Nothing is working like YouTube to get consumers and businesses to take action. Google Local Business Center listings are very important, as are listings on other local search engines like Yelp, Yahoo.local, and Yellowpages. A great website is important, too, as (see a Youtube video on how to create a website from a marketing perspective). But nothing offers the versatility for such a low cost as YouTube videos. Here's 10 ways to use YouTube videos to get clients to take action. Randy Kirk is president of Page1Listings.com. He is the author of "Running a 21st Century Small Business," published by Warner Business Books. For more like this about marketing your small business, see Randy's business blog.
1. Yelp.com and CitySearch both maintain that having a YouTube video on their listing for your company doubles the likelihood that the visitor to your listing will take some kind of action. What their claim leaves out is that a poorly created video will not produce those kinds of results and might have a negative effect. On the other hand, there are dozens of other good reasons to create one of more YouTube videos for your local small business other than its effect on Yelp.com.
2. Not every business, but most, will generate more customer calls and decisions to shop if the client has a reason to trust you. The written word is good at this, because folks tend to trust what has been made permanent on paper or screen. But you can really increase trust by allowing your customers to hear and see your personal passion about your products and services through a video. Here is an example of a video that creates trust. The client works for a mortgage broker, and therefore trust is critical. In this video Bill Rayman, mortgage expert, explains the benefits of an FHA mortgage.
3. The internet is hungry for information. If your YouTube video has information that your client base is seeking, they will find the video to get that information. Here is a great example from another client who helps writers with the details of self publishing. This video on publishing a children's book creates trust and gives great information.
4. YouTube has a search function. If you create a great title for your video, add a good description, and provide relevant keywords in the title, description, and tags, your potential customers will find you through the search mechanism on YouTube. They may also find you because you are related to other searches they undertake and videos they watch. This client also needed to create trust and provide information, but getting the title right was everything. Check out the video title on this upscale bike shop in Palos Verdes, California who is now almost sold out on doing bicycle fittings.
5. YouTube videos show up on Google Searches and other similar search engines. It is not uncommon for a thoughtfully keyworded YouTube Video to show up higher than your $5000 website. In fact, Google is making a concerted effort to "mix media" on page 1 search results. That's why you now see news, images, videos, local search engine results right on the top page. It is now estimated that a YouTube video is 27 times more likely to show up on page 1 of a google search for your important keywords than your website. Here is an example of an IRS tax resolution company with their YouTube video on page 1
6. By adding YouTube videos to your Google Maps Local Business Center listing, MerchantCircle listing, Yelp.com and others that offer this servie, you improve your ranking on those local search engines, and that helps to improve the ranking of your website. Now you can also list videos on Fan pages of Facebook.
7. You can add your YouTube video to your website or blog as a URL link, like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV-0VIHJCRk, or as an embed like on this insurance company website, or this mortgage agent's blog, or our own small business marketing blog.
and this and this. By putting the video on your website, you generate far more chances of it being seen. This is where you can really build trust and increase reasons for your customer to shop with you.
8. You can add your YouTube video to your blog, your facebook, you can Tweet about it, and you can socially bookmark the original video, the article on your blog, and the facebook entry. All of these increase the chances of the video being seen, and also benefit your activities on these other web tools.
9. Daily Motion and other video depositories similar to YouTube may pick up your video and add it to their listings. But if you don't want to wait and see if they do so, you can upload the same video to each one. Or you can use an aggregator like tubemogul.com to put the video up on numerous of these sites all at once.
10. A single YouTube video that we did for a client for less than $300 resulted in the sale of at least one $6000 bicycle. This is just one of many such examples. The best part is that the YouTube video is listed on page one of a Google search for Specialized Transition and is going to still be selling bicycles for this client a year from now.
While most of the videos shown above are live action, you can do a great job with still pictures and good superscripting. We have a client who sells neon signs and LED signs who had a great scrolling LED sign he wanted to do a video about. Having a speaker would have been fine, but totally unneeded. Here is a fantastic use of video to sell a scrolling neon sign.
You can create your own YouTube video. But I caution you that it needs to be thoughtfully created, edited, superscripted, titled, keyworded, described, and uploaded. Please take a look of one recently created for an apartment management company in San Pedro California. A video like this might cost $300.
Page1listing.com has now created a new product that provides the creation of YouTube videos from concept through upload to YouTube and provides a complete package of internet marketing approaches like the 10 above.
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