This is a guest post from Phyllis Zimbler Miller, an author who writes on Internet marketing and social media.
Free video sites on the Internet are not just for teens who want to share their latest exploits or book authors showcasing book trailers.
These video sites actually offer a free or low-cost opportunity for small businesses to both market their businesses and help run their businesses more effectively.
Here’s how:
Marketing on the Internet:
Let’s say you have a home organizer business and you want to reach more clients in your metropolitan area.
You know the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words”? How about a two-minute video showing a very messy master bedroom closet and then the “after organization” closet.
According to book authors Patrick Renvoise and Christophe Morin of Neuromarketing: Understanding the “Buy Buttons’ in Your Customer’s Brain, the primitive brain (my term – there’s actually a technical term for this brain) makes decisions for us – and the decisions are based on contrasts. So before and after pictures make a huge impact on the primitive brain.
How much more so a two-minute video – perhaps of a satisfied customer rather than of you – giving us a tour of before and after you organized her/his closet?
You can film this video yourself and upload it to a free video-sharing site such as YouTube. Then you can send the video link to potential customers and you can also put the video on your own website if you have one (which you should have even if you have only a brick-and-mortar business).
Running a more effective business:
Another one of the most valuable business books I’ve ever read is The E Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber. To paraphrase, his premise is that, as business owners, we should set up systems for repetitive tasks so that employees can do these tasks efficiently the way we want them done.
Terry Dean (terrydean.org) creates videos for his interns so that he doesn’t have to teach the same thing over and over. I thought of him last week as I watched the snack bar owner at the gym teaching a new employee how to blend one of the drinks. Later I saw the snack bar owner watching a TV show on his laptop at the snack bar.
How much easier if the snack bar owner made a video of how to blend the drink? Then he could have new employees watch this video on the laptop while he did something else.
And the snack bar owner wouldn’t even need his own website to do this. He just uploads his training videos to one of the video-sharing sites. Some of these sites have password-protection options, so he can protect his blender drink recipe from prying eyes.
These are examples of how you can use free videos to both market your small business and run your small business more effectively. I’m sure you can come up with many more ways to use free videos for your business.
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller’s company has launched the monthly program http://www.WeTeachWebMarketing.com to help people promote their brand, book or business online.
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