StrikeHawk eCommerce Inc.

When most people think of YouTube™, most likely they think of guys dancing on treadmills and bootleg clips of Stephen Colbert, from Comedy Central’s Colbert Report.

But, YouTube™ can effectively be used in eCommerce Marketing on a shoe-string budget! This free service hosts over 1bn videos viewed by millions everyday. The bandwidth is free as well as the video storage.

If your vendor provides product videos, download them! With some help by a video editor or your know-it-all nephew or niece, you can begin to put together some personalized company infomercials. Ideally, you should have a video for EACH product or service that you sell where the product or service requires a certain level of demonstration.

Michael Miller, author of YouTube for Business: Online Video Marketing for Any Business (Que 2008), points to Smith as a perfect example of how a small business owner or entrepreneur can hit it big on YouTube. “YouTube gets 20 million viewers a month. That’s a really big market to tap into and there are no placement costs. It’s low cost and high potential,” says Miller.

However, if you presume it's going to be as simple as uploading stock video footage from a vendor; think again. “The companies who fail on YouTube are the people who don’t understand the community aspect of YouTube or what attracts viewers,” says Miller.

Getting Youtube Viewers for eCommerce Marketing

The three categories of video marketing

• Informational videos. Offer behind-the-scenes tours of your operation led by a sharp professional. This builds consumer trust in the company and in your product or services.
• Educational videos. How-to instructional videos demonstrating installation, use of product or services. Include these links in your emails upon successful purchase.
• Entertainment videos. Do something funny or lovable with your product or service. Can you remember your favorite Cocoa-Cola Christmas commercial or Wendy's "Where's the BEEF!"?

Getting noticed on YouTube

Producing an engaging video for YouTube is just the first step in launching a successful marketing campaign on YouTube. With 20 million viewers a month and literally millions of videos to choose from, it’s easy to get lost in the crowd.

Here are some tips for making your company’s videos rise to the top and leveraging them to help your business:

• Social Bookmarking. YouTube has a terrific tool to announce your new videos on services such as twitter and facebook.
• A call to action. You've got the best video in the industry, but without a call to action or a company name and an address to visit, you lost the opportunity to close the sale. Make sure you include your Web address and other company contact information. Most hosting control panels assit you in creating a redirecting sub-domain or URL redirect. Make it SHORT and easy to remember!
• Using the right production values. Use the advice of @reelseo Optimizing Video For YouTube Video Sharing
• Choose your keywords carefully. YouTube site’s search engine keywords is essential. So, choose words that best fit your subject matter and niche. Keywords should draw in a broad enough audience to get the exposure you seek.

Other Benefits to Using YouTube

• Rising through the ranks. Now that Google owns YouTube, there’s the added benefit that a video on YouTube automatically goes into Google’s search engine. Videos tend to catapult to the head of the line. It’s a great way to increase your site visibility in the rankings.
• Spare your own site the bandwidth drain of streaming video. For some companies, generating new business or exposure via YouTube may be low priority. However, some are finding it’s a great place to park video clips using YouTube’s bandwidth with a simple link from the corporate site.
• Create your own channel and customer base. Anytime you post a video, YouTube creates what is called a profile channel. Viewers can subscribe to that channel. Businesses can then send out e-mails to those subscribers.