If a picture is worth a thousand words . . .

What is a Video Worth?

It’s probably no surprise to you that the Internet is one of the best places to promote your business. However, what may be surprising is the best place to do that online promotion is YouTube!

That’s right. YouTube and other video hosting websites like Yahoo Video and Vimeo are some of the BEST places to advertise your store and the brands you carry.

Online video is exploding. Over 52% of all new material added to the Internet in 2011 has been video content.  The online video explosion shows no signs of slowing. More than 10 billion videos are viewed online per month in the U.S. alone, and consumers are using online video ads to help make purchasing decisions.

Online Video Facts:

• 80% of Web users have seen an online video ad
• 52% took action after viewing the ad
• 31% visited the advertisers’ Website
• 22% searched for info about the product or service
• 15% visited the store to check out the product or service
• 12% made a purchase
• 16% talked to friends/family about the product
• 9% forwarded the video ad to friends/family

YouTube is the second most popular search engine in the world, following Google and the fourth most popular website. Online videos are already extremely popular and they will only grow in the years to come. Video IS the Future of the Internet. Why? Because video sells! The Infomercial industry has sold over 100 BILLION dollars worth of products on TV, and the reach of Internet video is already more than 1 billion users worldwide!

Little Competition – Yet Popular

Online videos provide web site owners an entirely new marketing option. It is still relatively new and few companies use it to market their products and services. You can still get in on the ground floor. Now is the time to learn how to take advantage of this new online marketing opportunity before your competition catches on.

The good news is that businesses do NOT have to spend a lot of money or time to put professional quality videos online. There are no costs to upload your videos online. There are also no costs for your videos to be viewed.  The only real cost is video production, which can be done relatively inexpensively. 

YouTube is by far the biggest video hosting website out there, but it’s not the ONLY place you want to post your videos. Currently there are over 60 different video websites where you can post your videos for free and there are new ones starting all the time. The search engine results vary among the different video hosting sites. A video on one site will get higher results from one video host and yet another video may get the best results from a different video website. 

Since search engines are increasingly looking favorably on video, and since there is so little online video out there, it has created a great opportunity for local businesses willing to do a little work to get a huge jump on their competition. Most local online video is buried within the listings of Internet yellow page sites that don't optimize the content effectively. Videos hosted on YouTube and other video hosting websites are easily outperforming any other type of online advertising.