DigitalDon

The term "video marketing" is rather generic, only describing a particular medium used to facilitate marketing of products or services. Asking if one has been successful at "video marketing" is sort of like asking people if they've been successful with email marketing or SEO marketing. There's a lot involved in each of these methods, and it can be easy to "get into the weeds" and spend time on things that don't necessarily produce better results. As such, there are numerous factors which will determine the degree of success one has using video as a medium: The size of the target market The desired results expected The quality of the video(s) - content, production values and effectiveness of the call-to-action (CTA) message contained The ability to determine whether viewers watch the complete video, and if they don't, when they stopped viewing (determining how the message may be improved to retain viewers 'til the end) Where the video is hosted - Videos that are slow to download (excessive buffer time) will result in loss of viewers due to impatience. Hosting videos on your own server is ill-advised because of this The means used to get your videos in front of as many interested eyeballs and ears as possible Those are just a few of the factors that come immediately to my mind, and I'm sure there are others that are based on individual objectives and circumstances. I don't mean to say that your videos have to be perfect. You don't necessarily have to be another Steven Spielberg to create effective marketing videos, but if you want to attract people with money to spend, you should strive to represent yourself, your business, and above all your product/service in such a manner that people will feel comfortable buying it from you. I would say that if there is ONE factor more important than any other, it's ensuring that your viewers actually receive the message you're sending them, and that the message compels them to act on it in the desired manner (click on a link, enter contact information, share of Facebook, etc.). If one thinks of video marketing as an extension of "on-demand" video - which appears to be the direction that video has been heading for some time. Give them a reason to watch and they'll keep coming back for more!

Hello Rudi. I couldn't help noticing that you've posted quite a lot of material here. From what I've looked at so far, most of it appears to be really good information. However, I also notice that very few of your posts have any replies attached to them, which isn't a good thing in a forum. If I may, I'd like to offer some constructive criticism, if you're still monitoring this forum (hopefully you've received an email notifying you of this reply). First of all, I would recommend that you don't post too much information at once. I've found that it's a good idea to give people a chance to digest what you have to offer before giving them more of it. In spite of the valuable information they contain, the many posts you've put up here are most likely contributing to that dreaded situation in many people known as "information overload." Second, since we're in a forum, I strongly recommend finishing your posts with a "call to action" - something to provoke the readers to contribute their own opinion or experience on the subject. That can be accomplished by asking them a direct question, or perhaps by making a provocative statement that spurs the reader to respond. Lastly, I would recommend injecting some "white space" into your longer posts. Many readers, when confronted by a single huge block of text, will be "scared away" and not read it at all. With large blocks of text it is also sometimes difficult to read because the width of the page is such that it's hard to determine where the next line begins - it's hidden amongst all of the other lines of text. Even using some of the rich text features of the editor (such as Bold, Italics, Underline, etc.- as well as "bullet points" such as I've used here) can help the reader identify the next line more easily, by giving them an "anchor point" to use as a reference to navigate to the next line. These "tricks" apply equally to the emails you send, with one additional piece of advice: Don't make lines of text more than about 60 characters long. That way, the beginning of each line is still within the reader's field of vision as they read to the end, making it easier to locate the beginning of the next line once they reach the end of the current line. There's much more to the art of copywriting than just the informational content alone (which is still very important, don't get me wrong). As marketers, we also must learn how to "package" the information we put out there, making it as easy as possible for our readers to actually receive - and to digest - the information we offer them. Best of luck to you, and may you prosper in all of your endeavors!

Beware of companies that simply offer "clicks" to your site - more often than not they either have a gaggle of people who just sit at their computers and click on links all day long without even looking at the page, or they have an automated system that does the same thing (using "proxy" servers to disguise the fact that all the clicks are coming from the same place). These are holdovers from the days when the search engines used less-sophisticated means to determine a site's "relevance," counting only the NUMBER of visits to a site, without taking into account where those clicks were actually coming from. Those days are long-gone! I agree with Matt that solo ads are probably the best way for new marketers (I refuse to insult them by calling them "newbies") to enter the "paid traffic" scene. I would definitely stay away from Google AdWords until you have a firm understanding of exactly how it works, or you could end up like so many fledgling marketers who ended up wasting SERIOUS amounts of money on traffic that didn't convert for a wide variety of other reasons. Using AdWords effectively requires a lot of research into keywords, trends, and a number of other factors. (IMHO, handicapping a horse race is child's play in comparison!) I also STRONGLY recommend that you don't send "paid" traffic directly to an "affiliate site" that the vendor gave you to promote the product/service. If you're serious about being an online marketer, then you should be using that paid traffic to build your own list! That way you have multiple opportunities to recoup your investment in their original "click" by communicating with them. If you don't have an autoresponder and corresponding squeeze page, GET ONE NOW - and learn how to use them! Lastly, if you're serious about your online business, DON'T use a Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL or MSN email address in your online correspondence. It's a dead giveaway that you're an "amateur" at best, and most people don't have to understand a lot about online marketing to recognize this. GMail has become the preferred "third-party" email provider of marketers, although the best address by far is one that's associated with your own domain (e.g: "me@myonlinebusiness.com"). Sorry if I wandered off the original topic a bit, but in a roundabout way it all ties together...

I've known both Matt and Darren for nearly 6 years now, from a time when we were all working in the same business - a business social network that basically "blew up on the launch pad" when the programmers bailed out on the founder barely hours before the launch - and scrubbed all of the code from the site! I'll leave it to them (Matt and Darren) if they wish to talk about that experience any further. As for me, I chalked it all up to experience and moved on. Was I bummed about it? Sure! But after an acceptable "period of mourning" for the failed program I picked myself up and got back in the game! I can vouch for the fact that both of these guys are true professionals who understand the true foundational principles of good marketing, starting with the core principle that the needs of the customer come first! I was fortunate enough to have learned that pearl of wisdom from my father as I was growing up, working in our family-owned grocery store. That was over 50 years ago, but some principles are timeless, and that's one of them! We had pretty much gone our separate ways when that startup failed, but I have been on Darren's mailing list all this time and I found this forum through one of his "list" emails. It just goes to show you that even though some people on your list don't always respond, as long as they don't unsubscribe you should consider them to be active prospects! Believe me - in the current environment, if people don't want to hear from you, they'll unsubscribe in a heartbeat!

The problem with using services like bit.ly TinyURL and others is that you surrender control of the traffic flowing to your site(s). If you have what I like to call "persistent" advertising - advertising that remains visible for long periods of time (e.g. banners) - then you're sunk if the link-shortener service discontinues its service (I've experienced this several times over the years). When that happens, all of your "persistent" ads become totally worthless, since the shortened links they contain no longer work - just as William warns above! I finally ended up installing a link-shortener script on my own server. All the links it generates use the base URL of my website in them, so not only do they direct people to wherever I want them to go, but they also provide a degree of "brand recognition" since some people will be curious and type in just the base URL (without all of the stuff to the right of the ".com.") I often do that myself when I want to learn more about websites someone is trying to refer ME to. I may not learn anything about THAT website, but I usually find out what redirect service they're using at the very least. Because the tracking script resides on MY server, I have total control over it. I'm able to customize the links as I see fit, and I'm able to track all sorts of information, conduct split-testing, and if I wish to change the redirect of a link from one URL to another it's just a couple of clicks (and a little typing too, of course). Tracking scripts aren't really all that expensive, especially when you understand the degree of control you have by using them. While there are instances where it may be better for you to "outsource" aspects of your business, until you hit a certain level of profitability it's probably best to try to retain as much control as you can over things.

If you stay in business long enough, sooner or later you're going to screw something up. (The most common slip-up by far is giving the wrong link to your subscribers.) When you make that inevitable mistake, here are several things I recommend you do: Make it YOURS! - Own up to your mistake! Tell your subscribers that it's YOUR fault that they didn't get the right link. Don't try to pass it off on your "server crashing" or an autoresponder problem (unless that's what actually happened - but even then you should still take personal responsibility for the screw-up. After all, it's YOUR server, YOUR autoresponder...) Then... Make it RIGHT! - Give them the correct link. Reveal the correct information. If you sent them somewhere that ends up not being exactly what you thought it was, tell your subscribers that YOU were wrong about it, and... Make it UP! - If you're unable to deliver on your original promise, apologize! Then give them something - of real value to them, of course - as a way of further apologizing to them.Mistakes are an inevitable part of the human condition. The mark of a true professional is how they handle their mistakes. It's a natural tendency to try to blame someone or something else when things don't go right, but when you take responsibility and "go that extra mile" to show your subscribers/followers that you're really "on their side," and that you're a real person, you'll go a long way towards "getting inside their heads" (in a GOOD way), and becoming more to them than just a faceless stream of text in their inbox. Perhaps the best way to establish relationships with the people on your list is to try to make things as interactive as possible - beyond just asking them to click on a link. Recorded video has been shown to work extremely well, especially when there's a comment stream for viewers to provide feedback/opinions about it (moderated, of course, to prevent "comment spam"). Live webinars can work wonders too. While they take a little effort to put together and to run smoothly, they can really pay off by giving people a chance to communicate "in public" with you, further building your brand as well as trust and confidence that you know what you're talking about.

I represent a hosting company that provides hosting for up to four domains, and the hosting package includes an email autoresponder, video hosting, video conferencing and live training twice a week. I won't post my affiliate link here because I don't wish to "spam" the forum. Suffice it to say that this company has a solid reputation for being "business-friendly" and has been in business for over 12 years now. It should be noted that under this plan your domains are hosted on shared servers, so it may not be suitable for ALL businesses. If you're going to host a lot of videos on your own site, or you plan on installing scripts which are "server-intensive," then shared hosting is NOT a good choice. I advise coughing up the extra money for a dedicated server, or look into hosting your videos on Amazon. Many marketers use YouTube to host their videos, however that looks amateurish to most people. Plus, if someone finds your video(s) on YouTube and you don't have sufficient info in your video descriptions there, it's really confusing to those who find them on YouTube, and you end up losing potential traffic there too. That's why I recommend consolidating things as much as possible, in spite of the age-old warning, "Don't put all of your eggs in one basket." Of course, if you're just starting out in an online business, you probably don't even know what questions to ask, let alone where and who to ask them. Forums like this are a good way to get some good "peer input" from people who are - or have been - "in your shoes." This is my first post on this forum, having just joined minutes ago. I've known Matt and Darren casually for a number of years now, and I value their opinions and advice - because I KNOW they are "walking the walk" and not just spouting "theory" like a lot of the so-called "gurus" out there.