What’s The Difference Between a Video Case Study and a Testimonial?

Monday August 2, 2021

In any business, showcasing your work is important to help others understand how you can adapt your skills to suit their needs. Video case studies and testimonials are powerful ways to help achieve this.

Both a Case Study and a Testimonial give a perspective of your business from one of your clients, and how you helped them. If they’re presented in an authentic and genuine manner, they can be one of the strongest tools with which to build trust in your business. (You’ll notice we mention ‘trust’ a lot in this article)

Case Studies and Testimonials help potential clients to see how you’ve previously managed to help someone in exactly the same position as them.

Often people get the two confused, so we’re going to try and explain how we see the difference between them.

Video Case Study

In a Case Study, you can share an unbiased – almost documentary-esque – account of the situation of one of your clients, and the methods that your business engaged to help them solve their problem or get the results that they wanted. Obviously, you’re only likely to want to produce a Case Study for a client you know is really pleased with what you’ve done for them, or which showcases exciting methods that your company can produce, so the outcome is bound to be a positive one. But the viewer must feel they’re seeing the whole story.

As with all videos we produce, we want to tell a story. And in a Case Study video, it doesn’t matter what the product or industry is, there’s always a story to share – what was the problem to start with, how did you approach it and help your client, and what were the benefits afterwards. If you have statistics to share to show how impactful the work was, then even better to include them at the end.

In a video case study, we deliver those perspectives in the form of interviews with the key representatives of the client you worked with, and with your staff (or you). These interviews also then act as a voice-over for a lot of the video which can show either physical transformations taking place, or footage of your client and your team working together.

Video case Studies should be presented in an authentic and genuine tone as this helps to instill trust.  Anything forced or false will be obvious and will do more damage than having not made the video to start with! So be honest with yourselves, and pick the right subjects to feature.

Case studies can be used in B2B or B2C situations. For B2B companies video case studies may be required to showcase how your work is different to a competitors. In a B2C environment it may be used to influence others into purchasing a product or service where the customer needs to see the clear results that others have achieved and understand their journey through the process. Software companies often use case studies to demonstrate how their product has helped a customer achieve their goals, and they will demonstrate the software at the same time as hearing from the customer.

In consumer health products visual case studies are particularly important – dieting supplements, meal programmes and exercise regimes all rely on customers stories, hand-picked to showcase the best of the effects.

In our opinion, video case studies should make the reader or viewer feel like they are getting an unbiased and rounded perspective and are seeing how your product or service has helped someone else.

Testimonial

In comparison, testimonials are more of a review of your business, brand or service from the client’s perspective.  They will be almost entirely made up of comments from your customer, about how you’ve helped them, and the service that they received.

They serve the same purpose as a Case Study but are more of a short reference for you and your business that others can easily read or watch on your website and social media channels to help validate their thoughts of working with you.

They will still ideally tell a story. The client would briefly explain the situation they were in which led to them engaging with or purchasing from you.  You and/or they can then talk about the process of working together, and you would then end with the client talking about how their current situation has improved on what it was before.

Testimonials are generally produced and shared in written form rather than video, as they are short and snappy, but we have worked on a a series of short testimonials edited together into a longer video for clients which can work really well for websites or events.

To summarise, case studies and testimonials are ways to share positive stories of work and client management with others who are looking to work with you or buy your product in the future. Case studies tell more of a story, whereas testimonials are a review of you that can be used to share quick and easily digestible content with your prospects.

If you’re looking to produce video Case Studies or video testimonials, please get in touch and we’ll be happy to talk to you about the best ways of approaching them.

 

 

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

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