Did you know that YouTube is the second-largest search engine? All types of businesses can benefit from creating and posting their own videos on YouTube. If you have a good budget for marketing, the possibilities are endless. But even a modest budget can allow you to make videos that bring traffic to your website — and new customers.
People often search on YouTube for “how to” information. “How do I ___?” Think about your business and the types of solutions you offer. What kinds of problems does your business solve for people? Write down a list of questions and answers. These are starting ideas for your company’s videos.
If you have a brick-and-mortar business, you should find plenty of material by shooting what is happening at your location. Be sure to get media releases signed.
For example, a dance studio has many opportunities to make digital videos of rehearsals, classes, recitals and performances. The studio can quickly develop a large YouTube channel that includes the name and location of the studio in the descriptions and tags, and a link to the studio website in the description. At performances, if videotaping is allowed, ask audience members to include the studio’s name or tag when they post the video.
Type keywords or questions related to your business into YouTube to see what comes up. Are your competitors in there? What are they doing? What makes your company special versus your competitors? When you are getting started, you don’t have to over-think your placement on YouTube. Just post something.
If your company services mostly your local community, you will want to include your location somewhere in the video title, description, and/or tags.
The description on a YouTube video can be long, so be sure to describe the event and include your company’s location, a full “http://” link to your company’s website, where the video was shot, the date, and any other relevant material.
Videos appear in search engines, and they often get prime placement near the top of the first page. This is why you should flesh out your YouTube title, description, and tags. When you fill in your tags, include locations that your people might type in. If you need to enter a keyphrase (more than one word), put it in double quotes, such as: “Irvine, CA”.
Think “short.” When you start out, YouTube may set a limit of 10 minutes on your videos. People have a short attention span anyway. Think 1, 2 or maybe 4 minutes in length.
You may benefit more from a batch of shorter videos than one long, grand, slick video. The more videos you have on YouTube, the more chances that someone will find a video from your company. Also, people don’t want to watch commercials, so if your video is too polished or looks too much like an ad, they may lose interest and leave.
If you have the budget, hire a video production company. They can shoot better quality video and audio, make a title sequence, edit the video, add annotations, and create effects. If you need background music, a professional will have access to thousands of tracks they can use without breaking copyright laws.
Take advantage of the second-largest search engine and keep posting your original videos to YouTube.
Note from the Editor: At the end of your video, be sure to add a call-to-action. As business owners, you do not want to just entertain with your videos – you want to move prospects to the next step. So, at the end of the video you want to invite them to a squeeze page or landing page where you offer them a special report or something else of value in return for their names and emails. This way, you can build a relationship by providing them with additional value on a regular basis until they are ready to invest in your products or services.
You want to automate this marketing and ecommerce process – so once you create the videos and create your lead generation process – you are making more sales with less effort. To see how you should be automating your business – schedule a “live” via webcast demo with us today.
