The Big Lie about video marketing

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Video marketing is so hot right now. I just bought a WSO with a free video ranking bonus and there's another raft of emails in my inbox pushing someone else's video ranking system.

Here's the problem with video marketing - it's easy to rank videos, but so what, because they don't push business. And they're almost impossible to sell or lease.

At least that's my experience.

But I know there are people in the offline market making a killing with video. So, I've invited some here to straighten me (us) out and tell me what I'm doing wrong.

So here's my challenge, convince me that videos drive traffic that I can sell or lease videos to clients, and that they won't hate me afterward...
#offline marketing #big #lie #marketing #video
  • Hi Tim,

    "because they don't push business" - disagree

    "And they're almost impossible to sell or lease." - disagree. But THIS is certainly, in my opinion, the biggest challenge with Video Marketing. The mechanics of ranking videos are pretty easy though.

    As I've already ranted about on other threads, my experience in dealing with Dentists has proved to be more challenging than anticipated. Again, even today, the story goes like this.....

    "Hi, Ms. Office Manager, I see you can help people who are looking for Emergency Dental Services - is that correct?"

    "Yes we can! Why? What's going on?"

    "Well, I have a website in your city right now that's currently generating 30-40 calls per month from people who are looking for your services. I was wondering if you would like me to send a few calls over to you for FREE and then you can decide if you would like to continue to receive these calls"

    "Oh, we already have a SEM/SEO campaign going on right now so we're all set, but thanks for calling." - Click

    Annnnnnnnnnd once again, I didn't even get to mention the part about "Yeah, I can see you have an SEM/SEO campaign going and that your website is below my Video that is generating all these calls."

    Comments from other Warriors have shed some good light on this particular niche, which I'm not going to rehash on this thread, but anyone can look it up if they want.

    1. With my videos, they rank in one of the top 3 organic positions above Google Maps. THAT is what is driving the call volume - not my website.

    2. User Intent - My dental niches are "emergencies". In retrospect, although I now believe this is not the best niche to pursue. Initially, I thought it makes sense because in the online world, these are the desperate buyers. If someone is looking for this type of service, they won't be shopping around for price, or taking to long to think about it - they need help NOW. Thus they are likely to call NOW. And I make it easy for them as I have the phone number right in the Title tag so there is no need to even watch the video.

    3. Video Quality - In my opinion, you can't just throw up some generic Animoto video and expect results. I use Adobe After effects templates. Use about 3-4 pictures within the template and title each slide. My videos tend to run between 40 - 55 seconds long.

    Without seeing your videos, I can only take a guess as to what the biggest issues might be. But the ones I've point out above seem the most logical at this point.

    Good Luck!
    • [ 2 ] Thanks
  • Although there are some folks here that can attest to the effectiveness of video marketing (see traffic/conversions), some business owners just don't care. They want it for market exposure, for reasons of vanity/ego and/or to have another spot on the first page of google while pushing out another competitor etc. In other words, there is demand and there are buyers - whether you can personally justify it or not.

    Just as you will hear folks claiming that selling websites to businesses that already have websites (i.e. to those that recognize the value of having a website) is easier, this can also be said for video. Although, this is not the only way.

    In fact, one of the more popular WSO's for offline video marketing (MPV, or, Massive Passive Videos), is based on this idea...seeking out clients that ALREADY have a video, but aren't ranking. You figure, they spent a good deal of money getting that video made - and for what? -to have it sit there for two years and receive a whopping 12 views (probably generated by them)?

    It works. It is not easy...you have to work at it (client acquisition is the hardest part). Don't let your reasoning stop you. Don't think of all of the ways that it will not work and fail before you even try. People are making money from this, you can too.

    This is not something that I am personally pursuing at the moment, but if you want some tips, I'll be glad to help.
    • [1] reply
    • Sweet! Hey Stranger......if you happen to stumble upon any of THESE types of business owners that you don't want, please throw them my way! - I would love to not have to convince someone that their phone will ring from Video Marketing - only that they will make it to the top.
  • yes, I know, local video is such low hanging fruit. Business owners will BEG you to do take their money. Such hyperbole should cause us to run the other direction. Video marketing is fine, but client acquisition will always take effort. I'm so tired of the greater fool theory that runs wild on here. It's hard work and there's no changing that, no matter the product being offered. I guess we can be glad because most people shy away from work.
  • You shouldn't. As honest marketers, we should focus on what will benefit the client (more customers, more money). In the end, it is up to you how you want to run your business. There is nothing wrong with providing a harmless, legal service if someone is willing to pay you for it (regardless of it's seemingly nonexistent value) - that is your prerogative. However, it is my opinion that we will all benefit more if we take the time to educate ourselves and others about the facts - instead of perpetuating worthless services that provide little to no real value.

    Now, I realize that you were probably just giving me a hard time for stating something so ridiculous without credibility and/or proof of experience to back such claims. But the truth of the matter is, it's all in how you present your services, how you word it and how educated your prospective clients are. You can sell them on page one, spot one, and people will pay you (people do pay for this). Or, you can sell them on more calls, more clients, more money etc. The end result is the same, but your selling points and services are not.

    I can understand your skepticism, although, I could have done without the sarcasm and condescension.

    Oh, in case you're wondering, I don't spat out nonsense based on theory or make up stuff as I go. When giving advice, I try my best to post information based on facts - either by my own experience(s) (preferably), or by the experience(s) of others that I have grown to trust.
    • [1] reply
    • @Stranger Danger - On the contrary, I meant exactly what I said. No sarcasm or condescenion intended. I really WOULD like to find a business owner who is only interested in more exposure (for pure ego or to knock out a competitor - as you've pointed out here and on other threads.). Not for ROI factors. The reason: I can execute that quite nicely.

      So it's a win-win, is it not? The owner gets exactly what they want, and I get what I want.

      I've taken the honest marketer approach and focused on pure ROI for the "prospective" customers. Build a lead-gen site + video marketing = Calls. That's a pretty measurable ROI if I've ever seen one.

      But, ironically enough, they don't seem to understand that logic. What they are doing and apparently will continue to do, is pay a lot more money for clearly less effective marketing = Exposure.

      How would I know it's less effective? I don't want to make too many assumptions here but, if you have a website that's ranked below MY website and MY video marketing effort, I'd say that's less effective. I would also think that you paid someone a hefty chunk of change to have that site built, but it's not doing as much for your ROI as I could.

      So, if exposure is all they want, that's what I would like to give them.
  • I appreciate you saying so. I apologize for misinterpreting your text.

    The problem is, business owners need to be educated - by people they know and/or can trust.

    There is value in both, receiving more calls and simply getting exposure to better market and establish your brand for awareness etc.. After all, if people have never heard of you, they're probably more likely to go with your competitor that has advertisements and such - where perceived value and credibility are at play.

    It's easy enough to hire a fiver gig and have someone get in front of their camera to give a positive testimonial on anything and everything - much like a commercial. That perceived value and credibility probably work much better than some crappy slide show (where it's easy to determine the actual publisher). I think people want real testimonials from real people. Not to mention, your click-through rates should be better by having a face in your video.

    Are you targeting businesses that already have videos?
    • [1] reply
    • Yes, just sort of calling these "prospective" clients morons, I will agree that this is probably the most likely reason - regardless of the results that can be provided.

      Yes and No. I did find a YellowPages person I thought would be easy to rank. So I literally took their video, added a placeholder at the end, and uploaded to my channel - and of course ranked it over the original video.

      I then called the owner and they weren't interested. They played it off like what they already had is fine.

      To your previous points:

      * Lack of trust
      * Lack of education
      * I also think they might have been a little embarrassed/offended to an extent. Although I did it tactfully, I did take a tiny little jab at their YP investment. If I recall correctly, my question was something along the lines of "Mr. Business owner, if you really believe that YP's was good investment, then why isn't your original video ranking as well as mine?"

      In the whole scheme of things, I'm not pursuing with as much zeal as I should though. It seems like a crap shoot though. Here's another one of my recent experiences with a YP type of business person that didn't turn out too hot either. Strong-Arming Tactic for New Clients?
  • Like any other prospecting, it's all about volume. The people that I know that are pursuing this model and actually have paying clients are:

    1. creating highly personalized and informative videos (screen-cast with voice-over) and prospecting via email with email tracking and warm calling and/or creating craigslist and/or other online ads
    2. ranking videos post approval for pragmatic and legal reasons

    The reason I did not pursue this model:

    1. high risk being at the mercy of google
    2. I wanted to offer real value that I knew was not only measurable, but was guaranteed (competing against google places in most markets wasn't ideal)

    Since most scenarios do not provide a reasonable way for you to establish trust with your clients, it is easier if you can produce tangible results prior to any sort of financial commitment on the client's part. This is easy to do with lead-gen models. Unfortunately, it puts ALL of the risk (time and financial investment) on you, the marketer.

    Not to discourage you, but check this out:

    Leo, if you want me to remove this, let me know.

    Leo is another MPV member that was pursuing this model before MPV (i.e. creating videos first). He has put in a lot of time and effort getting these videos ranked, but he hasn't rented many of them out. There are others on Youtube following a similar method - with very few renters.

    Not to say that it doesn't work, but it can be a LOT of unnecessary work. I.E. get the client first, then do the work.
    • [1] reply
    • What we're really talking about here is CONVERSIONS. Will this form of marketing get the prospective consumer to take an action (phone call or email)?

      IMO, for this to be successful (convert), I think you really need to have:

      1. A niche where the search volume is medium to high or the product/service in your video is a high price-point item or both.

      2. Your video has to be ranked in one of the top 3 organic positions.

      3. Good to have, but not required: It helps if what you are trying to market is some sort of emergency niche.

      THAT, is what get's the calls coming in.

      I cannot admit success with this yet in the form of selling leads or renting out a site. I can, however, attest to the power of these videos to convert into phone calls. If you can find somebody who WANTS and is willing to pay for leads, this method works and you are on your way to some nice $$$$.
      • [2] replies
  • Hi Tim, I use videos quite alot for clients, and many of them do drive traffic - simply because the videos often rank quicker and easier than their sites, plus some peole out there seem to think that YouTube is a search engine...

    So we often create a video that directs users to the clients website.

    Can you sell them, Absolutely! Clients pay if they are getting traffic, and so will happily pay for a video that gives them traffic.

    All this in my experience - but yep, create and post away and charge, charge charge!
    • [2] replies
    • That's great news Suzy - I'm wondering what the difference is. How are you finding clients that are willing to pay? And how are your videos driving traffic. I just checked my youtube channel. I have about 1100 views across the videos I've ranked. I believe those are real. I haven't paid for robot views. And I don't think it's created much or any traffic to client sites. What's your trick?
    • That's great news Suzy. It has been my experience that clients enjoyed the traffic they were getting but if the traffic wasn't converting, then it was pretty much useless.

      StrangerDanger was correct about the fact that some businesses just don't care.

      I use it as an adjunct to enhance my over all strategy. You shouldn't rely on it exclusively.
  • OK my 2 cents on video marketing. Used correctly video can definitely make you money. I have studied a course on ranking video and it is fairly simple but like anything it can be competitive. One thing I found once I learned how to get my videos ranked in google I learned how to look for other people who were ranking videos and by studying their results I found that for the most part although they did rank there videos they were not getting traffic to them. I even found quite a few videos ranking top 3 in google for extremely competitive high volume search terms that had only a handful of hits.

    In my opinion at this time, unless you have something of a viral nature or something quite timely with a hot news topic on a particular subject trying to rank videos is but a waste of valuable time.
    Using video as a sales tool and a social media tool on the other hand quite strong.
  • Hi,

    @mosthost, thanks for the tip.But youtube says not uploading an original video, my own video is original......??

    Could anyone here give memore clear answer about youtube marketing with own videos who are 5 minutes long with or without your picture and with your audio speak and a product slideshow with 30-50 seconds;

    How many people,lets say your video has 200 views, how many people click on the link in the description to your website with affiliate products ctr? And how many from them will buy 1-2% more?? (realistic on average value)

    And wehen your youtube video ranks in google first page how many google traffic come additional too?

    I need a (free?) easy read proof youtube video marketing tutorial.

    best wishes
    marco005
    • [1] reply
  • Claude,

    Your book The Unfair Advantage Small Business Advertising Manual looks like a great book, but is it available in a kindle/pdf version?
    • [1] reply
    • Sorry, no. And I need to tell you that the book is about advertising everywhere but online. I wrote it before I got into doing local online marketing.
      But, if you want to know how to advertise in print, direct mail, radio, or cable TV....you'll get a lot out of it.

      Thanks for asking, Claude
  • You are wrong that it is difficult to sell something with videos. I have a couple of videos in offline niches - real estate and car rental which have generated hundreds of enquiries from interested prospects. And I had done very little work for few days to get these video rankings up many many months back. The enquiries still keep coming up.
  • Well we have like 9 targeted videos on youtube in the home improvement niche and haven't got 1 call from them. The copy on the videos and targeting is good, the ranking/views is the problem.

    For competitive home improvement keywords, I figured it would take too much time to rank any of the videos, so I never tried. There are a lot of other businesses targeting similar local keywords, some who are dropping a lot of money just to get clicks, so its not worth the hassle imo. Eventually I just moved to craigslist which is 1000xs easier.
    • [2] replies
    • There are a few keywords that Google, for whatever reason, doesn't want to show videos for. I had a client with a dance studio in a pretty small town. I had a great title, good description, plenty of links, other videos pointing to it, and over 1,000 views with plenty of likes, subscriptions, and a few comments.

      It took a month for that video to show on page one. The title itself should have been enough. An SEO friend told me it was probably the word "Dance" or "dancing" that triggered the bad placement. (Like in pole dancing, I guess).

      You can get just about any local video onto the page 1 of Google.
      But I tell you, you need to know some stuff. There are WSOs here, like Rocket Video Ranker 2 and others that will give you the steps.

      Seriously, videos will bring in phone calls as long as the customer sees the video, and the video is convincing and calls for action.

      I got a client 3 videos for a city of one million. in the oil change business. Do you know how many places will change your oil in a city of a million? About a thousand. Two million search results. I got him three...three videos on the first page of Google with the search words "Oil change" and his city.

      I'll be honest here, I do 137 separate steps to promote videos to get on Google page one. Sometimes it takes 3 or 4 steps, and I'm good. Sometimes more. But I do 137 steps. I want those videos to be bulletproof.

      Seriously. Buy 3 or 4 WSO's on video, and you'll be amazed that you never thought of these things before. I only started studying these WSOs in the last 4 months or so. And I'm getting far better results than relying on a few views, and a decent title.

      It doesn't take time to rank videos. It takes technique.

      I just read this post. I sound like a know it all jerk. But I didn't know much about video and Youtube before I came here. I just learned from the evil geniuses here.
      • [ 2 ] Thanks
    • Are they promotional videos or educational videos. Having been a contractor for many many years the one thing potential customers are most concerned with is the contractors skills and ability. Educating and showing that you know what your talking about is what converts people into customers in the remodeling world.

  • Hi,

    @Claude Whitacre
    the most here I think don't want phone calls, they want that the user who see the video, is going from youtube to his website and from then to the amazon product site/ merchant sales page.

    Let us pick the religion niche- coaching niche, many makes videos from thereself 2-15 minutes long they explain some topics on there religion and so on, or many are not thereself on the video but with their voices and some slide pictures.

    Such videos have most 200-500 views within 2-3 months, some a few thousand views (but within 1-2 years-not in 3-4 months), this people push up 300-400 such videos to youtube from their one niche account, they watermark the logo and the url of their website in the video and are not banned.

    So the question here is, does they make it only for fun- or their videos are profitable-means make online sales??

    Think logical, some amazon affiliates say it will not works, makes not sales from short 30-50 sec. product slideshow videos, but in the niches above with 2-15 minute videos they make oline sales
    (books, ebooks,courses-whatsever) ?? What is true between these two answers?

    I need a good (free?) video wso tutorial to know these steps to rank fast with these videos and make online sales (without to spend massiv money to buy software), can anyone recommed some of these wso?

    best wishes
    marco005
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [2] replies
    • Not only Youtube Video marketing I have over 500 video marketing website list which is do-follow and free. I am very happy with video marketing
    • Sorry, this is the Offline Marketing thread. I don't have any experience selling affiliate products with video. So my advice will be worthless. But here are the WSOs that I've found valuable.

      None are free. But they don't require software.

      Youtube Power Slam
      Rocket Video Ranker 2
  • Banned
    [DELETED]
  • @Claude Whitacre; thanks for the wso tips!

    So when I hear you, it is best to build a list7squeeze page with video marketing not direct sell, affiliate products or own services?

    marco005
    • [1] reply
    • No. You may be hearing me wrong. And I may not know the answer. Could you restate the question?

      The advice I'm giving is how to make your videos show up in the important search results. Anda little on how to make your video generate opt-ins (or sales).

      But I really just use videos to bring people into a retail store I own, and to bring people into other businesses...or pick up the phone.
      I don't sell affiliate products, so I may not be the one to answer your question.
  • @ Claude Whitacre, ok I understand.


    marco005
  • Hey,

    I kinda disagree that the hype about video marketing is a fad or a lie. There are plenty of Warriors here just like me who get results and swear by the effectiveness of videos for offline markets.

    The real issues is knowing what you’re doing, which offline niches video’s will work for and how to do it right!

    Now, with that being said, I totally agree that some markets are simply not made for video marketing, while others can really help offline businesses cash in.

    In my experience, most folks watch YouTube videos to be entertained rather than looking for something to buy (in most cases they would go to Amazon.com if they just wanted to buy unless they're looking for a video review).

    BUT I believe the key to making video marketing work is to provide what the target audience is looking for plus some value before you move on to promote your own product and services (or your client’s).

    It’s just like what you are doing with traditional article marketing. Give them some value by sharing tips or useful advice and then move on with the recommended link at the end of the presentation.

    Just check out the viral videos. The best ones have clips that have a unique twist that is either funny, or featured someone who is extremely talented.

    It is very unlikely for a lame video promoting a local florist to go viral unless it is interjected with some exceptionally witty humor.

    Just my two cents.

    Chris
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Hi,

    @Chris Rivers,

    Dp you mean to build a list with video marketing, are 2-5 minute slideshow videos with voice (giving tips and so on) enough to get subscribers like this as an example;

    Increase Your Sales By Using Web 2.0 - YouTube



    Or must I produce a professionel video with myself and voice like this as an example;

    How to Build a Web Start-up, Part 1 - YouTube

    OK the second videos has far more views, but are the video number 1 is enough to get list subscribers or for directlink to an affiliate "money site" page? (I know this is an offline thread so please forgive me when I answered that again).


    best wishes
    marco005
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    The Big Lie about video marketing

    Video marketing is so hot right now. I just bought a WSO with a free video ranking bonus and there's another raft of emails in my inbox pushing someone else's video ranking system. Here's the problem with video marketing - it's easy to rank videos, but so what, because they don't push business. And they're almost impossible to sell or lease.