Using testimonials in advertising.
In this blog, we’ll be looking at using testimonials in advertising.
At Partisan Advertising, we believe there are five tenets upon which effective and memorable advertising campaigns can be built and how they can be used for the betterment of your advertising. They are:
Humour, testimonial, metaphor, analogy, and demonstration.
We need to start at the very beginning. Way back before social media and the Internet, when we had to actively look for advice from friends, family, and industry experts – word-of-mouth was the most powerful marketing tool around (and it still is).
In the previous century, being a film or food critic (or any critic for that matter) was being someone with a make-or-break influence to those being reviewed. These days, everyone’s a critic. Is that a problem? It doesn’t appear that way except (once again) for those being reviewed.
Using testimonials in advertising is so powerful because we trust people more than we trust brands. According to research by UK think tank WyzOwl, 42% of people say testimonial videos are compelling because they showcase an actual person and help the viewer understand their story.
WyzOwl also said that 95% of people they interviewed say that reviews, whether positive or negative, influence their purchasing decisions.
This points toward the importance of video testimonials as a marketing and advertising tool. Video takes word-of-mouth marketing to the next level. A video is harder to fake. This is a real customer willing to associate their face and name with your brand. It creates trust and helps create a strong, authentic relationship between the viewer, the person in the video, and the brand. This strengthens the relationship between the brand and the consumer.
Testimonial commercials are a highly specialised form of advertising, and they can be tremendously effective.
Testimonials make the invisible visible.
Testimonials can demonstrate conversation benefits.
A testimonial can add legitimacy and increase engagement.
Testimonials can provide direct targeting through strong resonation with the audience.
In the past eight years, Partisan Advertising has successfully used testimonial-based commercials for our client, TR Group. Our approach to generating testimonials is simple:
The customer does not have a script to follow. This results in a short, to-the-point, natural, and believable delivery.
We position TR Group’s clients in their environment, at work, and doing business.
We ignore marketing “buzzwords”.
So how has testimonial-based advertising helped TR Group?
It has built stronger trust from the customers doing the commercials.
The customers’ brand is showcased free of charge on a large media spend.
A testimonial is so powerful. To put it simply: even a short, 30-second TV commercial can show that there are clear benefits to using your product or service.
In our next blog, we’ll take a look at using metaphors to create better advertising.