Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Harnessing the Power of Video Testimonials: Dustin Tysick
254 Plays2 years ago
In this episode of Marketing Spark, Mark Evans sits down with Dustin Tysick, VP of Revenue, with Testimonial Hero.
They discuss the value of customer testimonials, with a special focus on the undeniable impact of video testimonials on the buyer's journey.
Mark and Dustin delve deep into the various aspects of video testimonials and their unique ability to connect with potential customers on a profound level. They discuss how video testimonials foster trust, build credibility, and serve as persuasive tools throughout the buyer's journey, from awareness to consideration and, ultimately, the purchase decision.
Through real-world examples, Dustin provides tips to capture authentic customer experiences, elicit genuine emotions and effectively showcase the value of your products or services.
From scripting and production to distribution and measurement, Dustin offers solid advice and best practices to help businesses unlock the full potential of video testimonials.
Recommended
Transcript
The Power of Testimonials in Marketing
00:00:09
Speaker
Welcome to the Marketing Smart Podcast. Today, I'm talking with Dustin Tizik, the Vice President of Revenue for Testimonial Hero. We'll dive into a topic that often doesn't get the marketing love it deserves testimonials.
00:00:22
Speaker
When making purchase decisions, customers are seeking reassurance and validation. They want to know if a product or service they're considering is worth their investment. And while many marketing strategies focus on advertisements and content, testimonials often take a backseat. But here's the thing. Testimonials can be powerful assets that make prospects more confident in their purchase decisions.
Dustin's Journey from Sales to Marketing
00:00:47
Speaker
With his experience at Testimonial Hero, a leading company specializing in capturing and producing compelling customer stories, Dustin has witnessed firsthand how testimonials can transform the marketing landscape.
00:00:59
Speaker
In this episode, we'll explore how testimonials can influence consumer behavior and booth conversion rates. We'll discuss the do's and don'ts of testimonial marketing, highlighting the common pitfalls to avoid, and the best practices to embrace. Welcome to Marketing Spark, Dustin. Hey, Mark. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to it. Why don't we start by giving me the Regis Digest version of you and your experience.
00:01:20
Speaker
For sure. Yeah. So, you know, started out in sales, fresh out of university, trying to figure it out, selling textbooks door to door. Spent a bunch of time doing that and kept doing marketing stuff and realized, you know, that's more where my passion lies. Made the transition over, spent about the past eight, 10 years, B2B marketing at SaaS companies and
00:01:38
Speaker
Now I'm in a really cool role at Testimonio Hero where I oversee marketing, sales, and work super close with success and actually get to bring the two teams together rather than having them fight each other. So it's a lot of fun. And yeah, that's kind of the coolest notes of my background and where I'm at now. The best training you can get is doing something like selling a product door to door. What are some of the key lessons that you learned from that experience?
00:02:01
Speaker
I like to think I was okay at it, but yeah, definitely learned a bunch. The main one is just don't take it personal when you get rejected trying to sell something. Like I was selling textbooks to grumpy old philosophy instructors at universities. So I got a few doors slammed in my face just for knocking on it. Um, but really it was that like just be persistent and not annoying and eventually you can kind of crack through it and don't take it personal when you get rejected. Cause yeah, it's going to happen more often than not.
00:02:26
Speaker
Okay, so getting back to the topic at hand, thank you for that answer.
Why Testimonials are Underrated?
00:02:30
Speaker
Let's start with an easy question. I think it's an easy question. Why do testimonials not get the respect that they deserve? Are they an underrated marketing asset? And I know the answer that you'll give.
00:02:44
Speaker
Yeah, no, I mean, obviously I would say yes, and I do think they are. Part of the reason I don't get the love they deserve is I don't think they're executed well all the time, right? Like often it's kind of a generic, yes, you should work with this company. Like I said, a checkbox approach, right? I need a testimony or case study from this industry, from this persona. I don't care what it says. I don't care about the story.
00:03:07
Speaker
I don't care what the problems we solved or any of the details, I just need something in the space. So I feel that's why it's overlooked. And the other angle, which I'm sure we'll dive into is they're often used at like the final stage of the sales cycle oftentimes, or they're slapped on the website. So it's, you know, I'm about to buy and ready to sign. Can I see some testimonials or hop on a reference call?
00:03:28
Speaker
Whereas I think there's actually a ton of value using them really early on the demand gen stage on the remarketing to bring people back. There's a whole list of ways to use it. So I feel like they're probably done wrong and underutilized a lot of the time. Do you think that the problem is testimonials is that companies don't have a plan of attack. They don't look at them strategically and think about the impact that they're supposed to have from a sales and marketing perspective. Instead, as you say, there are check marks.
00:03:57
Speaker
go to customer, get testimonial check marks completed.
Strategic Use of Testimonials
00:04:02
Speaker
It seems to be a very laissez-faire approach to marketing. Yeah. And I think that's not even just unique to testimonials. I think with most social proof, honestly, it's like that. If you look at case studies or anything else in that vein, it's quite similar. And I think that's, testimonial videos obviously came a little later than case studies and written testimonials. So I think that's why people view them as the same thing, whereas
00:04:26
Speaker
I don't really, I think you take a strategic approach, ask the right questions, you can get dozens of pieces of content from one interview and put them throughout your whole buyer's journey. That's valuable. One two minute video on your website that a tiny percent of your market actually views, not so valuable and maybe not worth the spend. Yeah, it's definitely the strategic side that's missing.
00:04:44
Speaker
In theory, a testimonial or a case study for that matter, builds trust and credibility. There's so much competition out there that something's got to make you stand out from the crowd. It could be better brand positioning or a well-designed website. Do you think that
00:05:01
Speaker
testimonial and maybe some of the other vehicles are enough to build trust and credibility. Let's say, for example, you have five star ratings or customer reviews. Is that enough or are there elements you think that need to be part of the mix? I think, you know, it ties to the whole brand, really, because, yeah, you can build that trust, I think, with the right reviews, running ads with testimonials to get in front of people. You can also erode that trust really quickly by
00:05:27
Speaker
really poor outbound campaigns, poor brand positioning. So it, you know, you have to consider the whole gamut, but I think, yeah, social proof in general, even though maybe it's overstayed in a lot of cases, it definitely has its place across the funnel. And it's like a hidden pipeline, right? You don't know how many deals you might actually be missing because you're not included because people don't trust you off the jump. Um, so that's, you know, part of why we really rely on it heavily here.
00:05:51
Speaker
Testimonials have been around for years. We've all seen those cheesy copy-based testimonials on websites and sales brochures, but video testimonials have become more popular in recent years.
Crafting Effective Video Testimonials
00:06:05
Speaker
How can businesses maximize the impact of video testimonials and create compelling narratives that resonate with the people that matter to them?
00:06:14
Speaker
Yeah, so I think it's to go back to that strategic part, right? Like before you even reach out to customers, think about the message you want. Cause it's not like a case study or those written testimonials where like we both know the marketing team probably wrote that and then asked the customer, Hey, is this cool? Can you sign off on it? Like you're actually getting someone to put their face and their voice to it. So I think that's the part is focusing strategically on like we frame it as question fears and doubts. Like what are the question fears and doubts you had as a buyer? How did you overcome them?
00:06:41
Speaker
what was the result, and then don't be afraid to speak to some of that. Having a customer say, I was really hesitant to go with you guys because XYZ, but this is why I decided to, is more powerful than just a customer saying, the process was good, the product was good, I'm happy. Getting specific and actually
00:07:01
Speaker
getting that story out is a little neglected and takes a lot of work up front to come up with the questions. And we both host podcasts, so asking the questions correctly, digging into the questions like it's an art form that takes time to develop.
00:07:15
Speaker
I think one of the problems or one of the challenges with text-based testimonials is that they come across as inauthentic or unbelievable. You look at them and as you say, it's clear that many of them are written by the marketing department, which in turn goes back to the client and says, hey, what do you think? If you want to edit this, that's fine. When you look at the trust factor, when you look at the fact that
00:07:39
Speaker
companies are trying to build trust testimonials may not be the best agent, at least the ones that are copy based. But video really turns the conversation in a different direction. Or I think, I think it turns it in a different direction, because you see someone's face, they're more believable. And it's actually a real person in front of you, as opposed to some words on a page.
00:07:59
Speaker
Yeah, a hundred percent. And I mean, it's, AI is getting good, but it's not quite at that place where I can fake a video as well. Whereas written and even case studies, like we, AI generate case studies from our transcripts, right? So you can just have that written and not be authentic. I think the video, you know, there's a bunch of stats out there about actually seeing something in video, hearing it auditory, you know, the emotional connection you get to it, how much of the information you actually retain is much higher. So yeah, I totally agree that videos have more of an impact.
00:08:29
Speaker
So if we both agree that a lot of testimonials are done in the wrong way, the wrong approach, they're not believable, they don't work. Can you highlight some of the common mistakes or misconceptions that businesses make when they're collecting and using testimonials?
Common Mistakes and Choosing the Right Stories
00:08:42
Speaker
And as important, how can they avoid them? Yeah, I think, you know, part of it is just saying I need five of these and not thinking through
00:08:51
Speaker
the stories you actually want to tell. That works with reviews, in my opinion. I'm going to differentiate a bit between reviews and video testimonials because one, a review takes five minutes. It's not a huge ask. Video testimonials, 45 minutes of a customer's time. I think thinking through strategically, the way I look at it is we have three buckets we go after. Let's say we have a giant well-known brand.
00:09:14
Speaker
Even if the story is not compelling, I want at least one of those. So we work with HubSpot, for example. Testimony from them is gold because of the way it handles. Luckily, that was a good story as well. Secondarily, we focus on customers that have an interesting story that we're not the easiest sales cycle. And I feel like sometimes that's a neglected area. They pick the
00:09:35
Speaker
This person bought, it was a three day sales cycle. They're super happy. But talking to someone who was skeptical, had a bit to overcome and is now happy is going to be a more compelling story. So I think focusing on that. And the third one is strategically thinking about
00:09:50
Speaker
Who's actually going to be on video? Some people are going to be great on video. Some aren't, no matter what you try, no matter what editing magic. So thinking through that, the right person, the right company, the right story, and figuring out the five or six of those you really want and coming up with a strategic plan to get those done over the year. So it's a lot more work, which is maybe why people don't do it as much.
Overcoming Challenges in Testimonial Collection
00:10:11
Speaker
I think one of the biggest challenges for companies when it comes to testimonials, at least in my experience, is that in theory, a happy customer
00:10:19
Speaker
a long-time customer or even a new and excited customer should be a good candidate for a testimonial.
00:10:26
Speaker
But when you approach them, I'm always surprised by the pushback or the cautious approach that many companies take. Some of it's legal. Some of it has to do with the fact that they don't want to reveal competitive information. If they're going to be using a specific type of software, they want to keep it to themselves and keep it behind the scenes as opposed to tell the world that, hey, we're using HubSpot to power CRM. As a result, one of the struggles that I think marketers have
00:10:54
Speaker
is that they'll approach 15 candidates and they'll get two case study participants. So the obvious question to you as someone who interviews a lot of people for testimonials is how do you grease the wheels? How do you convince them that it's going to be a seamless experience? It is something that is a win-win proposition. And that is going to be more joy, if you can call giving a testimonial joy, than pain.
00:11:21
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think that's an interesting one. It's something even some of our customers struggle with, especially we have a bunch of customers in the cybersecurity space. And you know, companies saying, I work with a cybersecurity provider can be a challenge. But I think a lot of it comes down to actually having a process and building the expectation in, rather than
00:11:41
Speaker
you know, just waiting at six months into a contract and cold pitching them. So like we, from the start, when we recognize that it's customer that might be a good fit for a testimonial, we will bake it into the contract as an ask and give them a percentage discount. We're never going to hold a gun to their head and say, Hey, you have to do this. But like you said, it greases the wheels. They're a bit more aware of it. And also something we focus on heavily is talking about what the process is like and how it is a win-win. So we have.
00:12:06
Speaker
different, we call them sizzle reels, but basically compilation videos that we created from people who testified saying how easy it was, how it was beneficial for them, for their brand, and really positioning it as a win-win. So we kind of take that approach. But I do think having a process to reach out at key points and make the ask is a good chunk of the battle because those cold one-off campaigns where you just pull those to foreign customers and email them, you're going to get a really low hit rate and it's just likely not going to be the best result.
00:12:37
Speaker
Stepping back, I want to talk a little bit about the cybersecurity customers that you referred to, because I think in that case, cybersecurity is a very sensitive topic. And I think a lot of companies do not want to talk publicly about what they're doing behind the scenes to protect their systems. And I think there's a lot of companies out there who sell to companies who consider their products to be
00:13:00
Speaker
corporate secrets or it's information that they simply do not want to share for a variety of reasons. It could be competitive or legal.
00:13:09
Speaker
in that case with the cybersecurity company, how did your clients get them to talk? How did they convince them that, yes, we can peel back the onion on what we're doing and the technology that we're using? Yeah, I mean, so we have probably a couple dozen cybersecurity customers now, and they do get their customers to talk. I was in the same boat as you, or I was a little bit surprised. But part of it is they have people giving reviews usually on G2 and other places where it's public information.
00:13:38
Speaker
So that's one point where we direct them to start is these people likely don't have a legal issue or maybe they messed up and they shouldn't have posted. But still, you know, you have 65 of these G2 reviews start there. These people who might be interested and likely don't have the legal hurdles. That being said, some legal hurdles are just not possible to overcome. So kind of to tie it all the way back to the beginning, like take that rejection stride and realize you can't do it for everyone. But yeah, search for those little hanging fruit. And for a lot of our cybersecurity customers, they
00:14:06
Speaker
sit in on the interview and help with the interview questions to make it in a way where it's vague enough that they're not giving away secrets, right? Because we write interview questions all day, but I'm not an expert on this cybersecurity software. So they are heavily involved in the process and we work collaboratively with them to kind of overcome those fears. And then the customer gets final sign off, like the testifying customer. From my experience, if you can convince a customer to provide a testimonial or take part in a case study,
00:14:36
Speaker
They often feel an affinity to the company. They often feel like they want to perform or do a good job when they're giving the testimonial or review or a case study.
00:14:47
Speaker
The obvious question would be, how do you ensure authenticity and believability when you're working with a case study
Maintaining Authenticity in Testimonials
00:14:59
Speaker
participant? How do you make sure that they're just not following instructions and trying to make the client happy along the way? Can you share some tips on how businesses can get their case study people to share information, the right information?
00:15:13
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, this is kind of going to sound like a shameless plug, but I don't mean it in that way. But working with a third party provider who is a professional interviewer and is unbiased is a big part of the battle. If I'm talking to, like, say I'm working with a company, I love their product and I'm recording interview with their customer success person.
00:15:29
Speaker
I'm just going to praise it as much as I can. And you know, it's a bit awkward and they're probably not going to dive in. Whereas we have, you know, two full-time people on staff who all they do is interview. They come from backgrounds of producing and interviewing. So they will ask the right questions and also dive in and ask for clarification or
00:15:47
Speaker
Say the person rambles for a bit and there's a 20 second snippet that is great. They will ask them to elaborate on that or ask a question to follow up. So we do it that way. I think having the third party person and then on top of that, just having it be a conversation helps a lot with the authenticity.
00:16:02
Speaker
There's a lot of tools out there. And they're really good in some use cases where a question pops up on the screen and you answer the question. But that sometimes isn't as authentic as a conversation where someone's relaxed. They're casually talking to someone for 40 minutes and you get that human feeling and connection. So that's kind of our secret sauce really. And we think for really high quality authentic interview, you need a good interviewer to host it. On a related note,
00:16:27
Speaker
A lot of testimonials focus on positive experiences. The person being interviewed has great things to say about the product, how amazing the customer service is, how wonderful the onboarding was, those things that reflect well on the company. But what about
00:16:46
Speaker
experiences around potential objections or concerns. When a case study participant highlights the fact that maybe the onboarding wasn't as seamless as it should have been, but they got saved by customer success, or they talk about the fact that it took them a little while to get implementation happening. I mean, those are relevant and important topics that
00:17:11
Speaker
can have value to demonstrate the fact that these are authentic and genuine testimonials. How do you balance the good and the bad?
00:17:23
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's a good question. And I think you have to be really careful here too, because there is this negativity bias where if someone hears anything remotely negative, it sticks in their head a bit more. So I do think a lot of that stuff is going to come up organically during the interview. You don't specifically have to ask about it, but you can frame it as what were some hurdles that you had during this process? Were there any, and at the very least, it's a good customer research question, even if it's something that's unusable.
00:17:48
Speaker
But I think finding a way to bake it into the story of the finished video is important. So if you end on that, for example, not going to be good. If you start with that, it's not going to be good. But if you can weave that into the story of onboarding was hard because I had to do all these extra things and this was why. But the result of that was and then weave into the positive side. I think that's the way to do it. But yeah, I agree. Fitting in the odd.
00:18:12
Speaker
moderately negative thing does add to the authenticity. And alternatively, on the objection side, weaving in those objections and concerns that they had before they worked with you can also be equally compelling. So we had someone who said, when I heard about doing a remote testimonial, I thought the quality was going to be garbage, and I didn't want to work with them. And then explaining how we overcame that. So I think taking that angle can help a lot.
00:18:38
Speaker
Assuming that you reach out to your customers, they're excited about giving you a testimonial. They agree to do it on video. The whole process is fantastic. It goes really well.
Strategic Placement in Buyer's Journey
00:18:49
Speaker
Then the question is, what do you do with it? Once you've got these polished, professional looking testimonials that you want to use for your marketing and sales activities, a lot of companies will simply
00:19:01
Speaker
put it on the bottom of their homepage or their about page or the product page. It's almost like doing a lot of work and then putting like a new piece of furniture, tucking it in the corner that no one sees it or a great piece of artwork. What are your recommendations in terms of fitting testimonials, video testimonials within the buyer's journey, both top of the funnel, middle of the funnel and bottom of the funnel?
00:19:22
Speaker
Yeah, so I think again, this comes down to asking the right question so you have enough raw footage to work with. Because if you're just asking for general positive recommendations, you're going to get kind of a bland video. So I think asking the right question so that at the top of the funnel, for example, they're more evangelizing your service than you initially.
00:19:40
Speaker
So having them talk about in our case, like just cause it's easier to speak from our experience, talking about why they wanted to get video testimonials and why that was important. And maybe even not talking about us and running those as demand gen ads on LinkedIn to a cold audience.
00:19:53
Speaker
And then as they interact and they go to the next stage where we're remarketing to them, then there's shorter snippets that focus a little bit more on us and drive the value to make them aware of our product. So thinking strategically like that and also matching the videos to where they're going to live. So LinkedIn probably do a square video, probably have more text. The captions are more obvious because people watch it on mute. So taking that strategic approach. So that's my recommendation for the front of the funnel is
00:20:21
Speaker
don't always have it be me, me, me. It's OK to spend some money to evangelize your category. I think that's incredibly important. And then I think the other area that's somewhat neglected is when the actual sales cycle is happening. So the way we approach it is we arm our salespeople with they have dozens and dozens of 45 second to one minute snippets, talking about specific sales objections, competitors we replaced,
00:20:48
Speaker
the cost of inaction driving that home. So they have this library in a Google sheet in our case, but you could use like high spot or sales enablement tool where they have this kind of endless supply to pull out and use throughout that sales journey. On the website, that's where kind of the traditional one can live. The difference is I do think multi-voice testimonials hit a little bit harder and work a little bit better on the website.
00:21:13
Speaker
So having that, you know, we call it a sizzle reel, but that compilation that quickly hits in 90 seconds shows a lot of voices, shows a lot of social proof and an engaging, jumpy way so they can get through it is really important. So that's kind of how we think about it in those three main stages. And for our tech companies, we also coach them a bit on the retention side as well. Have ammo ready for upon renewal. So customers who have been happy with you for multiple years or who upgraded to a new product line that you launched, like have all of that categorized and ready to go.
00:21:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting because I've been spending a lot of time recently looking at customer marketing. There's such a focus on customer acquisition that a lot of companies ignore.
Retention through Video Testimonials
00:21:53
Speaker
their existing customers. And as a result, they struggle with churn and retention. Are you seeing more interest in video testimonials for customer marketing to inspire, educate, validate the company's products? Yeah, I think there's a general shift in the market with especially smart marketers who are really attuned to it to focus on your existing customer base. And if you can keep gross or your net retention over 100,
00:22:18
Speaker
You're not bringing in new customers, it doesn't matter as much. So I think there is a focus there for sure to drive that home. I think the other thing we've seen is some customers use these as an opportunity to build that customer relation. So they'll bring us to like a customer advisory board meeting, for example, to record.
00:22:35
Speaker
There's something about A, the company gets good content, but B, you're making the customer feel like a hero telling their story. They're getting a nice experience. I do find more marketers focusing on that and just making the customer happy and coming up with tools for retention. It's an interesting concept because when I do brand positioning exercises, one of the things that I'll ask a CEO or the head of marketing is
00:22:59
Speaker
to talk to their customers. And one of the things, and sometimes there's some reluctance or leeriness about letting a third party talk to customers, but what I found and what I tell my clients is that if you ask your customers about what they think and how they feel, they're so excited. They're so happy to provide their ideas and feedback. So I'm not surprised that companies will use testimonials as a way to build relationships with their existing customers. Just makes a lot of sense.
00:23:26
Speaker
Yeah, no, absolutely. And people, you know, love to talk about themselves and the things they did well. And rightfully so, like if they've used your software to achieve something great. So that goes back to that win-win you mentioned, like on how to get them to agree. It is a win-win. They get this asset that kind of elevates their status in the company and, you know, potentially their personal brand a little bit. So I think that's an important piece to consider.
00:23:46
Speaker
You mentioned earlier the experiences of working with cybersecurity companies.
Impact of Strategic Testimonials
00:23:51
Speaker
Can you share any other real life examples or success stories where the strategic use of testimonials made a big impact on a company's bottom line?
00:24:00
Speaker
Yeah, so another space. So most of our customers are B2B SaaS companies. And I think that's maybe more well understood, especially with your audience, probably, like a more traditional model. One kind of interesting industry that we've seen have success with using testimonials is franchiseurs. So think Capriatus and WingZone, big customer of ours, they want more franchisees to come in and purchase locations. And that's kind of their business model.
00:24:28
Speaker
So they've used us a ton to get authentic testimonials from real life people who open these franchises and have them talk candidly about why they did it, how they changed their lives. Those videos are often a bit more emotional because it's a big decision to purchase a franchise and change your career path.
00:24:46
Speaker
But they've had them and a few other franchise companies have had a ton of success using that. So I think the takeaway there to me at least is an emotional story is going to resonate a lot more than a generic recommendation. So, you know, find a way to pull that emotion out really helps.
00:25:02
Speaker
Stepping back, one of the things that we talked about earlier was the focus on customer acquisition over the last couple of years. A lot of companies have changed their marketing and sales priorities. They recognize that leads are more challenging and that marketing budgets as a result are being rained in to control costs and reduce sperm.
00:25:25
Speaker
video testimonials fall into the scheme of things. Because on one hand, you could see them as a nice to have. It's nice to have testimonials on your websites. It's nice to have customers say good things about you.
00:25:37
Speaker
especially using video, but when there's such a focus on leads and sales, like immediate gratification in the marketplace, and there's so much pressure on marketers to perform, as a revenue guy, what are you feeling? What are you thinking out there? What are you seeing in terms of the focus or the interest in video testimonials within the scheme of things?
00:25:58
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's an interesting question because there's a shift in the market to efficiency rather than grow at all costs. So every dollar is getting scrutinized and looked at. Video testimonials as an asset, it's hard to go dollar in, dollar out. So I think people have to think strategically about how to actually measure success or at least some corollary of success based on where they're using the videos. Let's take the example of us using them as a demand gen asset in our cold layer. We have our 7,000 target accounts.
00:26:27
Speaker
I want to look at how many of those accounts did I then drive to the website through these video ads that we created, and look at that as named account interaction, essentially. It's not revenue, but it's a corollary to it, and we can explore that and do the math to make it work. And similarly, look all the way through with salespeople using them. What percentage of deals used one of these assets? You can track play times on the website. So finding a way to figure out the right metric, because you're never going to get
00:26:57
Speaker
cold video testimonial ad out there and someone clicks it and signs up and gives you 20 grand for your product. Like it's a longer term play. So if you're pitching to a CEO, you have to think strategically about what's actually the right metric that you're looking at and how that ties to revenue in the long run. On a related note,
Marketing Attribution Challenges
00:27:14
Speaker
A lot of people talk about the challenges of attribution these days and that it's really hard to correlate X. If I do X, Y will happen as somebody who's in the heart of the revenue conversation, the revenue engine. What's your take on attribution and how do you deal with it strategically and tactically?
00:27:32
Speaker
It's attribution is like I have a love-hate relationship with it as I think most marketers do. I do think a lot of attribution software is incredibly faulty because it just can't track a lot of channels. So, you know, we have done the self-reported attribution on the form and we map that into categories and kind of cross-reference that with the marketing attribution platform.
00:27:54
Speaker
That being said, with certain things, we realize we're rarely going to be able to track the impact. So we honestly go a little bit by gut feel and momentum. Take our podcast, for example, and how we produce that content and run ads with it. We start noticing some people mentioning, oh, I heard about you on the podcast and they end up being a sales lead and buy, but I'm never going to have full attribution of that. So I think there's a general
00:28:17
Speaker
Acceptance, track what you can, do as good of a job as you can, but gut feeling still matters in marketing and you're going to have to rely on it once in a while. Final question. If you have a company that hasn't done video testimonials in the past, they've done testimonials, maybe it's been hit and miss, and they're listening to this podcast and they say to themselves,
Getting Started with Video Testimonials
00:28:38
Speaker
Dustin talks a good game, the testimonials sound like something I should explore. What are some of the first steps that they should do? What like, where do they start in terms of trying to figure out whether video testimonials make sense for their target audience? Yeah. I mean, I think first think about the channels and tactics and strategies to get your customers. You know, if you sell in-person at events or field sales, maybe video testimonials aren't going to have as big of an impact.
00:29:05
Speaker
But I would say if you're selling digitally, so you know, through your website, through online ads with a remote sales team, there's very few cases where I would say video testimonials won't have an impact. So that's kind of where I would look at it. And then I would say if you've never done them before.
00:29:22
Speaker
dip your toe in and even just starting, start talking to customers, like run a couple of your own interviews, even if you don't use them and come up with a finished product, talk to your customers. And then when you actually figure out the stories you want to tell, invest a little bit of money and work with a professional, whether it's us or someone else, you know, people who do interviews for a living and edit these for a living, they're just going to do a better job than the DIY approach, which I've tried to do in the past and I failed horribly doing DIY at other companies. So that's kind of how I feel about the situation.
00:29:50
Speaker
Awesome. Well, thanks for all the great insight into testimonials and video testimonials and building social proof on your website and other vehicles. Where can people learn more about you and testimonial hero? Yeah. So for testimonial hero, it's just testimonialhero.com. Nice and easy. For me on LinkedIn would be the best way I talk about topics like these and other marketing and sales things. So open to connect with anyone who wants to reach out there.
00:30:15
Speaker
Well, thanks for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you liked the conversation, show your support by rating and subscribing to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify. If you're a B2B or a SaaS company looking to jumpstart your marketing, we should talk. I specialize in a three-part marketing methodology that assesses, fixes, and optimizes your marketing with strategic guidance and tactical oversight. Ready to take the next step? Email me at mark at markevans.ca or connect with me on LinkedIn. I'll talk to you soon.