It’s no secret, video blogging is a great tool that anyone can benefit from by adding it to their arsenal of business marketing weapons.
Some take advantage of it, some don’t know its power exists and some, don’t understand the force impact you can make by showing people the “face and feeling” of the company.
I’m in the former category. I started video blogging on a blog some of you may remember called Imarketinghacked. Long gone and taken down, Imark (as it was called in the street) was a blog mainly about the awesomeness of new marketing and social media. That’s where it all started for me.
Video Blogging Has This Much Power?
I was blown away. Months after launching the blog, I had actually (contrary to collective expectation) built a pretty solid readership.
Was my content awesome? Well, I think so! But it wasn’t the quality or practicality that brought in such quality readers, it was the fact that they saw my face, felt my feelings and were bonded to me emotionally that got that blog traffic.
That was well before I decided to start a full blown business. I was just dabbling around, learning the landscape, testing things out. But, as it turns out, it was not only the perfect primer, but the most powerful social marketing training I ever could have gotten.
Taking It Into Business, iPhone Style
My company, RMC Tech, is a technical service company that goes where the market needs us. Right now, we’re needed in, and are attacking the iPhone screen repairmarket.
We replace screens on broken iPhones nationwide, and locally here in Pennsylvania. But, with just the technical skill to replace a screen, could I really make any money?
Could my business get traction, press, awareness and leads just because I’m a hardware geek? I think not! And I certainly didn’t for the first month I offered the service.
I knew, I had to do something big, something contagious, something that spread. The video blogging begun.
I started thinking about how I could use the power of storytelling to reach the local market in the Lehigh Valley, expanding out to the rest of the US. The answer? The iGraveyard.
iPhones break, and when they do, we normally keep the parts. With the parts, comes a story. The story of how the phone met its demise.
Here’s a clip:
My friends started telling me they were drawn in by the iGraveyard videos, that each new one that came out, they were excited to watch and it’s at that point that I knew I was onto something.
Tweeting the videos out to people in my local market, it started to spread the awareness for me. Even if the video gets retweeted 5 times, 5 more people see it, the idea that I repair iPhones gets pressed into their brains, and I’ve effectively just indirectly marketed to them.
But wait, there’s more. It isn’t just the Ryan Critchett theory, I’m getting leads from this. People are not just calling for the service, they now ask me if I’m going to showcase their iPhone on the iGraveyard videos.
I’m now getting a steady flow of leads saying things like “I stumbled across one of your iGraveyard videos on Youtube, and I have a broken iPhone..” not just locally but also from states like like Massuchusetts, New York, and Texas. The main sources for this lead generation, as I ask each one of my customers, are YouTube, Google and Twitter.
I’ve also been able to get some interesting press coverage, land meetings with executives from worldwide brands about technical services within the enterprise, and attract a nationwide franchise technical service company. We’re now in negotiations to do some major partnership stuff.
The videos helped my company get the exposure we were not able to get by building backlinks to our website or attending local networking events. The formula is simple, I use video as a digital emotion vehicle to reach people in a more personal format, through storytelling and showing my face to spread something entertaining and get a message across, which is much more effective than interrupting people.
We’re moving into a new age. In fact, it’s arrived. We’re here. Internet technology and the social web makes it possible to reach customers, and generate leads, in a whole new way. Video blogging transfers emotion. It gives you the ability to show the company’s personality. The human being behind it.
How are you approaching your target?
Let’s take the bull by the horns. Find creative ways to built trust through video with your target market. Reach your potential customers before your competitors do.
Take advantage of the fact that this makes huge budgets in advertising obsolete, because you’re getting to the consumer first by being with them in the trenches and entertaining them.
Crank out some awesome videos, not just about the service you provide but about something entertaining around that service, without trying to sell all the time. People want to do business with people, they want an emotional connection and there is an enormous opportunity to build real trust points through video marketing.
Your R.O.I. is more likely to show up.
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