Hey guys, I'm asking for a friend (no really lol). Is it okay if we buy testimonial videos (and get the person's consent) from fiverr to put onto our eCom store? What would the worst case scenario be?
I wouldn't do it personally, but reviews are an important part of an ecommerce business.
The trouble with the fake ones that you usually see is that they're often so obviously fake.
Not sure what the worst case could be, but I'd guess someone could sue you over purposely showing false information with the intent to deceive people and drive sales.
So what can you do?
- ask friends to buy & review
- offer a free-for-review deal to people
- reach out to bloggers, youtubers and other influencers to work out a deal (intellifluence.com might make things easy there).
And I'd go with quick and easy text reviews.
They can get indexed by Google, so that's an additional bonus.
Also, I would go with some honesty here. Just state what you are trying to hide. Like: "My friend started his shop and wanted me to test one of his products. I didn;t expect much, but was really surprised when etc etc).
You don't need just 5 star reviews, people don't believe that anyway.
As you can see, lots of opportunities to solve the lack of reviews that everyone has when they start up.
Im also going to be doing this shortly but ill be positioning this as a product demonstration video and not calling it or implying its a customer testimonial. I believe they should be just as effective without the risk.
I would just use the "XXX sent me this product to check out..." instead of "We bought this product from..." angle and then everything also looks like a testimonial vide and works just as well without implying its a real testimonial and covering your ass. This is my thought on the matter but Im not really sure what the best practices are with these currently.
@jarad12 - if it's a demo video, there's nothing wrong with that.
If the purpose of the video is clear: someone is demonstrating what it can do, I don't see any problem.
It's just when it's misleading that it becomes a problem, like pretending to be a customer when they're not.
And, "how-to" videos are very effective. Make sure to include links and resources in the description (for Youtube). Include a contact email as well, people will use that.
Everybody's doing it. I dont have any 'moral' problem with it, but it's best if you can get demo videos, which look more genuine anyway.
People have good bullshit radars and can spot those fake reviews anyhow.