Rotaflash Web Design and Internet Marketing

Youtube is an affordable way to advertise your small business

2011-04-22T17:36:21Z

Large companies with deep pockets have long held a strong advantage when it comes to marketing. Simply put, they have the money to spend heavily on advertising and pull ahead of the competition. Thanks to the paradigm changing impact of the Internet, however, smaller companies now have an opportunity to catch up for a fraction of the cost.
That is why I strongly recommend that you read an excellent piece in the New York Times entitled: “Online Video Offers Low-Cost Marketing For Your Company.” The article provides powerful tips on how to use YouTube and other hosting services (Vimeo, MetaCafe, Facebook, Viddler, Brightcove and ) as a low budget form of television advertising as well as a means to demonstrate what a product does.
Below, please find highlights that I have pulled from the article. I strongly suggest, however, that you read the article in its entirety, save it and pass it on to others.
1. SHOW YOUR PRODUCTS – Short of getting a customer in the door or sending a salesperson on the road, online video may be the best way to demonstrate a product.
2. CREATE A DESTINATION – It is easier to win customers if you give them a reason to tune in. For [a company called] BBQguys.com, the reason is food sizzling on the grill.
3. USE ANALYTICS AND TOOLS – YouTube offers tools that allow you to measure the effect of your videos.
4. BUILD A BRAND CHANNEL – One way to get the attention of customers is invite them to become your video producers – especially if they jump off cliffs, ski down steep powder ridges or do somersaults on BMX bikes.

5. ADVERTISE WITH VIDEO – YouTube is the second-largest search engine after Google (which owns YouTube) and represents a huge audience of potential customers. It offers a dozen advertising options, including banner ads, promoted videos that appear on top and beside search results, and “preroll ads” that appear during other YouTube videos much like a conventional TV commercial. YouTube recently announced that it was displaying more than three billion ads per week.

6. OFFER INSTRUCTION – Online video makes it easy to follow the adage “Show, don’t tell.” Many businesses have turned to video for instruction manuals and how-to guides.
If you are currently using YouTube and other hosting sites to market your products, write in and let us know.

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59% of Consumers use Google Each Month to Find a Good Local Business

2011-04-15T00:06:27Z

Brightlocal.com, a provider of local search tools for local marketers and SMBs, has released a new survey of Local SEO’s and US consumers title: Where do local business websites get their traffic & do consumers appreciate local search results? They surveyed 648 Local SEOs and 1,250 US consumers as to the value of Local search results.

Local SEOs reported that Google Places was the number one source of traffic and Google organic was number two, with Google in total providing 58% of all search traffic. (I have asked for clarification of the results but it strikes me as difficult to ascertain with any confidence where a result from Google is coming from with blended results.) All other sites provided a small percentage of the traffic; Yahoo providing 4% in from both local and organic, Bing providing 3% and Facebook 2%. These numbers reinforced the results that I reported in a much smaller sample of rural visitation in January.

The report found that consumers looked more closely at results that included images particularly in younger demographics. It is confirmation of the general perception in the SEO world of the benefits of the Google included visuals. Of particular interest to me, were the consumer usage and satisfaction results.

Question: How often do you use Google to locate and find a good local business? (e.g cafe, bar, plumber, taxi service…)
- 59% of consumers use Google each month to find a good local business
- 31% of consumers use Google each week to find a good local business

Question: In Google’s search results they often display local results*. Which of the following statements best applies to your attitude and use of these types of results?

Key Findings:
-71% of consumers value the information contained within local search results.
-This rises to 80% for those aged 16-34; Only 66% of consumers aged 55+ find these results useful

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What is a Call to Action?

2011-04-11T09:56:19Z

Definition of Call to Action: The “action” (click/fill out form/buy/call you/etc) that you want someone to take on a particular web page. It usually involves a “call” as well that gets visitors attention.

A Call to Action is (for the sake of this article) one single action that you want someone to take on a page. It’s the goal of what you want that visitor to do when they get to your page.

Do you want them to click a link? Do you want them to click buy and buy something? Do you want them to fill out a form so that you can call them? Whatever action to want them to take, will form your call aka attention getting strategy around. This is why it’s called a call to action, like a call to arms, except you want them to take an action of some kind. Afterall, isn’t that why we make websites so that people take a certain action on our sites? We don’t just make sites with no purpose.

It often drives me crazy that so many people don’t use Call to Actions appropriately.

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Where Small Business Is Marketing Online

2011-04-11T09:40:51Z

The following list is from a survey done by MerchantCircle on where small businesses are spending marketing dollars this year:
Facebook – 70.3%
Google – 66.2%
LinkedIn – 58.2%
Google Places – 51.4%
Yahoo – 49.2%
Yahoo Local – 45%
Twitter – 39.8%
Citysearch – 39.7%
Yellowbook – 39.3%
Superpages.com – 33.3%
Bing – 33.2%
Yelp – 32.2%
Facebook Places – 32.2%
YouTube – 26.8%
YP.com – 25.6%
Ask.com – 19.9%
MySpace – 19.2%
Foursquare – 8.7%
Groupon – 6.6%
LivingSocial – 5%
Gowalla – 3.4%
Bizzy – 2.5%

Google is not surprising, but Facebook and LinkedIn being #1 and #3 is. At least to me. My guess is that entrepreneurs hear about social media and figure “Why not? It’s Free.” From my experience though, most small businesses that have these social profiles set them up and let them sit there, hoping people automatically find it and call them. I hope word gets out that you need to actively use it and engage people for the whole thing to work. Social media marketing is not like the phone book where you stick an ad in and people call.

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2011-04-11T08:42:32Z

68.2% or 158.1 million people in the United States will watch online video at least once a month according to Emarketer. It’s another sign that online video is something small business needs to start taking a close look at.

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2011-04-11T08:37:52Z

According to ExactTarget, 52% of people who’ve left Twitter and no longer use it, said they stopped “because it was pointless.” That’s a pretty strong rebuke. Primarily, the problem Twitter has is that everybody is on Facebook and only some people are on Twitter.

Twitter has close to 16 million people in the US who use it at least once a month. Facebook has close to 150 million. Twitter and Facbook are mostly tools to communicate and socialize. If the people who you want to communicate and socialize with aren’t using Twitter, there’s no reason for you to either.

The reason why people started using email is because after a few years, everyone gradually got on it and used it. That’s what makes email important. The number of people who use it.

Twitter will not be universally relevant until their user base increases dramatically.

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2011-04-11T08:27:30Z

Amazon is starting to get into Netflix’s business of offering online streaming of select TV shows and movies. No big deal, right? Only a matter of time before Netflix would have some serious competition. But actually, Netflix does have a really big problem on it’s hands.

Paid Content is reporting that Netflix outsources a huge portion of its operations to a division of Amazon called Amazon Web Services. AWS became a Netflix vendor in 2009, and has taken on an increasingly larger role in managing the “majority of our computing,” according to the 10-K SEC filing Netflix submitted.

The filing also states, “Given this, along with the fact that we cannot easily switch our AWS operations to another cloud provider, any disruption of or interference with our use of AWS would impact our operations and our business would be adversely impacted.” Doesn’t sound good on Netflix’s end.

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