Focus 3: Promotion and customer research with videos

Promote your company online it's the best way to find new customers. This is demonstrated by the growing volume of business generated in the trade of products and in the sale of services in the most disparate sectors. Tourism, catering, insurance, music and entertainment, cinema, food & beverage... by now every limit has been exceeded, with wide-ranging promotion possibilities interesting for any target of any age, gender and origin. But how does it actually happen? promotion of a company small or big? We have chosen to answer this question by selecting some of the main digital marketing techniques: in the first two articles we talked about promotion and customer research on social media, And promotion and customer research on Google. We know that social media and Google are two formidable alternatives, but there are several others that are equally valid.

Among the many we feel compelled to talk about video, a concept that can be declined in several variations and several versions. Promote yourself and find customers with videos basically means one thing: to enter the world of Youtube and exploit the (enormous) potential of this branding and marketing platform. As? For example with a Youtube channel where to occasionally publish a video relating to your business or the products and services offered. Or with multimedia commercials always conveyed on Youtube, this time for a fee, as happened and in part still happens in television programming. Finally there are the branded videos, content in the form of tutorials, interviews, live broadcasts, etc. created by bloggers, influencers and youtubers themselves, not necessarily and not only on Youtube. But let's not anticipate anything: let's go into the merits of this new study and try to understand what we can get from Youtube, multimedia commercials and branded videos.

YOUTUBE CHANNEL: A PROMOTION THAT LEAVES ITS MARK

Not all entrepreneurs have yet fully understood the potential of Youtube. Yet, the numbers of this platform continue to break record after record. Not for nothing Youtube has become the second most visited website in the world for some years after Google.com, demonstrating how successful this platform is having in Europe as well as in the United States, Australia, South America and beyond. But what can we achieve, as entrepreneurs, professionals or ecommerce owners by opening a Youtube channel? There is no single answer, because the advantages are multiple and transversal. Thanks to a Youtube channel you have the possibility to:

• intercept an extra audience compared to Facebook, Instagram
• show a product in an original and practical way
• demonstrate your expertise in the industry
• divert valuable traffic to your site or ecommerce
• insert very useful links in terms of SEO positioning
• beyond a certain number of subscribers, you can even sell online directly from Youtube!

The question to be asked is how to create a community worthy of the name, and the answer to be given is always the same: as with a blog or a social media, your numbers will increase as you publish videos of a certain quality , sharing interesting information, or establishing yourself with a distinctive style that knows how to intrigue, entertain and amuse the public. We advise you to study the channels of your competitors (if there are any) and secondly to start getting familiar with the video camera, publishing short pills to test yourself. Mechanics, lawyers, insurers and traders have already started and are having good results, come on too!

MULTIMEDIA ADVERTISING: A FEW SECONDS TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE

If your investments are already substantial on other fronts, from Facebook to blogs via Instagram, you may not have the necessary resources to keep a YouTube channel alive. You could then opt for a second method of promotion and customer research, namely broadcasting of multimedia spots of one or two minutes, real advertisements in the form of videos with real actors or made with the motion graphic technique (graphic animation). In this case you will only need a Youtube channel to publish your sponsored video, which will then be shown to the target you set up until the budget or campaign runs out. Each visualization, or each click, will involve a small expense which will be charged to you when a certain threshold is reached, exactly as it works for the promotion with Google Ads.

It goes without saying that the video and the campaign will have to be developed with criteria, in compliance with the quality standards and the constraints imposed by Google (current owner of Youtube). The video will never get a hit just because you're sponsoring it: so focus on the ideation and videomaking, and later plan a paid campaign to optimize the available budget. Also remember that your sponsored videos they will appear at the beginning or middle of other videos, effectively interrupting a user's service. If you fail to capture attention within a few seconds, you risk getting the opposite effect, wasting money without generating interest, clicks and visits. To start off on the right foot, we suggest you take a look at the Promote your videos of Google support.

BRANDED VIDEO: YOUR BRAND, YOUR TESTIMONIALS

And finally we come to the third marketing strategy with videos, excellent if we want to fully delegate the production and publication of the content, on Youtube and beyond. We are talking about branded videos, i.e. videos produced by youtubers, influencers, bloggers on behalf of a brand.  In this case we enter the sphere of influencer marketing, a form of promotion that exploits the fame and notoriety of a public figure (operating above all in the virtual world of the web). All or almost all of the major influencers specify the contact email in their channels, usually managed by themselves or by an agent (or by a secretary, or a communication agency, etc.). The first thing to do is therefore to get in touch with these interlocutors and illustrate your request for a branded video. Similarly, you can write to each referent to receive a creative proposal, and therefore a personalized video concept.

Branded videos find application both on Youtube and on the main social media that host videos, therefore Facebook, Instagram and to a lesser extent Tik Tok or other emerging social networks. This technique can clearly be combined with a sponsorship (point 2), thus increasing the reach of the video itself. As you can imagine, "making videos" nowadays is not a risky move, but a large-scale action, which can give you concrete benefits on several fronts, see the embed or integration of the video within the website or ecommerce to increase the time spent by visitors (and improve communication, and collect new subscribers to the channel). In short, if you plan to strengthen your online presence, we invite you to think seriously about the opportunity to create videos with a professional approach, in line with the principles and values ​​of your business.

We have reached the end of this third episode: in the next article we will talk about promotion and customer research with the newsletter, the classic one and the one with more advanced systems such as the funnel. Follow us!