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C h a p t e r 2 Developing Your YouTube Marketing Strategy 29

Infomercials

Let’s move beyond repurposed material into new content created expressly for the
YouTube site. (Although you can, of course, also display your YouTube videos on
your own website or blog.) When you’re creating videos just for YouTube, you can
choose from among several different approaches you can employ.

One very popular approach is to create the YouTube equivalent of an infomercial.
That is, you create a video that purports to convey some type of information, but in
reality exists to subtly plug your product or brand.

Let’s say that you offer gift baskets for sale. You create a short video for YouTube
about how to make gift baskets—something that would be of interest to anyone in
the market for them. You prominently display your web page address and phone
number within the video and in the descriptive text that accompanies the video on
the YouTube site. Because the video has some informational content (the how-to
information), it attracts viewers, and a certain percentage of them will follow
through to purchase the gift baskets you have for sale.

Or maybe you’re a business consultant and you want to promote your consulting
services. To demonstrate what you have to offer potential clients, you create and
upload some sort of short video—a motivational lecture, perhaps, or a slideshow
about specific business practices, or something similar. You use the video to estab-
lish your expert status and then display your email address or web page address to
solicit business for your consulting services.

Or maybe you have a full-length DVD for sale. You excerpt a portion of the DVD
and upload it to YouTube, with graphics before and after (and maybe even during)
the video detailing how a viewer can order the full-length DVD can.

Likewise, if you’re a musician with music to sell, an author with books to sell, an
artist with paintings or other artwork to sell, or a craftsman with various crafts and
such to sell. The musician might create a music video to promote his music; the
author might read an excerpt from her book; the artist might produce a photo
slideshow of her work; and the craftsman might upload a short video walk-through
of pieces he has for sale. Make sure you include details for how the additional prod-
uct can be ordered, and let your placement on YouTube do the promotion for you.

Here’s an example of an effective infomercial approach. Viator Travel
(www.youtube.com/user/ViatorTravel) offers tours of more than 400 destinations
worldwide. The company created a series of informative and entertaining videos
about their top destinations, like the one in Figure 2.2, and uploaded those videos
to YouTube. Interested people can view the videos and then contact the firm to
schedule a vacation. It’s quite synergistic.