It’s reasonably priced, fully supported and very lucrative. You’ve seen me discuss local video marketing before, and you know I am a big believer in it. You can really help your community and yourself by applying your video marketing know-how to brick and mortar businesses, mom and pops all over your town or city.

This system gives you everything you need to hit the ground running; marketing brochures and postcards, techniques to find businesses that are already spending marketing money on the internet and are not seeing the results they should, everything you need to make a difference in your community and have a thriving business. If you have ever thought about doing video marketing at all I encourage you to check this amazing business opportunity out today.

Watch this video and make up your own mind. I have decided to become an affiliate of Traffic Geyser just for this one reason. I believe in the product and I believe that this is the way that America is going to recover from the economic disaster it has experienced.  Small businesses that help other small businesses by leveraging the power and the reach of the internet to grow and prosper. Connect searchers with businesses that are meeting their needs.  Click here to check this opportunity out for yourself.

Main Street Marketing Machines

Now go make a difference.

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Number + Adjective + Keywords =  1 Awesome Video Title

1.Key Phrase or words

This should be obvious, but often it is overlooked. Do your research and find the sweet spot for your desired subject. If your video is about fly fishing, don’t go for the obvious. Your keywords should reflect the focus of your video. i.e. “techniques for fly fishing rainbow trout in July”. Determine the long tail phrase that best describes what the video is about.

2.Use a magic number.

Information consumers are gluttons. The more information they think they will get by watching your video the more attractive it will be. By including a number in your title indicating a list or ranking of your topic, i.e. 9 best bed & breakfasts in New Hampshire, 15 ways to save on gardening supplies, top 10 schools for psychic communicators.  Just remember to deliver the goods. Don’t list 5 things when your title says 8 things.

3. Use descriptors.

Use adjectives that evoke an emotional response. i.e. Cute, sad, funny, hilarious, dumb. Use superlatives if possible. Easiest, biggest, smallest, best, top, etc. Make the keywords jump out by adding distinct words to enhance their appeal. i.e. Sexiest Electric Toothbrushes, Deadliest Martial Artists, Coolest Laptop Computers, etc.

These are obviously guidelines and with practice you can become adept at creating compelling titles that get your videos seen. Make the most of the space you have by remembering the formula,
Number + Adjective + Keywords =  1 Awesome Video Title.

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Local Publications

While it’s hard to get free coverage through a press release in your local newspaper or magazine, there are ways to increase your odds of being “discovered”.   Read local publications on a regular basis. When a relevant article or story is published, make a note of the author. Contact the author through the publication and send him a copy of your press release with a note saying how you thought “this would be a great complement to the recent piece you did on” whatever. Again I reiterate that this is not the quickest way or the easiest way, but a free blurb in the paper or a local magazine can generate a great buzz about your services.

Direct Mailings

You’ll find the addresses of most local businesses in the Yellow pages or local directories.  Many times the local chamber has these addresses and business contact information available for the local community. A clever postcard describing your services or a special rate for the first 10 businesses to respond to your mailing is a great way to get a clutch of work and can have a long lasting effect.

Create a Community Portal

If you have a website, consider using a portion of it to create a local interest hub. Optimize the pages for local searches and include stories about your local work as a video marketer. Include educational content and feature a high value report or guide about video marketing that you have created. This site can serve several functions, as a place to offer specials and gather email contact information, as well as a portfolio and space to feature testimonials from happy customers.

What to Do Once You Have Customers

It takes 5 times as much money to acquire a new customer as it does to retain a current one. And, 80 percent of your business comes from 20% of your customers. Obviously, caring for your current customer is worth the effort. Maintaining contact with your current clients enriches the relationship you have with them and fosters trust. If you keep in touch with them, they are likely to talk about you when networking with other companies. You should contact them by email or by telephone on a monthly or weekly basis. Creating a schedule for contacting your clients is a great way to remember. You might also create a newsletter specifically for your clients, letting them know what you are working on, and what is going on in the industry. Be their go-to source for any internet video marketing information they may need.

While these are just some ideas, your local market and business community will dictate your exact strategy for getting offline local video marketing clients. Good luck!

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Getting Started

To get started building a portfolio of clients, you might offer your services for free to a local charity. They would probably be grateful, and you would feel pretty good too. A non-profit can be a real goldmine of community connections. You might just hit the jackpot in terms of recommendations, while acquiring valuable experience.

After that, you could select, say 2 – 3 new local businesses and help them develop a video marketing campaign, create their videos, distribute them and then report your results. This can be a great way to develop a trusting relationship and develop a long term relationship with the business.

Granted, this is all work you’ll be doing on spec, but the odds are good that these gambles will pay off. (unlike betting your rent at the dog track)

Selling Yourself

Word of mouth is a great way to get business, often the best clients are ones I met through a mutual acquaintance or upon striking up a casual conversation with a friendly stranger. The point is to be open to possibilities and have an “elevator pitch” at the ready. An “elevator pitch” is a brief 30 second description of what it is that you do, and who can benefit from it. You never know when you’ll have the opportunity to sell your services, so be ready!

The local chamber of commerce is a good resource for selling your marketing services as well. If you contact them about presenting your business services at a chamber of commerce meeting, you may get the opportunity to spread the word to your local business community as a whole.  If you do get a spot presenting, be sure you are prepared to answer the questions that may arise, and have promotional materials ready to distribute.  Often times, a good strategy is to present some educational content around internet video marketing to the group. You will be seen as an authority on your subject and it may lead to other presenting opportunities. A quick slideshow on the 10 most asked questions about internet video marketing is a good way to get people’s attention.

In part 2 I’ll cover local publications, direct mailing and taking care of your established clients.

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I like to think of the great football movie Rudy when I think of video marketing.

Let me explain. Not unlike the hero of the movie (Rudy) not many folks took video seriously when it first came to the web.  A scrawny rag tag video technology that was really the realm of the uberdorks. (Video Toaster, anyone?)

Early on, there wasn’t much content to watch, at least not at work or with your family. As usual, the adult industry pushed for better online video technology and got it. Gamers wanted better video cards and they got them.  As the price for both plummeted, there was a vacuum created and into that, folks started dumping their quirky homemade videos, like Global Funniest Home Videos on crack, and they suddenly flew to the furthest corners of the internet.  Some waited days to download the first viral videos over dial-up connections.

There were hits in this new form of entertainment, the “viral video stars” that saw millions of views and little else except notoriety and thousands of parodies.  And there were misses, big misses, usually by big companies trying to leverage the popularity of viral videos to sell products.A great deal of money was wasted before someone figured out that online, there was no captive audience. No rapt masses waiting to be fed over the top advertisements in 30 second bites. Viewers on the internet discovered, watched and shared the videos they wanted to, not the ones Madison Avenue had lovingly concocted from some mutant form of television spot.  No one could predict or prepare for the viral phenomenon. And it still defies understanding. Why do videos go viral? Because like the old Fabrege shampoo commercial, (the one with Heather Locklear) they told two friends, and they told two friends, and they told two friends, etc.

Something really clicked with the public, after all we are the video generation. Before 1980 you would have been hard pressed to name one music video, let alone a whole music video network, now there are thousands.  Same way with online videos, video portals, video software, etc.

And marketing? Where do we stand? Well, some are figuring out that, much like the plain text web, the video web needs quality content.  As we have discussed, quality is a relative judgment. And one not easily rendered by those who have a vested interest in it. Companies continue to struggle and fight with consumers, throw tantrums, and fall by the side of the road like weary travelers who’ve lost their will to keep going. And consumers keep surprising themselves by demanding transparency and respect, quality and relevance. How can you market to that?

Anyway, I have rambled enough. I am sure you remember it much differently, and we are each one entitled to our own version.  Share yours if you have a moment. I’d love to compare notes.

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1 — Use still images.

Use a digital camera to capture photos or acquire stock images that are appropriate for your slideshow.

2 — Write a script.

Write out the narration and describe the images you want to use for your video. Be as descriptive as possible. This will help when you create your shotlist.

3 — Create a Shotlist

A shotlist is all the shots you need to get to create your video. You can group images according to the ease of shooting, which does not necessarily follow the story. This is often done in films to maximize time on location.

4 — Record Audio

To make it easy to edit and synchronize to the images, consider recording each line individually. Although it creates more files, they can be manipulated individually, adjusting timing to images as necessary. If the audio is on long file, the timing will be impossible to adjust without editing.

5  — Optimize Images for Youtube Videos

Now that you’re ready to put your video slideshow together, make sure the images you’re using are sized for the video player. Your original images should be shot at the maximum resolution for highest quality.  You will need to resize those large images prior to importing them to your video timeline. You can use your favorite image editing software to batch resize all of your images at once.

6  — Use Software to Create Your Slideshow.

If you have PowerPoint or Windows Movie Maker you can use them. If you don’t, use a freeware program like Memories on the Web (available here) to assemble your video.

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• Entertainment
• Sports
• Music
• Comedy
• News and Politics

3. The best time to upload a video to Youtube is between 12pm and 1pm on Wednesday or Thursday.
4. YouTube gets 107 Million unique visitors a month, with an average of 65 views per visitor each month.
5. There are 20 hours of new video content being uploaded to Youtube each minute of the day.

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1. Keep it simple and concise. Simple, concise videos just work best. The most popular videos on Youtube are between 3 and 5 minutes long and are no more than 20 megabytes in size, on average.  Also, the page your video will appear on will probably have a lot going on visually, already, so your ad needs to be clean and concise in order to stand out.
2. Tell a story with the video. A businesses story is one of its most valuable marketing assets.  A good video captures and communicates the passion and commitment that a business has for its work and its customers.
3. Educate and inform with your videos. Educational video can help establish trust and foster loyalty. To be perceived as a leader in your field of business, providing high value educational content, relevant to your business is highly effective.
4. Create how-to  videos. How-to videos are perhaps the most valuable in an overall strategy for SEO and viral marketing. An effective way to leverage this value is to build out a how-to YouTube channel filled with valuable how-to content.
5. Provide answers to your audience’s questions. Most people searching on the internet are looking for the answer to a specific question.  Understand the questions your viewers are asking, and make sure that you provide answers to those questions in your videos.
6. Always include a call-to-action. Video content should be optimized not only for the search but also for response.  Including a call to action within the video, like a special viewer discount, a coupon code, or a special telephone number,  can help to track response rate from your video.
7. Leverage other popular videos. Create a video related to popular content and use a similar, but not identical, keyword rich title and description to increase odds of it appearing on the popular video’s page as a related video.
8. Forget about traditional television ads. TV commercials do not make the most successful online videos. Authentic and candid videos that don’t feature actors or extravagant productions are far superior as search and directory material.
9. Don’t try to do too much. Save your George Lucas ambitions for the home movies. Remember who and what the video is for.  Your videos need to answer your viewer’s questions, and then offer them a strong call to action.
10. Test and re-test your content. Video is such an inexpensive and adaptable medium that it makes sense to experiment with different formats and a message, to find the combination that works best. Test several different approaches to see how views and click through rates fluctuate when you change the visuals, the call-to-action or the promotional offer.

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These days video making is more economical as well as much faster than traditional commercial advertising creation. With the great explosion of videos on the internet, it is easy to get lost in the sea of video products. The way to stand out is to correctly optimize your videos. Here are a few tips/hints for optimization:

1. Use keyword research tools to discover keywords and phrases that are most often searched for when looking for the information that you are creating. Choose keywords that you know users are searching for. Use the keywords you are targeting in your title, description, meta data etc.
2. Understand LSI and the importance of the concept as it relates to keywords. LSI is based on the principle that words that are used in the same contexts tend to have similar meanings. Too many of the same keywords can be a red flag for search engines. By using other words related to the keyword to flesh out your text content, you can greatly increase your relevance and your page rank score.
3. Include as much text with the video itself as is possible. If practical, include a pdf transcript of your video with keyword and LSI rich title and descriptions
4. Use Google XML sitemaps to tell the search engines where all of your content resides. This makes it much easier for search engines to discover and index your online video quickly.
5. Use a sitemap and keep your videos all in the same directory folder on your own site so that search engines can more easily locate all the videos you are publishing.
6. Make the best use of the thumbnail. The thumbnail you choose can greatly effect the number of viewers that are attracted to and will watch your video.When searching for videos the first thing that users see is the video thumbnail.
7. Optimize the URLs of your video pages for the search engines so that the pages are freely assessable by indexing robots.
8. Develop inbound links to your videos with the keywords that you are targeting in the anchor text of those links.
9. Enable ratings, reviews, comments, and feedback on your videos. Research shows that allowing users to provide feedback results in greater views for your video. Also, users who provide feedback tend to be those users that buy.

These techniques can greatly increase the chances of your video being seen and your message being received. Take the time to do this optimization and you will see immediate results.



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