5 Ways Video Marketing Can Help Your Business

Have you heard? People have given up reading in favor of watching.

Well, maybe it hasn't gotten to that yet, but we are well on our way to becoming a society of viewers, rather than readers. And while that may be good news from some and bad news for others, businesses who fail to take notice will find themselves losing the battle for the consumer's attention, and that hurts the bottom line.

The good news is it isn't too late to hold onto your existing customers and to have them generate a buzz about you so they attract new customers to your brand.

So, how do you jump on the video bandwagon?

Here are 5 ways you can incorporate video into your marketing plan.

VIDEO AS A PRODUCT - You already create material that describes what you do. Those traditional brochures, handouts and flyers can be converted to a stream of images with you describing why it is of value to your customers. Wouldn't they rather hear it from you than read it on a card or flyer?
VIDEO COMMUNICATION - Things change all the time. Wouldn't it be great to be able to call up every customer and tell them what's new or exciting in your business? Chances are, your customers are being bombarded by Other People's Content all the time. But they know you and trust you, so send them a link, a video newsletter, or a short clip to let them know that they are on your mind and their needs are your priority.
VIDEO SERVICE DELIVERY - Instructional videos, helpful tips, guides on how to install your product, how to continue your exercise program at home, or how to contact you when they have a problem can go a long way t keeping existing customers happy and loyal.
VIDEO BRAND MANAGEMENT - Your customers develop a perception about the value of your products and services and you can increase that perceived value by adding video content to your site, your social media pages, newsletters and in-office displays. Testimonials, case studies, and research material may be ignored in print, but can get noticed as video content.
VIDEO IS A COMPETITIVE TOOL - You are in business for a lot of reasons, but in the end, you need to be profitable to survive and grow. Look at what your competitors are doing with social media. How are they marketing their products and services? Why not have their customers find you rather than have yours find them?

More people watch and connect with video than any other online activity.

43% More than Read Online Forums or Discussion Groups
56% More than Read Blogs
211% More than Listen to Podcasts

According to Cisco, 1.2 million minutes of video content will cross global IP networks every second by 2016. The good news is it isn't too late to establish a presence to have your content among the millions of minutes watched.

We can help.

Image credit: alexwhite / 123RF Stock Photo

Succeeding at Failure is Not an Option

Failure is one of those lessons everyone loves to learn from, as long as the lesson is at someone else's expense.

I love reading about failure, not because I like to see people lose the battle with the unknown and the known, but because it teaches us lessons. Either we learn how to fail forward to success, or we learn how to continue to succeed at failing.

The difference is a matter of setting expectations high enough to be both profitable and sustainable.

Back in the days when direct mail marketing campaigns were the rage, companies would play down the poor response rates they encountered by focusing on how few responses were needed to break even.

Today, the Internet has made even poorer response and click through rates seem attractive. Proponents of the Inbound Marketing approach have been very successful at developing a suite of tools and training modules designed to convince marketers that it is possible and profitable to capture new customers from the ether by following what we like to call the Post and Pay Method.

What is Post and Pay?

Post refers to creative content, like this blog post. No matter how interesting it is, it is only helpful in growing my business if someone sees it and acts on it. For that action to be profitable, it needs to lead to a sale, and that means it needs to be found.

That's where Pay comes in. I need to spend money to tell people it is there, or to have a link for it which will appear in search results.

Proponents of this Post and Pay approach will tell you what you are doing wrong if you don't get high responses, leads and conversions. It is your fault if you dont succeed at the numbers game. Similar to the old direct mail marketing days, the more people you reach, the greater the number of respondents.

So, if you are failing, you need to try harder, create more content, add the right tags, build keyword tables, create Calls-to-Action and Landing Pages, with forms and buttons and icons. The list of things you need to do to get someone to find you goes on and on.

STOP!

This is not the kind of failure that leads to breakout success. This is failure that leads to more failure and disappointment and loss of money.

In order to move forward to success, you need to Market Smart.

Smart is knowing how to determine the level of success you can handle, and having a plan to go beyond it.

Smart is starting with the right tools, the right focus and the right mean of tracking success.

Smart is understanding that the only way to grow your business is to provide value to your customers.

It sounds so simple, doesn't it?

It is. It begins, grows and ends with the customer. To deliver value to your customers at a profit to you, you need to create value in your products and services and communicate that value to your customers. This is what Dr. Philip Kotler, Professor, Scholar, Marketing Expert and Author teaches, and it is the foundation of our business.

If you are failing to succeed, it may be because you are succeeding at failure. Why not turn that around?

Storytelling Comes of Age (Again)

We've come a long way from the dawn of man, when images were painted on stone to tell a story, but what has changed?

Today's walls are digital and despite generations of predominance of the written word, pictures are back. For many, they are once again the main way we convey meaning.

While I remain a devoted fan of writing stories, I find myself spending most of my time listening to the stories of others and capturing them as digital portraits, mostly of the moving variety.

One of the hardest things for a writer is to create the voice of the character, that emotion and presence in the mind's ear that breathes life into the story. Hearing a real voice allows that emotion to flow freely, if the speaker is able to let down his guard and be true to himself.

This is especially difficult in front of an audience or a camera. It takes courage and self confidence, not to mention a sense of humor. Why? Vulnerability can easily lead to embarrassment. We tend to say things when we are comfortable that we might not say if we were to script it out and prepare ahead of time.

Ever since I began speaking to groups about using their personal stories to help them in interviews and on sales calls, people have been sending me clips from blogs, journals and other publications about storytelling. Everybody seems to be talking about it, and that is encouraging for us storytellers who believe there is nothing more compelling, if it is done well.

So, how do you tell your story well?

Here are three tips that work for me.

FOCUS - Avoid the distractions within your own mind. Our brains are complex and efficient devices, but they are also ego-driven. They race ahead to look for things we may want to say, and at the same time, they replay what we just said looking for things we missed or opportunities to jump in with related and unrelated events we could mention. Turn off your listening device and keep going in the direction you chose.

KEEP YOURSELF IN THE STORY - The difference between gossip and storytelling is the main character. The story should reveal something about you that gives the listener a reason to stay engaged. That doesn't mean you need to divulge family secrets or confess your crimes. What it means is be the character in your own story and it will be more interesting to you and the audience.

GIVE THE LISTENER SOMETHING TO DO - This is the key to success in telling any story. Keep it short and you will stay in control of the conversation. In other words, leave the listener wanting more. You can finish your point, but it should be on a note that leads the listener to inquire, "And then what happened?" or "What did you do?"

Whether you are interviewing for a job or explaining the value of your product to a new prospect, the stories you tell will be remembered more than the facts and figures you toss around. As we say, Facts Tell, Stories Sell.

Happy storytelling!

Is There An SEO-holics Anonymous? - Part 1: Quality Scores

Have you heard that you need to know your AdWords Quality Score?

Welcome to the world of Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, for short.

Beware! Before you go any farther down this road, I need to offer a few words of advice. SEO can be highly addicting and that addiction can be very costly, in money and in time. But, fear not! I promise that I will not lead you down any dark alleys. You are free to exit at any time.

Google defines its Quality Score as: "A measurement of how relevant your ads, keywords, and landing page are to a person seeing your ad. Higher Quality Scores can lead to lower prices and better ad positions."

OK. So, what?

Well, if your business depends on search engine hits to generate prospects, you may be spending a great deal of time trying to optimize your search results, and that means you worry about how effective your keywords are.

OK, now. What are keywords?

Keywords may be single words or phrases. They are used by search engines to match what a user is looking for to the ads or pages that are labeled with them. The more unique the word or phrase, the greater the chance the search engine will rank the page high on the list of matches. That's what is meant by a Quality Score.

Oops! Did I go too far?

Let's back up a bit and look at an example. If we type a very unique phrase into the search field for Google.com, the results will list exact matches first. In other words, those pages that have keyword matches will rank highest among all pages.

Try it by searching on your name, or your street address.

Now try a very unique name, like "Algernon Emory Smith." You will discover that he was killed in the Battle of Little Big Horn.

Now, even though Algernon is not a very common name, if that was what you typed in the browser field, our Calvary Officer wouldn't show up on the first page of the results. So, uniqueness matters.

But if your keyword is too unique, only a few people might ever try to search on it. How many people are looking for information on officers killed with General Custer?

It sounds so simple, doesn't it?

Therein lies the problem. It is.

At first, you don't even realize you are getting hooked. You write a blog post, add a few labels, identify them as keywords, and sit back and wait for the traffic to roll in from the Internet highway.

But that isn't what happens.

People are not reading your blog? Why not?

Maybe you need to let them know you have a blog.

But isn't that what the keywords are supposed to do?

Yes, and no. It is still a hit and miss game, not exactly like the lottery, but just as addicting. It takes constant involvement on your part, or on the part of someone you hire, to link in your social network sites, send out Tweets and emails to get friends and family to get their friends and family to appreciate (Like?) your hard work.

Oh, don't get me wrong. It is possible to drive business to your site by devoting all this time and money, but that only gets you to the next step, conversion.

We'll tackle that in the next installment. In the mean time, you might want to discover what Algernon did at Little Big Horn.

5 Ways Video Marketing Can Help Your Business

Succeeding at Failure is Not an Option

Storytelling Comes of Age (Again)

Is There An SEO-holics Anonymous? - Part 1: Quality Scores

Cusano Marketing LLC