Leaving You With No Excuses to Avoid Video Marketing

We imagine you’re well into shaping your plans for 2013 by now. We also imagine that you’re going to try a few new tricks this year in order to grow your business in as many areas as possible, be it with a drive in social media activity, increased visibility of customer testimonials or improving conversion on the leads you already receive on a regular basis…

… and we sincerely hope YouTube is somewhere within your plans.

If you’ve neglected creating video for your business so far and have no intention of beginning this year, you’re throwing potential custom down the drain and missing out on a fantastic area of growth.

Don’t get us wrong – we fully understand how daunting working in a new medium can be, but there really is no excuse to put off creating video content and sharing it with your clients (or potential clients).

Here we bust the most common hurdles people create for themselves, and the good news is they’re all imaginary.

YouTube is Just a Video Site

By the end of today, over twenty million different people will have visited YouTube. But don’t make the mistake of assuming it’s “just a video site” in which people flock to watch funny cat videos (as good as they are).

If you consider YouTube instead as a massive search engine with arguably as much weight and power as Google search itself, you can see why it’d be silly to focus on one and totally ignore the other. And it is a search engine, albeit one that serves streaming video as opposed to hard copy. And guess which one the majority of people prefer to digest?

I Just Don’t Think the Traffic Increase Will Be Worth It

Ever wondered why people pay to have their ads run at the start of videos? It’s simply because YouTube traffic converts, and the advertising has worked so well that it raises enough to cover Google’s gigantic overheads for keeping the site running at no cost to the end user.

Given that advertisers see enough returns to warrant investing in YouTube ads, it makes a lot of sense to create your own videos which direct traffic where you want it to go. Not only is this free, but every video you add to your company’s channel will be permanent – free and perpetual traffic generation is always attractive compared to a paid ad slot that runs out as soon as the money ends!

But I Bet the Traffic Doesn’t Convert Well

Another popular misconception that is quashed by the sheer fact that people pay good money to advertise on YouTube. If videos didn’t convert traffic a decent amount of traffic for their advertising partners, there wouldn’t be any advertising partners and YouTube would have been forced to close down years ago.

Additionally, we need to consider a bit of psychology. Imagine, hypothetically, that you run a hairdressing academy and you have a number of videos on hairdressing technique on your channel. The people clicking on your videos aren’t likely to be idle surfers; these will be people with an active interest in hairdressing, and will be more receptive to your message. In addition, the majority of YouTube visitors are well-trained to click on the description box for more information; nothing is ambiguous and guiding viewers your way couldn’t be easier.

It’s Too Expensive / Time Consuming / Difficult

You’ll want to make sure your videos look great in order to give off the best possible impression, but thankfully you won’t need to invest in a $20k studio camera, an ma filmmaking degree or professional actors to hit the mark. These days, it’s relatively easy to capture good footage with a modern phone – all that’s needed is a good eye for putting the video together.

And while it can take a bit of time to get to grips with the fundamentals of good video editing, it’s not time consuming at all to get great source material. If you’re hosting an event, doing a talk or making a pitch, it takes virtually no extra time to make sure you’re getting it all on camera.

If you’d like to get started but you’re not sure how to begin – or you want gorgeous film right out of the starting gate – don’t hesitate to get in contact. We’ve got a passion for film and would take great pleasure in helping you get the most out of your video content.

I Don’t Have Anything to Film!

This also falls under the subheader of ‘but I don’t do anything people will find interesting!’

While being humble is a lovely quality, if you really believed nobody was interested in yourself and what you do, you wouldn’t be in business.

In reality, there’s an audience out there for everyone no matter how quirky your niche – as an example, this video on advanced panel beating techniques has over 130,000 views and is driving a lot of valuable traffic back to their main site… not bad for a two-minute video on advanced panel beating techniques!

Just as people discover your site via Google and stick around to see what you have to offer them, there will always be a pocket of people – be it small or gigantic – hanging around on YouTube who will have a vested interest in you.

Make sure they can find you.