Know-How Exchange : Customer Behavior

There are a few routes to take. It all depends on your budget and the location of the clients.

For the highest quality, hire a video production company. They should have the experience and the equipment to give good quality and a consistent feel to all the testimonials. The production company could set up at your office, their location, or travel to the client.

Your company could set up a room with a video camera, hopefully some lights, and hopefully a microphone. And invite the clients into your office and do them there. Depending on your knowledge of video production, the quality could be pretty bad! Look up "three point lighting for interviews".

There is another option. For logistical and budget purposes, I had a client buy two laptops and a couple of logitech 9000 pro webcams (they were the highest quality for least amount of money). Because their clients were all across the nation, they couldn't afford to send a video production company or anyone else to the client. They installed Skype and Vodburner to the computers, and mailed them out to the clients. Once the laptops arrived, someone in the home office would contact the client and perform an interview over skype, while recording it with vodburner. The laptop would then be sent back, and the video would be handed over to a video production company to edit down to about a 1 to 2 minute testimonial. Of course, you have to realize this method is potentially the lowest quality, but in this day and age of webcams and depending on your company's image, the quality could be acceptable.


I would also recommend:

1. A consistent feel across the videos

2. Have the same background for all the videos

3. Have an intro and an outro with the company logo and title like "A word from our client..."

4. And use a little title bar at the bottom, with the client's name and the person speaking.

5. Be mindful of "three point lighting for interviews"

6. Make sure the sound is clean and clear

7. Have the same list of questions that you ask every client



With the webcam approach, your backgrounds will be different. You can accept that and let the client's personality come through the background they choose, or you can direct them to find as blank a wall as they can. Then all the videos will be consistent.

There is no "universal answer to "effective and appealing" because this depends on the audience. Since you provide no definition on your target audience, the simple answer to you is go ask your audience what is effective and appealing. I am assuming you want to buy credibility with these videos. Ask your present customers and prospective customers what would make them "believe." While we can all sit here and pontificate what is effective from our own experience, that really doesn't matter unless we are "typical" of your target market. They are the only ones who matter. As a general rule, if you want to know something about your customers, ask them, not a bunch of self-proclaimed marketing experts. We only know from our experience - and in most cases, that will be just plain wrong. You might think that there are some "universal truths" - like don't film them from a cell phone, use a professional cameral, use a neutral setting, make sure the subjects are "typical," etc. But, even these things may vary depending on demographics.

I hope this helps.

Wayde