Approaching Online Video Marketing

Creating high quality online videos about your business, its products and services, and useful subject matter expertise you can share with the world at large may sound like something far too involved and costly to even consider, especially if you are only just venturing into the Internet advertising space. However, there are compelling counterpoints to these potential worries which should inspire you to fully explore the possible benefit of making a video marketing investment. If you cover all your bases, you can come away with expertly produced video content which is relatively affordable and fully optimized for the search engines, allowing your prospects more avenues from which to find and interact with your business. Because of it’s effectiveness as a communication tool, video represents a valuable component to social media marketing.

To help you gain some perspective in making the video marketing decision, it’s important to understand some of the reasons that online video can be impactful to your marketing success overall. A lot of it comes down to some pretty obvious facts. People are simply predisposed to absorb video content. Remember that television your parents told you was rotting your brain? Addictive stuff, right? Well, online video taps into that same predisposition to become glued to televised content, capturing an audience’s attention in quite a different way than the printed word. Video conversion rates (the percentage of people taking the action you want vs. just watching a video and moving on) tend to be higher than conversion rates on text-based messaging. In a world keenly focused on the value of driving action more so than mere traffic, this is a critical factor to consider.

And don’t be fooled into thinking that people are online watching video solely as a brain rotting activity. While I’m sure there is plenty of that going on, when it comes to consuming video content related to products, services, and educational/informative topics, it must be understood that the viewer is most often arriving at this content after taking some sort of proactive step to find it in the first place. This audience is best described as “sit forward,” rather than one which “sits back” to watch more passively. The video searcher wants the “commercial” content they find. They are driving the delivery of what they view by actively seeking answers to questions.

Consider a person searching online for a solution to a termite problem in their garage. They might not even be looking for video, but finding a 30 to 60 second spot by a local pest control company that addresses the problem, and offers a solution, can be extremely impactful on the user. The premise is that a user is far more likely to engage with a company that they can “see and hear” than one they have to do a lot of reading on. Giving them all the information they need to make the decision to act (pick up the phone or fill out a form) in the span of 30 seconds, feeds perfectly into everyone’s appetite for quick actionable content. No one wants to waste their time unnecessarily.

Video can be more engaging. That’s just the way our television addicted minds work, even on the Internet. Is it foolproof? Of course not. Nothing online is. And I’m not saying that video is the silver bullet to all your online marketing woes. But, while companies are coming along making it more and more affordable to deliver high quality, SEO-ready video to your proactive end users, you can be sure it becomes easier to stick your toe into the video marketing water.

The rules for knowing what sort of video content to create follow the same rules related to printed content online: give people something useful. One suggestion that can start you down the right path is to come up with a list of commonly ask questions related to your particular industry. Then you can create the answers in video. This is a critical component in participating in the dialogue format of web 2.0’s social media landscape.

For example, an Orthodontist’s office could create numerous 60 second videos answering specific question often on the minds of parents: How many different types of braces are there? What’s the right age to start braces? Are there alternatives to braces? The list goes on and on.

Answering common questions plays directly into the foundation of social media. Forget for a moment that it might lead to business. These questions are an open door to an interactive conversation. There is an audience looking for topic-specific, useful information which you possess. Just as other facets of your online presence allow you to become an active participant in your online community, video can also play its part. It provides another vibrant layer in the multiple ways any business must seek to engage with its audience online.

Guest Article On Social Media & Video

I’ve just done a little moonlighting. Over at ReelSEO.com, a site devoted to online video and video marketing, I was asked to provide an article talking about the synergies between video and social media. This connection exists at many levels, and is even being explored during a full day devoted to Social Media & Video Strategies at the upcoming Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, CA.

Check out my article, "On The Blurring Line Between Worlds: Humans, Screen Watching, and Social Media," as well as the rest of the wisdom shared over at ReelSEO.com.

From Information To Communication Highway

It’s a subject that gets a lot of attention in the online marketing community, and even plays out at summer backyard barbecues on the weekend while non-geeky web folks consider all that’s new on the world wide web. Is Social Media the real deal, and if it is, what the heck is it anyway? It’s even a subject that I’ve touched on more than once here on these pages, yet it continually deserves more thoughtful reflection aimed to help folks separate fact from fiction. And we can pretty quickly confirm the fiction that Social Media is the savior to everyone’s business marketing woes online. That said, it is a fact that Social Media does play a role in successfully being a business online today. In fact, the premise of Social Media has been at play far longer than the craze has been going on – we’ve always been using the Internet to spark compelling interaction between business and prospect. The methods by which we accomplish this just keep on changing, and that’s okay.

Constant change is nearly the only consistency in Internet Marketing. Amidst its ever-shifting landscape there are, however, several recurring themes. How to reach the right customers? How to reach them cost effectively? How to measure the effort? All the while, companies struggle to keep up with the changes, and fear wasted and costly efforts they can’t quantify or recoup.

While Social Media is all the rage, many businesses feel obligated to participate. However, there is no denying that many view it with skepticism, assuming that it is just some passing phase, hoping they won’t have to master yet another Internet tool. Businesses must take care not to miss the Social Media forest for the trees as they watch the comings and goings of things like MySpace or Twitter. The popularity of platforms and applications will always rise and fall, but they aren’t a true indicator to the value of the medium they serve.

Social Media’s evolution is born out of technology’s ability to improve communication. This is the overarching consistency which Social Media serves. Key to business communication is driving a marketing message and encouraging customer interaction, two things that Social Media can directly influence. Reaching customers, delivering compelling content, and fostering a valuable relationship with consumers continue to drive marketing efforts online. This has long been the function of Pay Per Click ads, and display/banner advertising as well. The tools evolve, but the goals remain consistent.

To enable businesses to successfully evolve along with the Internet Marketing landscape, simplification is key. No company can effectively navigate the path while it appears cluttered and confusing. Aligning and prioritizing Social Media tools based upon how they best meet a business’ marketing goals can be a welcome revelation. Staying attuned to your goals can simplify the path. When it becomes clear that no one must do everything all at once, and more importantly, not do things just because everyone is doing them, the path to successful Social Media marketing clears.

Businesses participating in Social Media can recognize that it allows them to engage with customers, share content which benefits their audience, and study the conversations occurring online within their space, no matter how niche. They can not only begin to measure the impact of these efforts as a specific marketing metric, but also reap the more long term, and often hard to quantify benefit of simply joining in the dialogue with their target audience – a concept too compelling to ignore. Using Social Media will soon be as obligatory to business as having a customer service layer, or as building a website in the first place. Getting started need not be daunting, and once prioritizing the tools to business goals is understood, tangible benefits can begin. Keep the goals of improving communication and dialogue in the forefront and it naturally drives down the static and confusion as you approach Social Media.

Got Business? Get Listed

Local and regional companies traditionally conduct nearly all their business within a 50 mile radius of their physical location. This is likely true of your business too. Even in the digital age, proximity is a key factor in building a client base. Customers themselves drive this statistic based upon their tendency to want to do business with a company they can “see and touch.” It’s no wonder that Local Internet Marketing caught fire over the last several years as consumers strove to make use of the Internet when looking for businesses ranging from restaurants to building contractors. And the search engines responded to help facilitate their own ability to serve those searchers the results they were looking for (and thus retain those precious user-eyeballs).

Today, search results are populated with content culled from any number of trusted business information sources which the engines have come to rely on, not just for basic business information, but for “trusted” business information. What’s that? Well, consider that a search engine kicks its user experience in the shins if they supply an “out of business” business listing at the top of their results. If Google were to show me that its best search result for a landscaping company was a company whose phone number was now disconnected, this would sour me to the usefulness of Google as a local business search tool. So, the search engines do everything they can to make sure that the information in their results is current, accurate, and useful to the searcher.

One of the best ways you can show the engines that your business information is current and accurate is to get it submitted online everywhere you can, so that as the engines index (go out and gather) business information, yours is consistently found, and it’s full of useful information.

Set aside a little time to make sure your information is out there correctly. Here are just some sites where you should submit your business information and thereby feed the data sources which in turn play a role in feeding search results. Not to mention, folks actually uses many of these sites directly when looking for products and services. Spread your business information around. Remember, you are not just your website, you are a web presence. Be present everywhere possible.

Business Listing Directories:
Localeze
Universal Business Listing
infoUSA
Yellow Pages
Super Pages
Yellow Bot
iBegin
Yelp