YouTube is not only a popular website for individuals to share their favorite videos; it has also emerged as a marketing tool for businesses. Many businesses actively promote their products or services by creating a YouTube channel that includes a company's branding, video advertisements and interviews with executives and employees and ways for customers to interact with them. A YouTube channel, effectively used, can help a business improve its search engine rankings and increase awareness of its products.
One of the major business benefits of creating a branded YouTube channel is that YouTube can help generate traffic to a company's website, which can help increase sales. According to Alexa, a Web analysis company, YouTube is the third most popular website in the world (following only Google and Facebook), with about 490 million people globally visiting each month, watching about 2.9 billion hours of video monthly. Businesses that create effective, compelling videos and upload them to their YouTube channel, including links to their business' website, can drive traffic from YouTube to their site.
Search Rankings
Building an effective YouTube channel, frequently updated with fresh and interesting video content, can also help a business improve its search rankings, according to a July 2011 article by Search Engine Journal. Specifically, video content that uses the right keywords and tags that are relevant to that company and its products can help a company's "organic" search rankings, which are the results that appear in a search engine because they are the most relevant to the terms a person is searching for, not because of paid advertising. In addition, YouTube is the Web's second largest search engine -- trailing only Google. Companies with YouTube channels can pay to have their videos ranked higher in the rankings when a person searches for videos using specific keywords.
Thanks to social media, advertising online is a piece of cake.
Well, maybe not a piece of cake, but it’s a nice, easy and cheap way to market to your current clients and possible future clients. While sites like Facebook and Twitter are easy to use for marketing purposes, other outlets available can seem more difficult to market through.
As popular as YouTube is, it can be somewhat difficult to market through, especially if you’re not t he best videographer or even like to be on camera.
Video Blogging/Tutorials
Using YouTube to market to your followers is like riding a bicycle: you may fall the first couple of times but once you get the hang of it, you never forget how to do it.
Blogging through YouTube has become an incredible way to send messages even for people who aren’t interested in starting their own business. Not only is watching videos a preferred method of communication, but this allows the reader to listen to your content or promotion without even having to be at their computer.
Creating videos for your followers to see can relay messages ranging from new products to just simply sharing an experience with a product.
The great thing about YouTube is that you don’t have to only use it to market your product or business. People like to see videos about anything; even if it’s you making a fool of yourself trying sushi.
Tutorials are also a great way to market new products. If you use constantly searched keywords in your video title to help promote your product, this is a great way to get people to watch your video as well as market your new product.
Linking Accounts
After making an initial video explaining who you are and what you do, it’s important to link all of your accounts to your YouTube channel.
If you’ve ever watched a video, sometimes a link will appear while hovering over the video or even at the bottom in the description of what the video is about. This can give users easy access to whatever their next step must be.
It’s important not to place too much information inside of the description area below the video. Not only is it distracting, but the chances the user is going to read it are slim to none. YouTube is intended for videos only – nobody wants to have to read there.
Gaining Followers
Gaining followers via YouTube is where many marketers find their difficulties. Unfortunately, unlike the other outlets of social media, when you post a video, unless the user is subscribed to your channel, they will probably not see it unless they are searching for it.
One of the easiest ways to allow your following to grow is to comment on other people’s videos. Instead of making a promotional comment about your brand, simply post something kind of positive about the video they posted. Not only does this pique their interest but they will probably visit your page to pay you a comment as well or just see what your video content is about.
Not only does this get your product and brand out there but it gives users the opportunity to see a few videos you’ve created and one day, gain their loyalty.
Creativity
Creativity is an absolutely requirement when it comes to creating videos. If you’re concerned that you’re not funny enough to make a video, put somebody on there that is.
But seriously, that doesn’t have to happen either. If you have hired a copywriter or someone who writes your content, once the creative content is written, it’s easy to repeat it on screen for your followers. Using videos can help them put a face to your brand, so using yourself can be more beneficial than using an actor or actress.
Uploading one or two videos a week is enough – don’t get too video crazy. If you’ve got that friend who posts 5 or 6 selfies a week, you know how annoying that can be. One video a week would show your followers that you consistently have more information to share but it doesn’t overwhelm them with content.
As more of you expand your efforts invideo content marketing, you undoubtedly know (and have been told) that a call to action (CTA) is an absolute must have. That all-important prompt encourages someone to actually dosomething and it offers an opportunity to evaluate your video’s effectiveness.
Advice on how to weave an engaging and tightly integrated CTA into your video is much less decisive. Create a funny and personal or slick-motion graphic? Incorporate in video or description? The fact is that there is no single answer. The secrets to crafting a great CTA depend on your unique circumstances.
This guide focuses on YouTube because the CTA design is more direct and easier to measure than on other platforms. (Vimeo, for example, is a popular tool because of its visual clarity and compression for crowd-funded campaigns like Kickstarter, but those initiatives often have different goals.) In a medium where there are no one-size-fits-all solutions, access to information is key for successful content marketing.
Step 1: Assess your goals
Your CTA is the nudge you give viewers so that they will do something. So what do you want them to do? Take stock of your business goals in both abstract and specific terms:
What do you want to achieve with this video? Be broad. Evaluate how the video is designed to contribute to your goals. Do you want viewers to buy a product, install an app, or subscribe to your channel?
How can your CTA support those goals? Be specific. If you want someone to purchase a product, does the CTA allow them to click through to the sales funnel? If you want more YouTube followers, does it encourage them to subscribe to your channel? If you want viewers to visit an affiliate, is the affiliate identified with a clear link?
After you’ve nailed down exactly what you want your CTA to achieve, your next task is to create something that meets these goals as effectively as possible.
Step 2: Identify the best options
At this point you have two decisions to make: How should you craft your CTA stylistically and which tools can help you meet the goals.
How does your CTA fit with the video content? Think thematically. Let’s use Dove’sReal Beauty Sketches as an example. The video is pensive, introspective, and emotionally charged. As such, the CTA on the screen at the video’s end is thoughtful, restrained, and unobtrusive. Dove didn’t use brightly colored annotations or loud noises. In its description, Dove simply included a hashtag and link.
Now look at Cartoon Hangover’s Bravest Warriors episodic cartoon’s CTA end card. It’s busy, colorful and energetic, just like the video.
Its visible description focuses on the episode and doesn’t include a CTA, and the full description reads like closing credits for a show.
Both Dove and Cartoon Hangover understood their videos — they matched the CTA to the video, and more importantly, they matched the CTA to their goals. For a B2C like Dove, its primary objective was to encourage viewers to further their experience with the brand, while Cartoon Hangover’s primary objective was to inform viewers about the show.
What tools will effectively communicate your CTA?
Annotations: These pop-up messages on the video don’t have to detract from the viewing experience, but if they show up in the meatier content they can. The upside is that users can interact with your CTA immediately within the video experience. The downside is that annotations have a tendency to make users bounce, and annotations don’t appear on mobile or set-top boxes. Annotations in end cards? Totally cool.
Descriptions: A video description offers two-fold viewing — a few sentences on the first screen underneath the video and an expanded version after the viewer clicks “show more.” Including CTA links in descriptions is both better and worse than annotations because they don’t distract the viewer from the video experience. They’re more versatile than annotations and engaged viewers will naturally check your description for more information. But be careful about how you use your real estate: The first three lines of your description are a critical part of YouTube SEO (YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine), and the first lines are all that appear on the first screen.
Verbal (speaker mentions) vs. (direct host): A CTA during the video that comes from the narrator or host can carry more emotional weight than an end-card CTA. It also requires you to lock into a single CTA, so make sure the CTA is sufficiently attractive or powerful to engage viewers. Unlike an end card, which can be changed and updated easily, a speaker mention cannot be changed without significant production overhead. Many Kickstarter videos use this technique because viewers are likely already on the campaign page, making the next step obvious.
In addition, if your videos involve multiple speakers or subjects, the person speaking may not be in a position to deliver a meaningful CTA. In those cases, consider filming a separate end card with a familiar host that can be shot and edited separately.
In this edition of its Ripple Effect videos, Red Bull opens the video with its general web address then uses Red Bull.com/Surfing on the opening credit slide. The CTA returns 14 minutes 30 seconds later in the end credits. Note the lack of annotations in the video, though.
End cards: CTAs on the end cards can work, but it’s a risky move given that a good portion of your audience may not still be viewing. That means you should explore all CTA options, but don’t give up on end cards. The 40+ percent of your audience that may still be watching is probably interested and looking for more information.
As we’ve seen, there are pros and cons to every tool and stylistic decision you make, but this can be mitigated by combining CTA styles. Make sure they all support your goals so that you don’t risk overcomplicating your pool of results and possibilities.
Step 3: Test, measure, and iterate
After you implement your CTAs, the evaluation begins. What happens with your CTAs? How you measure your CTA depends on what goals you’re trying to hit, but since many marketers are ultimately trying to push YouTube viewers off site and into their own funnels, we’ll focus on three critical measurements:
Measure in-video CTA viewership: If you click on Audience Retention in YouTube Analytics, you can see at which points viewers are dropping off, and this information can be used in multiple ways. For example, a significant drop-off that coincides with an annotation is a good sign that viewers do not think the CTA is too disruptive to the experience. Perhaps more importantly, these analytics allow you to see what percentage of users even makes it to your CTA. You can calculate a CTA viewership number by multiplying the number of total views by the percentage that made it to the point in the video with a CTA.
Measure click-throughs: Other than clicking the universal “X” in the right corner of a page to cease viewing, there are only two ways to click out of YouTube – through annotations to your verified website (known in YouTube parlance as Associate Website Annotations) or through links in the description.
Ultimately, you want to extrapolate the conversion rate of your CTA by dividing the number of views by the number of out-bound clicks. This CTA conversion rate is a really handy way to compare variations in your execution.
Tip: Further track your CTAs by using custom links through shortened-URL sites like Bit.ly, which can bring in demographic and easy-tracking data for each CTA.
Measure your annotations: You can see how well an annotation is performing by visiting the Annotations page under Engagement Reports in YouTube Analytics. Enter the name of your video and not only will you get your number of clicks, but also the close rate (the number of times a viewer closed the video when the annotation appeared).
Conclusion
This three-step video CTA process can help you create a goal-oriented CTA, pick the right delivery avenues, gauge each CTA’s effectiveness, and adjust and use analytics to evaluate what you should continue, change, or stop. It will likely take a few tries before you’ve developed an effective style, but once done, you will have a systematic approach to engaging your audience, increasing retention, and in turn, boosting the number of people responding to your CTA.
Finding a way to unleash the power of video in social can be essential to your brand's long-term success. In fact, according to Cisco, social video will account for 69% of consumer Internet traffic by 2017.
However, cracking the code to video success on social networks can be mind-boggling: from allocating budgets to measuring results, to finding the right audience on the right platforms.
So what might be helpful for you to know before your next campaign? Here are some tips to help you win in one of the most competitive advertising landscapes.
Apply traditional planning principles. With more than 1.3 billion Facebook and 271 million Twitter users globally, social can deliver as much scale as traditional reach channels. Combined with industry-standard audience insight, this provides brands with the unique opportunity to effectively distribute their video content and connect with potential new customers. Planning your social campaigns on reach & frequency (as you would in other channels) will ensure cost-efficient delivery vs. traditional video channels.
Go native. The ultimate driver of your video advertising should be to deliver the best possible experience to your audience. The new Facebook and Twitter video solutions provide high-impact premium video experiences in native environments. As a result, advertisers that use native video formats are seeing campaign performance up to 5X better then many leading VOD channels.
Personalize content. As marketers and advertisers place more and more emphasis on how to engage with their audiences, a one-size-fits-all communication strategy is convenient, but not always effective. Instead of sending out just one video to a broad audience, experiment with bespoke messaging for specific audience groups. Test lessons provide scope for future creative and targeting strategies.
Tell a story. A brand’s narrative is not limited to 15” or 30” video spots, and social video solutions allow for improved storytelling through depth of content and lasting customer experiences. Engaging content and use of sequential messaging delivers best results.
The combination of sight, sound and motion, with the addressability, measurement, and scale of platforms like Facebook and Twitter, means social media has the potential to be the most powerful brand-building medium yet, delivering as much scale and performance as any other traditional reach channels.
One of the most critical components of your Advisory Marketing plan is to stop chasing clients and start attracting them.
Today, we will show you a simple 3 step strategy on how to do just that.
There are two types of consultants and advisers : attractors and chasers.
Attractors do things differently than chasers and as a result, have a boat load of ideal clients in their lead generation funnel. Not surprising, they almost always make more money than advisors who follow the chaser model. Chasers spend the majority of their time on the hunt for new clients. They are often desperate for their next deal. Even though they spend the majority of their time chasing clients and attempting to close the deal, their closing rates are rarely better than their counter parts who use an attractor model. The chaser business model is like a roller coaster business – going from feast to famine and back again to repeat the never ending cycle.
But don’t worry, these 3 simple steps will show you how to stop chasing clients and start attracting them.
Step #1: Become an Attractor-
To become an attractor, you need to create a business that attracts your ideal prospects and clients. First, you need to find out what your ideal prospects and clients want, need, value and even fear. Once you find out what your ideal client wants, you simply need to deliver it. Chasers, on the other hand, are too busy selling or trying to sell that they don’t have the time to find out what their ideal clients want. Chasers generally believe they do not have the time to find out what their clients and prospects want, need, value or fear- nothing could be further from the truth. If they knew just how valuable it is to find out what their clients and prospects want, they would find the time to start asking questions.
Step #2: Find the Answer-
One of the biggest insights shared by Socrates was to never assume or tell but to ask, ask, ask. By asking your clients, prospects, centers of influence and reciprocal referral partners exactly what they want, you will know exactly what you need to do and offer to have a boat load of clients lined up wanting to do business with you. The best news about asking anyone and everyone who has knowledge of your ideal client, is that they are almost always willing to help you out by answering a few questions.
Some great questions include:
What keeps you up at night?
What is your top objective?
What has to happen in 1, 3, 5 years for you to be ecstatic about your financial situation?
What do you love about your current advisor (if they have one)?
What would you like your advisor to do differently, if anything?
How do you want to be remembered?
Do you have a plan to ensure that will happen in your estate plan?
Before you begin asking questions, take some time to create a questionnaire that includes all the questions you need to know to best serve your ideal client.
Step #3: Deliver it-
Once you have interviewed the people tied to your ideal client, you need to create a plan to deliver it. Your plan ideally includes the inner game, game plan and outer game. From your 12 month plan, identify the to-dos from most important to least important. Then determine who will complete each action. If you do not have the staff to ensure you complete the plan, hire another part or full time employee who can assist you execute the plan. The worst thing you can do is to start a plan and then stop it because you are too busy to execute it. To ensure you follow through on your plan, you need to plan for contingencies and do the upfront work to make it a reality.
The best advice is to understand that our actions produce our results. Consistent, right action produces consistent, right results just as inconsistent action produces inconsistent results. To ensure our actions are consistent, take the time to create a plan and do what is necessary to complete the plan to ensure you get the results you desire.
Lights! Camera! Action! To get the most from your ecommerce product videos, it's important to make them engaging. Take a look at these important tips to help your online business boost conversions with your product videos.
It’s time to pull out your director’s chair and make some killer product videos for your ecommerce site. Regardless of your experience or access to technology, follow these tips to make your videos a selling machine.
Happy selling!
Today we give you two minutes of ecommerce advice to bolster your online success, we’re going to focus on tips and tricks to make your product videos engaging and effective.
keep your videos short. No one wants to sit and watch an epic telenovela about why your products are so amazing. Keep it less than two minutes and try to make it flashy.
Demo your product. Remember, you’re trying to sell with these product videos. The goal here is to essentially turn your product description into an interactive and engaging video. Thus, make sure that you’re showing off what the product can do and why customers should purchase.
Along the same lines, it’s important to show the benefits of the product within your video. Don’t sit there and go through a laundry list of technical features. Instead, explain why those features are beneficial to the user and put them into a lifestyle perspective so customers can see how it will enhance their lives.
Include product close-ups. Have you seen those restaurant commercials on TV where they have extreme close-ups of the food? You know, the ones where they splash the lemon juice that makes everything fantastic? Your job is to do the same thing – your product video will complement your product images, so make sure that you zoom in and show your products in a good light.
Last but not least, always, always optimize your product videos when you post them to YouTube or distribute them elsewhere. Make sure you have a keyword-rich, engagin headline. Also be certain to include your tags and relevant keywords. Following these steps will help your videos appear higher in organic search results and help more people find them.
Hopefully this is helpful in making your ecommerce product videos a selling machine! If you have any questions, we’re always happy to help.
You can make the most informative and entertaining video on YouTube, but that alone won't guarantee you an audience of potential customers. You'll still need to promote your video in as many ways as possible to help spread the word about your startup.
Here are some of the most successful tactics for promoting a new YouTube video:
1. Promote it on your company blog.
Your company blog is the perfect place to promote your video to your loyal customer base. Talk up each new video in its own blog post, linking to it or even embedding it in the post.
2. Tell your email list.
When you upload a new video to YouTube, send a message and link to your entire email list. If you send out a periodic email newsletter, mention your new videos in it, too.
3. Connect to social media.
Mention your new videos in your tweets and status updates, and link to or embed them in the messages. Facebook, for instance, lets you embed YouTube videos in your status updates. Just paste the URL into the status update and Facebook will put the video in your News feed. Twitter doesn't let you embed videos, but you can link to them from your tweets. And on Pinterest, you can "pin" YouTube videos to your virtual pinboards.
You also can promote your videos on social bookmarking and news sites such as Reddit and StumbleUpon. When you post a link to your video on these sites, you can broaden the viewership beyond your existing customers and social media followers. Note, however, that self-promotion is often frowned upon on many of these sites, so do so as sparingly and subtly as you can.
4. Do some old-fashioned public relations.
While most companies focus their promotional efforts on the web, you shouldn't neglect traditional public relations. This means issuing a press release when you've uploaded a new or particularly important video, and also picking up the phone or sending emails to target specific news outlets, such as your industry's trade groups, publications and blogs. Make sure you include a video link in your press release to help online news sources link directly from their coverage to your video on YouTube.
5. Advertise on YouTube.
If you can afford it, you can advertise your videos on YouTube, using parent company Google's AdWords for Video program. Called TrueView ads, they appear on the YouTube site, targeting potential viewers and linking back to the selected video or your YouTube channel page. TrueView ads are pay-per-click (PPC) ads, just like traditional AdWords text ads. So, you pay only when someone clicks your ad.
Start by logging into your Google AdWords account and linking it to your YouTube account. Set a daily budget for the maximum you're willing to spend. Then, select a video to display in your ad and choose the type of ad you want to run.
Google offers four types of TrueView ads. In-search ads appear at the top of the search results page when users search for the keywords you select. In-display ads appear in the related videos section on the viewing pages for similar videos. In-stream ads are short video messages that play at the beginning or end of other videos. And in-slate ads are commercials that play before or in the middle of longer videos.
In-search ads are the best choice for many companies because most YouTube videos are found through searches. So, just like your website, you want your video showing up on search results pages.
The next step requires you to set a maximum cost per view (CPV). This is the maximum amount you're willing to pay for each click. You can start with just $1 per day but what you spend is really dependent on your budget. You then choose how to target your ad -- through demographics and interests or via keywords. Keyword targeting is often best for in-search ads.
Once your campaign is up and running, you can use the AdWords Dashboard to measure the performance of your ads -- including but not limited to number of views. Depending on the results, you may need to tweak your strategy and possibly create new ads.
Braj is the area that Krishna grazed his cattle, killed demons, and played on his melodious flute attracting milkmaids whom he bullied for butter. It was here that he ultimately found Radha, his inseparable companion. Virindavan, 15 km from Mathura, however, was the favorite romantic haunt of the divine couple.
Social feeds from across the country are chock-full of videos and photos of celebrities, inventors, CEOs, athletes and politicians all taking part in the most recent viral sensation: the Ice Bucket Challenge.
Whether you've laughed at your friend’s reaction to the ice cold water or taken the challenge yourself, postings about it are everywhere. This initiative has achieved something that's every marketer’s dream: goingviral and capturing wide attention across the nation in a month or two.
The Ice Bucket Challenge benefits the ALS Association, which is dedicated to raising funds to research a cure for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis as well as caring for those with the disease. It gained steam with the participation of Beverly, Mass.-based Pete Frates, who since 2012 has had the illness (also called Lou Gehrig's disease).
Startups, established firms and marketers of all types can learn from the success of the Ice Bucket Challenge. Those trying to develop a viral campaign can take the following steps:
1. Identify the goal or cause.
The goal of the Ice Bucket Challenge has been to spread awareness and raise funds for ALS research and its success has exceeded initial expectations. The objective is simple and clear and the challenge doesn’t require much effort from participants: going online to donate or pouring a bucket of ice water over the head, or both.
Today’s consumers like simplicity and direct messaging. They typically won’t take the time to read through an entire article, newsletter or web page to understand a message. Marketers, simplicity is your friend.
2. Make it fun and easy.
Few things are funnier than seeing people have ice poured all over them and watching them cringe, scream or freeze in place. The web has been flooded with comical videos and images of those who have accepted the challenge.
People like to laugh, so keep members of your audience entertained with a video or photo that they would enjoy viewing. Keeping things lighthearted lets people connect with an organization on a human level and can encourage further engagement in an authentic way.
3. Add immediacy.
Those asked to take the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge have only 24 hours to do so.
If you want an idea to flourish, keep the window of time brief to propel the process forward rapidly. By giving your audience a deadline, the initiative will become a greater priority.
The ALS challenge calls on participants to encourage three additional people to participate, thus creating a multiplier effect.
When possible, let consumers involved in an initiative have a chance to engage with their network so as to experience the joy of others joining in. The bonus for a marketer is bringing increased exposure to a company's brand.
5. Share on many platforms.
News of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is being shared on many social-media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
If you’re hoping for an idea or campaign to go viral, make it easy for others to share updates across multiple platforms. Don’t give people a reason to not become involved.
6. Give participants a chance to feel good.
Everyone loves to feel a little better about himself (or herself). The Ice Bucket Challenge raises funds for a medical cause, and no matter the size of a donation, participants can feel good because they're helping others in need.
Plus, the challenge gives participants a sense of unity: They are sharing positive feelings and a goal with the rich and famous.
Setting up an initiative like this lets participants also allows for an emotional connection with an organization and opens up an opportunity for conversation.
Contributor : GABRIELLE BOKO Executive Vice President of Marketing at Sage North America
