Internet marketers can often be heard lamenting the fact that they did not get their start when Google was young and competition was sparse. They will moan about the money made during the pioneering period of the Internet before there was so much competition. Well, right now there is a new frontier that is very much like the early days of Google – that frontier is Youtube.
Before looking at how to promote a business on Youtube, we must look at why. First and foremost, there is little commercial competition when compared to a general search engine. Sure, videos showing cute kittens or someone shaking her booty are going to have a tough time standing out, but videos about a specific business in a specific place are likely to have only a couple of competitors to beat out for the top spot. Modern search engines now categorize search results, and one of the most popular categories is video. Depending on the search engine, having a #1 video on Youtube for a given search can be like having the #3 position in the engine’s general search – something that could take years for an independent site.
Now that we have seen why Youtube should be used to promote a business, let us look at a couple of ways to take advantage of it:
Tutorial Videos
For internet savvy people who are about to undertake a simple but unfamiliar task for the first time, Youtube is often the first stop they make. Tutorial videos can build goodwill among potential customers and act as a promotion at the same time. A good commercial tutorial will show someone not only how to clean their widget, but provide a link to the business that sells those widgets. For complicated tasks, a tutorial may intimidate do-it-yourselfers to the point that they would rather have the business that posted the video take on the project for them.
Product Reviews
For any popular product, finding the raw measurements and specifications of the product is easy. There are thousands of pages that list these things. A video review can give personal impressions that are absent on such pages. Whether that tool fits comfortably in a pocket is seldom something the manufacturer ads to its description of the tool. A video review is the next best thing to a potential customer actually handling the product himself, and if the video convinces him that this is indeed a product he should purchase now, it is very likely that he will follow a link to the product found in the video itself.
In internet terms, Youtube is a virtually untapped commercial resource. Like all frontiers, there is a window for businesses to capitalize that is rapidly closing with each success and each new business that becomes aware of the possibilities.
