Marketing Your SIV
The other key ingredient to your success is marketing.
We cannot stress this enough!
How will you reach your potential customers economically?
Distribution Method |
Implications |
| Internet Website |
Inexpensive, incredibly wide reach, great potential. You have to know how to promote your website, have shopping cart and credit card capability (or Paypal). |
| Advertising |
Expensive, can be effective, short lived. |
| Trade Shows/Conferences/Expos |
Expensive, can make a lot of money fast. Often hard to measure results. |
| Press Releases |
Inexpensive (depends on size of mailing), can be very effective to drive traffic to your website. You can do electronic press releases. which can be basically free. You should do these. |
| Email Marketing |
Build a mailing list of interested people and mail to them regularly. Can be very effective and inexpensive. We use Constant Contact and had have had some very successful mailings. |
| Distributors |
Contact distributors who are already established in your market and sell through them. You will probably only get 50% to 60% of your retail price, but they will take care of all marketing and fulfillment. Can be successful, especially with higher priced items. |
Other avenues you should look into and consider when marketing your videos:
Pay Per Click (PPC) - Google AdWords is the big player in this arena although there are many other programs out there.
Video marketing on social networks (Youtube, Vimeo, etc.)
Social media sites - Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Squidoo are some of the ones where we have successfully marketed.
Article marketing
Maintain an active blog
Being active in forums, reviewing products on sites such as Amazon, commenting on blogs
After you get your initial big exposure you will notice that it becomes easier and easier to get traffic because you gain access to larger and larger communication channels. It still requires lots of ongoing work and you need to continue to demonstrate the value of your product, but each additional visitor you get makes it easier to get another visitor because of word of mouth and networks (people telling other people about your videos, other people blogging about you, twittering about you, etc.). Be sure to put "Share This" on your site.
There is no way to guarantee you will get consistent results in this aspect of publishing. Some producers strike it rich within the first few weeks, release a great video that is showcased by a big publication, and spreads all over the media and the internet. This is viral marketing and is the holy grail of internet marketers.
Unfortunately this scenario is rare, and most publishers have to work their way up. That’s why it’s so important to celebrate the small
successful steps. If you quit, you'll never get there. But like we said, we do this on a part time basis and have shown it can happen.
This is where our membership site will help you the most. Please sign up for our newsletter on HowToSellYourVideos and you will be notified when the membership site is open.
Package It For The Market
Amazon.com requires a UPC code for a DVD (ISBN for books). Many retailers require them as well. You can get a UPC code for $29 - $50 each.
http://www.upcexpress.com ($29)
http://www.buyabarcode.com ($50 each for 3)
Give it shelf appeal, especially for a retail product. The packaging should be appealing, exciting and create desire for the product. Use great photos. Give it sizzle!
For a more thorough introduction to marketing your DVDs, see my DVD, "Make Money Selling Your Own Videos" here. (Scroll down the page.)
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