Promote Your Business with Online Video

Using Video to Promote Your Business?  You Should Be

Have you considered advertising online with video content?   If you aren’t using Video SEO to promote your business online, there’s never been a better time, and there never will be.  This is a great time to give it a try and start to establish a presence in the Video Marketing world.

Everyone from your little sister to your grandmother is online, and they’ve all shared or watched videos that moved them in one way or another.  By using this powerful medium, your business can harness that power to help promote your brand, sell a product, or even defend your reputation.

Some of the major benefits of using video to promote your business online:

• Videos are more engaging than other forms of online advertising – Because videos stimulate multiple senses they tend to engage the audience more than static images or text.    This stimulation leads to longer time on the website, increased page views and the ability to integrate more calls to action on your website.  Ultimately this increased interaction should lead to more conversions and sales.

• Search Engines are Hungry for Video – There is a relatively small amount of video online, when compared to text and images.   This is one of the reasons that search engines are hungry for more video.  The search engines have even adapted their results pages to include special sections for highlighting videos, usually appearing in the video results at the bottom of the SERP’s.

• Videos Rank Quickly in the Search Engines – A properly optimized video will rank for targeted keywords in a very short period of time, usually in several days, whereas a text file or web page may take months to achieve the same rankings.    This quick placement can help a business to get exposure early on, while their organic search engine optimization efforts are still taking hold.   As a secondary effect, the additional exposure can lead to more links from sites in your niche, and others looking to add content to their blogs and web pages.

• Video sharing sites allow you to reach more customers – Sites like YouTube are now getting more search queries than Yahoo and Bing.   This is a great indication that consumer behavior is changing, and they are now looking to the video sharing sites for more than entertainment, they are looking for how-to videos, and educational clips.    If you are able to give away a bit of valuable information, you will become a subject matter expert, and consumers will look to you when it’s time to pay a professional to do the work.

There are a myriad of other reasons to get started with a video marketing campaign but the biggest reason to start now may be the relative lack of competition.   In a couple of years your competition will have saturated your niche with online videos, and you’ll be playing catchup.   Take the leap and begin your video marketing efforts now while the market is new and mistakes are forgiven, and you’ll be far better off down the line.

#2 Video SEO Company in the United States

HighPoint Search Marketing was recently voted the #2 Video SEO company in the United States for February 2009 by Top SEO’s.   This is the 3rd month in a row that we have been ranked for our Video SEO efforts, but the first time in the top 3.

We are very happy to be honored for our work with Video Search Engine Optimization.  Although Video SEO is not as established as other forms of Internet Marketing, we see it as a growing trend in the near future, and are happy to be involved at the forefront of this powerful new medium.

To see the rest of the rankings, follow this link: Top 10 Video SEO Firms in the United States.

In this post, Darren Rowse of Problogger gives us 3 relevant reasons to consider using Video on your Blog or your website. This is entirely Darren’s content, but I thought it was an excellent article and worth sharing.

Earlier in the week I wrote a post arguing that Text is King in the online space which caused some interesting discussion (both in the comments and on Twitter).

While I did try to qualify the post by saying that I do think video has its place and that it’ll continue to grow as a medium, particularly in some demographics, some people saw my post as me ‘writing off’ video.

So today I wanted to write a short post giving three reasons why I do believe in video and will continue to use it on my blogs. I won’t do it exclusively (ie I’ll primarily be investing my time into text) but I do believe that it’s a great compliment to the written form of communication that I focus upon.

1. Video Gives You a Voice and Face – perhaps the biggest thing that I noticed when I started posting videos here at ProBlogger was that I noticed readers interacting with me in a different way. Suddenly the emails I received had a more personal edge. Strangers started emailing me using a tone and language that was more familiar – as if they knew me. At first I didn’t realize what was happening – but after a while I realized that people felt like they ‘knew’ me. This happens with text as well – but video has a way of showing your personality. It shows your face and lets people hear your voice as it really is. This ‘personal’ aspect is powerful.
2. Video Connects with Different Personalities and Learning Styles – another thing that I noticed when I started using video was that I started getting comments on video posts from people I’d never heard of before. I started getting comments that would start with – ‘I’ve been reading your blog for 12 months but never commented before but just wanted to say…..’. We all have different learning styles and personalities – some of us learn better by hearing and seeing – while others by reading. Video appeals to a different crowd and can potentially widen your audience.
3. Video Opens Up Opportunities to Illustrate Certain Principles in Creative Ways – some things are very difficult to communicate in the written word. There are just some times when you need a tone of voice or body language to be able to ’show’ people what you mean. Video allows you to do this. It also opens up different ways of illustrating the principles you’re talking about. For example in my last video on First Impressions I started the video with a little sequence that illustrated what I went on to talk about – that sequence was commented upon by many and wouldn’t have been achievable with text (or at least not in the way I did it).

Should you write off video? No way! It is definitely a medium that I feel is worth experimenting with (and so far it seems 67% of you have been doing just that if our latest poll is anything to go by).

I guess all I was trying to say with my last post is that just because video is on the rise doesn’t mean that Text is dead. I think it is here to stay and will remain ‘king’ for quite some time yet!

Text, Video, Audio and other forms of communication online all have their place and can all be powerful. I find them especially powerful when you combine them rather than focus upon one – (but that’s partly just my style). Choosing your mediums and working out how much to focus upon them will probably come down to weighing up a number of factors including:

• Your topic
• Your audience and what mediums they’re most comfortable
• Your personality and how you best communicate
• Your skills in presenting, speaking, writing etc
• Your resources and access to cameras, bandwidth etc

OK – so that is enough of me – what do you think?

Darren Rowse is widely considered one of the top experts on blogging and his is one of a handful of blogs that I read daily.  If you have a blog and you have not visited ProBlogger, you are missing out on a valuable resource.

Mountain View Chevy

Auto Dealers are having trouble with sales in this economy.  Many dealerships are closing their doors.  But it’s not all doom and gloom.  There are some savvy Internet sales managers taking advantage of the downtime to create Internet Video Marketing campaigns that they hope will pay off big when the economy rebounds.  Early indications show that they are on to something.

One example of an automotive dealer that is excelling with the use of online video is Mtn. View Auto Group in Chattanoga Tennessee.  The Auto Group is currently running video marketing campaigns for both their Ford and Chevrolet stores.  Led by eCommerce Director Don Erwin, Mtn. View has embraced Online Video Marketing and they are dominating the local car market online.

By utilizing as many as 10 different video sharing sites, and embedding their videos on a separate blog, Don is able to make sure that their videos are getting maximum exposure, and targeting their local auto enthusiasts and car buyers through as many channels as possible.   Running a variety of campaigns allows them to provide more content to their viewers, and highlight specific vehicles that need to be moved off the lot.   Don’s team runs separate campaigns to target different vehicle buyers – one campaign spotlights used vehicles, another campaign focuses on trade-ins and yet a third is composed of new vehicle walk-arounds.

By using separate campaigns, they have been able to target specific vehicle niches, and the buyers associated with those markets.  Their videos show up in the search results for keywords related to thatsubject – I.E. someone searches for the term “Chattanooga Corvette” they will find Mtn. View Chevy’s video of a 2009 Corvette Z06 in the top 3 results – which means that the viewer of the video fits their target audience from a needs standpoint, as well as geographically, and in most cases this means that they are in the buying phase and looking for the local dealer.

Not only does this strategy lead to ranking for highly targeted search terms, but it drives more traffic to their website, and takes up more positions in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP’s).   The benefits of owning more spots in the SERP’s is that you create a larger online presence, you have more control over what is being said about you online, and you are able to push your competition down in the results.

By strategically targeting customers through online video, Mtn. View Auto Group has increased their overall Internet sales, gained a larger share of the online market, and reached more customers than ever before.  As they continue to work with online video, they are honing their processes and improving their effectiveness, and their reach begins to grow as well.  They are gaining valuable knowledge and experience, not to mention maket share, and when video marketing online begins to hit it’s prime, they will be well positioned to dominate, and take their sales to a new level.

While there aren’t a lot of businesses that are embracing online video marketing with the same vigor as Mtn. View Auto, this model can be adapted for almost any business, and now is the time to get in, while errors will be forgiven, there are fewer competitors, and the market is not yet saturated.

Any predictions about the full scope of online video in the future are pure speculation at this point, but the potential implications for business are huge, and when Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 Billion in October of 2006, it was a pretty good indication that the world’s leading search engine has plans to make it big.  Bundle that with the introduction of Universal Search, and it’s easy to see that online video marketing has a bright future.

There is a huge opportunity for those businesses that are early adopters of this increasingly powerful advertising medium.  Starting an Internet Video Marketing campaign now will pay off big dividends down the line.

Get in now or get left behind.

Denver-based HighPoint Search Marketing was recently rated as the 4th Best Video SEO Company in the United States by Top SEO’S.com.  While this is the first time HighPoint has been honored for their work with Video SEO, we expect that it will not be the last.

CEO Christopher Gragg said “I’m honored to receive this recognition for our work.  Our philosophy has always been to provide our clients with excellent results and the rest will take care of itself.  To see our company ranked with other reputable SEO companies ArteWorks, Fathom SEO, and EveryZing is an honor, and reinforces the fact that we are accomplishing our mission – to provide our clients excellent results.”

The Video SEO Company Rankings can be accessed on Top SEO’s.com at the following link > http://www.topseos.com/rankings-of-best-video-seo-companies.

If you would like to see what Video SEO can do for your company, contact HighPoint Search Marketing today.