Video Marketing for Small Businesses

Video marketing services for small businesses can be a tough sell.

Small business owners, marketing managers, and bloggers often don’t know how to start a video marketing strategy, who’s video marketing services to work with, and why video marketing is for their blog, marketing campaign, or business.

Last week a partner of mine asked me to do some basic research to help with a his new video marketing and production services. The target market was an in-house list of online bloggers, offline small business owners and marketers of different kinds.

He didn’t want to spend all his time convincing people, he just wanted them to be well informed and then make their decision based on a special offer. So I thought bringing that information to others would be very helpful to people in the same situation across the web.

Here’s the situation I saw with video marketing

On the one hand there’s the self made video and social media rockstars, earning millions of views. And on the other, are the corporate giants and the high priced agencies they hire to get monetization.

It’s just like General Marketing and the Guru Problem.

The benefit of placing emphasis on the medium is obvious. The methods to reap them and the proper understanding are clouded  by the hype, greed, and the corporate drive to make video marketing on sites like Youtube an absolute science.

So let’s get straight to the language of business.

Video marketing by the numbers

Most people who start video marketing usually do so on Youtube.  There are other sites, but Youtube is the big one. They make their
statistics publicly available.  This is a good place to start getting an idea of who’s watching and why the site is worth having a presence on.

You can also peep this quick infographic of the same information from SEOReel.com

A little video marketing research

“Follow the money” is a good rule of thumb for anyone trying to determine the best direction to go in business.These report summaries from E Marketer help us get clearer on where the money is in all this video marketing craziness.

Here’s an projection on spending from 2010, highlighting investment in
online video ads.

Notice the projection for 2012 and how they make it a point to say these are steady gains. Video marketing is not going anywhere.

Small business owners, bloggers, and marketing managers definitely need to start with some type of overview of the audiences they are trying to reach. Here’s another stat from this past February to help with that.

The last line of the summary emphasizes entertainment in brand messages, revealing a key strategy toward any type of returns on investments.

eMarketer also answers some key questions but leaves you with some good thoughts for research if you can’t afford to purchase the reports.

• How do people in you niche spend their time with media?
• What do they use and what do they like to watch?

Video marketing: thought leaders around the webSmall businesses need to be concerned about proper focus in video marketing and being aware some of the pitfalls. Marketers and bloggers need to seek out proper sources for content writing and backing up any claims on video services or consultation.

Here’s an overview of some experts located across the country. I’d start here to see what type of advice is being offered up, from what perspective, and then find more people like them.

This interview by Emarketer.com writer/analyst Tobi Elkin with Charles Wax is a great model to start with. Charles talks about some of the best video marketing practices and what to look out for.

Use this interview as a reference for getting important questions answered should you or your client need to get in touch with a provider in your area.

For example, “What do most businesses coming to you want in a video marketing service?”

You can learn to avoid crashing and burning with your video marketing by aligning yourself with the solutions to common mistakes. Sometimes failure is the best way to discover the right way to go. And they don’t have to always be your own. That’s the advice I gave to my partner when discussing bad press. I got the idea from this Mashable.com article discussing mistakes in You Tube video marketing.

“YouTube requires as much thought as any other social media channel and shouldn’t be looked at as a dumping ground for marketing videos,” Justin Gonzalez, social media strategist

The top ten innovative ads were split between TV and online video, according to Mashable. This goes to the credit of online video’s market share and attention factor.

Big brand viral video marketing solutions provider, Feed Company offered AdAge.com a 10 step process for attaining their idea of going truly viral found in their press section of their website.

But going viral is very much an “eye of the beholder” type thing. There’s many paths to success, and you should have other models to research. Feed Company offers a big brand viewpoint which is important in for the big picture.

But my crowd is more the one man operation or the small business. These are people who are looking for the more grassroots approach, using sites like Facebook and Youtube. Closer to home for me here is New York’s own, Catherine Gail Reinhard, offering a more niche frame of reference:

“As YouTube has grown into the preeminent video sharing service online, marketers have tried, with limited success, to broadcast themselves and to reach audiences with their messaging.”Catherine-Gail Reinhard, Creative Director

Her ten step program is another practical resource. Blog Success students can make excellent use of this to begin a proper video marketing brand strategy. Use this as a checklist, at the very least.

Which of these are you doing or haven’t begun doing yet?

Her other mashable article gives an overview of 5 You Tube brands. This should kickstart some more niche research. In each brand there’s a small description listed. Take note and consider how you want to approach video marketing.

Bloggers, business owners, and marketing managers all need to figure out how to drill down into a niche in a mass “marketplace” like Youtube. What categories do your or your clients video brands fall into?

Sources of Inspiration

Finally when all else fails … and you’re just plain tired of reading, conceptualizing video marketing couldn’t get any more fun. Sometimes it’s just helpful to watch a few videos. That’s part of the appeal of video marketing  and video marketing services.

Here are a few places to watch what’s hot across the social networks.

• Mashable
• Funny Or Die
• Guardian UK
• Advertising Age

Here’s a resource list of video sites

People to follow on Twitter

This isn’t an exhaustive list. Video marketing experts are all over the place, including in your local areas. These are examples of the kinds of people small businesses and marketers should be on the lookout for.

@catherine_gail
@DavidMurdico
@justinSF
@DaisyWhitney
@SimplyZesty
@SupercoolAgency
@markrrobertson

Bloggers can glean great information and platform off of this short list of video marketing experts and service providers. Later, your research might turn up even better results for your own personal situation.

Hopefully this information has pulled together enough for small businesses, marketers and bloggers to avoid the run around. Don’t waste your time getting caught up with all the content published daily on the subject.  Use the information here to get on solid ground. Then go get a piece of that video marketing pie. It’s delicious.

Guest post by Christopher Flores