.
• Filming: please film the entire testimonial in one take.
• Inspiration: [add links to 1 or 2 examples of video testimonials] 

Please upload your unedited video testimonial to this link [add link] before [date]. 

I look forward to seeing it. Thanks again for your help!

Best regards,

Marc

Happy collecting! 🎉

I hope this article will make it easier for you to start collecting good video testimonials. 

Video testimonials have been a great help for me when it comes to getting the attention of potential clients online. I usually share them prominently on the websites of my businesses – like on the KREW website.

Feel free to copy and adjust the template from this article to make it more suited for your own situation. The same goes for my shared strategies.

To close off, I’d like to share my favourite video testimonial ever, made by Alireza Parpaei and his team at Holland Park Media: