Tips for Producing More Effective YouTube Videos

Sep 2, 2008

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This chapter is from the book 

YouTube for Business: Online Video Marketing for Any Business

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Tips for Generating Sales

Creating a highly viewed video is great, but it's ultimately meaningless unless you can convert those viewers into paying customers. How, then, do you turn views into sales? Here are a few tips that can help in the process.

Include Your Website's Address in the Video

The key to marketing on YouTube is to lead viewers from your video on the YouTube site to your company's website—where you can then directly sell your products and services. How can you accomplish that?

Unfortunately, YouTube doesn't allow live links from a video to a third-party website. You can, however, include your website address in the body of the video and hope that viewers will remember it or write it down for future reference.

There's no point being subtle about this. Because people have trouble remembering things such as 800-numbers and URLs (uniform resource locators, also known as website addresses), you need to include your address early and often in the video. I recommend starting your video with a blank title screen with the URL overlaid, as shown in Figure 3.1. You should also end the video with a similar blank screen with the URL displayed. Make sure the URL is big and easily readable; high contrast colors, such as white text on a black background (or vice versa), provide the best results.

Figure 3.1 A title screen with the company's URL prominently displayed.

You might even want to include your URL onscreen during the main part of your video. Use your video-editing program to overlay the URL, as shown in Figure 3.2. The URL shouldn't interfere with the main content, of course, but you should be able to overlay them in a nonintrusive way.

Figure 3.2 A URL superimposed on the bottom of the video screen.

Include Your URL in the Accompanying Text

You can't live link from within a YouTube video; unfortunately, you also can't include a link to your website in the description that accompanies the video. You can, however, include your URL in the text description, but not as a live link. So, when you write the description for your video, make sure you include your URL or 800-number in the text.

Link from Your Profile

Although you can't include a live link in your video or its accompanying text, you can include a direct link to your website in your YouTube profile. Anyone clicking your username sees your profile with the link to your website, as shown in Figure 3.3. When viewers click the website link, they're taken directly to your site—where you can sell them more of what you have to offer.

Figure 3.3 A typical YouTube profile, complete with a live link to an accompanying website.

The Big Picture

What's the takeaway from all the tips presented in this chapter? The big picture is that you need to create professional-looking videos that are both entertaining and informative, and then make it easy for viewers to go to your website for more information or to purchase what you have to sell. Your videos can be funny or educational (or both), but they most definitely should be short; YouTubers have a notoriously short attention span. And, whatever type of video you produce, you should design it to be visually appealing in the small YouTube video window. There's no point including a cast of thousands when everyone has to fit in a space only a few inches across!

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