Why You Shouldn't Do Case Studies
(The Old Way)
Written reviews might be fake. But your customer's smile isn't.
No matter the size of your company, trust is the one asset you can never have enough of.
And in the age of misinformation trust can be difficult to build.
Fake reviews are everywhere.
And written case studies translate to ‘sales brochures’ in your prospect‘s head. They know you wrote them. Their guard is up.
But seeing real customers telling their real stories on camera?
That’s persuasive success that can’t be faked.
See how Hugo, Foleon, and Give+Take easily built a library of customer videos that convert
How Hugo builds trust instantly
“Testimonials provide a way for us to tell prospective customers about the value we’re already offering to all of our existing customers.
Social proof is king. If we can tell the story about others and how they’re using our product or getting value from our product, the reality is that everyone else naturally follows.
Written case studies come across as marketing content. It’s not organic, it’s not authentic, and anyone could have written it.
When I hear something from someone’s mouth with a face with a name, someone I can relate to, all of a sudden it’s real, it’s like I’m having the conversation with that person myself.”
“We’ve always wanted to use video more extensively in our business—for video testimonials to tell that story in that authentic way.
We’ve never had the budget or the time to be sending production crews out to meet our customers, to be inconveniencing them, making them move around their office and set up lights and cameras and have five people in there.
And then when COVID came along, firstly, there’s safety concerns. But also, everyone’s at home, there’s no longer an office where I can go and take over and set up.
So cost, health concerns, not even having everyone in the office made it impossible to do that, especially for a young company who doesn’t have tens of thousands of dollars to spend on each video. So that was always the challenge that got in the way of us using video testimonials more extensively.
As a founder, there’s naturally so much on your plate. And the way I prioritize things, firstly, sales is king. That’s the future of the business, that’s our ability to survive and to thrive.
Anything we can do to enable sales is critically important. And talking to customers and selling is obviously really important.
But if I can invest a little bit of time for something that I can use over and over again, that’s going to help me sell in a one-to-many way, that time is the best time I can spend as a founder.
I can go and have this two minute video clip that tells this story in this perfect, authentic way about the value we provide. And that piece of content can be shown to thousands of people for a long time.
That’s the best time investment in sales that I can make as a founder. So like always, it’s something else on the list. But it’s something that has such a transformative, huge ROI impact.”
“After working with TeraLeap, and producing our first video testimonials, our sales org has never been more excited.
They have this library of high quality stories from real people that they pull off the shelf as they need every day to explain the value of our product and why you should be choosing us.
So TeraLeap is helping them close many more deals much faster, and in a much more engaging way.
On the marketing side, we’re working on a new website—we’ve actually switched our results page from being a page of testimonials to a page of videos, where we’re doubling down on video as a way to tell stories for all the reasons I’ve described.
And on the paid social side, on the advertising side, the data is there that shows that having a real person telling you why this product is great is going to do 10 times better than any quote, image or animation.
So we’re really excited about the future of our paid social campaigns using TeraLeap video testimonials.”
“I’ve always had video testimonials high up on the list as something I really wanted to achieve to enable our sales team, and our marketing org as well, to have these real stories on our website and to help with our marketing content.
But being blocked by huge budgets, COVID, being able to get out to people’s offices and the like, it was something that I didn’t think was feasible for now.
And another SaaS company we use actually reached out to me and said, “Hey, we’re recording some videos using this product called TeraLeap. I would love it if you could join and tell us about why you love our product.”
And I remember getting this package, and I flip it open, and there’s my tripod and the light and the microphone and the adapter for my device and these beautifully formatted instructions.
And in my inbox, the link to get this set off. A few days later, I had this conversation with a video producer who really understood my business and the business I was talking about. And I was able to tell the story like I would to a friend.
And then days later, I see this beautifully produced two minute video about why I love that product.
And immediately for me, I knew that’s what we needed. So we very quickly became a TeraLeap customer.
Two weeks later, I think three weeks later, we had our first three videos, we’ve now got a roadmap of many more, and have obviously been telling everyone we know about TeraLeap.”
“What sets TeraLeap apart is the customer experience.
We obviously want testimonial videos to tell the story. But these are our real customers who pay us money, who do care a lot about our product, and we really need to look after them.
They’re doing us a favor by helping us tell this story. And we want them to have a really good experience.
So it’s as important to us that we have an amazing, high-quality piece of video content that tells the story, but it’s just as important that they have a great experience too, and enjoy the process.
And the irony is it’s a favor for us, but all of our customers walk away thanking us for the opportunity to tell the story because of the experience they had with TeraLeap.”
“The way we’re using our TeraLeap videos is nicely split between sales and marketing.
On the sales side of things, we’re emailing them out to relevant prospects when we’re having conversations so they can hear it firsthand from a relevant company that they can relate to.
And on the marketing side, we’ve got a whole roadmap of users for these videos. To start with, they’re finding their way into a new website that we’re designing at the moment.
We’ve cut them up and used them on social for paid ads. So we are already using them in places where we can tell a story to prospects we don’t even know yet. They can hear it straight from a real customer.”
“We’re also starting to look for other opportunities for social proof. One objection we sometimes hear is around security and concerns about security.
So we’re looking at now setting up another video with a head of security at a company talking about why Hugo is a great, secure, private solution for their meetings.
So for us, wherever there’s a use case for social proof, either one-to-one in a sales context, or one-to-many in a marketing context, we’re turning to TeraLeap as the way to tell that story authentically.
We all know that when you’re selling a product, objections or concerns is what breaks deals, right? People always have these things on their mind that they’re trying to get through. And a great sales representative is working hard to overcome them. But it’s very hard to do that when you’re hearing it from me as the sales rep. You know, obviously, I’m going to be telling you why that objection isn’t a problem, or why that challenge isn’t the challenge.
All of a sudden, when you have a third party who you can relate to, who’s a real person in your shoes explaining why that objection may not be an objection, why the product is perfect for what you’re looking to do, we can jump miles ahead in our sales process. So we’re looking to TeraLeap and video testimonials as a way to overcome objections with real stories from real people.”
“So if you ask me the question, would I recommend TeraLeap, all you need to do is look at how many companies we’ve already recommended use TeraLeap.
The answer is absolutely yes. For an early stage startup, you can act like a really big company with video production teams and huge marketing budgets to tell a story in this high-production way for a fraction of the cost and for a fraction of the time.
So it’s an absolute no brainer to any team who’s looking to unlock sales and marketing with real customer stories.”
How Foleon easily scaled stories
“Building a community of brand advocates is the most important thing. It’s all about having our customers tell our story for us. We want them to share with us, in their own words, about the value that our product brings to them, and the results that they’re seeing.
We can show logos on our site and we can do written case studies. But none of that will be as powerful as hearing and seeing customers talk about what they’ve done with our product, and, most importantly, the results that they’ve seen.”
“We used to have an in-house videographer who shot videos with customers on location, which was great, but also very time-intensive. It took about a day to shoot the videos, and then all the editing and customer approval would take weeks.
The end result was always good. But it just required a lot of resources and time, which we don’t always have. And it’s not very scalable. Which is why we were looking for a better option.”
“Our customer base is pretty much global. We have customers all throughout Europe and all throughout America, which makes it really challenging for us to capture videos, especially if we try to shoot them on location.
Which is why we needed a solution that would allow us to [create] videos anywhere in the world remotely, without all the hassle and all the back-and-forth with customers.”
“We came into contact with TeraLeap when we recorded a testimonial video for Vitally, one of the software providers that we use at Foleon.
The process was so professional and slick, and we were so impressed by how the interview went, and how quickly they created a great video, that we really wanted to learn more and see if TeraLeap could be a partner for us.”
“I would describe TeraLeap as a full-service product that essentially does customer videos from the beginning to the end.
They manage the booking of the customer, and the timelines, and helping the customer prepare, and also facilitating the interview itself. And then they do all the video editing and feedback rounds afterwards. Besides that, they can also help with social promotion and all of that good stuff.”
“Obviously, when you’re reaching out to customers, it is a big ask, right? You’re asking them to spend an hour or more for the interview itself, but then also to provide feedback and all that stuff.
But all of our customers have been really excited about the process and how efficient it was and how easy it was and how professionally the interview went, and how good the result was.
I’ve heard nothing but good feedback from our customers about the TeraLeap team.”
“Our team has been really positive about the customer videos that we’ve created together with TeraLeap. Internally, it’s done a lot of good. It really helps our team better understand our product and its positioning, as well as how customers are using it and how we’re helping customers.
But externally, and that’s obviously the most important part, it has really helped our prospective customers get a better understanding of our product, what it does, and the kinds of results they can get when they start using our product or working with our team.”
“Working with TeraLeap has been really beneficial for us because it really helps us quickly scale the customer videos that we create, or the production of customer videos, by essentially taking it off of our hands. Once we get a customer to say yes, they take on the entire process afterwards. We have the video done in one or two weeks, and that really helps us to quickly produce a lot of customer videos.”
“Partnering with TeraLeap, which has provided us with a better way to quickly create customer videos while also doing it a lot more affordably. It has cost us less time and money, which is obviously a double win for us.
I definitely recommend TeraLeap to any company. Being able to scale customer videos and create a wide library of customer proof without having to do all the heavy lifting yourself has been hugely beneficial for us, and has played a big role in growing our company.”
How Give and Take shortened their sales cycle
“It can be really hard for prospective clients to understand what we do and how we do it. And so a testimonial is actually one of the most valuable marketing assets we have, because it lets our customers explain what we do for them in their own words.
When a lead is trying to learn about our company, just by talking to us, just by looking at the website, just by reading the literature we provide, it can take a really long time for them to sort through all of that.
But when they hear from someone who’s in their position at a similar organization, it shortens the sales cycle, it makes the trust happen faster. You can go on our website and read fifty testimonials, but it doesn’t have the same connection that a video testimonial does.
It’s really cool to be able to send a video to a prospect or potential customer, showing them someone who has a similar title, a similar position, facing similar challenges, who can share firsthand experience with my company, and share how valuable we’ve been to them.
You can see the light bulb go off in the prospect’s head, and they’re able to identify so much more easily than they would with a written testimonial.”
“I did video testimonials at my last company, and it was incredibly expensive and time intensive—many tens of thousands of dollars, often sending crews to see people. We would organize video testimonials at conferences, because then all of our customers were already there, and there was a crew of three people with a giant video camera on their shoulder interviewing people.
I’m at a startup now—we just don’t have that kind of budget, we don’t have those kinds of resources. And so I never even really considered doing videos, because it seemed like too much. Too much time, too much money, too much investment, and we couldn’t pull it off.
So we decided to start working with TeraLeap. It has been so great. We’ve gotten incredible testimonials well worth the value. And I would recommend it to anyone.”
“TeraLeap makes it really easy to schedule and organize these video testimonials. In the past, when I’ve worked with other vendors, it’s a time-intensive process involving a lot of people, a lot of scheduling, a lot of time on my part to manage it, as well as on the part of the customers.
With TeraLeap, it’s as simple as scheduling a half-hour video testimonial interview, and it takes very little of my time to oversee it. They do the interviews alone, though they’ve always welcomed me to sit in and oversee it.
It’s a much more streamlined, easy process, and it doesn’t take a lot of my customers’ time or mine.”
“I was definitely concerned about the idea of handing my most valuable customers over to a vendor I didn’t know well at the beginning.
So I chose to sit in on all of the video interviews to oversee what was happening. And they make that very easy, I felt very welcome being included in that process.
And as a result [after working with TeraLeap], I feel comfortable and confident in the way they interact with my customers. There was one time I had to leave early, and I felt completely confident leaving my customers with TeraLeap.”
“The biggest difference in having videos is we’re getting meetings faster. It’s a very effective tool for the top of the funnel, because it takes someone from considering meeting with our company to meeting with our company in a much shorter amount of time.
We already have a section of our website that has written testimonials, so I’m excited to add the video testimonials. We of course use them in social media, we’re sharing those widely, using them in our monthly newsletters. Anything we have that gets going out to prospects or customers, we want those people to see these videos. I would recommend TeraLeap to anyone in marketing who needs help at the top of the funnel.”
“The reason I would recommend TeraLeap is because they make the process incredibly smooth and easy. They’re professional, they’re fast, and in two weeks time, you’ll have a video you can start sending out with your best asset, which is a customer testimonial.
I would say if you’re considering working with TeraLeap, go ahead and do it. It’s incredibly inexpensive to buy a package of three testimonial videos.
It’s so easy, it’s not going to take much of your time. It’s not going to take much of your customers’ time. And I guarantee if you buy three testimonials, you will eventually buy more, which was the case for us.”