No offence intended but the truth is prospects are no longer interested in what you have to say about your company. They only care about the opinions of people exactly like them.
As a business owner or marketer, how can you use that to your advantage? You get prospects to trust the people who trust you – your happiest customers!
If your customers like you, they’ll be happy to recommend you to their community.
And how do you get your customers in front of your prospects?
Video testimonials of course!
Videos boost conversions by 80% and the reason is simple: it’s because they are real and authentic.
Your prospects deserve the best. They will value the videos of your happiest customers because they are genuine, unpolished, and most importantly trustworthy.
Would you believe that even in 2022, 23% of marketers don’t use video for marketing as they lack time? Hard to imagine given the stats above.
The irony is they know they need to invest in video, but because videos are notoriously time-consuming and expensive to produce, they focus their efforts elsewhere.
The time has come to cease hiring expensive video production teams to follow your happy customers around. It’s time to stop sending them boring surveys. You need to focus on simplifying the process and getting happy customers in front of the camera.
As customer-centric marketers, there are some great video testimonial tools available to make our lives easier. I’ve compiled a list of the best platforms that can help simplify the video production process, save money, and drive sales.
Here's a short summary, but please read on for a deeper comparison:
The UX is incredibly simple and it appears that a lot of thought has gone into the design and layout of the tool. I also found this to be the most entertaining, yet informative, onboarding I have ever experienced.
StoryPrompt makes the process of creating, sending, and replying to prompts, called storyprompts, incredibly easy. StoryPrompt has created a very clever AI experience where you can select a producer to create a “story” with your own branding, music, and b-roll.
Thanks to the inclusion of automatic video production in StoryPrompt, very little tech-savviness is required. This would appeal to a variety of business owners and busy in-house marketers. StoryPrompt makes it incredibly simple to create and produce video testimonials from your customers, and embed authentic video-based reviews on your website.
StoryPrompt has two plans currently available:
StoryPrompt is the only one of these tools that utilizes AI to this extent. Your videos will always be professionally produced, and made according to your specific requirements.
VideoAsk is very clear, intuitive, and has great UX. It does what it says on the tin without all the fluff. I loved the onboarding process which utilizes video to figure out your requirements. VideoAsk also has helpful templates that you can use and edit yourself.
As can be expected from the makers of Typeform, VideoAsk is focused on the form experience. Respondents are able to respond to your videoask in many different ways including Open Ended (video, audio or text), multiple choice CTAS, or by making a payment using Stripe.
Something strange I noticed was that my video flipped after recording with my webcam. Not a massive bug I suppose but a bit of a surprise if you have a good or bad side. 😝
VideoAsk has three plans and all plans have Zapier integration:
VideoAsk is a real contender to StoryPrompt but I feel the biggest disadvantage is the lack of AI capabilities like StoryPrompt. While the editing capabilities are good, they are limited and might still require external editing.
But what VideoAsk does, they do well!
After signing up for a 14 day free trial, I felt immediately bombarded with text and instructions to help me get started. However, there was a quick and helpful onboarding video on the dashboard. Thanks to Ryan!
To get started with Boast, you need to create a form from a pre-built template or a blank form. Your customized form can then be shared or embedded on your website. The recipient can respond via video or upload a video file.
The sequences feature is very handy and you can create an email sequence to ensure surveys are completed. Boast also works with NPS and customizable widgets. All plans except Solo have Zapier integration. Boast offers a free trial for 14 days and you don’t need to add your credit card details upfront.
Boast has four plans:
Boast is one of the more expensive video testimonial tools and I think the reason for this is because they don’t have a free plan. I believe they might be missing an opportunity because all their competitors listed here offer a free plan and only Boast has a time-limited free trial. It might take more than 14 days to see results too.
Bonjoro looks like it has some good features. It’s easy to follow and the UX seems clear and uncomplicated. It allows you to add multiple users even from the free plan.
Bonjoro has great integrations including Native CRM integrations, Zapier, Slack, Shopify, and Gmail. It also has an impressive use of workspaces.
One limitation I thought is that you can't ask your questions in video format, it’s only in written format, however responses can be in either format. This seems to be a general theme in most of these tools. I think this is a bit unfortunate as humans are more comfortable responding to humans, even if it is asynchronous.
Bonjoro has four plans:
A good tool and easy to use. One negative I discovered is to remove the Bonjoro branding takes you from a free plan all the way to the Grrrowth plan on $149 a month. In my opinion, this seems like an enormous jump and a bit unappealing.
Also Bonjoro is pretty new to the testimonial game and are more focused on sending videos (for sales reps). I therefore have a few reservations about where their long-term focus will be.
The UX was clean and it was very easy to understand what Tolstoy can offer you. Integrates with many tools including Salesforce, Intercom, Zapier, Calendly, and HubSpot.
It’s very straightforward to create a Tolstoy, which is basically a question. Once this has been created, you can add buttons onto your question, for example a video, audio, or text response. You can then share your Tolstoy using the link to your email. If you upgrade to one of their paid plans, you will be able to share the video using a widget or embed it.
Tolstoy has two main plans and a customizable Enterprise account:
While Tolstoy is considered one of the cheaper tools, I think it’s because their branding is heavily used in your videos. In order to remove the branding entirely you will need to contact them for the Enterprise plan. There is no price on the website which has to make you wonder.
A lot of text and too many videos to watch for the onboarding. I honestly had no idea how to get started on the free plan. Perhaps it was because I didn’t watch the 8 minute video explaining how, but heck – why should I have?
Vocal Video utilizes Turnkey Editing and Branding (similar to StoryPrompt above) which enables you to add your own branding, music, trim a video and create a transcript.
Text-based questions are sent to customers and they have the option to respond via video or audio.
Vocal Video has three plans:
There was just too much going on. While Vocal Video has a free plan, if you create more than 3 videos, they become insanely expensive at $99 a video! The jump to the next paid plan is also enormous.
Firstly I have to say I love the name Vouch and particularly loved the concept of your customers vouching for you. The onboarding tour was clear and very easy to follow.
To get started you have to add a contact which I feel is an unnecessary step in the process. I really liked the fact that Vouch links to your calendar so a respondent can schedule a reminder to respond to the question.
One negative was that I was confused by the Basic plan offering hosted video player and embed code and Pro plan mentioning that you can host the recording on your own domain. Maybe I’m not technical enough to understand this, but to me that sounds the same and potentially not worthy of the upgrade.
Vouch has two plans:
Very simple to use. You can set up multiple questions and choose whether you want the user to respond with video or screen share. Like Vocal Video (above), the questions are text-based not video, which I believe is a shortfall.
There are some tools here that will be really easy-to-use and I think you will really benefit from. However, I found most of them either have overly complicated UX, or they are pushing me to upgrade, or to enter their competition.
In all honesty, good UX should afford me the opportunity to be left alone. If I can’t manage on my own it seems the problem is more yours than mine!
I can’t finish off without mentioning that I think it’s a bit disappointing that some tools removed the human representing the company in the very first interaction. Instead of asynchronous communication beginning with an authentic video, it begins with a cold text-based form.
I believe it’s a golden opportunity to show a face behind the business and have a prospect connect with you, a real trust-worthy human.
Rant over, how do I really feel? For me, StoryPrompt seemed like the most suitable software for businesses looking to create video testimonials. Good UX, intuitive onboarding, and super quick to get set up.
The biggest tick of all has to be the brilliant use of AI. As a busy marketer, the time and money it saves me when it comes to video production is worth 10x more than the monthly subscription!
StoryPrompt is usable by any business owner or marketer who doesn’t need anything complicated. They just want good video testimonials from their happy customers, and the ability to share authentic, professional videos without faffing around with video editing or needing to hire an expensive videographer.
If you'd like to start collecting testimonial videos for free, sign up to StoryPrompt.
Chief Storyteller at StoryPrompt
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