When creating marketing video, remember that it doesn't just have to contain information about your product or services. In fact, there are scores of different things that you can do with your video to make it a perfect marketing video. The fact is that most advertisements on YouTube, unless they are especially unique, actually turn a lot of people off. The reason being that people tend to go to YouTube to be entertained and to learn information -- not to be suckered into buying stuff.
So what else can you do with marketing videos, especially ones you want to put on YouTube?
- Interview an expert in the field that you are promoting. For example: say you own a garage and you're trying to get customers to take their cars to you. Go down to the local mechanics school and interview an instructor. Get him to give you tips on seasonal car maintenance, or some other general subject. By doing this, your viewers will learn something valuable. At the end of the video, you include your contact information. You are still marketing your business or product, but you are also giving people something useful to remember as well.
- Actually show someone making use of your product or services. This is basically like customer testimonials, which can also be an excellent source of video. Look at major infomercials: the successful ones are very good at showing seemingly "real" people using the products/services. They make it appear easy! Instead of just showing off your product, try recording someone really using it.
- Say you are promoting an event; show clips from past events! Be as creative as possible, and add music if you can. There's nothing like showing people having a great time to get others interested in what they're doing.
- Use product placement by working with other people. Use their products in your videos and do the same for them. When doing this, be sure that you mention what the other product is, though, or your audience might just think it is a prop.
- Give your audience a tour of your facility (if you have one). This is a good idea if you are markting something like a restaurant or a product produced in a small factory. Take your audience of a tour of it to give them a "behind the scenes" vibe. A restaurant would be especially good for this, because people love to see how a restaurant runs; look at shows like "Iron Chef." It also gives you an opportunity to show off your staff.
The next question, once you've created your marketing videos, is how/where will you distribute them? The 800-lb gorilla of video sites is, of course, YouTube. If you're going to distribute there, be sure more than ever to make your videos informative and entertaining. But there are other options for distributing videos. Video directory sites are popping up like weeds these days! There are now sites that are being created for no other reason than to do "smart" submissions of videos to all the other video directory sites. The other option, of course, is self-hosting the video on your own site or sites.
Now, the main plan is to host videos on YouTube for exposure with an eye towards the type of videos people expect when they go there looking for videos. Still, you must investigate the possibility to self-host videos on your own blogs or sites; you have a lot more flexibility in your video topics and length of videos when you do this. Be sure to consider the tools for online video marketing that are becoming available for you to purchase. There are plenty of tools available, so don't be afraid to use Google and do some reading to find out more.
