You Aren’t Marketing Your Business on YouTube? Your Competition IS!
If you have a blog where you want to reach more people and share your ideas, or an online business where you want more customers; (and who doesn’t want that?) you really need to be creating videos and uploading them for people to view!
Your competition is taking customers from you that have no idea you exist if they are uploading video and you are not. If they aren’t producing video for YouTube or their own sites then you need to make sure you get those customers they are missing.
Compete.com lists YouTube with 85 million unique visits in July of 2009! Just imagine what it could do for your site if you happened to create a viral video that got 100,000 views… 200,000 views…. 1 million views! A certain percentage of those people would visit your site and a percentage of those would sign up for your newsletter or buy something from you.
Now if my math is right, and you get 1 million views for a video and only 3% of those viewers visit your site that is 30 thousand visitors! If only 3% were to opt in or buy your product that’s 900 sales or opt ins! Sound good to you?
I know it’s very difficult to get a video with 1 million views, but take a look at YouTube and see what videos are that popular. Why do they become popular? What is so good about them? It’s not the production value, it’s not because they have celebrities or cost a large amount of money to create.
These videos are crazy popular because they are extremely funny, or cool, or amazing for some reason. The videos can be planned or spontaneous, but they are NOT selling something, they are NOT outwardly trying to get customers or build their mailing list. If you want a video to have a chance at going viral, you can’t be selling in the video; you must let the video sell for you!
There’s an old saying from my door-to-door sales days “Sell the sizzle not the steak”. What does this mean to you? If I want to sell plant food, do I talk about the chemical composition and the different nutrients that are in it? NO! I don’t want to sell the customer on the fertilizer, I sell them on the end result my product gives them: BIG tomatoes, and that’s the sizzle!
Give for free something of value in your video. We are a digital camera repair shop and can’t make videos about how to repair every camera, but your customers are looking for something regarding your business, so find out what it is and give it to them!
Teach them something, give them information they are looking for, entertain them. If you become an authority on your subject your customers will happily tell others about you.
You don’t need professional quality videos, but you do need to make them viewable and understandable.
- Make sure your camcorder or digital camera records good quality video, and no it doesn’t have to be HD quality for YouTube!
- Use a quality microphone. Poor audio will drive away most viewers, guaranteed.
- Use a solid backdrop, don’t show your cluttered basement or office or bedroom unless this is part of your presentation
- Write a script or at least notes regarding what you want to say
- Practice and view your results before publishing it. Ask others for opinions and feedback!
- Yes, you will hate the sound of your own voice, but that is how you sound to the rest of us so don’t worry about it.
Just go for it, things will get better as you go!
Now I’m off to try and figure out what my customers are looking for regarding camera repair for their Sony, Canon and Nikon cameras and then just give it to them.