This is a case study of how one small business has been experiencing extraordinary success by marketing with YouTube videos.
My friend Rodney Geisler is the owner of Home Energy Doctors here in the Dallas - Fort Worth area of Texas. For the last several months, he and his team have been filming and uploading videos to YouTube and his website.
We have had a number of conversations about the success of his videos and how well they are working for him. Here are a couple of the lessons Rodney has learned:
Videos are a great way to explain complicated services and help viewers understand the benefits of what you offer in a way that is personal to them.
Home-made videos made with an inexpensive Flip Camcorder are more persuasive than overly polished, professionally filmed videos. This is based on feedback Rodney has received. He feels the home-made videos feel more real to his customers.
Rodney uses his own employees and customers instead of professional actors. He wants viewers to "meet" him and his staff through the videos. He feels this begins a personal relationship and gives viewers a chance to see who will be coming into their houses.
Rodney includes a number of do it yourself videos that offer tips and ideas homeowners can use without paying him. Nevertheless, a number of viewers have hired him to do the work anyway (even though they have to pay hundreds of dollars). These do-it-yourself videos help viewers understand the procedure and see the need for having it done.
The videos build trust and credibility.
The videos educate homeowners.
The videos offer proof of his claims. (When you watch this video, look for the spider web that is blowing back and forth from the air leak. - What could prove his case better than that?)
Videos offer Rodney a way to show, rather than tell, a key point in the sales process. Rodney will often just hand his I Phone to a customer and let them watch one of his videos as a way to answer a question or objection.
Videos build traffic to his website. When you include your URL in the information section about your video, this creates a direct link from YouTube to your site.
I will be interviewing Rodney Geisler on my BlogTalkRadio show, The Rainmakers' Roundtable on January 5, 2010 at 9:30 am. If you would like to learn more about marketing your business with YouTube videos, be sure to tune in or listen to the podcast later.
I've been reading about Google's new URL shortener, goo.gl with a lot of interest. As anyone who uses Twitter knows, it is just about mandatory to shorten long URLS into smaller ones in order to fit your message withing the 140 character limit.
I've been using bit.ly as my shortener of choice until now. It works very well, plus it is integrated into my Tweetdeck so the whole process happens automatically for me.
The drawback with shortened URLs has always been that Google and other search engines do not follow a shortened link back to the site it points to. In other words, sending out a shortened link does not contribute to an SEO link building strategy.
The more links you have pointing back to a website, the better it will rank when someone does a search for the keywords used in your website.
Hence my interest in Google's new shortening tool.
While I have not been able to find anything written about whether Google's spiders will follow Google's own shortened links, I have to assume it will. When Google adds on new services and offers new tools, they have always in the past contributed to its goal of delivering better search engine results.
So I will be using Google's new shortener with my own Twitter activities, if for no other reason than to add to SEO link building.
The only drawback I see with Google's new shortener is that it presently requires that you use Firefox as your browser. I switched to Google's own browser, Google Chrome, some months ago. It strikes me as odd that this new tool is not yet available on Google's own browser.
For more information about the new shortener, read this article by Muthu Muthusrinivasan, Ben D'Angelo and Devin Mullins,
Please note: This workshop has now been rescheduled to December 19. I've changed the information below.
If your website isn't attracting visitors, is it really helping your business?
Next weekend, I will be teaching a two-hour workshop on how to get more traffic to your website - without costing a fortune. This is the first time I have ever presented this workshop.
In my opinion, the very best permission-based, email marketing campaign I have ever seen is Marcia Yudkin's Marketing Minute.
Every Wednesday, Marcia sends out a short email newsletter that is the best of both worlds - informative AND brief. It lives up to its name because it takes about a minute to read, yet each week she shares valuable tips and insights that anyone in business can learn and benefit from.
Moreover, her strategy is something that anyone can adopt. I've never asked her, but I strongly suspect that her email list is one of her most valuable business assets that produces income for her week after week.
Yet she follows an uncomplicated game plan that could work for any business person if they simply put in the thought and effort to make it work.
Let's take a look at what she does to make her Marketing Minute so successful:
It is strictly permission based. She doesn't spam, she doesn't cut ethical corners, and she plays by the rules of permission marketing. You must opt in to receive her newsletter and she provides a link on each email for her readers to unsubscribe if they choose.
She over-delivers valuable content. Marcia knows who her subscribers are and why they opted in. She keeps her information relevant to her audience and focuses on the marketing problems they wish to solve. It is clear that her motive to add value is stronger than her motive to sell something. There is nothing wrong with selling, but she always gives more value than she asks from her readers.
What she sells is also relevant. Yes, Marcia has one or more sales messages at the bottom of her newsletters, but there is a definite tie-in to the people who opted in. She avoids a big mistake I see a lot of other marketers making. They have not taken the time to understand their audience and ask what this audience wants. Their product offerings often bear no correlation to that audience's wants and needs.
She is consistent. The Marketing Minute comes out every Wednesday morning without fail. Her subscribers expect it and this boosts her "open rate" (the number of people actually open the email). A big problem with email marketing is the fact that a lot of subscribers don't actually read the emails before deleting them.
Perfect frequency. Based on all of my research, I am convinced that most email newsletters should come out once a week. That is not so frequently to cause people to unsubscribe in droves, but it is just often enough to keep Marcia's name and business on people's minds. I advise a lot of my clients to send out "Tip of the Week" newsletters because that conveys value in their subscribers' minds.
Focus on benefits. Marcia has a great way of telling her readers "whats in it for them." But she is careful not to overwhelm them with too much information at one time.
Permission marketing is, in my opinion, the most effective marketing strategy available. It is easy to implement and it is very inexpensive. But the return on investment can be spectacular.
If you are interested in learning more about email marketing, I suggest that you do two things:
First, subscribe to Marcia Yudkin's Marketing Minute and study what she does and how she does it.
Second, give me a call at 817-501-6892. I would be more than happy to give you some guidance to help you set up an email marketing campaign for your own business.
It seems that everywhere I turn I am hearing marketing people talk about how brands are struggling.
It use to be that if you established a well-known brand name for your product, service or company, you could be assured of a large chunk of market share.
A great brand insured that a competitor had to engage in massive spending in order to knock you off your "King of the Mountain" status within your niche.
Now it seems that brands have lost their luster. Having a well-known brand does not create the same positioning and market share it once did. The big brands have to spend just as much as their competitors to maintain their status - and even that is no guarantee.
The question then is: Are brands dying out?
Hardly. Name identification is, and always will be, an important component of marketing.
But buyers today are more skeptical of brand names. Sure name recognition can be the tie breaker, but it does not equate to value in people's minds these days.
A new element is taking over the marketing toolbox: Content.
Since the early days of the internet, the motto "Content Is King" has ruled. Buyers go online to research before they buy. They want valuable (non-fluffy, non-hypy) information. Moreover, they also want to know what peers think about your brand.
Nor can it be controlled. Social networking defies anyone to reign in even one pissed off buyer's anger. (A great example is how Dave Carroll's YouTube video, United Breaks Guitars, about the horrible service he received brought United Airlines to its knees.)
So what can a company do to avoid WalMart and United's errors?
To me, the answer is to create great content for your "target demographic."
And that, by the way, begins by not thinking of your customers in de-humanizing terms like "target demographics."
A far better way is to adopt David Meerman Scott's approach of thinking of them as "buyer personas." (PLEASE NOTE: That last link takes you to an article on David's blog that is pretty much required reading if you are to understand buyer personas.)
Creating content begins with constantly asking yourself:
"What do our customers want?"
"What do our customers need to know?"
What information would help our customers become more informed consumers of our type of product?"
"What information would solve their problems or help them achieve their goals?"
Here is the point:
Educating customers or clients creates a HUGE competitive edge far beyond the edge created by a well-known brand name.
I recently wrote an article about personal branding that talked about how vital it is to create a body of informative work in order to build a personal brand.
The same lesson holds true for building a brand for a product or service. Buyers have always gone through an "information gathering" process before making a significant purchase. In the past they may have looked up magazine articles or asked their friends and neighbors about their experiences with a certain product.
Today, the internet has created an environment in which buyers want to find out more about what you sell before they buy. Their information gathering process is longer and more in depth. They expect to be able to find out a lot of information about your company and your product online.
Will producing content ever completely replace brand name recognition. Of course not, but no longer can companies expect their brands to create invincible fortresses for them to withstand a pesky competitor. While a brand does create a certain amount of credibility, it does not create trust. Information that is not overly biased, that actually helps the buyer in some way is what builds trust.
Be willing to share your knowledge with your buyers. Find new ways to educate them and give them the information they desperately need and want. This is a far better way to build a market share than to spend massive amounts of money on jingles and slogans.
Whether we like to think about it or not, all business people are sales people. We have to sell our ideas, our services, our capabilities and our solutions to certain problems.
But let me pose a question: Do you close every person you have a sales presentation with?
Of course not.
No one, not even superstar sales people, can close every qualified prospect. There are many reasons for this:
Some prospects are just not ready to take action. It could be the money is not in the budget for now, they are still in an information-gathering phase, or the “pain” of their problem is not yet acute enough to make a change.
Sometimes you have just not built up enough trust and credibility with this prospect yet. Trust and credibility takes time and several contacts for people to develop.
In some cases, the key benefit(s) that the prospect is most receptive to are just not clear in the prospect’s mind. Even though you have already given information about these key benefits, they need reinforcement.
You have not yet built a relationship with this prospect. Again, relationships take time and nurturing. My favorite way to build relationships is to give away free information that solves problems and helps prospects reach their goals.
Most Sales Are Not Made Until AFTER The 7th or 10th Contact
Depending on whose statistics you read, most sales are not made until after the seventh or tenth contact with the prospect. But how many business owners or salespeople have time to make that many follow up contacts?
The answer is 100% - if you use an autoresponder.
An autoresponder is an email follow up program that sends out pre-written, pre-scheduled email messages to opt-in subscribers.
How can an autoresponder work for the typical sales person or business owner?
An autoresponder will automatically send information to anyone who requests it from you, and add that person to your email list.
It can also send out sales letters or newsletters to your list on a pre-determined schedule. If you want prospects to receive one email a day for the first seven days after they request your information package, and then change it to once a week afterwards, the autoresponder can do that for you.
An autoresponder can track how many of your recipients open their emails and how many click through to any link you put on an email. You can use this data to refine your marketing system.
An autoresponder can spoon feed your prospects with one benefit at a time, so that they can absorb and understand what your product or service can do for them.
An autoresponder can get you in the door in the first place. A sequence of emails addressing problems your prospects face and offering viable solutions can go a long way to moving a prospect’s interest level from luke warm to hot.
An autoresponder can keep you in touch with the people you don’t sell at first. It allows you to stay on their mind while they “think about it” or while they shop around with other providers.
An autoresponder allows you to keep putting new prospects into your pipeline and do the follow up “grunt work” for you. It can gradually increase their interest level with sequential emails until they are ready to make an appointment with you.
In addition to giving you the ability to send out pre-scheduled or sequential emails, an autoresponder can also enable you to send out “broadcast” emails to your entire list when you have a special offer, announcement, reduced price, new product, close out or any other information you want to get out.
An autoresponder helps you avoid even the slightest hint of spam because it documents the fact that your subscribers “opted in” and give them the ability to opt out if they no longer want to receive your messages. While this may not sound like a positive, isn’t your time better spent communicating with people who have at least a modest level of interest in what you offer?
All buyers have a buying cycle. Most sales people try to jump into a prospect’s awareness right when they are hot and ready to buy. Autoresponders enable you to get on their radar further upstream when they first begin considering a purchase. By the time this prospect is ready to make a decision, you can be miles ahead of your competition because they have received numerous helpful, informative emails. You already have established trust and credibility with her.
I personally use and recommend Traffic Wave (Disclosure: you should know I am also an affiliate of their program). Traffic Wave’s cost is lower than most autoresponders, gives you one price for unlimited campaigns, emails and subscribers.
You can see a price comparison of the top autoresponders by clicking here.
Did you wake up this morning thinking, "I really need to buy insurance today."
Probably not. Nor, in all probability, did you wake up thinking, "I need to buy a new widget (of any sort) today."
Yet marketers seem convinced that buying their product or service is your dominant thought all day, every day. This is evidenced by the types of ads, sales letters and website content we see all around us.
But what we do wake up thinking is, "I really need to solve this problem today."
The lesson here is that if the insurance sales person or the widget marketer would think in terms of solving my problems, they would be a lot more likely to get me to buy their product.
There are things that keep us all awake at night. A marketer's job is to find the people who are worrying about a certain problem and show that what they sell is a solution to that problem.
I read a tag line recently that said, "No Pain, No Change."
If we do not position what we sell as a solution to someone's problem, we are unlikely to get them to change what they are already doing.
The simple fact is that all any of us really sell are aspirins.
Our prospects do not want to hear about the pretty coating we have over our aspirins. Nor do they want to hear about the attractive bottle we package our aspirins in. And they do not even want to hear that our aspirin company has been in business for 100 years and has won all kinds of awards for our pretty, attractively-packaged aspirins.
They just want to know that our aspirins will make their pain go away.
It really isn't any more complicated than that.
All this came to mind recently in two conversations I have had recently.
Yesterday I met with a lady who sells a service that offers a wide variety of protection services for families and businesses. She was having a difficult time getting to people to see the need for this service, mainly because they had not had this particular type of headache before.
But the more I questioned her, it came out that one of her company's main services was to protect people from identity theft. She was really knowledgeable about identity theft becoming the fastest-growing crime in America. She also informed me that the number one target for identity theft is now children, because they might not discover the theft until they reach college age.
So I pointed out that this identity theft protection was her "low hanging fruit."
We discussed a workshop she could put together about identity theft and present to parent-teacher organizations, retirement communities, civic organizations, etc. In other words, educating people about a headache they don't yet have, but could have very soon.
Another conversation I had was in a question-answer session after talking about LinkedIn (and social media in general) to a local chamber of commerce group.
One lady, who worked for a printing company, asked about broadcasting information about the printing business to her connections on LinkedIn. After shuddering slightly, I suggested instead that she identify her top customers by industry and address their reality. What problems (headaches) do these businesses face that her printing services can solve?
In other words, address her customers' realities. Don't focus on what you want to sell, but on the pain they are experiencing. Offer solutions to their problems, even if these solutions do not directly relate to selling printing services.
The whole concept of content marketing is about addressing the needs, problems and goals of the people you are trying to reach. This kind of content builds relationships, trust and credibility.
In other words, never lose sight of the fact that all you really sell is aspirin.
Recently I have noticed a growing backlash against the concept of Personal Branding. Several people on Twitter have rightly pointed out that (at least the way many people are practicing it) personal branding has become little more than snake oil salesmanship.
My first thoughts were that these critics were just uninformed. Personal branding, as I have been using it in this blog, is a good thing. It is a way to get the word out about one's skills and expertise.
I am a veteran of sending out lots of resumes and getting little or no response. I am also a veteran of feeling frustrated because I was very good at what I did, but felt I had no way to get the right people to know about me.
Finally, I am also a veteran of old-style techniques of marketing my services as a business person (I still have nightmares about making 200 cold calls a day). I knew there were people who needed my services, but was unable to be found by these potential clients.
Personal branding is the tool to let people who need your expertise find you.
The bottom line is that personal branding without expertise IS hype and IS deserving of the criticism I have been reading about.
Which leads me to my definition of personal branding:
Personal Branding is becoming a recognized expert in a certain niche by producing content that demonstrates knowledge and adds value.
I am not an advocate of Hollywood-style branding, in which someone seeks to become a celebrity simply by being a celebrity. I think of this as the "Paris Hilton method of personal branding."
I suspect this is where the backlash and criticism is coming from. The Hilton method is not, to my mind, really personal branding at all. There is no substance to this kind of name recognition.
In contrast, think of a politician you regard as someone who is a person of integrity and public service. (Try really hard, I'm sure you can think of someone you respect).
When you vote for someone in an election, you vote because of two things:
First you choose this person because of name recognition. This person has done something to get herself on your radar. So far, Paris Hilton meets this criteria, but I still wouldn't vote for her.
But second, and more importantly, you choose this person because you perceive this person to be the better person to deliver the results you desire. You regard this person as capable, knowledgeable, and good at her work.
It is this second factor that is missing from some efforts to establish personal brands.
So how do you establish this perception of expertise? My answer is to produce content. Content - whether in the form of a blog, a book, podcasts, speeches, public presentations, teleseminars, or videos - establishes a person as knowledgeable within a field.
If you want to establish a real personal brand, do so by producing information that solves your audience's problems, helps them achieve their goals, educates them, and helps them make better decisions.
In the world of social media, few people have achieved more celebrity and more of a personal brand, than Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary began his video blog, Wine Library TV, in February 2006. Today he gets over 80,000 visitors a day.
Gary began his video blog because he didn't think he had the patience to stick with a written blog. Every episode showed Gary in his cluttered office in his family's wine store discussing a variety of topics about wine. He would do tastings and discuss which wines might go well with certain occasions.
These short videos propelled Gary into a major star. He has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Business Week and the New York Times. He is also a much sought after speaker for many business events.
But at the core of his celebrity is content. Gary has consistently built his personal brand upon information. He has created a huge body of work that you can find on a variety of platforms, both online and offline.
If you are starting out, I would suggest that you begin with a blog. Whether you choose a written blog, a video blog or an audio blog (podcast), produce content that will appeal to your audience and solve their problems.
Over time, you can spin and re-purpose your blog material into other forms of content, such as a book or public presentations.
And what if you are not already an expert in your field? Use your blog as a platform to learn more about your topic. As you write about it in small doses, you will find yourself reading, researching, talking with others, interviewing experts, and becoming an expert yourself.
So to the critics of personal branding, I would suggest that branding by producing quality content is a far better way to reach clients and employers than by sending out resumes or direct mail. It is a give-to-get philosophy that builds a brand by adding and creating value to the very people you want to reach.
Or would you rather go back to cold calling and mailing 10,000 resumes?
I was just talking to a lady I met at a local networking group about how to use social networking to promote her business. The nature of her business prevents her from engaging in a lot of common marketing approaches because it happens to be very heavily regulated.
Her name is Kimberley Feldman and she is a financial planner who works for a large financial services company. If you are familiar with this industry, you are no doubt aware that everything, I mean EVERYTHING, Kimberley wants to send out (direct mail, advertisements, public speaking engagements, and everything she puts on the web) must be first approved by her company's compliance department.
I suggested that she talk to her compliance officer about starting a blog devoted to the needs of female business women. It would be a blog about topics like:
How to succeed in business,
Time management,
How to attract business,
How to advance in ones' career,
How to balance work and family life,
Leadership and management skills,
Case studies of successful business women,
and maybe, just maybe, an occasional (compliance approved)article on financial planning topics.
Think about how this focus differs from the approach most business take when they start producing content.
A computer company would usually spew out articles about their products and the technology they are so proud of.
A law firm would be expected to bury readers under profiles of their lawyers, their long and prestigious experience, the areas of law they specialize in, ad nauseum.
A cell phone manufacturer would often tell us all about their products, complete with pictures of attractive people enjoying talking to each other.
In other words, the traditional approach is "look how great we are," "look at how great our products are," "let us tell you about how much better we are than the competition."
Which brings me to two recent articles I have read by the two authors of the great book, "Get Content, Get Customers," Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett.
While Best Magazine does mention products, it has the look and feel of an airline in-flight magazine. It has articles about things that are of interest to Best Buy's very best customers.
Much like the type of blog I suggested to my new friend, Kimberley.
Joe was lamenting the fact that top brands like MasterCard, Verizon or AT&T are missing the opportunity to publish magazines like Inc. (which is apparently one of Joe's favorites). He cites a statistic that reports 80% of consumers prefer to receive company information in the form of educational articles.
Another statistic he cites is that readers spend about 25 minutes looking through a custom magazine. Can you imagine your customers spending 25 minutes looking through your company's marketing materials in their present format? This is the power of providing information that addresses a target audience's reality.
By reality, I mean that your typical prospect is not spending her days and nights thinking about your products. She IS however, spending her time thinking about her work, her family, her relationships, her problems, her dreams, and her goals.
Doesn't it make sense to produce content that builds a relationship with her by addressing her reality?
My good friend, Bill Hurlbut, sells insurance. But he is very active on Twitter simply giving his followers information that help them. He very rarely discusses insurance (that's why we're friends). He builds relationships by helping people with the problems they are concerned with. (By the way, be sure to follow him on twitter, his user name is @billhurlbut).
So back to Kimberley Feldman, the financial planner. If she wanted to create a blog about financial planning, investments and insurance, she would not only have to constantly get approval from her compliance officer, she would also have a blog that would compete with every other financial services person in her marketplace.
By creating a blog about the needs and interests of her target market - professional business women - she can address their reality, and build relationships with them.
Even without pitching her services or products, she would probably attract visitors to her website and develop a following for her business.
Craig details the actual results he has achieved as a result of following advice given in Brian Clark's free ebook, "Authority Rules":
234% more members to his membership site.
62% more unique visitors.
48% more total site visitors.
100% more paying clients.
92% increase in visits per day.
12% increase in referring sites
113% increase in search engine traffic
What did Craig do? He first created a free ebook to educate people about his subject matter, along with a supplemental audio program. Next, he made the ebook available without asking readers to opt-in to an email list.
This last part might cause a lot of marketers to pause. Why give away free information without attempting to capture email addresses? Isn't building a list of prospects the be-all and end-all of online marketing?
Not always.
The mere act of requiring readers to submit an email address inevitably causes a large number of your potential prospects to turn away without downloading your information. People are so overwhelmed by the volume of emails they receive each day that they are reluctant to add to the avalanche.
Moreover, making your information available without attaching opt-in strings enables your "fans" to freely share links on social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook. This means that your information has a better chance of "going viral" and reaching a larger audience than you could ever reach on your own.
Giving your information away does a number of remarkable things for your business:
It positions you as an expert in your field.
It creates a bond with your prospects/readers who are grateful for your willingness to solve their problems.
It triggers the "Law of Reciprocity" which creates a sense of obligation when people receive something free.
Educated prospects are the best prospects of all. Ignorance and confusion are the ultimate barriers to buying. Your information removes these barriers.
Check out both Craig Wildenbradt's article and Brian Clark's ebook, "Authority Rules." Both are well worth your time and might just help you achieve the same results that Craig experienced.
I consult with businesses on the strategic use of social media, web marketing and email marketing. I also speak and conduct workshops on social media marketing for organizations.
My team offers outsource solutions and training for companies needing to engage with their target market with social media.
Contact me at 817-501-6892 or by email at: or chbrown/at/webmarketing-coach.com.
Need a Speaker or Guest Writer?
Need a speaker or guest writer/blogger on social media marketing, rainmaking or personal branding?
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