Most marketing sucks – do you believe that? If you do, you might be having trouble marketing your own stuff. In one of his most memorable posts, Seth Godin tells us that marketers are storytellers. This is one of the keys to being a great marketer. You have to engage your audience, tell them a story that’s relevant to them, and then use that story to suggest a solution to whatever problem your audience is having. Today, one of the best mediums for conveying that story is video.
Promote Your Story To Your Friends
It’s easy to overlook your own social circle when promoting your new videos. However, your friends and family are probably your greatest asset when it comes to word of mouth advertising. Your mom would never tell you how ugly or awful you are. When you were a teenager, you might have been a little annoyed by that idea, but now it’s going to help spread your marketing message.
Old business partners, co-workers, friends, and venture capital partners can all be the first point-of-sharing for your vids. This is how organic growth starts.
Convert Your Story Into Multiple Usable Formats
When you start uploading your videos, don’t make the mistake of using just one video-sharing site. YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, Veoh, Metacafe, Flickr, and Break are all great places to upload your new video. One of the best, but lesser known options for video advertisements, is Spotify. As you can read about here https://ads.spotify.com/en-US/ad-experiences/video-ads/, this is because video ads are often viewed with no sound on other platforms, due to the user’s phone settings. However, because of the nature of Spotify, the sound will automatically be turned on which offers a valuable opportunity for your company’s message to be both seen and heard.
Of course, the problem is that these sites don’t all have the same video standards. Fortunately, a program like YTD’s youtube converter can fix this in no timends. The program allows you to upload, and convert, just about any video file type – you can optimize your videos for most sharing sites out there.
Use The Press Release
Press releases are underrated. Almost no one uses them to their full potential. Why not? Most people don’t know how. Press releases are often used to announce a company’s newest product or services – boring. No one cares.
What people care about is content – relevant content. So, instead of pestering people with information about your COO, use press releases to advertise your latest content. Companies like Ten Golden Rules use this tactic all the time to drive visitors to target blogs.
The “trick,” if you can call it that, is to produce exceptional content. Then, write a press release about it and link to it. If the article or blog post is any good, it will generate readership, social shares, and ultimately earn you enough meritorious links that you’ll push yourself higher in the SERPS. Does this stuff really work for anybody except marketing companies? Sure it does.
There is some research showing that press releases are viewed about 275 times during the week. The media (major media) views these releases an average of 70 times per week.
Get Personal
Personalizing your video is a great way to connect with users. It lets them get to know you, your likes and dislikes, and your values. Have you ever sat down to watch videos by your favorite artist or actor? After about 20 or 30 interviews, you start to get the feeling that you know this person – especially if the interviews are candid.
But you don’t know them – if you met them in person, it would be a little awkward to ask them how their cat was doing or tell them that their kids are growing up so fast. Yet, at the same time, the personal nature of their video interviews made you feel connected to them.
Now, you don’t have to do interviews to “get personal” with your audience. Just give viewers a glimpse into your life. For example, you could do a “live” video recording where you live, your town, and your favorite hangout spots. Use these places as backdrops for your video. So, maybe you’re not doing a video tour of your house. But, rather, you’re walking through your home as you do a video about something else or you’re walking through your favorite park while shooting.
YouTube starts, like Kina Grannis, used to do this, often filming from a hotel room, her bedroom, some random room in her house, or out in a park somewhere. She would also do “shout outs” for people who had birthdays at or around the time of her video’s posting. Not only did this help her connect with her fans, it made her more genuine. She wasn’t a pretentious musician. She was just like the rest of us.
Promote Your Brand Using Your Company’s Catalogs and Social Media
If you have a company with all the usual business stuff – catalogs, social media accounts, business cards, stationery, etc., use some of this stuff to promote your videos. Send your YouTube channel link out with every email, for example. Advertise your Vimeo channel in your catalog. You can also use websites such as Printivity to help with printing your catalog to make it personal and with exactly what you want inside it. Promote your video channels via Facebook and Twitter.
Hire A Marketing Firm
When all else fails, hire a marketing firm. It’s definitely not DIY, but a professional marketing firm can take over all of the heavy lifting of your campaign, allowing you to move on to more important tasks.
When using downloaded videos, remember to respect intellectual property rights.
Tammy Heckel started in marketing nearly twenty years ago promoting her parents’ small business. Now with a degree and a growing list of clients, she loves finding new and effective ways for reaching consumers with a variety of methods.