Web Video: How To Offer Your Services To Local Businesses

Have you thought about selling your web video expertise to your local businesses? If you have web video production and marketing skills, you can make serious money while helping your local economy. Many small businesses have not adopted web video as a marketing tool and they desperately need to. Sometimes you have to convince them why they need it, but they do. There are many small and medium sized businesses who have not yet caught on to the marketing power of online video.

While on the cruise last month, we met several marketers whose business model was helping local businesses establish a web presence so they can get new business and grow. A few of these specifically were targeting web video marketing.

In our area, there is a strong need for video producers to offer web video production services to local businesses and most likely you’ll find the same in your town.

Here are some ideas on how to get started offering this type of service.

Begin With Your Business

Start with your own business. Not only should you have a website, you also should have web video on your site. Include examples so potential clients can see what can be done. Shoot those types of videos for yourself as well. (To build up your sample base, why not offer to do a video for free or as a trade?)

Target a niche 

Find a strong, yet under-served niche in your local area. One niche that clearly benefits from web video is lodging. Restaurants are another great niche.

Have A Web Presence

Find a local business that already has a current, nice looking website but they aren’t incorporating video or aren’t  utilizing it well. A website that looks good probably has a website owner who values this marketing tool and will spend money making it better.

If you feel you have a really interested client with a business that doesn’t have a website yet, consider adding website design to the package as well. You don’t have to be the developer. There are many outsourcing avenues you can use to get websites made very reasonably. “All done for you” is a great package to offer.

Pitch Your Idea

Research what is on their site and come up with some great video ideas to present to the business. Most businesses would benefit from welcome videos, site tours, demos, video sales letters, and video testimonials from happy customers or clients.

Put your marketing hat on to give them an idea of what they need to focus on in the video. Approach it from a problem solving position…what does this company offer that will solve a customer’s problem? Does their target market need a place to eat with vegetarian items on the menu? Are they looking for a dentist that works primarily with children? Do they travel with their dogs so so are looking for a place to stay that welcomes pets? You have to let the target market know the uniqueness of what this business offers from similar businesses in the area.

Outline Your Package

You need to come up with a clear outline of how a video will help them and how you can make it happen. Reread our post on online video marketing for good arguments and powerful statistics on why businesses of all kinds should use web video.

To offer the most benefit, include in your package that you will work with them on a strategic plan and techniques on how they will promote their web video. While having video on their site will boost their page rank, video can be a huge traffic driver from external sites.

Here’s a quirky, fun video we shot for one of our local businesses last month. Hope you enjoy it. If you do please comment and share it.

Marketing Tips: How To Find Video Marketing Opportunities While On Vacation

Marketing tips from my cruise ship balcony…

While on our annual Marketers Cruise, enjoying the sun on our cabin’s balcony, I shot this short 2 minute video on how I was going to take advantage of our cruise vacation to shoot marketing videos for our business.

There are 3 ideas I share regarding the type of video shooting opportunities to look for in using:

• Your environment
• The people you’ll encounter
• Your location and destination

These are many more ways you can use your video camera to help promote and market your business, which I’ll explore in future videos. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you interesting ways you’ve used video to market your business. Leave your comments below and I’ll include your strategy, name and link in future marketing tips posts.

 

Video Marketing Plan: 5 Marketing Video Opportunities

We’ve been spending this week not only masterminding and networking, but using the many opportunities this trip presents us to shoot video for our marketing and teaching goals. Before we got on board we didn’t just bring our cameras and equipment, we strategized and came up with a plan for our video shooting.

Following is what we came up with. As you read this, see how you can do the same with your business:

1) Shooting review videos

We’ve carefully chosen our travel gear and we’re taking this opportunity to shoot videos about traveling lightly while still getting great videos. I love gear but I hate traveling with a lot of baggage so this is a real challenge and I’m looking forward it. We’ll be sharing these videos on this blog and our new Special Interest Video Organization site.

Not only will we be on camera, we hope to get other cruisers to share with us their views on not just camera equipment, but other resources to help your business. The people on the cruise are very generous with sharing their most valuable resources and we’re going with open ears and a notepad.

2) Shooting testimonials

Not only are there a few marketers we’ve partnered with on board who we want to get on camera but we are also going to be giving video advice on the cruise and will be asking for testimonials from those individuals as well. Video testimonials are powerful tools for your marketing efforts so always be alert to opportunities to get them. I’ve learned that it never hurts to ask and you’ll probably be amazed how many people say yes.

3) Shooting video and marketing tips

We’re traveling with the cream-of-the-crop of internet marketers and will have unique access to them. One of the great things about this cruise is that we have the ability to meet with and interview these people from all around the world that would otherwise be unreachable. That alone makes the cruise worthwhile. You’ll see a lot of these tips on our YouTube channel.

4) Shooting for B-Roll

As always, when we shoot, even if it’s pretty scenic shots, we have in the back of our minds how we can monetize this…not only in the educational videos we sell but as B-Roll in our web marketing videos.

5) Shooting interviews for our upcoming book and companion website

Many of our fellow cruisers offer videos or video courses for sale. Since we’re going to offer case studies of other individuals who have successfully produced and sold their own videos, this will be a great opportunity to get some of them on camera.

With all of the collaborative videos we’ll be shooting, we will always offer a link back to their website, so it’s a win-win situation.

Our goal is to shoot enough videos to use for the next 6 months or maybe longer! With opportunities like this, there is no good reason not to take advantage and shoot as much as we can.

When we return we’ll have plenty of new information to share with you, and we look forward to doing so. We really appreciate your interest in what we’re doing at HowToSellYourVideos.com and in our upcoming SpecialInterestVideo.org and SIVAcademy.com.

This is going to be an exciting year.

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