How to drive revenue with video testimonials | Dustin Tysick (Testimonial Hero)

Hey everyone, Dustin here. So I'm coming at you solo today on the B2B Revenue Leaders Podcast. And you know, I've been thinking a lot about something that keeps coming up in my conversations with marketing and sales leaders. So almost daily, I get the comment of everyone's trying to figure out this whole customer story thing.

Like when to use videos, when to stick to written case studies, how to actually get ROI from all this content. There's a lot of questions I'm hearing all the time. And look, I'll be straight with you. I run the revenue team here at Testimony hero.

I'm a little biased. I mean, I live and breathe this stuff every day, but what's really fascinating is just seeing how the whole B2B buying process has completely transformed over the last few years. I mean, we're looking at buying committees of what, 10, 15 people now, each one of them doing their own research, checking out your content, trying to figure out if you're even legit before they ever hop on a call. It's not how it used to be.

They're really ahead of the game here on the research side. So let me just, you know, paint you a quick picture here. Remember when a simple logo wall and the PDF case study were enough? I mean, those are my old sales days, but those days are long gone.

And I mean, your buyers are skeptical and honestly, they should be. I mean, they're getting pitched left and right. Look in your email inbox. Everyone's claiming to be the best thing ever.

And they're trying to figure out like who's actually walking the walk. Who's legit. Who should I consider as a vendor, a partner, an agency? And I mean, I was talking to a CRO last week.

Let's just call him Mike. He told me something that really stuck with me. And he said, I don't trust what companies say about themselves anymore. I trust what their customers say about them.

And I mean, I'm the same way. And here's the kicker. He doesn't just want to read what they say. He wants to see them say it.

There's something about like looking someone in the eye virtually, you know, through a video recording and deciding for yourself if they're the real deal, if they're telling the truth, there's just that emotional connection. So I can talk about a lot of things on this one, but let's dive into video testimonials first. And I'm not talking about those obviously scripted ones, you know, where it's pretty obvious marketing wrote the copy. I'm talking about authentic, genuine conversations that actually make a difference.

So starting at the top of the funnel, this is where you're trying to stop the scroll, right? Like we're all doom scrolling, going through things, but you've got about three seconds to grab someone's attention. And here's what we found that works. So you want to have 15 to 30 second clips of customers, you know, really snappy, direct to the point, no fancy intros and names, just straight into the value and lead with something memorable, specific metrics, outcomes, something upfront to capture their attention.

So let me give you a quick example. Like say you in the DevOps space and you have a quote of a customer saying we cut our deployment time from two hours to eight minutes Put that on LinkedIn have some animations and music to show that professional and it's branded and see the engagement you'll get on that short clip and how it drives people down the funnel. So up next, mid funnel is where it gets really interesting. Right now, your people are doing their homework, right?

They're on your website. They're opening your emails. They're trying to figure out if you're worth their time. So you can go a bit longer here on the video side.

Think 90 to 120 seconds. And a tip here is to structure these videos like a mini story, right? You want the pain point they were facing, why they chose you, the implementation experience or buying experience, especially for larger companies, if you sell enterprise and then concrete results, and maybe even one unexpected benefit they discovered to keep it interesting. So there is a bit of a formula here for storytelling that I mean, no matter what you're creating, you have to follow.

Now the bottom of the funnel is actually my favorite part. So when you're in those late stage deals, having a video of a customer who faced the exact same challenges i mean that's like your secret weapon right so think objection crusher videos focus on competitive replacement the cost of an action something like that i mean the one example i always go to is we often get the objection at testimonial hero that i have a video team why should i work with you so we had ron from hubspot explain you know we have this massive video team they're amazing but they have a ton of requests and i can't scale so i work with testimonial hero to scale my customer testimonial program.

We use that video in our sales process constantly in enterprise deal, and it just works. So, I mean, I talked a lot about video, but let's not just throw out written case studies. They do serve a crucial purpose, and in some ways, they're more important than ever nowadays. I know you're probably rolling your eyes and thinking why, but I mean, really, because they give you a bit more space to dive into the details that you wouldn't have in a shorter video.

So following the same format, let's go top of funnel, mid funnel, bottom of funnel. For top of funnel, an often neglected thing is your case studies need to have SEO and they need to drive traffic. So this is where you capture people's attention quick. And one quick easy tip is rename all your case studies to match actual search terms.

Sounds simple. You would do this with all other content, but people skip it for case studies. Another one to consider is create quote cards. So that way you can run image-based ad campaigns, kind of doing the same thing as my video example, but in an image format instead.

Okay, on to mid funnel. So this is where you need to arm your sales team with the right ammunition. I mean your written case studies, they should be modular. Break them down into sections that answer specific objections.

So maybe you start with technical implementation details for your engineering audience if you sell in that space or the ROI and business impact for your economic buyers or the change management side and adoption metrics for your end user champions That way you have different stories that you can pull out depending on who you're selling to and who you're talking to. Finally, bottom of funnel, this is where written case studies really earn their keep. You need to give your champion everything they need to sell internally.

So think of specific customer stories that really address the problems your champion is solving for. Also, think of different ways to deliver the content. So for example, a one pager or a sales slide, I mean, a really targeted one pager might be what pushes the deal across the line and not a 1500 word case study. Okay.

So talked about written, talked about video. Here's what I see a lot of companies where they really miss the boat is they treat these as separate things. And honestly, I think it's a big mistake. I mean, the real power comes from using video and written together strategically.

And if you're going to interview a customer, you might as well get as much content as you can, right? I mean, let's think about your own buying process. You probably want to see someone like you talking about their experience, right? But you also want to dig into the details, verify the claim, see the actual numbers, your jobs potentially on the line when you're purchasing a software or picking an agency to work with, right?

So video and written content can help reassure people. Okay, now to break down what we've seen work honestly really well is start with video, build that emotional connection, follow up with written deep dives for, you know, more validation, use both formats on key landing pages, and finally arm sales with both types for different conversation stages and also depending on the buyer. Some people like to watch, some people like to read. Okay, finally, let's get a little bit tactical about where this content lives and how you get in front of the right people at the right time.

So for video testimonials, social media is great, especially LinkedIn if you're B2B. We use customer content both in our cold layer as well as very heavily in remarketing. But aside from that, you can also use it in email sequences, sales conversations, virtual events, website headers, product pages, even SOWs and proposals. And finally, one big tip here is to have a compilation video on your homepage that features multiple customers talking about your company.

Combine that with some kinetic text and animations, highlighting your value prop, why you're different, why you matter. Then you have a killer brand video that has your voice and the customer voice kind of blended together seamlessly. On the flip side, for written case studies, don't just stash them away in your customer stories page. Try putting them in, if you have a resource center, it could be a blog post, sales collateral, email streams.

Again, proposal documents is often overlooked. Even technical documentation, depending on the content. So you know think about where it going to live And then on top of that the question I always get is what is the ROI How do I measure customer content The trick here is it not a direct response ad where someone clicks and buys so it not like you can just measure and attribute things that way But here a few things you should be tracking, in my opinion. So for videos, look at view-through rates, drop-off points, social sharing metrics, influence on deal velocity.

None of this will be perfect data. It's not a causation thing, but it will be directionally correct. And you'll spot trends. You'll figure out what content is actually resonating, what content is actually working and where.

On the written side, honestly, pretty similar. Focus on time on page, download rates, citation of written content and close win deals, search rankings if you're going the organic traffic route. But overall, written video, the real metric that matters is deal influence. So track which pieces of content are actually showing up in your winning deals.

That's your North Star. Are they making a difference? What is the impact they're having? So now I've droned on and on about testimonials.

I could keep going. It's almost the holidays. I could let you off easy here, but let me leave you with a quick framework for building this out. So number one, start with your best customers.

You know, the ones who are crushing it with your solution, go to them first. Go to your happy customers. Seems obvious, right? Number two, capture their stories in both video and written format.

Number three, create a content matrix. So map all the formats to the buyer journey stages. Four, actually come up with a distribution strategy. Five, test and measure it.

And number six, iterate, learn what's working, move forward. Same process you would use for pretty much any marketing campaign, right? So treat this like a campaign and not just a tick box that you have to check because sales is bugging you for another case study, right? Like these are marketing assets, plan accordingly.

So to wrap it all up, you know, here's your homework, right? Number one, audit your content or audit your current customer evidence. Number two, map it against your sales funnel. Number three, identify the gaps.

And finally, number four, make a plan to fill them. Simple, right? But it's not easy. It takes work and you got to do the work out front.

So remember, the last thing I'll leave you with, it's not about having the most testimonials. It's about having the right ones in the right format at the right time. Just like everything in marketing, right? Okay, so I'm going to step down off of my soapbox.

That was my first solo episode. I'm tired of hearing my own voice. Hopefully you enjoyed it. But we'll be taking a break over the holidays.