Over the past few months, I’ve found myself using more and more of one social media website.
It’s not Facebook. It’s not Twitter. It’s not even Pinterest.
It’s YouTube.
I don’t spend my time watching cute cat videos – although that’s not such a bad way to relax on a lazy weekend – but instead, I do research. I learn new things.
I find it much easier to watch an explanatory video first, then read up on something – this way I understand a lot more when I finally get around to reading – because I’ve already visualized a lot of the information. Sellbrite has great
You may have heard how successful Khan Academy has been with their video learning lessons. But, the advantages of video are not limited just to academics. Videos have a huge impact on shopping, too!
One of the biggest issues with online shopping is that you can’t hold the product in your hand and turn it over. You can’t even test-use it. Video, however, is the next best thing. A simple product video goes a long way in getting your product and your store to connect with your customer.
So where can you do video marketing?
YouTube
Did you know that YouTube is the second largest search engine? It is bested only by Google itself.
People come to YouTube searching for all kinds of information. Information that you can provide, and eventually win customers!
If you think about most products, they solve a problem of some sorts. Even though the problem may not be obvious at once, it’s useful to think of it this way.
Obvious examples are products that relieve some sort of pain – emotional or physical – or even just make an inconvenience go away. A chef using the wrong knife has a problem. His solution is to use a different knife.
A RC car enthusiast wishes to go faster, but he can’t. He doesn’t have the right motors, and this is a problem. His solution is to use better motors.
Once you start thinking about your products in terms of problem solving, you can start creating some video content for YouTube.
Of all the searches in YouTube, “how to” videos are a huge chunk. You’ve probably done it yourself, too. So now think about the problems in terms of “how to videos”.
So if you sold knives, you could make a series of how to videos such as:
- How to slice baguettes – in this video, you can talk about serrated knives
- How to dice onions – in this video, you can talk about santoku knives
- How to cut a steak like a connoisseur – in this video, you can talk about steak knives
BeardBrand had a lot of their initial success because of the beard care videos that the founder, Eric Bandholz had on YouTube.
A video by BeardBrand on How To Apply Mustache Wax has received over 230,000 views as of this writing:
You may also have heard of LuxyHair, who have over 2 million YouTube subscribers as of this writing. Luxy Hair became popular by creating how-to videos for hair care – and occasionally mentioning hair extensions when fitting.
If you’ve heard of multi-rotors (also known as drones), you may have seen some of the awesome racing videos that people have shot. A lot of these skilled drone pilots have sponsors, and the pilots link to all the parts they used in their drone from the video description.
So far, these are two powerful forms of video that we’ve looked at – how to videos and videos of your product in all of its awesomeness. Both are powerful motivators for people to visit your website and even buy your product.
Another powerful form of YouTube content is lifestyle content. BeardBrand not only creates videos on their products and how to use them, but also focuses on creating content that appeals to all bearded men.
One very interesting video they’ve posted is Tips For Having A Beard At Your Job. This content sometimes is a more powerful way of hooking your potential customers because you are connecting with them at a level even deeper than just a product.
Optimizing YouTube for maximum gain
To make the best of YouTube and get maximum visibility (and ultimately traffic and sales), you’ll need to optimize your videos on YouTube.
Brian Dean has written an excellent post on how to rank in YouTube. Think like an SEO when you write a title for your video. Remember that Google shows YouTube results in their own searches, too, so if you can get your video to show in those results, too, you’re golden.
YouTube also prefers to rank videos that have higher view times (percentage of the video viewed) and a greater number of thumbs ups.
So in your video, you can use YouTube’s annotation tools to add some useful notations throughout your video.
Most people have something on the lines of “Please like this video if you found this useful” and “Please subscribe for more great content!” It’s also a good idea to put these messages in the video description, too.
Be sure to include a link to your website in your video description, and it’s a good place to write some keyword-rich content as well.
Using videos for product descriptions
Your Blog or YouTube page isn’t the only place where you can share leverage the power of video marketing. One place you should most certainly shoot professional-looking videos for is your product description pages. Most shopping cart platforms support embedding videos either as one of the images in the slideshow or in your descriptions.
If you are selling on Amazon, there’s another great place to have a product video. Many Amazon products do not yet have videos, and now is a good time as any to start capitalizing. With ways to differentiate yourself from everyone else diminishing quickly, video can help you seize the opportunity.
I’m not sure whether having a video will rank you higher in Amazon, but it will most certainly help your conversion rate, since your customers can know your product even better before they buy it.
Conclusion
The great thing about video is that it is now ubiquitous, and wherever you can plant a video, you can leverage video marketing for your brand. If you simply include your brand identity in the video (like a splash screen with your logo and website), no matter where your video goes – Facebook, blogs, or even Whatsapp, you will still get free publicity.
