Secrets Of Vidoe And Television Markeing And Advertising In The Inland Empire
In these new and challenging economic times it’s more important than ever to get the most return on your advertising investment. As a business owner you have huge responsibilities. Customer service, inventory, payroll, human resources yes you may wear many hats. There are areas of your business that you’ve grown to do well by being actively involved in them on a daily basis. But outside your door the world is changing and it is often difficult to keep up with the trends. One such area that is constantly in flux is marketing and advertising.
When it comes to advertising your business, one wrong decision can literally cost you thousands of dollars. Even worse, that ill advised decision can undo many years of work you put into developing a strong brand in your industry.
That salesman from the radio station presented you with a pretty good offer, the rep from the cable company did too and so did the newspaper account executive. They all sounded good right? Well in the old economy when you had plenty of capital to work with the ‘advertise everywhere’ approach would have been just fine.
Today you must choose your advertising vehicle carefully to ensure that your message, your product and your service are being directed right to your potential customer.
One local advertising tool that is often overlooked is television. Television or video is a very different marketing and advertising tool than it was just 10 years ago. Back then one of the only options for television or video advertising was to make a commercial and put it on the air on a local cable channel. Yes you could be on ESPN, TNT, CNN or A&E but only in the cable system you purchased time from. If you had a modest budget you most likely had an airing schedule that varied each day. It could air at 4PM, 10PM or 1AM…not very consistent and it was almost guaranteed that your commercial wouldn’t air during prime time.
Still, at that time, television or cable advertising was one of the most affordable means of reaching a mass audience in a local region. As long as your commercial concept was engaging and had a clear call to action your commercial or ‘spot’ could reap heavy rewards. There was one particular restaurant in Inland Empire, Riverside specifically, who had a great looking commercial and a 30-minute infomercial that did very well in showing their mexican food, the colorful drinks and the lively atmosphere. The half-hour infomercial had testimonials, product shots of the food and showed how they made tortillas right there in the restaurant. The infomercial was a huge success for them I know because they were always on the air and their restaurant was always full. They understood the long term value of each of their customers and spent the money to get them in and keep them coming back. To this day they, even in this new economy, they’re brand in the Inland Empire remains strong. If you asked most people in the Riverside or Corona area about that restaurant they would have known about it even if they had never eaten there before. That’s brand awareness and it is gold!
Today, television continues to be one of the more affordable means of local advertising and the internet has made it even better. The internet gives your video production or commercial extended life. What do I mean about extended life?
When you produce a commercial or video that demonstrates or shows your product or service you can put it on television as a :30 spot or you can put it on your very own TV/video channel. Wait…what? Your own TV channel? Yes, the internet offers everyone, every business, every church every cause their very own portal to the world.
Now when you make your video you can upload it to any number of video hosting sites such as Youtube, Viddler, Vimeo, Dailymotion…the list goes on and on. All of those video hosting services offer you the ability to create your own brand on their video hosting service. Since Youtube is the ‘Gorilla’ of them all let’s focus on Youtube.
If you don’t already have a Youtube account for your business advertising you need to create one as soon as possible. It takes about 3 minutes to create and account. Name your account with a keyword loaded title that refers to your business. Let’s say for example ‘TheMediaProfessional’. Youtube will run all your words together. Now with your account created you can upload your videos. If you have already have a commercial that you’ve made in the past you can upload it to your Youtube Channel for local Inland Empire advertising purposes for example. When you upload your video you’ll be asked to enter a Title of your video. Use keywords that are associated with your business or industry in your Title. An example for me would be something like “Secrets of Television Advertising in the Inland Empire”. It has the keywords Television, Advertising and Inland Empire in the title. When someone does a search using those keywords in my local area, there is a better chance that my video will come up in their search. But wait there’s more! You’ll also be asked to write a description of your video. This is important because in the description box you can put the address of your website. Put it first at the very beginning of the description. Be sure to include the entire address including the http all the way to the dot com part. This will ensure that Youtube will make it a clickable link right to your site. That is called a backlink and although one link is not Gold, it is a nugget. Next you’ll be asked to associate keywords with your video. This is where you have to think like someone who is searching for your business or service. In my case I would enter keywords like: Advertising, Marketing, Television, Production, Inland Empire, Riverside, Ontario, Upland, Rancho Cucamonga, Branding, Video, Editing, Youtube. I could include more but you get the point. Select your category in the drop down menu and set your privacy setting to Public and save it.
So now what happens? Let Youtube do it’s work. The search engines absolutely love new content and especially video content. As search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo send their little Feelers out for content throughout the web your little video will soon gain attention. Especially if you’ve chosen the correct keywords. But don’t stop there. Remember all those other video hosting sites I mentioned earlier? You must create accounts at all of them too and upload your video there as well. It is time consuming but in the long run well worth it. There are automated systems that can do this for you once you’ve created your accounts but they can be costly and often times the uploads will fail for various reasons if you don’t prepare your videos correctly. This advice of manually uploading your videos to each video hosting site is for those business owners who have more time than money. You could even have a teenager do it for you if you have one in the house.
The more videos you can upload over a period of time with the proper keywords the better. And of course your videos should be of good quality all while selling your business. A good campaign will consist of mix of videos that will include hard sell, soft sell and entertainment. A good example of entertainment would be an interview with a key employee at your business or with you. This Entertainment has purpose. It helps your audience get to know the people behind the business. Remember, we always like to do business with people we know. And the more they know about you…well that’s Branding!
Find pragmatic recommendations in the sphere of – please make sure to read the web site. The times have come when concise information is really only one click of your mouse, use this opportunity.
