Eight Ways to Effectively Use YouTube to Market Your Business
By Michael Miller
Large businesses have long embraced video marketing in the form of traditional television advertising. But television ads were outside the purview of smaller businesses unless they could afford a late night spot on a local channel. Thanks to YouTube, businesses both large and small can effectively market themselves via online videos.
Here are the ways YouTube can help your business, taken from the new book, YouTube for Business: Online Video Marketing for Any Business by Michael Miller, author of the best-selling book, YouTube 4 You (Que Publishing):
1. YouTube for Brand Awareness: Instead of focusing on individual products or services, use a video to push your company’s brand, just the way you would with a traditional television ad. According to a Millward Brown study, online videos are better at imparting brand awareness than are traditional television ads with 82% brand awareness and 77% product recall vs. just 54% brand awareness and 18% product recall for similar television ads. Experts agree this is because online viewers are more engaged than television viewers.
2. YouTube for Product Advertising: If you can use YouTube to push an overall brand, you can use it to push individual products, too. This requires a direct approach while keeping the video informative, educational, or entertaining. Include lots of close-up product shots and link back to your own web site where more product information is available.
3. YouTube for Retail Promotion: You can use YouTube to promote a company’s retail stores. They can be general in nature or more specifically targeted to shorter-term promotions. Consider recording a short store tour or highlight individual departments or services within the store, rather than resorting to claims of 20% off and “this weekend only” specials. You’ll have a better chance of grabbing eyeballs.
4. YouTube for Direct Sales: YouTube is a terrific channel for generating direct sales for products and services. All you have to do is show the product in action or provide a clip of the service in question, and then ask for the sale by directing the viewer to your web site. One of the best ways to showcase a product is in an instructional video – the online equivalent of an old-school infomercial. The key to converting eyeballs to dollars is to generously highlight your company’s web site address or 800-number within the body of the video. Put the contact information at the front of the video, at the end of the video and overlaid at the bottom of the screen during the body of the clip.
5. YouTube for Product Support: Consider some of the most common customer problems and questions, and produce one or more videos addressing those issues. If you can help your customers help themselves, you provide them with a useful service and reduce your company’s support costs – all with free YouTube videos.
6. YouTube for Product Training: You have a new product to introduce and a sales force to train. In the old days you’d fly salespeople from around the country to a central office and put on a day’s worth of hands-on training. Doing so is both time-consuming and expensive. Instead, consider using YouTube for your product training. Create a series of short training videos, upload them to YouTube and provide access to all of your company’s salespeople. This way you are creating an archive of product information that anyone can access at any time.
7. YouTube for Employee Communications: Instead of holding a big company meeting, have the big boss record his or her yearly state of the company address and post it on a private channel on YouTube. Employees can watch from the comfort of their own desks, while they’re on the road, or even at home. Done right, YouTube gets employee information out there in near-real-time, with all the benefits of face-to-face communication. Much better than sending impersonal memos via email.
8. YouTube for Recruiting: If you have a company welcome video, post it on YouTube and make it public. Think of this as an exercise to attract new talent to your company. You can link to the video from all your recruiting materials, even from any traditional ads you place. Produce separate videos for individual departments, as well as to illustrate company values, employee benefits, and facilities. HBM
You Tube for Business: Online Video Marketing for Any Business is available via book retailers nationwide, and www.informit.com. Author Michael Miller is a popular writer and commentator on technology and digital lifestyle. He’s authored more than 75 books, which have collectively sold more than 1 million copies and have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
