Online Video Marketing – Is YouTube the Right Answer?

It’s great that you want to use online video marketing in your online business! Now you need to decide just how to do that. A natural first step might be YouTube, Viddler or some of the other public video sharing sites. But you won’t know if YouTube or these other options will be good for your business (and your bottom line) until you look closely at what you hope to achieve through online video marketing.

Is your goal for using video marketing to get people to notice you on the internet? To build your list?

That is actually a really effective way to use public video hosting sites like YouTube and Viddler. Every day, hundreds of thousands of people search for videos to answer their questions, show them how to do something, or even just provide entertainment. And search engines love these video sites. Pay close attention the next time you do a search on Google, for example. It’s very likely that your search result will return two YouTube videos, often on page 1 of the search engine results. Then look at the dates the videos were put on YouTube – often the videos shown are years old! So you know that a good video on a public site can get great search engine placement for a long, long time.

Who are you branding?

When you place your video on a public site, most often when someone watches your video, a watermark of the site will show up through the whole video. Go check out a YouTube video, and pay attention to the YouTube mark you see the whole time. Ask yourself who is being branded here? Your business… or YouTube. Then watch what else happens during and after watching that video. The public site is suggesting other videos your viewer should watch – and most of them (maybe even all of them) are someone else’s videos! So your viewer will likely be drawn away from your brand – your videos – and on to someone else’s videos. If that is OK, then it’s fine to use YouTube or other video sharing service. If not, then you will want to consider other options for your online video marketing.

Do you have a business… or a hobby?

YouTube and other public sites work perfectly for hobby sites. You are probably most interested in having people be able to easily find your videos, so you can connect around your shared interest. There is probably nothing proprietary about the information you are sharing about your hobby. And it’s also more than likely OK if anyone and everyone watches your video.

But if you have an online business, then you will need to rethink using a public site for most of your videos. Chances are, you will want to capture people’s attention and then keep them on your site. Help them to continue to consume your content. Get them to opt in to your list. You can do this most effectively if your videos play on your website or blog, and if the branding (watermark) on the videos your logo and only your logo. Also, if you host your own videos, you can redirect your viewers automatically to an opt-in or sales page at the end of the video.

This entry was posted in videos and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.