How to Use Video Marketing to Reach More Customers

Video marketing today is responsible for almost 50% of all Internet traffic, and is projected to reach 90% of all consumer internet traffic by 2013 (source: TechCrunch.com). If you sell a product or service online, or have a bricks and mortar business with a website as an extension of your physical business, you should consider using video as one of the pillars of your marketing strategy.

The largest video site out there today is YouTube. This site, bought by Google back in 2006, allows anyone to upload videos for free. Not only can you watch YouTube videos on its own site, YouTube allows you to embed code for the video into other sites you own, such as your website or blog. Having others watch video that you created can serve to develop a rapport between you and your customer that did not previously exist before. The majority of people out there, almost 70% in fact, learn best by visual means. Therefore, video allows you to reach the largest percentage of the population that learns via this style of communication.

They say 'A picture is worth a thousand words'; by comparison, a video might be worth a hundred pictures or more. A great place to place video would be on your sales page. Product advertisements and testimonials from customers are great uses of video on such a page. Instead of using long-form copy of hundreds or thousands of words in order to sell your product, consider adding video to your sales page in addition to a traditional sales letter. Market research shows that a sales page using video on it converts prospects more highly than ones that do not use them.

Video also has a much higher perceived value than some other forms of communication. If the traditional e-book might normally be priced in the $27-$97 range and audio products between $97 and $197, a product with all three sorts of communication types - including video - might be able to sell for $300-$1000 or more, because of this perceived the customer associates with video. Video also makes the best format for 'How To' products and tutorials. A step-by-step process which might take many pages to explain in an e-Book may be accomplished using video in only a few minutes of run-time.

The key to success in any business is to generate leads, or customers. Generating consistent, quality traffic is the key to success, whether you're selling donuts or high-end mainframe databases. Videos have the greatest chance to "Go Viral", meaning that one person who views the video will pass on the link to someone else, creating a network effect of viewers. Sooner or later, you may find a video you uploaded has thousands of views in a very short period of time. Since you can place links back to your website in the 'About' section, and watermark your videos so that your website name is clearly displayed for the duration of the video, this is a great way to send free traffic back to your website.

While video used to cost hundreds or thousands of dollars to create and produce, today anyone with a webcam or screen capture software such as Camtasia or CamStudio can make a high quality video for little or no money. It has served to level the playing field, allowing small business owners to compete at the same level of large businesses. Video marketing may well be the best return on investment for any business looking to increase sales, traffic, and conversions.

In the same way that a blog is associated more with the news content and selling, marketing using video is still perceived as more like entertainment or education than actual marketing and advertising. As such, you may be better able to reach a customer than traditional ads or written text.

Like any type of marketing, you need to follow some basic steps in order to succeed. Step One: Identify your target market, their needs, their wants, and their demographics. Step Two: Do keyword research for your video titles and descriptions like you would for any article or web page that you would build. A YouTube video that contains targeted keywords for your niche will rank higher than one that doesn't. Step Three: Outline your video message in advance, plan your sequencing, dialogue, screenshots, and other content sources before you start. The fastest way to lose a potential customer is to make a disjointed video product or message. Keep it interesting, and make sure the video content contains a lot of value and addresses the needs, concerns, and issues of your target viewing audience. A message that is clear and relevant will convert more prospects than one that is convoluted and abstruse.

Distribute your videos efficiently. Realize that there are many other sites out there other than YouTube, such as Yahoo, Metacafe, Blip.tv, i2TV, Veoh, and DailyMotion, to name a few. All of these sites allow you to upload content for free, and may reach a different target audience than YouTube alone. Use services like TubeMogul or Traffic Geyser to upload and distribute your videos to many different video sites quickly and efficiently. Anything you can do to automate the process and free up your distribution time allows you to focus more of your efforts on the highest revenue producing aspects of your business - namely, getting more customers, increasing conversions, and product creation.

Once your videos rank high in the search engines, the videos themselves may stay out there for months or even years, contributing valuable high Google PageRank back links to your site and sending traffic to your websites for a long time to come. If you're not using video currently, I advise you to get started today and see the benefits that this type of marketing can bring to your business.

Source: Erick Schonfeld, TechCrunch, By 2013 Video Will Be 90 Percent of All Consumer IP Traffic