Nobody watches your testimonial videos

It's not the camera. It's the conference room.

Nobody watches your testimonial videos. I know, because I shoot them for a living, and I can see the view counts.

It's not the camera. It's the conference room. You took your happiest customer, sat them under fluorescent lights, and told them to “just be natural.” Nobody is natural in a conference room. So you get forty minutes of a nervous person saying “uh” and “you know,” and your editor salvages twelve seconds.

Here's what actually works. Shoot them where the work happened — the job site, the kitchen you remodeled, the office where the thing got fixed. People relax when they're standing where the story took place. Ask what was going wrong before you showed up, not how great you are. The praise comes out on its own, and it sounds like a person instead of a script.

Your customers have good stories. Stop filming them like hostages.