Sales & Marketing Consultant, Bestselling Author & Business Motivational Speaker

Is there anything more boring than visiting a website or a blog and having pages upon pages of web copy to read? The truth is, when someone visits your website or blog, they are not going to spend 45 minutes simply reading about you and your services. Time is the one element where we all are given the exact same amount. All of us are given 24 hours in a day.

When a potential customer visits your site, they may only spend a few minutes browsing to find the exact information they need. If they encounter thousands of words, they will leave quickly. Your site does need to have copy; there is not question about that. The key is to provide just the right amount as to not overwhelm the visitor. Videos are a great way of condensing your message into a short and simple 2-minute soundbite. How can you incorporate video into your website or blog effectively?

Introduction
By incorporating a short video that introduces you to your potential customer you are able to let your true colors shine. This is the best way to say hello, tell the customer a little about you and show them your personality.

Highlight Services
Short videos that highlight your product or service are great. Consumers would much rather watch a video showing examples of how you fixed someone’s problem or how exactly your product can be used. For example, if you are selling coaching services, show a short 2-3 minute video of you speaking to a group of individuals. This will showcase your ability to communicate and it allows your potential customers to see if there is a natural fit between your style and their needs.

Tips & Giveaways
Many sites offer incentives for visitors to enter their email addresses. All businesses want to build a solid list of followers, which translates easily into leads. These leads may eventually become paying customers. Often the incentive is an e-book or white paper or subscription to a newsletter. Why not make your business stand out? Turn your e-book into a video series. This allows you to obtain their email address, build your list and offer great value that sets you above your competition.

Vlogs
Vlogs are video blogs. If you are already writing blogs for your site as a way to create new content, vlogs are perfect for you. Simply convey the message of your written blog into a video blog. This allows your audience to connect with you and saves them the time of reading.

As our consumers become more and more busy, time truly is of the essence. As a sales professional we already know the time our potential customers give us is extremely valuable. By incorporating video into your marketing strategy, you are showing potential customers that you value their time. Try making a short 2-minute video today!

Happy Marketing!
Sean
(Image Creative Commons)
Sean McPheat
Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert – Motivational Speaker

YouTube has celebrated its 5^th birthday this week, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to pay homage to the video sharing site which has revolutionised the way people interact online.

Here are some interesting facts and figures about the rise of YouTube:

• YouTube gets over 2 billion views a day – YouTube Press Statistics
• A whole 24 hours’ worth of video is uploaded to the site every minute – YouTube Press Statistics
• The first video on YouTube was only 19 seconds long – YouTube Press Statistics
• The founders of YouTube all originally worked for PayPal – YouTube Press Statistics
• Google bought the site for $1.65 billion in November 2006 – YouTube Press Statistics

Over the last 5 years, YouTube has seen off some stiff competition from other video sharing sites such as Vimeo and Viddler to claim the number one spot, and the site has now become so engrained in our day to day lives that it’s hard to believe there was a time in the last decade when it didn’t exist.

Not only has YouTube allowed the masses access to all manner of video content across the world, but it has also made it possible for the public to reach a vast audience they would normally not have been able to connect with – which makes it a very powerful business tool in the right hands.

Through YouTube you can literally promote yourself and your company to the world, without having to spend a single penny on expensive advertising campaigns. Many big organisations have used the site to create viral video advertisements and build their brand globally.

The Cadbury’s Eyebrows advert, in which two young children do a fantastic eyebrow dance to “Don’t Stop The Rock”, became an overnight sensation and has now had nearly 9 million views.  A great example of video marketing if ever I saw one!

So, I’d like to wish YouTube a happy 5^th birthday and look forward to seeing where the next 5 years video sharing will take us.    

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

(Image by www_ukberri_net)

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker

As true as these two rules are for marketing, they are also just two general guidelines for life, and should best be applied every time that you leave the house. However, today we’re going to discuss their applicability to the marketing world, and to your marketing campaigns.

As a general rule, creating interest in your product is among the most surefire ways to drive an increase in traffic, and to ultimately drive an increase in sales. Being interested means showing that you care about your customers, and making every possible effort to engage them and please them.

Be Interesting

While it’s never been easier than it is today to create an interesting product, and to generated natural interest around the product, there’s also never been nearly as much competition as there is now.

YouTube is the perfect example – while the popular video-sharing site has made possible the previously unthinkable idea of creating and distributing a video advertisement with no cost associated except the time that it takes you to product it, it has also driven allowed your competitors access to the exact same set of tools.

The key to creating buzz is indirect advertising. In this age where one can access nearly everything they want, totally free of charge, nobody wants to watch an advert. Instead, create a funny or informative video or article, and just include a link to your site. If you can be interesting enough that people share the article, then you be sure to have some of the excess interest spill over onto your website.

Be Interested

However, it’s not sufficient to just be interesting. You must also be interested in your customers. Thanks to the rise of the internet, its now possible to do this better than you ever could before.

Set up a blog and a Facebook fan page where you can see what your customers are saying, and where you can respond to them directly. Modify your marketing efforts to more accurately target your customers, and change your products if your customers are looking for something different.

The rule of being interested also applies to competitors within your industry. Read their adverts, both online and off, to see what they are doing, who they are targeting, and how they are doing it. Read the blogs of industry leaders, comment on them, and share their insights via your Facebook page.

By showing interest in your industry, you’ll not only learn more valuable information, but you’ll ultimately draw more attention to your own site, and your own products. And as we all know – more attention means more sales.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker

So we’ve all heard of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), and a few of us will even have a good understanding of the basic principles of SEO and will be able to use these to generate more traffic for our company websites and blogs. But as always the platforms for online marketing are changing, and as we move into 2012 we need to not only be focusing our efforts on increased SEO for our sites, we also now need to be thinking about our social media marketing goals and how we can further engage our audiences for the year ahead.

Social Media Optimisation (SMO) is the new SEO and it can do wonders for your business in terms of generating more leads and increasing awareness of your brand – so how can you optimise your corporate social media accounts to get the most out of them in 2012?

Well, there are two basic components to any good SMO campaign. Firstly, you need to link your social media sites to your website and blog content through the likes of social media share buttons. By adding a Facebook “like” button, a “Tweet This” button or Google Plus’ “+1” button to your content your audience can easily share your content with others and give recommendation to your work, which any visitors to your site will be able to see through the number of likes and shares each your posts or pages have had.

The second component to a successful SMO campaign comes from the contributions you make yourself – by providing high quality content which continuously engages your audience, then sharing this to all of your social media platforms yourself so that all of your followers have regular updates to keep them interested.

It is also very important when creating improved SMO for your business that either you yourself, your marketing team or your company as a defined brand itself interacts with your audience directly, through posting comments on your own sites, interacting with your followers and engaging in discussion and debate on other relevant blogs and forums. Simply plastering your content all over your social media platforms is not enough – you need to engage your audience and interact with them in a way which drives discussion and sparks further interest.

In basic terms, in order to be successful with SMO your content needs to be engaging and up-to-date, and it needs to be made easy for your audience to share this content across as many social media platforms as possible.

SMO is just as important for your business as SEO has been, as not only can it drive traffic to your sites, creating increased lead generation and in turn boost your sales, but it is also aimed at increasing your direct contact with your current followers – which in turn will push your online reach out across your targeted markets and allow you to engage with more and more potential clients.

The main downfall with pursuing an SMO campaign is that it can be very time consuming, and if you don’t have a dedicated team to push SMO it can be very difficult to maintain a strong online presence for your business – so look out for future posts about some great online tools which can help streamline your social media efforts and increase SMO in one foul swoop.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert – Motivational Speaker