A year ago, I wrote a Top Shelf VA Report “Video for Small Business Marketing: The New Content King.” Well, it’s a year later and I’m sure you’ve become fully aware of the importance of video for a small business.
In the “Video for Small Business Marketing” report, I discussed the four types of videos you could start adding to your website. Briefly, those were:
- Explainer Video: The video for your landing page or home page of your website. It catches the visitor’s intrigue.
- Testimonial Video: Your clients provide video testimonials about your product or service.
- Product Video: Your potential clients can see how your product works prior to making the decision to buy.
- How-To or Tutorial Video: These are “value added” videos, not “marketing” videos. You are providing value and knowledge on how to do something.
Now let’s talk about YouTube. Google is the largest search engine in the world. Google also owns YouTube, which is the second largest search engine in the world. If we know video is necessary today for growing your business, and YouTube is the second largest search engine, it makes sense to get more clients coming in through your doors (brick and mortar, or virtual), it would be highly beneficial to have a YouTube channel.
You might be thinking there is so much work that goes into a YouTube channel and it takes so long to build up a subscriber base. That can be true. You may also think it takes a long time to build up views on your channel and videos. That can also be true. You may also think it’s not worth the time and investment needed to build a YouTube channel. That would be false!
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Let’s look at some of the benefits of having a YouTube channel.
- You establish a portfolio of your business’ services or products.
- You establish yourself as having the knowledge and expertise about your product or service.
- You have a central location to answer your clients’ or potential client’s questions.
- Your videos will have a higher likelihood of being found on YouTube than on your website.
- You can use your videos on YouTube to direct people back to your website.
- The biggest benefit is your YouTube channel has the potential to bring in more revenue to your business than your website alone.
Number six should be the biggest reason you have a YouTube channel. When I refer to more revenue, I’m not talking about the dribble of passive income from YouTube ads. That would require a massive number of subscribers and views.
No, when I refer to more revenue, I’m referring to the number of people who come through your business’ doors because they saw your videos. That can easily happen if you have 10 subscribers or if you have 500 subscribers.
Let me give you an example, when I had only 14 YouTube subscribers, one small business owner saw my videos and decided to become my client. That client stayed with my business for two and half years and paid for a total of 295 hours of services.
By the time I had 478 subscribers, I had brought in three more clients from my YouTube channel for a total of nearly 500 hours of revenue. Two of those clients are still with my company and I am still earning revenue from the services I provide to them.
In addition, my current clients have seen my YouTube channel grow and are starting to work on their own videos and channels, using my services, thus increasing the number of hours they need.
The moral of the story is you don’t need a large YouTube channel to start seeing the KPI (Key Performance Indicators) that can bring in considerable revenue to your business.
If you don’t have a channel yet, or have one and need to make it better, then I have two resources for you. The first resource of course is my services. I can help you get your channel set up and ready to go, handle video editing, handle search engine optimization, transcriptions, tags, descriptions, titles, cards, end cards, everything you would need assistance on.
If you’re not quite at the point you can afford to have someone do the work for you (other than recording your video yourself), and you need to set up your channel and grow it on your own until you can afford to hire someone, then I have another tremendous resource for you.
This book, “Tube Ritual Volume 1: Jumpstart Your Journey to 5,000 YouTube Subscribers” by Brian G. Johnson, is an absolute must have. Now don’t let that title fool you. Yes, the book definitely focuses on building a channel fast; however, not all channels are equal in their niche and some will grow faster than others.
As a small business owner, what to really focus on in this book is the extremely sound advice Brian gives on building a solid foundation for your channel. That’s the true key. By incorporating most of his advice here, you will be able to build a strong channel from scratch and won’t have a situation down the road where you discover you were doing everything wrong, hindering your channel rather than strengthening it.
If your channel grows quickly, fantastic. If it grows slowly, but you are consistently bringing in new clients for your small business that is brilliant! To me that should be your main key performance indicator.
Brian will take you through understanding why creating engaging content will keep your viewers coming back repeatedly. Being able to determine your goals and your plan of action for your YouTube channel. The nuts and bolts of playlists and having great thumbnails to get more viewers’ eyes on your video. Learning how to answer the “why” of your channel. How to convert viewers into subscribers and so much more.
If you are a kinesthetic learner like I am, then I would also suggest two additional places to be while reading the book. The first is to subscribe to Brian’s YouTube channel. Forewarning, he’s a little quirky in a positive uplifting way. I would also suggest joining his highly active, positive, uplifting TubeRitual group on Facebook. Everyone in the group is there to help each other, you won’t find any spamming of the group’s newsfeed. Brian is terrific at keeping the spammers and trolls out, and keeping it a strong place for everyone to learn from each other.
Video and a YouTube channel is what is needed today and will be an integral part of business as usual for many years to come.
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