 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
"How You Can Avoid The Internet Marketing
Mistakes That
Are Costing Businesses £1000's"
|
Marketing With Video: 6 Tips For Better Results
Have you taken the plunge into video marketing yet? If not, don't feel bad. Most people realize the importance of adding video to their marketing strategy but it's a very different medium and not one that a lot of people are comfortable with. Most of us enjoy the anonymity of working away in the office or at home, hiding out from the rest of the world behind a pen name or an avatar. And most of us are not what you would call movie director material by any means.
But the fact remains, people coming to the internet for information are looking for instant gratification. If not, they'd use the Yellow pages and their local newspapers or books and magazines to find what they were looking for. And research has shown that we have mere seconds to grab and hold the attention of the visitors who come to our site. If they don't see what they're looking for in those few seconds they can easily click away and go find it somewhere else.
As more and more sites pop up on the web, then, it becomes crucial that we find a way to keep these visitors on the page, on our sites, for more than 2 or 3 seconds. They don't want to have to read an article to find what they're looking for. They really don't even want to scan simple bullet points anymore. What they're looking for now is instant information that they don't have to work for and video is the best solution.
Use Video to Introduce Yourself
Marketing with video is a great way for you to connect with your visitors. People will often remember a face before they will a name so you're making a much longer lasting impression. And even though you can't see them, they can see you – more specifically, they can see your eyes. This has a huge psychological effect on people. The importance of making eye contact is the first thing you learn in any marketing course.
And while most visitors will just skip over the parts of your sales page that tell about your own personal experiences, they're going to stay on the page longer when you have a video and this will give you more opportunity to sell yourself.
One of the problems with using strictly text on your squeeze pages and sales pages is that your reader can't hear your sincerity so it's difficult for him to trust you. Your goal on any sales page or squeeze page is to overcome any objections your visitor might have to responding to your call to action. In most cases, the largest obstacle is lack of trust. Marketing with video helps you overcome this obstacle by allowing your visitor to see your face and hear the sincerity in your voice – it enables him to get over that last obstacle and trust you.
Use Video to Increase Your Opt-ins and Sales
Use a video on your squeeze page as a way to introduce yourself to your visitor – NOT as a way to sell your product. Your squeeze page is simply the first step in the selling process. It's the page where you get the visitor's attention and let him know who you are and that you understand his problem.
Use your video to briefly tell people who you are, why you think you can help them, and then include a call to action. Whether you're offering a free mini-guide or a subscription to your newsletter – people will be much more willing to opt-in now because the feel a connection with you now that they've actually seen you.
Use Video to Increase Your and Sales
Until recently it was thought that the longer your sales page was the better it would convert and the more you could charge for your product. If you could keep someone on your page long enough to read the whole thing, all the way to the end, then that person was probably going to buy whatever it was you were selling.
However, in this age of instant gratification, we're finding that people don't want to read those long sales pages anymore. If you have something to say, they want you to say it. And they'd much rather you said it with a video so they wouldn't even have to bother reading it.
You Don't Have to be Scorsese
You don't have to be a big name director to create a video for your website. Even a simple video made on your Windows Media Player with images and text will attract more attention than your standard text sales page. You'll get much better results though if you create a video with you as the star. People will be able to put a face with the voice and they'll feel more connected to you.
Your video doesn't have to be so long that it requires an intermission in the middle either. 30 seconds, 60 seconds, 3 minutes, whatever it takes to get your message across is all you need to do.
What to Include in Your Video
Always identify yourself, of course, and your website. And don't forget a call to action at the end. TELL your visitor – Click this link and I will....or For More information, click here...Let them hear you say it and it will make more of an impression. Sort of like your mother telling you to pick up your room. You can't NOT do it!
Hosting Your Video
Most people host their videos at YouTube but wherever you choose to host it, remember:
1) Include your keyword in the title 2) Include keywords in your description 3) Put the link to your site somewhere near the beginning of the description so it's visible
Instead of hosting your video at YouTube though, host it at a video networking site like TubeMogul.com. TubeMogul.com is a video networking site that allows you to upload your video once, just like you'd upload it to YouTube, but it's distributed to over 24 different video hosting sites – inlcuding YouTube, Yahoo Videos, Metacafe, and many others. The basic free service offers you up to 100 video deployments per month and you only have to upload your video one time.
Users of TubeMogul's universal upload system report up to three times more views per video using this service and one user I spoke with told me that he was getting his videos indexed in as little as 15 minutes.
Being a little bit intimidated by video marketing is only natural and you're not alone. But it only seems complicated because you're thinking of it in terms of movies that you see at the theater or on TV. The programs and software that we use to create videos for out websites are nothing like that at all and they're made to be user friendly.
If you think about it, you probably didn't know how to set up a website when you first got started either. And you were more than likely a little bit intimidated when you set up that first one, but look how far you've come. You probably said, “Now why didn't I do that sooner?” Well, you'll be saying the same thing about video once you get the first one or two under your belt.
So go ahead and give video a try and let's try something new here. Once you get your first video up, leave us a comment here on the blog so we can all come and check it out.
|
|