You are a professional who is good..scratch that…Celebrated at what you do. You have some very pleased customers. Nevertheless, just like any business, you need a constant stream of new prospects in order to continue generating income. The answer to your problem could very well be using video testimonials.

Consider this: a website that includes videos is 53 times more likely to turn up on the first page of search results than text pages. Sites with video get indexed faster if they are also uploaded to YouTube. And since it can take up to 90 DAYS to get indexed by Google when manually submitted, it’s really a no-brainer to make use of video.

It is very important for any business owner to employ video testimonials correctly in order to achieve the objective, which is to drive new business to your website or brick and mortar business. While you can employ a production company to create a video for you, unless you have lots of money to burn this isn’t necessarily the best option for all website owners. We’ll discuss DIY video testimonials. So let’s get started.

Camcorder (HD if possible)

With the abundance of ‘flip’-style HD camcorders on the market, the prices have really plummeted in recent months. At the time of writing this article, the price range for a modest HD flip-style camera is $60-$200. I recently purchased a very good Panasonic HD video camera from Amazon for $79. The video quality is amazing, and it was worth every cent.

Obtaining the Testimonials

Obtaining video testimonials is easy. Just ask! Your customers are quite unlikely to voluntarily offer to be in a video testimonial. Select your ‘favorite’ raving fans and ask if you can take a few minutes of their time in order to tape a video testimonial. You’d be astonished at how many excitedly agree. In fact, I have yet to be turned down. Your good customers will be willing to sing your praises. One very significant detail you can’t afford to overlook is this: obtain a signed permission form. You might want to have an attorney write one of these. However, a uncomplicated form granting permission should be satisfactory.

The 5 Components of an Excellent Video Testimonial

Every outstanding video testimonial should have these five components. If not you will likely fail to impress your potential customers, resulting in loss of revenue. Here are the 5 must-haves:

1.The person should state their real name. A video of a person singing praises will seem unnatural if the person is an unknown. After all, you could have hired actors to do that!

2.They must contain meaningful specifics. "Joe is a great person" lacks specifics and will not impress your customers. As an alternative, try something like: "Joe helped me save $800 when remodeling my bathroom without sacrificing quality." Your potential client watching this video can picture Joe saving them money too!

3.They define tangible outcomes. Let’s go to our past example. "Joe got done remodeling our bathroom and it looks great" is ambiguous. "Joe finished 4 days early, and my wife thinks I’m a champion for hiring him!" is more moving, don’t you think?

4.They should resolve a prospect’s objection(s). "Joe was much less pricey than I thought he’d be" is a good example. After all, isn’t that one of the first thing many consumers worry about?

5.They should highlight the benefit of your service or product. "Joe transformed our bathroom, and now it’s a great supplement to our master suite" is a good example. The benefit is that they love the room and it ‘spiced up’ their master suite.

Editing the Videos

Your videos need not be polished like a Hollywood film. But you should make them snappy and fun to watch. If you have a customer who just rambled for quite a few minutes on end, select the part you would like your potential customer to see and cut the rest out. It’s also a good idea to buy some royalty-free music to play in the background. As far as what software to use - I use Pinnacle Studio. In all honesty the only reason I use that over another brand is that it came with a video capture device I used to transfer some movies from Betamax to DVD. So there you go.

Uploading the Videos to YouTube

This is simple. Go to YouTube.com and register for an account. Once you’ve registered, you can tailor your channel as much as you want. Look around at what others have done to get some ideas. If your objective is to embed the videos on your website, there’s really no reason to make the channel intricate. Just use YouTube as a video hosting service and embed the video on your site.

Now that you know what to do, you have no excuse to avoid this any longer! Take the plunge, put some time and effort into your video testimonials and you will start seeing benefits very soon.