YouTube is the Forgotten Marketing Asset
When you start learning about internet marketing, you’ll find that there are a lot of different subjects for you to tackle. These include the likes of SEO, social media marketing, writing press releases and more. You’ll have to learn about auto-responders and email marketing, about affiliate marketing and about link building.
But something that often gets overlooked is video creation. This is strange, bearing in mind that video can have an incredibly profound impact on your brand’s visibility as well as your sales and is one of the most effective ways to stand out.
So why do people tend to ignore it? One possible answer is simply that it is too complicated and difficult for many people to understand – so they’d rather just overlook it!
Why Video is SO Important for Your Internet Marketing
But it’s this ‘difficulty’ that makes video production such a powerful marketing tool. Simply put, anyone can create a blog and anyone can create a sales page. When you build either of these things, you could still just be someone working from their mom’s basement.
Video creation on the other hand requires expertise and expensive equipment. To make high quality videos, you will need a good camera, a great lighting set-up, a good microphone, editing software and know-how. All of this communicates that you are a serious business with serious money to invest and that professional sheen is what will inspire trust in your visitors.
What’s more, is that video allows you to talk directly to your audience and to use both your own voice and music to persuade them to make a purchase. Video is naturally more engaging and it makes people feel as though they know you, which is incredibly useful from a marketing perspective.
When creating video there are several ways you can use it as part of a marketing campaign. One is to add a video to your homepage or your sales page. Either of these things will help you to immediately grab attention and increase conversions. Another option is to create a YouTube channel. This makes it very easy to reach a big audience and can even be highly profitable on its own. A video getting 100,000 views a month can easily earn you in the region of $200!
How to Get Started
To get started, you will need to invest in a small amount of equipment. You need a camera with good auto-focus and the ability to record in at least 1080p at 30fps (ideally better on both fronts). Even more important is good lighting, so invest in three soft boxes or another professional lighting solution.
Sound is also very important. An H1 pocket recorder paired with a lav mic will make a big difference at a low price point. You’ll then need to edit all this together in a piece of editing software such as Camtasia.
It all sounds like a lot but trust me, it’s more than worth the investment in terms of what you’ll get back out of it!