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14 P a r t I Marketing Your Business Online with YouTube

YouTube for Direct Sales

YouTube is a terrific channel for generating direct sales for products and services.
All you have to do is show the product in action or provide a clip of the service in
question, and then ask for the sale by directing the viewer to your own website.
One of the best ways to showcase a product is in an instructional video—the online
equivalent of an old-school infomercial. Do you remember Ron Popeil’s late-night
TV ads for slicers and dicers? Create a shorter version of said Ronco ads, but focus-
ing on the useful attributes of your product, and you’ll gain YouTube viewership.
The key to converting eyeballs to dollars is to generously highlight your company’s
website address or 800-number within the body of the video. Put the contact infor-
mation at the front of the video, at the end of the video, and overlaid at the bottom
of the screen during the body of the clip, as Sign Warehouse (www.youtube.com/
user/signwarehouse) does in the video shown in Figure 1.8. Make it easy for inter-
ested viewers to find more information or place an order. (And, to that end, there’s
nothing wrong with mentioning the product’s price somewhere in the video.)

Figure 1.8 A direct sales video from Sign Warehouse.

YouTube for Product Support

Not all companies use YouTube to generate new business; some companies do so to
support existing customers. Consider some of the most common customer prob-
lems and questions, and produce one or more videos addressing those issues. If you
can help your customers help themselves, you provide them with a useful service
and reduce your company’s support costs—all with a free YouTube video.