- Tips for Creating Better-Looking Videos
- Tips for Improving Your Video Content
- Tips for Generating Sales
- The Big Picture
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 will 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 some sort of title screen with the URL overlaid, as shown in Figure 12.1. You should also end the video with a similar 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 12.1 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 12.2. The URL shouldn't interfere with the main content, of course, but you should be able to overlay it in a nonintrusive way.
Figure 12.2 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 Channel Page
Although you can't include a live link in your video or its accompanying text, you can include a direct link to your website on your YouTube channel page. Anyone clicking your username will see your channel page with the link to your website in the Profile section, as shown in Figure 12.3. 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 12.3 The Profile section of a typical YouTube channel page, complete with a live link to an accompanying website.