Video Marketing is YouTube Marketing

Lately I have found myself speaking at groups on the topic of online video marketing or YouTube marketing.

Now YouTube marketing is not the only venue where a savvy business person can utilize video marketing shorts but it is the big dog and here are a few reasons why.

YouTube is the #3 ranked website today. Google, the #1 website on the internet bought YouTube in 2006. A very good move on their part. You know that Google is a Search Engine, a website where people go to search for anything and everything. But what you may not realize is that YouTube is a search engine too.

YouTube Marketing is effective because YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine online.

And because they own it, Google places a lot of emphasis on what’s posted at YT.

Here are some of the statistics for those of you who like to see the numbers.

1. YouTube gets in excess of 300,000,000 visitors a month
2. Those 300 million visitors watch over 2 billion videos
3. There are over 26 billion videos in the archives at YouTube

What business owners need to know about video marketing online is that people go to YT to look for answers to their questions and solutions to their problems. They troll the archives for reviews of products, services, brands and people they are looking to do business with.

Your current customers and potential customers are using the YouTube search engine to make buying decisions. And I hold that online video marketing is the most powerful way to educate, inform and build community with your clients because of…the celebrity factor.

What is the Celebrity Factor in YouTube Marketing?

Think back to the days when we only had television at home as a visual medium. I can actually remember having to get up to turn the dial from channels 2-13. (Oh yes I can!)

When we let someone into our home, the space we share with our family and friends, we are giving them a different level of trust than we afford the rest of the world. Television expanded the circle of people we granted access to our time and our lives. We began to watch people on television and think of them as someone we knew. The longer we got to know them and actually liked them and what they had to say, the more we trusted them as an authority. Think Walter Kronkite, Phil Donahue and Oprah.

That’s the celebrity factor. These people became famous because we made time to watch them every day on television. We let them into our homes and we built a relationship with them, feeling like we knew them though we’d never actually spoken. And why did we make time for them daily? Because they gave us advice, wisdom and information that we valued. YouTube marketing with online video works in the same way.

Anyone can gain the celebrity factor through video marketing online and effectively harnessing the power of the internet and those 300 million monthly viewers.

Gaining Celebrity requires adhering to some important dos and don’ts. (Is that actually how you spell dos and don’ts?)

Here is a list of the six top considerations you should do and should not do when creating your YouTube marketing videos:

1. Do – Offer your expertise that will solve your customer’s problem or answer their question. Video marketing is for building a relationship with your customers and showing them you care about their situation. It’s about them, not you.
2. Don’t – Make a sales pitch. An online video is not the place to make a sales pitch. There is no faster way to cause a viewer to hit the back button than making a video that is nothing but a sales proposition.
3. Do – Make your video no more than 3-4 minutes in length including any introductory or ending credits. Even two 2 minute videos will likely be more successful than one 4 minute video.
4. Don’t – Worry about the production values too much. We are used to the production values of YouTube videos being less than TV. It’s not a turn off to the person looking for a solution to watch a well crafted homemade video.
5. Do – Include a call to action at the end of the video. This is not breaking the no sales pitch rule. It’s simply letting the viewer know how and where to find you because they need more of your expert information. Let the viewer know you have a website, email address or phone number. Whichever way you prefer to be contacted, you need to let the viewer know you are available to help them beyond the video.
6. Don’t – Skimp on audio. While video production quality can be lower than TV, video marketing online does you no good if the viewer can’t hear you.  A simple lavalier microphone can be purchased for less than $30 and will make a world of difference to the perceived quality of the video overall.

Remember, the internet is alive and well 24/7/365. When you add online video marketing to your sales arsenal, it’s working for all the time. Even while you sleep.

So my call to action for you–go out, get started and make a YouTube marketing video, the results will be amazing.