Video marketing is not only one of today’s leading means to market a service, product or business online but it is positioned to become even more of a driving force within the search marketing industry.
One of the most successful and long term ways to build your brand, build your channel and video views on YouTube is the power behind the subscriber. Internet marketers are well aware of the power behind subscribers, hence their long relationship with their FeedBurner accounts and history in email marketing. This will serve as a guide to using YouTube to initiate subscribers for your video channel.
In Q1 07 YouTube was the leader in online streaming video. Comscore reported “YouTube.com drove the lion’s share of the video streaming activity at the Google Sites property, with 53.5 million unique streamers and 1.1 billion streams initiated.” .
Comscore goes on to prove that “More than 126 million Americans viewed online streaming video in March.”
These numbers are pretty impressive and given the fact that this is a number of video views in America ONLY is a stand alone impressionable figure. Did you know that six out of ten consumers watch streaming video?
This means if you are not doing video marketing now then you are not capturing 60% of your market base!
Lets take a quick look at the top sites based on overall traffic globally. Alexa has a list of the top 500 sites globally and interestingly enough YouTube ranks #4 on their list. Not to mention additional video sites at #39, #41, #42, #75 and the list goes on.
Ok, so we know that video is growing rapidly and we know its worldwide. We know YouTube is globally the highest trafficked video sharing site in the world. Now its time for the secret to success on YouTube. That secret is the power of the subscriber.
The more subscribers you have the more people get to see your video via their subscriptions window. This is a powerful tool and technique to use when marketing on YouTube. Below are the steps to invite subscribers to your channel.
Once you log into your account simply click on the “account” link. The window below should appear.
Once you are at this screen click on My Contacts:
You will see all of the people you have sent friend requests to listed here with their status of the friend request listed to the left hand side. On the right hand side you have 3 powerful options. Send a message, Invite to group (great for segmenting your friends into marketable silos) and invite to subscribe. This last link allows you to send a message to a person literally inviting them to subscribe to your channel.
Here is your “call to action”. Unfortunately, YouTube does not allow you to do this on peoples channel directly so you have to request a friendship first so their is some leg work that goes into this but it is well worth the investment.
I will be posting on YouTube marketing techniques and tricks over the course of the next couple months. Stay tuned to learn more about video marketing and harnessing the power of YouTube.
Well I agree video marketing is becoming increasingly important.
But this bit here: “This means if you are not doing video marketing now then you are not capturing 60% of your market base!”
That would be the case if they only watched streaming video when they are online and did nothing else. I find that rather unlikely.
Well, I have to agree with Phil. What happens if my customer segment all have vision problems and can’t watch streaming video. Then the percentages don’t work for me.
Sorry.
That was information done by the kelsey group here:
http://www.kelseygroup.com/press/pr070524.asp
phil, when you say “That would be the case if they only watched streaming video when they are online and did nothing else. I find that rather unlikely.”
Why would they only have to watch online video? The way people operate when they are online is they surf the web, look through sites, research and watch video. So if a potential customer is trying to find you that doesnt mean that 60% of them have to watch streaming video and thats it. That means that streaming video reaches 60% of potential consumers so this does not mean your customers would have to soley be watching video.
The kelsey grouops steady seems pretty well put together according to the way they pull data of course all research numbers I personally take with a grain of salt.
Remember that its not neccisarily people literally on youtube or these video sharing sites trying to find you. Rather its search engine results pages, social bookmarking sites or other means that they stumble upon these videos while researching a product or service.
Small Business Marketing,
That is very funny! I doubte a vision impared person would be searching the web however I could be wrong. I mean I dont think audio marketing would work for the def nor would I think video marketing would work for the blind ;-) however again.. Those surveys have not been done yet ;-) jk.
I am a huge advocate on not just believing what people blog about. I challange people to take what they read and try to apply it to their business model.
Try out a service for video marketing and make sure you track and measure what is being done. You might be pleasantly suprised at what you find… or it might not work at all. Either way you will know for yourself.
All the best and happy holidays,
Joe Whyte
I agree. Video is increasingly becoming more and more widely available to the average internet surfer, and as a business you can’t afford to ignore it any longer if you are serious about establishing you’re brand.
I did video marketing for my ecommerce site for cyber monday and we had huge success with our business.
We reached more people this year then previous years.
We have not built a youtube channel yet but this is some great advice but looks like it takes a while to do.
Actually Joe I wasn’t being funny. There are products out there that can help the visually impaired read text – Zoom Text – check out http://www.wisdomware.com but still does not give them the ability to look at streaming video. I have clients who are visually impared though I don’t specialize in that segment.
Well, Joe they way you explained it in your comment makes perfect sense. That’s why I focused on this line:
“This means if you are not doing video marketing now then you are not capturing 60% of your market base!”
The way you phrased that made it sound like a bi-polar choice. Because if you would lose 60% of the market base by not advertising online then you would have to assume that 60% of the online market only watch online videos and can’t be reached via any other channels i.e. online games, blogs, news, funny pictures you name it. And that tacit assumption I found rather unlikely.
I think pretty much every video sharing site, including YouTube, offers you the choice of maximizing the video to “full-screen”, so that pretty much takes care of any vision impaired people. Half the people I know watch video that way.
Can’t wait to read the next article, Joe. :)
The one thing about video marketing is that it allows you to reach a whole new audience who may not be your typical blog reader or RSS subscriber.
Great write up. I agree with the power of subscribers on YouTube. We just added a service to help increase the subscriber base on your YouTube channel. This rounds out a great list of web video marketings services on YouTube we’re offering at http://www.WebVideoPromoter.com
I think boosting Youtube videos is not hard anymore.
Thank you for your article Joe. I started out video blogging before just about everyone else back in the summer of 2000. Back then all we had was singlereel.com and radicalzoo.com – the original Google Video and Youtube sites on the internet. But even back then I was producing videos for local clients and individuals.
Nowadays, I have to turn down work as it seems that everyone and his grandma now wants a new hot, viral video on Youtube. My how times have changed! Thank you again.