Affordable Marketing Ideas

You can run a video contest on Facebook as long as you comply with the site’s promotional guidelines.

Lots of customers provides you with written testimonials; contact some of those customers and provide them an incentive to place their testimonials right into a video.

Be a leader inside your industry by developing a place where your audience and stakeholders can post and view business videos free of charge.

Cheaper, easier, and faster

Selling and branding your product or company with video has become a necessity. Thankfully, it’s also become much easier. Some small , medium-sized businesses (SMBs) not have the budgeting resources of major brands, they have no need for a huge budget to make use of video. Small businesses can build a brand or promote products quickly with web video by creating and uploading their own videos and taking advantage of user-generated content (UGC) in their video promotions.

YouTube is not only typically the most popular video search site; it’s earned a place in national broadcast news. We’ve all seen a viral YouTube video about the evening news, right? ComScore reported in April that 174 million U.S. online users watched online video content in March for an average of 14.8 hours per viewer, thereby participating in a lot more than 5.7 billion viewing sessions through the month.

Going beyond UGC videos, Americans viewed 4.3 billion video ads in March, with video ads reaching 43 percent from the total U.S. population an average of 33 points during the month. The most recent trend is perfect for big advertisers to move ad dollars from TV to web video, and you can get on the web video bandwagon too by creating web video on a budget.

In the following paragraphs, we’ll discuss seven low-cost strategies for launching a strong video marketing program.

Think about the advantages of UGC on YouTube

A great low-budget tactic for SMBs to promote their companies and merchandise is to use UGC in video promotions. It is incredibly easy to produce quality videos because UGC admins can be found through most of the video hosting providers, including Blinkx, Flickr, Vimeo, and YouTube, for starters.

UGC video submissions to YouTube provide your site having a great way to connect to its users whilst increasing the content displayed on the site. Instead of storing files locally on your web server and taking advantage of server processing capacity to transcode videos for playback, it’s much easier to submit videos to YouTube. YouTube will host the files and look after transcoding and will be offering a universal way to play back your videos. Instead of having to integrate a JavaScript script player into your site, YouTube supports iframe embed code that takes the guess exercise of video playback.

By using an iframe, the choice of player is dependent upon YouTube, which has an HTML5 player along with a traditional Flash player for older browsers. Whenever you host your videos online, you aren’t limited to any specific file type, and also you do not have to encode your videos because YouTube does the transcoding for you personally. By hosting UGC video content on YouTube, you can:

Increase brand awareness and SEO juice by hosting videos by yourself company YouTube channel
Save disk and bandwidth costs by hosting videos off your local web server
Save CPU by no longer having to do video encoding
Shorten development time without having to decide which video player to make use of on your site to support all browsers and video types

Operate a UGC video contest

You are able to run a video contest on Facebook so long as you adhere to the site’s promotional guidelines. You don’t have to be a Facebook advertiser to operate a contest. However, any promotions administered on Facebook must be carried out by a credit card applicatoin, and the app must adhere to Facebook’s platform policies. To make sure you comply with these policies, you might want to use a third-party application such as Strutta or Wildfire.

If you run a contest on your Facebook brand page, note their email list of do’s and don’ts below, that are quoted from Facebook’s promotional guidelines.

- You can’t: Condition entry within the promotion upon a user providing content on Facebook, for example posting on the Wall of the Page, uploading a photograph, or posting a status update.

- You are able to: Make use of a 3rd party application to condition admission to the promotion upon a person providing content to the application. For example, you might administer a photo contest whereby a person uploads a photograph to a third-party application to go in the contest.

- You cannot: Administer a campaign that users automatically enter by liking your Page, checking in to your Place or connecting to your Platform integration.

- You can: Require entrants to love your Page, check in for your Place or connect with your Platform integration before they provide their full entry information, for example name and phone information.

- You cannot: Notify winners through Facebook, such as through Facebook messages, chat, or posts on profiles or Pages.

- You can: Collect an email or address with the third-party application for that promotion to be able to contact the winner by email or standard mail.

- You can’t: Instruct people (within the rules or elsewhere) to sign up for a Facebook account before they enter the promotion.

- You can: Instruct users to visit the third-party application to go in the promotion (as described in Section 2.3.2.1). Since users should have a Facebook account in order to access an application on the Facebook Platform, if you give this instruction, they will be prompted to enroll in a Facebook account if they do not already have one.”

Most of the contests the thing is on Facebook that require users to post on the brand’s wall or “like” the company to win have been in violation of Facebook’s guidelines. While Facebook can’t police every brand page, it could try to gain more control over its platform. So it’s better to comply with the site’s promotion guidelines.

It’s also wise to be aware there are specific legalities involved with establishing contest rules, and going having a third-party app provider for the promotion would help cover all the bases.

In case your contest is on Facebook, you are able to administer it on Facebook or advertise it on Facebook and host it on another site. When you administer your promotion on Facebook, you apply the Facebook platform to collect submissions, determine the winner, and notify the winner. When you publicize your contest on Facebook, you utilize your Facebook brand page and send status updates through Facebook, but host the contest on another site. If you publicize on Facebook, there are specific rules you have to follow, including the contest can only most probably to individuals 18 years or older.

Use UGC videos to demonstrate product benefits

A great way to generate traffic and curiosity about your products would be to invite your users to submit a UGC video showing how they make use of your product. Building a UGC area requires a little engineering work, but once to control your emotions, the rewards are priceless. You own this content, you get the SEO attribution, and you increase your traffic. Creating a YouTube-like admin is as easy as chiming in to the application programming interface of Fliqz or VMIX, which both offer this particular service (see the section at the end of this short article on hosting your videos).

Let the creativity flow while you invite your users to submit UGC videos demonstrating and taking advantage of your products. Make it fun and permit people to vote for the best videos. Invite users to tell why they like your product or how they use it in unique ways. Encourage your visitors to submit videos through email marketing or house banner ads on different pages within your site. You might even run a small Pay per click campaign on appropriate search engines like google. Lastly, you can publicize your promotion on Facebook if you comply with its promotional guidelines.

You are able to give away tchotchkes or product samples towards the user who submits the video that gets the most votes on the weekly or monthly basis. A good example of this type of UGC video promotion can be seen on Twistlets, a site selling teen jewelry that may be bent or twisted into different shapes such as a bracelet, necklace, or head piece. They have a featured video on the homepage and buttons to submit videos or view photos. Users can upload a short video clip (60 seconds or less) showing how they “bend it, twist it, shape it and put it on.” Girls can rate their favorite designs and sort by the most widely used and recent video submissions.

When you use UGC videos in your site, don’t forget the recording sitemap. This is something your webmaster can perform to ensure the videos rank well on search engines. You will also have to submit the videos to video-sharing sites (read more within the upcoming section on optimizing your video).

Post corporate and product videos in your website

Video can be used for branding on your corporate page as well as for promoting products in your product pages. People would rather watch a relevant video than read about your organization online since it is faster and simpler to understand quickly. You can capture the essence of your business and interact with your customers, giving your company an individual touch. Let’s say you sell complex products, a demo will help boost sales. These videos ought to be short and therefore are inexpensive to create.

When designing your web corporate or product videos, make sure to have them short and be sure the quality is good and the sound is apparent. Actually, captioning has become available for video, and it helps to sell product to possess a few captions inside your video. Have a clear goal before you start and limit each video to creating one main point. Videos should be between one and 2 minutes long — three minutes max. This is exactly why you’ll need prior planning.

You don’t have to hire a pro to create these short videos. Make use of a plain background behind a talking head or product display. This prevents the viewer’s attention where you need it. Avoid using flashy transitions or effects — however it can be helpful to use graphics. Use large text that is readable with sans serif font. Keep the camera steady whenever you shoot by using a video tripod. Be sure to have plenty of light. You should use three lights positioned approximately 6 feet away from the camera and mounted on a drawing easel 2 to 3 feet aside from the camera. A couple of lights ought to be at eye level, as the third is all about 6 feet up, pointing down. By placing the lights off to the side of the camera, you receive subtle shadows about them, which helps add dimension.

You can make your sound better by using a top quality microphone plugged into your camcorder. Bad quality of sound is common in do-it-yourself videos since the built-in microphones of all camcorders aren’t good enough.

Create product testimonial videos for the product pages

Plenty of customers provides you with written testimonials. Contact some of the people customers and give them an incentive to place their testimonials right into a video. You can give them coupons, discounts, or perhaps a 30-day free trial for his or her efforts. You can now create a short video nowadays; they can record the video and send the file for you by email. If you are in exactly the same city, you might invite the individual for your business to shoot the video; then take them to your meal to show your appreciation.

All that you should create high-quality web videos is really a camera, proper lighting, and video-editing software. You can use the Flip Ultra HD camera ($132.99), RCA Small Wonder EQ101 camera ($99.99), iPhone, Droid, or worthwhile smartphone having a video recorder to record your videos.

Most of these cameras fit in the palm of the hand and operate on AA batteries. You can record as much as Half an hour of digital video directly into the camera’s memory, so no video tape is needed. When you’re finished recording and are prepared to edit or upload to the web, your camera plugs straight into your computer, letting you transfer the video files to your computer. Flip has its own video editing tools in its video management software. Several popular video software programs are described below.

Microsoft Movie Maker video software is simple to use. You may create and share your personal movies with Windows 7 and Windows Movie Maker. This can be a download free which includes tools for photos, im, email, and social media. You can import pics and vids out of your PC or camera into Movie Maker to start making movies. Editing tools permit you to trim, split, and accelerate or decelerate your movie. You may also edit the audio, adjust volume, fade music in/ and out, etc.

Jumpcut video editing software offers a free download. This movie maker and sharing service has numerous advanced features and requires a small learning curve. Movies can be created from video, audio, and photo files or clips from other videos published on a site. You can set soundtrack lengths and add visual and audio effects by clip. Once saved, you are able to re-edit by clicking “remix.”

iMovie is a user-friendly video software which makes viewing and working with video quick and easy. A built-in library automatically organizes your videos so that all the clips you’ve captured and also the movies you have made are only a click away. It is easy to add movies aimed at your website, distribute them online, and make versions for iPods, iPhones, and Apple TVs. The price is $79 (part of iLife).

Niche websites and email

Produce a niche video-sharing site
Be considered a leader inside your industry by creating a place where your audience and stakeholders can post and examine business videos for free. Whenever your brand becomes the host for video sharing inside your niche, you receive increased traffic and brand exposure. Your visitors can post videos regarding their products and services, or marketing tips, how-tos, and much more. You will quickly develop a growing video community that shares information about the industry and concepts.

When your video community reaches critical mass, you will get ad revenue and obtain more SEO juice that may put your site in top organic rankings. We wrote in detail about producing your own white-label video hub in August of last year, and also the details are still relevant.

Create a video email marketing campaign
Embedding a relevant video in your email marketing campaign can increase your click-through rates by as much as 2 to 3 times, based on Forrester research. It tells your audience that you care enough to speak inside a personal, interactive, and easy-to-understand manner than the usual longer text email that can take additional time to see.

While there are a number of video email providers available, we encourage you to seek a provider to suit your budget. We looked for an affordable video provider and found VideoCustomizer, which is a cloud-based solution providing you with the infrastructure and technology for creating, designing and delivering personalized video email, video ad campaigns, and video streaming and hosting solutions. With this particular technology, you are able to reach customers on computers, iPads, iPhones, and smartphones.

VideoCustomizer’s Plan Lite provides you with 1,000 video emails about the platform with 4,000 video landing page views, which includes a free video ad. Additionally, it includes video hosting on your website and blog. The program offers multi-user, multi-email accounts, and you will use your own domain with full system access. The price for Plan Lite is $15 per month.

A note on optimization and hosting

Optimizing your videos
You need to optimize your videos by creating a video sitemap. You should use the Google Video extension towards the Sitemap protocol to provide Google along with other search engines details about the recording content on your site.

Video content includes the web pages which you embed your video, the URLs to players for the video, or even the URLs of raw video content hosted in your site. Each URL entry must contain the following information:

Title
Description
Play page URL
Thumbnail URL
Raw video file location and/or the ball player URL (SWF)

For more information see Google’s guidelines for creating sitemaps.

As you can submit your videos straight to video-sharing sites like YouTube, Metacafe, Vimeo, etc., you may also use TubeMogul, a free service that allows you to upload your videos to multiple leading video-sharing websites quickly as well as track results. Currently supported websites include: Google Video, Metacafe, MySpace Video, Revver, AOL Video, and YouTube.

TubeMogul is really a video analytics and distribution system that provides publishers independent information about web video performance in addition to automated upload to the top video-sharing sites. It offers the following features:

Mass upload: Upload videos to six leading video networks automatically
Video analytics: Track video performance, viewership demographic reports, and create comparison charts
Comments and ratings: View all user comments and ratings in one place
Charts: Email charts to others and export to Excel

Hosting your videos

You may need a video webhost, and that we want to suggest a few hosting companies that provide affordable solutions which are easy to deploy.

Fliqz enables you to upload, stream, track, and monetize your video content. It provides five different plans, from basic to platinum, and you can try it free of charge.

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