Videos are a great way to differentiate your business and YouTube is no longer regarded as just an entertainment site. It has grown into an invaluable business resource. With some time and creativity your videos can open new opportunities for your small business that would make a Fortune 500 company cringe with envy. Here are ten reasons why YouTube is a must for small businesses.

1.) It’s Free
Unlike television ads or radio spots YouTube and for the most part social media is free. To become a visible entity on the web it takes time and effort, not money and connections like in traditional media. This medium can be leveraged so a small start up has the same potential to go viral as a much more recognized brand and that can happen very quickly with videos. YouTube is the most watched website for videos and your YouTube channel is like having a second website without the cost of hosting and upkeep.

2.) Drive Sales
A video on YouTube is a great referral to your site. Your video can be seen by many people, optimized and shared through different social media tools like Facebook and Twitter. Because each video will have specific keywords or Tags associated with it. It will be found by the folks who are looking for you and your products via search engines like Google which owns YouTube and has about 70% of the search engine market. A powerful medium to showcase your products and build leads.

3.) SEO
As I mentioned, a YouTube Channel is like having a second site and lends room for you to describe your company and the products and services you provide. Along with the Channel you can describe each video individually with tags to help weed out the folks looking for cute kitty shenanigans. Tagging your video for SEO purposes will give you a great advantage of being found in general search. Each SERP page provides results for videos. For instance if you sell “baseball cards”, that key term in general search will have millions of results but, on video only thousands apply.  Because the SERP page prominently shows video results there is much less competition and therefore giving you a greater chance of being found on page uno. That will lead to much more exposure to your brand.

4.) Huge Audience
YouTube exceeds 2 billion views a day. More than 700 billion videos were examined in 2010. Users published more than 13 million hours of content and are the third most visited website in this known universe, bested only by Facebook and Google, respectively.

5.) Product Support
Provide your customers with useful videos on the most common problems and questions. This will reduce your company’s support costs. A video tutorial on the proper usages of your products beats a convoluted directions page on your website any time. They can watch and pause as they’re assembling as well — all with free YouTube videos.

6.) Training
Use YouTube for product training. If you have a sales force and distributers around the globe, a short series of training videos will save you a ton of money on traveling costs. Simply upload your training videos to YouTube and grant your salespeople access. This will also be useful to new in coming employees as the material is already archived and ready to go.

7.) Engagement
You have the option to let viewers comment on each video. This gives your small business a unique opportunity to correspond with potential customers directly on your channel. Also, sharing your video via social media gives it even more exposure and chance to communicate with folks on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.

8.) Customer Testimonials
A video testimonial from an excited loyal customer can go a long way. Simply having written testimonials on your website leads to the question  of who actually wrote it. Anybody can write, but with video, perspective clients can see and hear the real deal with their own eyes and ears. The trust value and authenticity of your customer recommendations sky rocket. And you’ll have them forever and use them for specific market strategies. You cannot put a price tag on this, it’s that valuable.

9.) Insight
For every video you upload, YouTube offers free analytics data via the Insight feature where you can see statistics on views, demographics, community and subscribers. Most importantly, there’s discovery data that shows you how people are finding your videos, including the links they followed to get there. In addition, you can see how many views you are getting through the YouTube player page, embed player and mobile devices.

10.) Fun
Putting together a company video whether it be a holiday message or a just for the hell of it lip dub video can be loads of fun and boost company moral. We are seeing more and more small businesses having a blast with video and their company brand. These entertaining videos are conveying an important message that they are fun to work for, buy from and do business with. This highlights the social human nature behind the logo and gives a welcoming feel to any future business relationship.

There could be a blog post written for each reason above, probably a whole book. The website for your business is just part of the entire online opportunity. With YouTube videos you can give a no doubt message to your audience. Please don’t have your site built, fold your arms and wait. Take your HD video camera out and start recording the amazing things that are going on in your company right now. Be proactive in your small business marketing.

We’ve heard them all. Excuses that is. We’ve been at this Internet Marketing game for almost 10 years now. In that time we’ve seen a lot of things change with respect to the Internet, our industry, the economy, politics, etc. But, one thing hasn’t seemed to change much. That’s the excuses and objections that we hear from small businesses about why they aren’t using the Internet to market their businesses.

I thought I would catalog 4 of the most common objections that we’ve heard from people over the years. I’ll also share a few comments from those same people after allowing us to help market their small businesses on the internet.

1.) We really don’t get a lot of business from our Website
This is probably the most common objection that we hear from people about doing business on the Web. Generally, this objection comes from a person whose Website has little or no hope of generating any business to begin with because it’s completely static and has been neglected for years.

I’m never surprised, albeit disappointed, when I hear an objection like this. What’s really at the heart of this comment is the disbelief that the Web can actually provide any real monetary value for their business. Like I said, we hear this one a lot. Fortunately, after they become Cazbah customers, we hear this quite a bit too:

“The Internet sales have been tremendous…much better than I had hoped for! During our first busy season, it was the max that I could possibly handle. We are also seeing an increase in our order size of about 40% over our walk-in trade. Our return on investment has been better than we ever anticipated.”
Diane Cappel, Owner – Cappels, Inc.
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2.) Our Website is really like an electronic brochure
Meaning? It’s doing nothing for us. The people who respond with this objection are typically rooted in some pretty basic and traditional marketing practices and haven’t yet embraced the Internet as the most effective marketing tool for their businesses.Once they step over their own objection, this is what we hear:

“Before Cazbah our Website was just an electronic brochure. With Cazbah, it’s an active part of our business that brings (sales) inquiries in that we can filter through.” “I would say on average, we’re talking about five to ten inquiries a day.”
Andy Severson, VP/GM – Armstrong Brands.
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3.) My customer’s aren’t on the Internet, or don’t use the Internet
Generally, we hear this excuse from traditional businesses, manufacturers or distributors, that have been doing business a certain way for a very long time. In most cases, these folks have restricted themselves to a particular territory or region and haven’t considered how the Web could change their business by opening up new markets or opportunities for them. Once we show them how much more efficient and effective (i.e., profitable) it is to do business on the Web we hear:

“We get more than 5 phone calls from the website each day. When somebody calls us from the Website they’re usually very interested in buying something. If we have it (in stock) we’ve got the sale. At least 60% of our sales are attributable to the Website and plenty of the rest of the sales are helped by the Website because we can refer people to it…”
Don Welch, Owner – Cylinder Services.
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4.) We don’t sell our products online
This objection comes from people who don’t yet understand the power of the Internet to reach new customers, regardless of the type of products they are selling. In most cases, they don’t believe that anyone would spend the kind of money that it takes to buy their products on the Internet. There are still quite a few people that we run into who have the incorrect assumption that the Web is only good for consumer products that will easily fit into a shipping box. Fortunately, we know otherwise and so do all of our customers:

“Before Cazbah we had no ability to sell online. Since our relationship with Cazbah (our business) has probably doubled. We ship nationwide every week, almost every day, whether it’s small sales UPS or common carrier tractor trailer. The volume and the ticket sales are just tremendous. We are now getting three to five to 10 thousand dollar sales.”
Joe Jackson, Owner – Bristol Valley Hardwoods.
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What are some of the objections you have to expanding your business online? What are some of the successes you’ve had through your website? Write back we would love know and help if we can.

Customer testimonials are a great selling tool and have been used in marketing and selling circles for a very long time. Frankly, there’s no better way to communicate the value that you provide to your customers than through a testimonial from an existing satisfied customer. Your prospects are much more likely to take their word for it, than yours.

There are several types of customer testimonials and they include: The official customer endorsement letter, where your customer writes a brief albeit thorough letter on her company letterhead endorsing your product or service; The customer interview, where you interview your  customer and document her responses; The testimonial video, where you conduct an interview with your customer and capture it on video.

All of these forms are useful but, there’s no better way of communicating your unique value to your prospects than through a streaming customer video testimonial on your website. The power of video in this context cannot be overstated.

Gone are the days of Advertising Agencies, expensive video shoots, film crews and hired talent. All you really need is a reasonable and relatively inexpensive digital video camera (or video capture device i.e., a smart phone), the ability to transfer the video file to your computer, some editing software, the talent to use it and a willing customer or two.

There are 5 things that you need to keep in mind when creating customer video testimonials:

First, what is the goal of the video testimonial? Well, as with all of your marketing and selling activities, it should be to get more of the right customers to do business with you. Having customers is mandatory for any business. Having the ‘right’ customers is optional and is something that successful businesses learn to distinguish sooner or later. That being said, this should impact your choice of which customers you want to get a video testimonial from. Pick the ones that you would like to duplicate. Don’t choose the ones who cause you fits and sleepless nights. They probably won’t give you a good testimonial anyway.

Second, the idea is to have the people viewing the video testimonial to identify and associate with the person speaking on the video. Therefore, it’s important to consider where your prospects are in their lives and in their businesses at the time that they are viewing the video. Having the person on the video talk about what their situation was like when they were at that point is very important. Ask your existing customer to talk about the problem that you solved or the pain that you eliminated. Chances are the person viewing the video has a similar problem or pain.

Third, everyone is concerned about results and return on investment. Your prospects are no exception. Make sure that the person that you are interviewing on video talks about the results related to your product or service in as specific terms as possible. Some examples of these results include, increased sales revenues, reduced costs, increased income, reduced cycle times, etc. The more concretely she describes the results that you have achieved for her, the better.

Fourth, your interviewee should give a very clear and articulate expression of her satisfaction with the service that she has received from your company. One of the things that I like to include here is to have her talk about how long she has been your customer and how that relationship has continued to grow and improve over that time. This builds credibility and communicates the legitimacy of your business due to the longevity of your customer relationships. On the other hand, if you have customers who have had significant results in a short period of time, this is another great message that can be communicated through your video testimonial.

Fifth and finally, keep it real and don’t be phony! Nobody likes phony people. Actually, only phony people like phony people. In this socially conscious day and age phoniness will not be tolerated, especially as it relates to customer video testimonials. The more candid you can be and the more realistic the expression of your existing customer’s satisfaction on video, the better. Keep in mind that these testimonials are not an advertisement for your company. They are the next best thing to a first person referral, from one trusted friend to another.

For years now my customers have asked me about video on their websites and how that medium might be used to compliment their products and services sales. Until recently, I have always been a bit cautious because of the time and cost of producing videos versus the benefit received from such a marketing activity.

In the last year we’ve seen a number of tools introduced into the marketplace to increase value while decreasing the amount of time spent producing videos. Social media sites like YouTube and Facebook have made it very easy to upload videos and share them. Additionally, video camera and even cell phone technology have made it much easier to create videos and get them onto the internet for viewing.

Why
So why would you ever want to create a video for your ecommerce web site? You want sales. After all isn’t that why you have a commerce site? Video can give you a real competitive advantage by sharing your knowledge and advice on how to get the most out of the product or service you are selling. This will attract viewers who,if done correctly, can become customers.

How
I like to use a video camera called Flip Video. This inexpensive video recorder is small and easy to use. It creates quality video without a lot of complexity. Most importantly Flip Video has very easy to use software for editing and uploading your videos. Once you have shot your video you need to decide where to upload it. I use YouTube as the hub for my customer’s videos. YouTube allows you to store your videos for free and has a number of tools to allow you to promote them. Once I have uploaded the video to YouTube I can embed that video on my customer’s web site, blog, Facebook, etc.

Results
In the end the reason we do this is because we are creating value. We are showing the world what we know about our products and services so we can build trust and ultimately make more sales. This is precisely what a number of our clients have done. For instance take a look at my customer’s video listed on the Google search page for the term “saniguard spray”. My customer doesn’t just sell Saniguard spray, he creates value by showing how to use it properly. This video has done a lot to increase their sales of the Saniguard spray product line. Lastly I will leave you with a video that took me about an hour and a half to shoot, produce, and upload. I used a Flip Video, uploaded to YouTube and then embedded the video to my customer’s appropriate product web page. The “video value” my customer creates in this video will be sure to increase his sales. How can you increase your “video value”?