How do you get customer video testimonials at live events?
Live events are gold mines for customer testimonial videos.
Whether it’s a conference, trade show, meet-up, or private event, the stars align: your customers are all in one place, positive emotions are running high, and you can walk away with hours of incredible testimonial footage—and potential case studies—if you approach this with a well-thought-out, proactive plan.
In this step-by-step guide (with schedules and templates/ideas throughout), you’ll get insight into the strategy, coordination, day-of shooting, and post-production processes you need to know to make the most of these golden opportunities for customer proof.
These are the five steps to getting testimonials at live events:
- Set Your Content Strategy
- Plan the Logistics
- Coordinate With Customers
- Capture the Story
- Manage Post-Production
The tips here will generally apply whether this is your event—or someone else’s.
1. Set Your Content Strategy
Getting a great ROI out of customer interviews at events starts with a proactive plan of attack, which includes the style of your shoot, your goals, and the invitees.
Get clear on the style you’re after.
Are you looking for the raw authenticity and serendipity of an ‘off the floor’ interview shot on an iPhone?
Or the depth, polish, and power of a professional shoot?
Each comes with benefits and limitations you need to consider:
| Live-Off-The-Floor (e.g. iPhone) | Professional Video Shoot (e.g. Separate room w/camera crew) |
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The “walk around with an iPhone” approach is easier to execute in terms of cost and buy-in. You can capture a ton of small soundbites based on whatever is top of mind for attendees. But if the goal is to create deep, strategic content with details, success metrics, and a storyline—or to translate that content into more assets (e.g. written case studies)—you’re setting yourself up to fail.
Note that if the event is not your event, you’ll need to make sure you have permission to be doing this sort of thing off of the floor.
Professional shoots are more expensive and complex, but the trade-off is that you’ll walk away with stronger depth, quality, and storytelling. You won’t have time to capture 100 quick-hit soundbites, but you can leave with enough to create an entire library of really great case studies and a ton of content to repurpose.
Yes, you CAN do both!
There’s nothing saying it has to be all one or the other: you could plan a professional VIP experience and *also* have team members running the floor for footage, and the goals can be separate.
For example…
- ‘Off-the-floor’ footage could capture soundbites to promote future events and create a ‘live feed’ for social, while
- The VIP event could focus on deeper testimonials and customer success story videos
It’s always better to have more footage than less—though the goal should be more *intentional* and *planned* footage, not just heaps and heaps of video for some poor editor to make sense of later.
Note that what’s realistic depends on the timeline: coordinating a more professional shoot with invited guests can be a 2-3 month process. If you don’t have that kind of time, it may be best to go the simpler route for this event and plan differently for the next one.
Map out your goals for the footage.
You don’t want to review footage from a past event and think, “S@#!, if only we’d asked _________, we could’ve turned it into __________” or find a direction for editing after videos have been captured and you’re sitting on a mountain of unstructured footage.
That editing will rarely get done. You’ll constantly put it off until it’s lost to time.
Without a solid game plan, you’ll miss opportunities to support your broader marketing, sales, and branding strategies and even risk the footage never seeing the light of day.
1. Define your primary objective.
Start with the overarching goal that *must* be accomplished.
- Scope: Are you trying to capture full video case studies, brief testimonial soundbites, or footage with the potential for both?
- Story Focus: Is there a specific product, service, or part of your offer you want to highlight with stories?
- Metrics: Are there certain key numbers your leads would find most compelling?
- Target Clientele: Is there a particular segment of your client base that you want to spotlight? (e.g. size, industry, spend, etc.)
- Sales/Marketing: Are you trying to overcome a specific marketing objection, or support specific positioning/messaging?
2. Consider upcoming campaigns/initiatives.
The right quotes from the customer can be used to support several different types of content or campaigns—but only if you capture them. Review your planned marketing initiatives and content calendar for the year and consider where you could use some support.
For example…
- Competitor marketing: Soundbites about switching from a competitor could fuel a competitive ad or content campaign
- Upselling: Feedback on a higher tier of your product/service could be used in an upselling campaign
- Referrals: Recommendation quotes could be used to support a new referral program being launched
- Adoption/awareness: Comments on a specific feature could be used in adoption or awareness campaigns
- Event promo: Quotes about the event could be used to promote next year’s event
You could also ask broader questions surrounding the business challenges they’re facing or what trends they’re seeing happen in your industry that they’re using your product to solve for, as these types of questions can support demand gen campaigns.
While you can’t stuff in 20 questions to cover it all, you may identify two or three key initiatives that could be easily supported with the right footage.
3. Be clear about the channels you’ll deploy on.
Based on your goals and the initiatives you plan to support, where do you want to be able to use the video (e.g. on social, in cold outreach, onsite, etc.)?
This will help determine the scope, including the lengths of the videos and the ways they’re cut.
Build your ideal shortlist of invitees.
With your goals fleshed out, it’s time to identify the specific customers you’ll invite to take part.
Your goal is to identify customers who are both attending (or likely to attend if incentivized) and meet the criteria for the goals you’ve set out in your strategy.
A ‘take all comers’ approach works fine for fast, live, high-level feedback like iPhone interviews. But if you’re going the professional shoot route and you’re hoping customers spontaneously line up to be interviewed, you’re taking a big, unnecessary risk. Without prep, the details won’t be there and you’ll be lucky to fill available slots.
Plan to maximize participation.
- Determine how many 30-45 minute ‘slots’ are available for interviews based on the length of the event, allowing for ‘reset’ time in between video shoots,
- Scour your customer base/attendees list for clients who fit the ideal profile to be interviewed based on your goals (as a note: your customer success team or account executives are likely the most ideal to collaborate on this with),
- Create a shortlist of those customers and their internal points of contact, and
- Plan to invite more than enough to fill the slots (because your win rate won’t be 100%)
That’s not to say you can’t leave some slots open to serendipity. You just don’t want to rely on having to convince people to get in front of a camera during a busy, exciting event where there are countless other distractions.
Do we really need to ask for approval ahead of time?
If you plan to go into any level of depth or invest in a production crew, then yes, absolutely, you need to ask for approval ahead of time.
You don’t want to shoot a bunch of footage only to find out you can’t use any of it. The person interviewed may not be the one with veto power, so while it’s more taxing and inconvenient to do things ‘by the book,’ you’ll be setting yourself up to avoid sunk costs.
Sometimes, these approvals are easy to get. If your customers are speaking at your event or winning an award, you can combine asking for release to use their session footage alongside an agreement to take part in an invite-only ‘studio session.’
2. Plan the Logistics
Now we’re into the nitty gritty: video testimonial vendors, shooting locations, and scheduling, oh my!
If you’re new to video, there are essentially three parts to the process you need to plan for:
- Pre-production (the planning and setup)
- Production (the filming itself), and
- Post-production (the editing)
Here’s how to tackle it, depending on the video approach you’re taking.
For informal, ‘live-off-the-floor’ shoots:
Pre-production
Make sure you have permission from 0rganizers.
If this is YOUR event, this is a non-issue. If it’s not and you plan to invite random people off the floor to be on camera, it can become a BIG issue very quickly, so make sure event organizers know what you’re planning.
Define your video testimonial aesthetic.
Decide in advance how you want to frame participants: Close up? Mid-shot? Neutral backgrounds vs. crowd shots? Will you have the interviewer in the frame, or off-camera?
A few basic rules will keep footage more consistent and ensure you’re happy with the end product. Some variation can be fine and make the videos more interesting to look at—but not if it comes at the expense of quality.
Assign filming and post-production roles.
If you plan to have multiple team members scouring the floor for footage, make sure they’re aligned on the approach to asking/capturing and (potentially) scheduling for specific times so it isn’t left open-ended.
Sort out your equipment.
An iPhone is fine, but you’ll quickly face limitations on battery life (so make sure to have a charging station) and storage (especially if you’re shooting video testimonials in 4K), so you’ll want to have portable hard drives at the ready. You should also invest in a lapel mic to try and minimize unwanted background noise.
If you want to go for the best possible footage, a stabilizer or gimbal is helpful to avoid shaky footage. You might also consider having a backup device ready in case the worst should happen.
Production
Create your ‘ask’ scripts and interview question sets.
Having a go-to approach for asking people to take part can help speed up the process and set expectations. Having a shared question list based on your strategy and desired footage will ensure everyone filming captures the right footage in the same way.
Set up digital or print release forms.
Whether it’s an app or a simple printed version, it’s not a bad idea to have an option at the ready so you aren’t trying to hunt down participants later. If you’d rather not put them on the spot, you’ll need a means of capturing every participant’s name, title, role, company, and email so you can follow up after the event.
Do a test run.
You don’t want to be blocking and tackling people’s nerves and tech issues on the day of the event.
Post-production
Source a post-production resource.
Whether it’s an in-house editor or an outsourced team, securing this resource and looping them in early (before the footage is captured) is critical.
Any video editor will make critical decisions around cuts and content, so they need clarity into your strategy, desired aesthetic, and the final formats you’re looking for. They may also have technical requirements that they need you to meet (camera, lighting, audio requirements, etc.), so don’t leave this until after the footage is already shot.
For professional shoots:
Pre-production
We’ll dig into some of the more nuanced customer coordination tasks involved in professional video shoots later in this guide, but for now, we’ll focus on the video capture process.
Source a video production team.
If you don’t have an in-house video team, it’s time to source and vet companies who do video testimonials at events who can help (like us!)
You have a handful of key roles to fill: the interviewer/producer (sometimes, but not always the same person), the camera operator(s), and the final editor (and perhaps motion graphics artist.)
Sourcing all of these roles from the same company has distinct advantages in terms of efficiency and strategy as their team will be able to work tightly with you across the entire engagement.
- Evaluate quality and experience—not just cost.
It’s important to check out the reels and examples of any potential vendor, to see what you like but don’t stop there. A great partner should have provable experience in planning, capturing, and editing customer interviews, and should be able to guide you through considerations like equipment, aesthetics, and storytelling. You want a proactive video production partner who is involved before the day of the event because you need someone invested in getting the story right. - Be choosy about producers and interviewers.
A great producer not only comes with the ability to make interviewees comfortable and run a professional interview, they’ll also have a strong sense of what footage will work in post. Better still, having a neutral third party running the interview can be a catalyst for getting more honest, compelling feedback.
Share your strategy.
Walk the video team through what you plan to create, including aesthetic, formats, and how you plan to deploy. They should lead the discussion on your video requirements, from the look and feel of the shots (e.g. one vs. two cameras) to the transitions, animations, lower thirds, and b-roll.
On that last point, it’s critical the team knows what they’re trying to capture—if anything—for b-roll at the live event, because they’ll need to allocate time to do so (which can mean slightly fewer slots available for interviews!)
Everyone needs to be clear on the scope and goals.
Set the schedule.
Discuss with the video team how many sessions you’re aiming for and how long they will need to set up and tear down.
Create a detailed schedule, factoring in the duration of each interview, setup times, breaks, and any potential delays. This helps manage the day efficiently and ensures no overruns.
Production
Secure the location for the video shoot.
Professional video testimonial shoots require quiet, comfortable, controlled spaces far enough away from the bustle of the event to avoid quality issues, but close enough to be easily accessible by attendees. Appearance, background noise, lighting, and even temperature are all factors to consider.
Some of your options might include:
- A meeting space on another floor of the conference venue
- An adjacent hotel or meeting space (e.g. an event tent, a local office, etc.) – especially if this is not *your* event.
- A green room or VIP area
- A mobile studio or production van
- A local studio
If your attendees are going to need to leave the primary event area, you’ll need to carefully plan transport, signage, and day-of support to ensure they find the location without issue.
Have a contingency plan at the ready.
Brief the production and internal teams on a contingency plan in case of technical failures or other disruptions.
It also makes sense to have a list of contacts for quick resolution of any issues, like technical support or venue management, and share these across all team members.
Plan your day-of amenities and perks.
A few small considerations can make the video capture experience welcoming and memorable for your invitees.
- Refreshments: Consider having snacks and hot/cold beverages on hand.
- Grooming: Whether it’s a grooming kit, a hairdresser/makeup artist, or just a mirror, help people look their best.
- Wardrobe: Irons, backup clothing, stain remover—it might sound like overkill, but it’s worth considering.
- Tech: Charging stations and Wi-Fi access can go a long way as creature comforts.
- Gift bags/swag: if you plan to thank folks with something tangible, have it at the ready.
Develop a base question set.
You’re at the stage where you can develop core questions for the production team to use.
Some guidelines:
- The questions you ask should support the goals you have for the content.
- Plan a maximum of 10 essential questions to focus on, allowing time for follow-up.
- You want the questions to be palatable for legal/PR teams who may review them, so don’t put the focus entirely on yourself.
You will continue to refine and customize your question sets as clients confirm participation, but this is a great place to start.
Having this established empowers you to have more focused conversations with your video production team about the goals for the content after the event as well so that they can storyboard and plan for the cuts they’ll produce.
Assign a ‘runner’ for the day-of event.
Someone on your team needs to be responsible for herding cats during the live event. Determine who is going to be responsible for finding, directing, and guiding participants, acting like a friendly ambassador and hype person for everyone taking part.
Post-production
Plan a delivery schedule that works.
You’re about to be awash in a bulk of content that needs editing and approval, which means you need a realistic production schedule so that you can plan follow-ups with your clients.
Set timelines for when cuts of video should be delivered, and prioritize the cuts you want first based on the content strategy or editorial calendar you are following. Be sure to account for how long it will take the video team to produce, the marketing team to provide feedback, and the time needed to route to the client for their final approval.
You don’t want to set unreasonable expectations internally around production timelines—or keep clients waiting to see what’s become of the time they invested.
3. Coordinate With Customers
With the foundational elements in place, your focus now turns to minimizing the chaos that comes with managing invites, scheduling, approvals, and coordination.
For this section, we’ll assume you’re planning a professional shoot for your video testimonials at the event, as this level of coordination isn’t as critical for a live-off-the-floor approach.
Buckle up!
Create an invitation email sequence.
A templated testimonial invite sequence ensures everyone making invitations is setting consistent expectations and providing the same level of detail about what’s coming. It also helps you operationalize invitations at scale while leaving room for personalization in every message.
When writing your emails, you don’t want to drown invitees in detail or scare them off by going for the jugular all at once.
We recommend a staged approach that looks something like this:
| Goal | Notes | |
| Invitation | Make a personal invite, sell the benefits, and gauge interest. | Consider positioning this as an exclusive, invite-only event. Be sure to share that the goal is to celebrate their work and impact. Build comfort by sharing a high-level summary of what’s involved. End the email asking if they’re open to exploring the opportunity. |
| Follow-up #1 | Answer questions and provide specifics that equip them to get approval. | Respond to any concerns or questions raised. Provide specifics on what will be created and how it will be used. Ensure they know they’ll have a chance to review and share the content. Provide a release form and a deadline to confirm interest. |
| Follow-up #2 | Schedule their slot and set expectations. | Send a scheduling link so they can choose a time that works best for them. Share details about the shoot location and how you’ll support them on the day of the event. |
| Follow-up #3 | Prime them to come with the context you need to tell a really great story. | As the date approaches, send a base question set as well as some desired KPIs/story details you’d love for them to have ready for the interview. |
This staged approach might feel like overcommunicating, but in reality, it helps make your invitation and the details digestible.
Set up a scheduling link and timed reminders.
Your customers have a lot on the go. Set up an automatic scheduling link tied to a shared calendar, and then map out timed reminders to keep their commitment top-of-mind. The more proactive you are, the more likely you will catch potential no-shows, cancellations, and issues before the big day.
| Timing | Goal | Notes |
| On Confirmation | Celebrate their participation in a video testimonial/case study and set the stage. | Keep it light and exciting, with the promise of more details as the event approaches. Ensure they’ve added it to their calendar. |
| 1 Month Before Event | Build excitement, keep the process moving, and weed out potential no-shows. | Let them know you’re excited to see them at the event and steer them to complete any outstanding items (e.g. approvals). This is a good moment to share their ‘cheat sheet’ so they can come prepared (more on this below). |
| 1 Week Before Event | Catch any last-minute issues. | Remind them of their slot, celebrate the upcoming event, and remind them again of any story details you’d like them to come ready with (e.g. link their cheat sheet) |
| 1 Day Before Video Shoot | Provide detailed instructions they can act on. | Send a detailed breakdown of where to be and when, potentially with a map to help.
If you have a ‘runner’ for the event, introduce them as a resource: share your cell phone with the participant and invite them to do the same. |
| 1 Hour Before Video Shoot | Usher them in and ease any jitters. | Share the map, remind them they’ve got this, and introduce the ‘runner’ again in case they need a hand. |
Set up tracking docs.
A central source of truth is everything when tracking asks, responses, legal releases, sessions, and story details across potentially dozens of invitees. The more people on your team helping operationalize the effort, the more important it becomes to keep everyone rowing in the same direction.
Create a “Pre-Event” spreadsheet to help you track, at a minimum:
- Invitee details: full name, email, phone number, company, role*
- Asker: especially if multiple team members are involved
- Invite status: e.g. invite sent, follow-up sent, approved, declined
- Release status: e.g. approved, declined, in revisions, etc.
- Client context: e.g. account details, products/services used, KPIs, desired metrics, etc.
*Heads up! Your video production team is going to need total accuracy in the invitee details to avoid embarrassment and revisions later on (e.g. showing the wrong title or misspelling a customer’s name), so don’t skimp here.
Customize question sets (as needed).
While your base question set is a great start, you’ll get more out of every customer interview if you spend time customizing the question sets around the experience and outcomes of every individual client.
Every customer story has the potential to support a specific strategic goal: identify and categorize which specific goals you’ll be looking to fill with each confirmed interviewee ahead of time, and work with those who have the most context into the account ahead of time to craft questions to capture those details.
Build customer ‘cheat sheets.’
For every interview you plan to run, create a new document that consolidates:
- Invitee details (name, role, company, and contact details)
- A full question set for their interview, including customizations
- A shortlist of key metrics or impact statements to capture in the interview (e.g. “30% lift in…”)
These docs serve three purposes:
1. Facilitate collaboration.
You’ll use them to collaborate with internal teams and confirm all details are correct and all questions are approved.
2. Guide day-of production.
You’ll share these docs with your production team, including the interviewer, so they have context at the ready and know exactly what to ask in order to run a personal, focused interview that hits all of the right beats for your strategy.
3. Secure approvals (as needed).
If a customer’s PR or legal team wants to review potential questions for the video testimonial, or the customer is nervous and wants a chance to prepare, you’ll have a resource at the ready. Just make sure the details in the doc are safe to be shared with the client by scrubbing out previous comments or internal notes and anything that might embarrass your team.
We like to use Google Docs for this because you can easily control permissions, collaborate, and share vs. sending hard copies over email where version control can rear its ugly head.
4. Capture the Story
With everything arranged, managing the day-of video capture is all about keeping things clear, calm, and comfortable.
Get your signage up.
Make sure it’s easy for anyone who is meant to find the video shooting location to do so by using large, clear signage on walls, fold-out signs, etc.
As a rule of thumb, take as much signage as you *think* you need and double it.
Have your runner ready.
Your ‘runner’ should have a complete schedule for the day(s) as well as all of the contact details (especially the phone number!) for each person participating.
As the day unfolds, someone in this role should…
- Reach out 15-20 minutes prior to the person’s session to confirm their involvement
- Escort the person to the room and make introductions. This level of care is critical for creating comfort in your customers.
- Run for anything the video production team might need: snacks, gear, etc.
- Manage no-shows and work to fill empty slots (if desired.)
On that last point: you can arm the runner for success by providing them with material around the video testimonial shoots (the goal, the benefits for the customer taking part, the base questions, etc.) so they can present it in a simple way when asking another attendee to participate.
Get the room set up.
Your production crew will be more than capable of setting up the areas where people will be on camera.
That said, you may want to take some steps to make the area more inviting and functional throughout the shoot:
- Adjust the room temperature to a comfortable level.
- Arrange comfortable seating for interviewees and have amenities set out and ready to be used (snacks, charge bars, etc.)
- Have a clock clearly visible to production crews so they can keep track of time.
- If you’re capturing consent day-of, have release forms ready for interviewees to sign.
- If you’ve got a makeup artist/hairdresser, ensure they’ve got a space to operate.
Set expectations for follow-up.
Celebrate with customers when their interviews conclude by providing some small token of thanks (totally up to you, but a nice gesture!) and remind them of the next steps.
Now is a good time to plant the seed and see if they can secure any b-roll their company may have to support the video. If you can arm them with a simple way to ask, for example a short script in an email sent post-event, it can help grease the wheels.
Make sure everyone leaves with a rough idea of when you’re aiming to have cuts ready for them to review and when you hope to set the video content live.
5. Manage Post-Production
You’re on the one-yard line—don’t drop the ball now!
Post-production is the final and crucial phase where your captured video content is transformed into polished, compelling videos. This stage involves editing, reviewing, getting approvals, and ultimately, deploying the content effectively.
Do this well, and you’ll make sure your content is completed on time, sees the light of day publicly, and has maximal impact.
Batch your edits
Logistically, trying to plow through a heap of video all at once will burn everyone out and compound issues. Instead, plan to complete the first 1-2 videos in isolation to make sure you’ve nailed the aesthetic and storytelling before pushing into batches of 3-5+.
Staggering this process also gives your team time to chase up approvals and navigate edits/revisions without drowning in the coordination.
Review and edit
Don’t let your video editing team work in a vacuum. As the first few video cuts are shared, provide close and careful feedback. Refer back to the goals you originally set for the aesthetic and storytelling, and be mindful of the context you established for each interviewee’s story during the preplanning process.
- Establish manageable feedback loops. Once you’ve approved the core content, get out of the way and let the editors work.
- Limit the number of voices weighing in: too many cooks in the kitchen will kill momentum.
- If multiple stakeholders are reviewing, nominate one person to collate, align, and share their feedback with the editing team.
Ask for customer b-roll (if necessary)
If you haven’t yet, be sure to ask the customer for any b-roll that may support the final product and make it more interesting to watch than just two minutes of a talking head.
Companies often have footage/self-produced stock they can provide when asked, but your point of contact may need a little time to contact their media team.
Secure client approval
Share cuts and make it easy to collaborate.
Once the internal team is satisfied and the video is looking polished, share the draft videos with the customers for their review and approval.
When you share the videos, it’s not a bad idea to tell customers that you’re just looking for a quick sign-off/a ‘thumbs-up’ instead of leaving things open-ended and inviting irrelevant criticism about things like the aesthetic, background music, etc. Let them know you want to make sure they’re happy with the message and how they’re presented.
We recommend using a tool like Frame.io to share video content. It allows feedback to be applied directly to the video, making it easier for clients (and their legal departments, if necessary) to weigh in.
Address concerns and secure final sign-off.
If a customer tables a concern, talk through it and try to get to the source of the feedback:
- Is it their concern—or someone else’s internally?
- What is it about the footage or content that’s throwing them off?
- What would need to change for them to be excited about sharing this internally and with their audience?
- What alternatives can you present? Are there other quotes or soundbites you could replace contentious footage with?
You cannot solve a problem you don’t understand, so work *with* your customer instead of getting defensive.
And while you can’t go back and reshoot the interview, you may be able to ‘patch over’ sections with b-roll, update metrics using imagery, or come up with other creative solutions that allow you to publish the content at the end of the day.
Once you’ve made the changes, get that final confirmation so you can get that story live!
Celebrate and share!
You’ve worked SO hard for this moment, and it’s all about to pay off.
Thank (and loop in) the customer.
Send a quick email thanking your customer for all of their help and letting them know when their story will go live, and where. Ideally, you want them to share, respond, like, and amplify the content so you get the benefit of their network behind it.
If you’ve planned to give them a gift for participating, make sure they’ve received it at this point.
Send the final assets.
Give your customer all of the collateral you plan to share so that they can celebrate internally and on their own channels, too!
You can also consider sharing some templated posts they can share and tweak, just to make sharing as easy as possible.
Deploy and share: over and over again!
One-and-done is not the way. We’ve got over 100 ways you can use case studies and testimonials, so there are bound to be some ideas in there for you!
A few to whet your appetite:
- Create a ‘highlight reel’ of several different quotes on a topic/pain point/outcome
- Use videos in ads on social in places like LinkedIn, targeting similar titles and roles to the person featured
- Embed snippets of video in place of blockquotes alongside your written stories
Above all, don’t let all of this hard work and coordination go to waste.
You’ve got this!
As Linda Leung, a content marketing leader who has taken on the challenge of customer video testimonials at events puts it:
“The opportunity to interview customers at an event is a privilege that deserves all the planning that you can give it. You’ll get a trove of quotes to place in many places, including your website, blogs, articles, guides, and so much more. So it’s worth investing the time to get this process right.”