REVEALED - The 7 Key Internet Marketing Strategies Every Local Business Must Know

KEY TAKEAWAY – Video is one of THE most powerful types of media you can use to market your business with today, so use it.  A lot.

Video is wildly popular:

   •  Over 100 million Internet users watch online videos every day
   •  Many of them are looking to buy a product or service.

Online patrons like it –  90% of online shoppers say they find video on retailers’ websites helpful in making better buying decisions

It’s effective – Retailers who use video to show off their products report that products with videos sell better than products without videos

 It’s sticky – 80% of Internet users remember watching a video ad on a website they visited in the past 30 days…

…and of those 80%:
 
   •   26% looked for more information
   •   22% visited the company’s website
   •   15% visited the company store
   •   12% bought the product in the video ad
 

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You can use marketing videos to engage with new prospects in a variety of ways:
 
1.  Produce an “FAQ” video.

   •  Impress your prospects by anticipating & answering their questions. It builds your credibility and helps position you as an authority
   •  It can give your curious visitors a sneak peek behind the scenes of your business
 
2.  An Explainer (How To) video.

   •  Educate your customers on product assembly, usage & maintenance
   •  Use it to illustrate & simplify difficult concepts in the viewer’s mind
   •  Easier to SEO-rank “how to” videos
 
3.  Culture videos.

   •  Gives prospects insight into why, not just what, you do
   •  Can help visitors put faces to the names and voices of your staff
   •  Helps you more clearly convey your corporate vision & passions
 
4.  Testimonial and review videos.

   •  Provides the all-important social proof expected by today’s consumer
   •  Carries an inherent 70% trust rating
   •  Richer sensory-engaging format for reputation and branding purposes
 
5.  Interview videos.

   •  Use Google Hangouts to host panel discussions and expert interviews
   •  Share a slice of corporate insider life with potential new hires
   •  Acquaint prospects with the people making the products they buy
 
6.  Event videos.

   •  Highlight the best parts of branding events, or milestones achieved
   •  Unscripted video is more trusted than a slickly-produced promo
   •  Event videos should show, not tell
 
You can invest as much or as little as you want in video marketing.  Generally speaking, the higher the production costs, the better the production values (look and feel). 

There is a lot to be said, though, about self-produced or “homemade” videos.  For some audiences, they convey more realism, more believability, than slick, professionally produced videos.  It just depends.
 
Although the cameras in current smartphones have more than enough video quality to use in most video marketing applications, the camera’s built-in microphone needed to record the soundtrack probably won’t be good enough. You’ll need a wired/wireless remote microphone if your subject is more than a few feet away from you.
 
One of the conveniences of using your smartphone to capture video is that you can upload it directly from there to video sharing sites.  YouTube – owned by Google – is the world’s largest video website.

And as we saw in an earlier video, with over 1 billion users YouTube is also the 2nd-largest Internet search engine & business directory – where new prospects are going every day to look for you.
 
Create your own YouTube “channel” (be logged into your Google account first) and upload the videos from your smartphone to it.  You can also use YouTube’s editing tools to polish them up a bit if needed before sharing them.

You can create and link your YT channel to either your Google personal profile or a Google Places business page you may have also created.
  
Syndicate your videos even further across other popular content sharing sites for top visibility. Top video sharing sites include Daily Motion, Vimeo, Veoh, Yahoo Video and others.
  
Video is a sensory-rich, popular and highly effective communication medium that your business should use as much as possible in your overall online marketing strategy.
 
NEXT UP:  We’ll look at one of the oldest “tried and true” internet marketing strategies that businesses still use effectively even to this day.

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