With social media, your small marketing budget is no longer a limitation. A small company can make an impact without spending big bucks.
“YouTube is the hottest new medium for online marketing,” according to Michael Miller, author of “YouTube for Business: Online Video Marketing for Any Business.”
Visual storytelling is embedded in our culture. We not only tolerate video ads; we enjoy them if they’re creative. We seek them out if they’re informative. That makes YouTube fertile ground for marketers. Further, it costs nothing, zero, nada to post a video to the YouTube site. There is no charge for hosting or streaming your video, according to Miller. Where else does the advertising medium cost so little? Your only costs will be for production, and you control those costs.
Small Businesses Get Creative
According to Miller, who has spent a lot of time studying YouTube videos, every type of small company is making use of YouTube for marketing, training, or communicating with customers and potential customers.
“I’ve seen videos from companies that make or sell aquarium accessories, computer cables, motorcycle parts, you name it,” Miller wrote in an email. “Realtors use YouTube to show video walk-throughs of their properties; travel agencies use YouTube to show off their prize destinations. Pottery companies use the site to sell their wares; credit card companies use the site to show merchants how to use their terminals.”
He added, “If what you’re selling is in any way visual, which almost everything is, YouTube is a perfect medium for your company’s promotional message.”
Here are five tips to help you get started:
1. Don’t sell—educate. Before you take your first sashay into YouTube, spend some time on the site and browse the video categories. Decide how to present your company in the best way. You might be baffled at first. How does your business fit with crazed kitties and weird people doing and eating weird things? It doesn’t. But you may eventually notice that one of the video categories is “Howto & Style.” Don’t think of YouTube as a sales medium, but as a way to help people understand a product, service, or idea. It’s possible, of course, to create a highly entertaining video. That is the type of video that goes viral, “if everything goes right,” Miller wrote. But “it’s the hardest to pull off.” Better to start with this goal: Make a how-to video. Miller suggested numerous models. (“If you’re a car manufacturer, you might create a video showing drivers how to change a brake light or check their car’s oil level. You get the idea—use YouTube to turn a problem area into a public relations victory.”) And be sure to feature your company’s contact information onscreen, “at the front of the video, at the end of the video, and overlaid at the bottom of the screen during the body of the clip,” Miller wrote.
2. Add video to your website. Embedding video on your own site gives you the opportunity to educate and sell. Your viewers are self-selected as having some interest in your products or services. Your video can clinch the sale. You might use an infomercial as a model, or again, use the how-to model. Here’s an example of a company that puts multiple videos on its site to sell parts for various repairs.
3. Be audible and good-looking, if not hip. Videos do not need to be top quality to make an impact on YouTube. But as a business owner, you do not want your company associated with bad quality. Your presenters should be friendly and believable. If the CEO is charismatic, great. If not, hire a spokesperson. Smallbusinesscomputing.com suggests the following technical standards:
- High-definition quality video with 16:9 aspect ratio
- MP4 video file format with H.264 compression
- MP3 or AAC audio compression
- 30 frames per second
Miller said you could use a consumer-grade, high-definition camcorder if you supplement it with some key accessories. These will total $100 to $400 and will improve the quality substantially:
- A tripod to keep your camcorder steady
- External lighting (a top-of-camera light, or a set of two or three photofloods)
- External microphone, such as a lavaliere type that clips onto a shirt or blouse
- For a talking-head video, a roll of seamless background paper to provide a clean, non-busy background.
“You can find all of these accessories at your local photography store,” Miller wrote. “It’s the same stuff that still photographers use.”
4. Keep it short. You’ll make a bigger impact with a shorter video than a longer one that viewers stop watching. Edit its length to less than two minutes, even if that means condensing information. You can always create a “Part 2.”
5. Use SEO to promote your video. The video’s headline and description are good places in which to use keywords that will boost your business. Your description should be as compelling as possible. Your title should be no more than 65 characters long (including spaces); more than that will get clipped in search results. On the other hand, you want to use all the space that’s allowed for your description—that’s 5,000 characters to pack full of keywords. Miller said that if you want viewers to be able to click on the video and jump right to your website, the only way to do that is to pay to be a Promoted Video on the YouTube site. Do it. Add a call-to-action overlay on your video, and “viewers can click the overlay and be taken to any web page outside the YouTube site,” according to Miller. “You can only add overlays to promoted videos, however, so spending a minimum amount on advertising lets viewers have this more direct access to your website.” Promoted videos are pay-per-click. For more information about how they are priced, click here.
