Compact Keywords, my SEO course, unexpectedly had its best day of sales last Wednesday and it wasn’t from Black Friday, it wasn’t from an affiliate promotion, it wasn’t from a holiday, and it wasn’t from a viral video.
It was from a testimonial video I almost didn’t post, which way underperformed relative to my averages:
- 20,000 views on Instagram
- 4,000 views on TikTok
- 2,000 views on LinkedIn
- 4,000 views on YouTube
- 4,000 views on Facebook
This is significant because anybody building a brand can and SHOULD do what I’m about to share – your content does not have to go viral to make you a lot more money.
The testimonial video that spiked sales:
Do this: ask satisfied customers for a VIDEO testimonial
Whenever I get a positive email or DM about Compact Keywords, I ask for the lowest-effort video testimonial possible.
You can steal my language above to do this yourself.
Edit the video testimonials
There are three ways to post your video testimonials:
- Raw and unedited, aside from captions (always use captions (Descript will add these for you for free)).
- I recommend using these types of testimonials on your landing pages as they’re the most authentic.
- With gaps removed between words to be more engaging (Descript does this too – I share how I use Descript to edit mobile videos here).
- Fully edited.
- Hook and outro.
- My face is the brand, so I started the video with my face, introducing the testimonial.
- Then I gave an outro summarizing the testimonial, giving the Compact Keywords URL, and showing the LinkedIn profile of the person who gave the testimonial – to show he is real.
- Ruthlessly remove anything from the video that could cause viewers to swipe away. The word “and” signals a thought change to viewers, causing many to swipe away – for this reason, I often cut the word “and” from my social media videos.
- The jump cuts, while making a testimonial video more engaging, could make some potential customers think something is being hidden. But for platforms like Instagram Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, etc., the tradeoff in engagement is usually worth it.
- Hook and outro.
Use type 1 on landing pages and occasionally in social media when targeting keywords like “[brand] review,” “does [brand] work,” “[brand] honest review,” “[brand] scam,” “is [brand] legit,” etc.
Avoid type 2.
Use type 3 mainly on social media. You can target all the keywords you can from type 1, but because you’re giving an intro, you can also target “[brand] complaints,” “[brand] pros and cons,” etc.
Targeting keywords
As an example, here is the description for the testimonial video on YouTube Shorts:
The keyword is at the beginning. Then the rest of the description is the video transcript. That’s a super easy way to do descriptions THAT RANK IN SEARCH ENGINES AND GET CITED BY AI.
So aside from the immediate impact of your audience seeing the testimonial videos, people and LLMs doing due diligence on your brand come across these positive videos for months or years because they are searching the keywords you targeted.
Here’s my guide for how to post short-form video for maximum reach.
I almost didn’t post this
Many of my greatest wins and lessons have come from activities I completely underestimated.
I legitimately didn’t expect the testimonial to convert as well as it has (for days after I posted it, as well), and despite me making content for nearly 4 years now, I still hate putting up content directly selling.
You’re afraid you’ll lose followers or it will be cringe or just “the content’s not good enough.”
The lessons are:
- When you get into the habit of taking relentless action, your opportunity for luck and lessons broadens massively.
- Constantly share your wins!
Review videos
I want to state it plainly:
Review/testimonial videos will underperform as far as views go, but they WILL overperform in terms of content that directly makes you money.
Don’t be shy to share them!
Use them strategically
Reuse them and/or save them for special promotions when a little goes a long way.
For example – post one a day starting a week before Black Friday / Cyber Monday.
People are primed to buy during this time so these review/testimonial videos will work EVEN BETTER than normal.
Ask everybody for easy testimonial videos
- Ask everybody.
- Be strategic about when to use edited vs raw.
- Post relentlessly.
- Post a lot during promotions.
Remember: Your highest-converting media asset could be the testimonial you almost didn’t ask for that you almost didn’t post.
Compact Keywords
Grant Jenkins said it himself in the testimonial video that this article is written about:
Compact Keywords really is that good.
Just like this article, Compact Keywords is about how to do marketing that makes MONEY.
Specifically – Compact Keywords is on doing SEO that targets people looking to become paying customers, users, warm leads.
These people are searching for a solution, product, or service. They are in heat. They don’t have a brand in mind and need to find one. I show you how to identify the searches these people are doing and target these searches with conversion-based SEO landing pages.
I also show you how to structure your site for these pages, build backlinks, do an SEO technical audit, examples in every niche, page templates, Google Docs, Google Sheets, step-by-step instructions, and a lot more.
Here’s another video testimonial:
Get Compact Keywords at https://compactkeywords.com/
