Alex Jamieson

Alex Jamieson has over 10 years broadcast experience in making high quality TV programs for UK broadcasters, such as the BBC. He can produce, direct, film and edit so bring this experience to businesses so that they can produce the best quality and most relevant video content to promote their endeavors.

More recently, he underwent extensive content marketing training and worked as a Director of Media and Marketing for a software company, helping to grow their organic marketing leads exponentially through video, blog writing, webinars and email campaigns.

Alex currently work for VCM Interactive as a Producer and Digital Marketing Consultant whereby he creates video content for clients based on their brief and objectives. He then advise them as to how to best utilize their new video content in order to maximize it’s impact.

Expert session

Tactic that has had the biggest impact on Alex’s success

Makin the video as ‘real’ and impactful as possible

Result if you follow the steps in Alex’s session

Become more credible by using video testimonials

Full session with video, notes, audio and discussion inside EHQ Club. Learn more

Expert session snapshot

Transcript

The value of creating a video testimony is even more powerful than creating, than having a written review because instantly, it’s a lot more authentic. It’s a lot more credible, and it’s a lot more informative. It’s very easy for keyboard cowboys to go out there on TripAdvisor or Amazon or whatever, and write negative reviews or write positive reviews about their own products.

As soon as you get someone on camera talking about product or service and reviewing it and giving testimony too, it’s the strength of that, that content is 10 times more powerful than the written word. And yet, it’s not that much more difficult to do. So that’s why I think I’m a great advocate of doing video testimonies.

Yeah, great cuz I think that’s the power of it, right? The extra credibility because it’s difficult to fake a video testimony. If someone tries it as a viewer, as it’s, you know, you can tell when someone’s being fake and inauthentic and unreal.

So, I love video for that exact reason and probably similar to you, and I’ve even seen, you know, people create a lot of fake text related reviews for their restaurants or small businesses and shops. And it can be quite easily faked, but this, what you’re saying is a little bit more difficult to do.

Yeah, there’s a couple of points I’d like to pick up on there. First, is that if you’re ever thinking, if you are going to embark in doing some video testimony for your business, never ever fake it, because you can’t, it just stinks. And it comes across and I’ll just do your brand reputation, no end of damage.

The second point is, since I moved to North America, there’s a lot of infomercials on the television here. And you have these actors giving testimony as to the value or the medical powers of our product. And it’s just so fake and see through and you can tell that it’s an actor reciting lines when you get on to making set, talking about making testimony and about and some of the key things to avoid and the key things to do.

But you never want someone to be reading a script. You want to be interviewing one of your customers or clients and you want them to be speaking genuinely, honestly and truthfully. Because it will really come across as authentic and that will speak with your brand and really help give it credibility online.

Alright, so I think we’ve probably set the scene quite well here. So how do we go about creating a great testimonial video?

Well, there’s one of the first thing you want to do, is the casting. So you need to figure out who’s going to be giving the testimony. So I’ve had a couple people come to me before and say, well Alex, we were a new company or we’ve got a new product, how can we get testimony from someone when we don’t have any customer or client base yet?

One way to get around that if you’re coming at us from you know, day one of your business or product, is give out free samples to people, give them a free samples or go and give them an hour of your service, whatever it may be, and then ask them if they would give a video testimonials to their experiences using your product or using your service. So that’s the first way to overcome that obstacle.

And so if you already have an established client or customer base, you know which customers are most loyal to your brand and company, speak to them and ask if they would be interested in speaking on camera and talking about your product. And it’s unique that individual to be you know, confident and outgoing.

Because if you get an introvert on camera, it can be very difficult. You want someone who’s outgoing, who’s passionate, who’s outspoken, who’s enthusiastic because that really comes across in volumes when you’re recording video.

As I kind of touched upon before, you can’t fake it. So don’t give them a script or anything like that. You just want to have an idea in your head what you want them to talk about. And even for you, don’t write over fool sync questions, just have a sheet of paper in front of you for when you’re interviewing them. I just have bullet points, but the key areas you want to touch upon.

And one particular leader you always want to touch upon is, what is the USP of your product? What’s your unique selling point? Because let’s face it, every market is saturated. Everything is saturated.

So you need to differentiate yourself, your service your product from others. You need to make sure you get that across in testimony, as at your service, as your price point, is at your after sales care, is whatever it may be you need to, you should know that as your brand, or you should get that in the video testimony.

And the other thing I would really recommend when you’re interviewing your person for the testimony is, you want to elicit emotion from them. And as soon as you get them excited or enthusiastic, they’ll start giving you great answers. But not only that, it comes across really well and it speaks volumes of your brand.

If you get someone on camera really excited talking about your product or your service, it’s contagious on people and it’s believable. And it’s genuine and it’s authentic.

Okay, I’ll keep coming back to those words because they’re hand in hand with video testimony. So that’s some of the kind of key points in terms of when you’re actually conducting your testimony.

So how do we get the customer who’s doing the testimonial for us excited? Like, what are some tactics we can use to make sure that enthusiasm comes across in the video?

Well, there’s two key points here. One is that you always want to ask someone about their thoughts and their feelings. If I just ask you, why do you like this product? It could elicit a very boring, like it’s easy to use. But if you start asking questions like, how do you feel using this product compared to others? Or why do you love this product?

Ask about their thoughts and their feelings because that will get them excited, that will get them going and ultimately get them relaxed and not thinking that they’re being interviewed because they’ll start thinking in their head or have a genuine answers and their thoughts and feelings and that is that emotion that you want to tap into. And it’s key.

The second point here is, and I’ll touch upon this later on when we come to talk about the SEO of testimonials, is that you want your product or service, should always answer a problem that person has.

So say for example, you run the hairdressing business where you go to people’s homes or their business place of business or wherever it is, you cut their hair, and what you’ve done to them as you will, you answered the problem that they can’t find a time normally to get a haircut because they have to work a lot, or they have to look after the kids or whatever it is to tap into that seat, you know.

You want to really show how your product or service is a solution to a problem that that individual has had. So ask them before, what was the problem that you had? And how did my service or solution manage to solve that problem?