Category: internet marketing

Should Video be Part of Your Internet Strategy?

 

Here are just 6 statistics about video from the 50 statistics on the article from Insivia “50 video marketing statistics that you need to be aware of for 2013” see more

  1. According to ComScore, 45.4 percent of users viewed at least one video online over the course of a month and the average user spend over 16 minutes watching video ads in a month
  2. 86% of colleges and universities have a presence on YouTube, according to the University of Dartmouth.
  3. 90% of users say that seeing a video about a product is helpful in the decision process.
  4. 75% of executives watch work-related videos on business websites at least once a week.
  5. One minute of video is equal to 1.8 million words.
  6. According to Online Publishers Association, 80% of users recall a video ad they viewed in the past 30 days.

Using video is an effective way to engage with your customers, members and prospects.

Video engages people in a way that photos and text alone can’t. For small
business owners and nonprofit managers, using video in your marketing
can bring faces, voices, personality, and heart to your operation, while also
demonstrating your authenticity. To top that, on sites like Facebook, video
posts generate 100% more engagement than text-only posts.

Here are five reasons to add video to your marketing mix.

  1. Tell your story quickly:  People don’t have a lot of time, so you want to get your message across quickly. Video can communicate a lot of information in a short amount of time.
  2. Put a face to your business or organization: A video helps bring your business or organization to life, and it makes your communications more personal. Putting people on camera makes you and your team real to your customers and members.
  3. Get your readers to remember your message: Let’s face it: In general, we remember little of what we read. Our retention of a message is much better (estimates are three times better) when it includes pictures, sound, and motion. Your readers can only take action if they remember what you said.
  4. People enjoy video: People like to read, but they really like video. We watch TV, go to the movies, stream video content to our computers and mobile phones, and more.
  5. Creating your video is fun and easy to share: You can create your own videos or work with a partner.  Share your video is available on YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, your own website and blogs.  Videos hosted on these sites can help your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts as they give sites like Google and Bing yet another  piece of content associated with your brand to crawl and serve up to the masses.

Some Examples

Welcome to your business.  Put a personal face on your business. Use this on your website, facebook page, play it at a trade show, share at a business networking meeting, ad to your blog.

Demo of a product or service.  Show how your product is made, how you carry out your services, add value to the product by showing the quality and details of how it is made.  Excellent for artists, artisans, creators of all types.

Tourist destination.  Show your area, environment, activities, experiences.

Fundraising.  Show the issue or problem and what you are doing to be part of the solution.  Touch the heart of the viewer and get them engaged so they want to take action.

Tour a Property.  Show a property for sale, destination, features and

There are lots of ways to make a video and a variety of approaches.  Create your plan, shoot and edit the video – on your own or with a partner.  Contact me with any questions on how to get started. 

See Eckova Film and Media Production for more details about creating video.

Using Stats to Identify a Target Market

Review your website statistics and use the results to identify potential target audiences for new products and revenue.

Expand your market
Expand your markets

When you are creating your business plan and strategy you start by identifying your target audiences and what they need and how you provide something that meets that need.

After you have had your website up for a while – you might find that there are other people who are finding your website that may be outside of your original idea of a target audience.  Reviewing your website statistics may give some clues and ideas of other potential markets that you could tap into.

Example:

As a nonprofit of small business you may directly serve people in a specific geographic location.  Perhaps you provide training or consulting as part of your services.

Website Statistics - Map of Recent Visitors
Website Statistics - Map of Recent Visitors - view from Statcounter.com

You notice in your website statistics that you have visitors coming to your website from other parts of the country – or even internationally.  Although you don’t know WHO these people are – look at the path they follow and what pages of the website they look at.  This will give you some idea of their interest.  Also you may be able to tell where they came from (link from another website) or what key words they used in a search.

What could you offer these people?  Would you be able to charge for it?  Would it be appropriate for your mission? Would it potentially add value to your organization profile – and also of use to your own clients and affiliates?

You may want to consider creating “Information Products” that would meet the needs of this potential target audience.  Here are a few suggestions:

  • Webinars on specific topics.  These could be available free or for a fee.  With many webinar softwares it is possible to record the session, and make them available on your website of via a link.  You could also be building a library of these over time and offer on DVD.
  • eBooks. An eBook is readily accessible to download for free or by purchase.  Review the current publications that you have now – or think of topics that lend themselves to a book, whitepaper, or short tutorial that would be useful to this potential market.
  • Printed Books.  Investigate publishing a printed book using a self publishing firm.
  • Video. Videos are increasingly popular as a means for delivering training and tutorials and providing information to your target audiences.  If you are charging a fee for video views the videos could be in a subscription / members area.

As with any new product or service you will need to do your research, decide on the content, method and resources needed in order to carry this out.

Here are a few links to get you started. These are sources that I have used after researching and found they offer good value

  • Webinars – GVO Conference enables you to put on a webinar, record it and store the link to use.  It is a good way to start as there are good tutorials on how to begin and help getting setup.
  • eBooks  and Printed Books – LULU.Com gives you the means to publish eBooks and printed publications.
  • Videos – Screenr.Com has a free version that you can use to create tutorial. YouTube has a basic editor for video.

Denise Davies is an Internet and media consultant.  She works with nonprofit organizations and small businesses to maximize their effective use of the Internet to build their organization and achieve their objectives.  If you have questions or would like to learn more contact through the contact form

How can your local organization benefit from international web traffic?

Ideas for building new revenue streams outside of your local area. You may have a local business but see web traffic from international or outside your area.

Expand your productsWhen you review your website traffic statistics do you notice that some of that traffic comes from other countries? or maybe even from different parts of your own country that you consider are outside of your target market?

Perhaps you have always thought of your business or organization serving the local area where you live and that those other visitors to your website are not of interest to you.

There are some things that you can do to localize and appear more frequently in local listings – for example you can set up your business page on google maps; you can register your site with local portals; you can include town and city names in your key words and describe your target area in the content page.

However I would like to explore some ways that you can consider to benefit from the greater geographic coverage that the Interent provides.

First of all – what information do your visitors find MOST interesting.  Which are your most popular pages?  Review the products and services that you offer now.

Offer an online teleseminar webinar – there is no barrier to a person attending a teleseminar or webinar from anywhere in the world.  For some systems they only need a phone.  Others provide Voice over IP where attendance can be via the web so there is not even the cost of a phone call. Select a teleseminar system that enables you to record the call and you can have this on your website.

Digital information products – to build your non-local market – consider creating information products that can be delivered by a download once a person has paid. This removes the problems of shipping, packaging and can happen directly from your website without your direct intervention.  Your research will give you some hints about the types of products that will be of interest – and you can specifically aim at building that audience no matter where they are located.  Here are some examples of digital information products:

  • Teleseminar registration or downloading recording
  • EBooks
  • Tutorials and “How to”

Affiliate products – you may not want to create the information products yourself.  Look for affiliate products that you can sell from your website. You can browse Click bank and Commission Junction to select products that would be of interest to your target audience.

These are just a few ideas on expanding your business or developing revenue streams that you may not have considered as a “local” organization or business.

To discuss specific ideas on creating information products for your business contact me at Aleph Consulting