Why limit those interactions to a company blog? How about turning to rich media, including the video sharing site YouTube, to diversify your marketing efforts?
YouTube Success Stories
Who hasn’t heard of “Will It Blend?” the highly successful viral YouTube videos from Blendtec blenders? The videos, showing how Blendtec blenders could blend everything from a broom handle to an iPhone, spread virally around the web on blogs, forums and social news sites. In September 2007, this early pioneer in YouTube marketing reported a 500% increase in online sales after creating the series.
Not everyone can be the next Blendtec, but the company is a leading example of “marketing as entertainment”: create something that the audience will want to share, and let web users become your marketing team.
The effect is even more powerful if you’re actually in the business of media creation: the comedy troupe Monty Python reported a 23,000% increase in DVD sales in January 2009 after the launch of the official Monty Python YouTube Channel.
Small Business Marketing on YouTube
There may not be a magic formula for YouTube marketing success, but some simple rules can increase the reach of your video and make sure you hit the target. The golden rule, of course, is to create a great video: something truly shareable, bizarre, unique, quirky or useful, and (importantly) short enough to match the attention span of the average web viewer.
And yet, YouTube marketing goes far beyond video creation. To best reach your company’s audience, tagging and categorization are essential. You might never make it to the top of YouTube’s Most Popular videos, but you can still rack up tens of thousands of views by becoming popular within a category, or simply through the serendipitous browsing enabled by YouTube’s “Related Videos” feature.
You can also gain traction on YouTube by participating in the community: leave insightful comments on videos relevant to your business, and become friends with those creating videos in your niche. Building a more visible presence on the site grows your subscriber base and increases the chances that your videos will be seen, shared and commented on.