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C h a p t e r 6 Incorporating YouTube Videos in Your Overall 65
Web Marketing Mix

Let’s start by recognizing the obvious—the Internet has dramatically changed the
way marketing works. A company’s marketing mix today looks much different from
the marketing mix of a generation ago. Go back a decade or two and you had a lim-
ited number of media to use: newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and direct
mail. Now, all of these media are still around today, but the Internet has added a
variety of new options one must consider.

What new media has the Internet added to the mix? Here’s a short list:

• Email

• Websites

• Search engines

• Blogs

• Social networks (such as Facebook and MySpace)

• Photo-sharing sites (Flickr and so on)

• Video-sharing sites

YouTube, of course, defines that last category.

You need to consider all aspects of online marketing when fitting YouTube into
your marketing plans. Does your YouTube marketing stand alone, or is it part of a
larger campaign that includes seeded blog postings, banner website ads, pay-per-
click search engine ads, targeted email, and viral campaigns on the key social net-
works? You should determine all this before you script and storyboard your first
video.

In addition, you should also determine YouTube’s place alongside the traditional
marketing media. Do you use YouTube merely as another channel for your televi-
sion commercials, or does it expand on your television advertising with additional
spots, alternative takes, expanded scenarios, and the like? Does YouTube merely
provide more exposure for your existing campaign, or does it change things up to
fine-tune your message to the slightly younger, more interactive YouTube audience?

Answering these questions will help you determine exactly how you fit YouTube
into your marketing mix.

Coordinating Your Online Marketing Activities

Whatever components you include in your marketing mix, it’s important that all
these components mesh with one other. They should all carry the same message;
you don’t want to present one image to YouTube viewers, another to Google and
other search engines, another to customers viewing display ads, and yet another to