Youtube Marketing with the help of 3D Box Shot

 

How to start using youtube for marketing

Youtube is a marketing channel. There’s no doubt about it. If you're trying to sell any sort of product online then you can't afford not to use it. The trouble is, it's not immediately obvious what the best way is to do this. There's such a vast amount of material on youtube, how can you possibly get your videos noticed? The short answer is, initially at least, you don't have to. You can increase the sales of your products by making youtube work for you.

How to make youtube work for you!

In this short article I'm going to outline some of the ways in which youtube can help you to sell your products online. Of course, there will inevitably be some plugs for the product I'm trying to sell but these will be in the form of video examples of what you can do with 3D Box Shot to help kick start, or enhance your marketing. I'd just like to point out that you can buy 3D Box Shot here, today on this very site for just $9.95. Unless otherwise stated the the video clips on this page were made exclusively in 3D Box Shot and no other software was used.

 

One of the big things that stops companies from using youtube to promote their products is the perceived expense of doing so. 3D Box Shot V3 removes this barrier by doing the hard work for you. The program contains ready made presets so that all you have to do is load your own graphical assets into the program and click the "Generate Video button". Using this method you can have a quality video that promotes your product up on youtube within 10 minutes of buying 3D Box Shot.

Video Coupons!

I'm going to talk about one simple way you can use 3D Box Shot to help sell your products, quickly and easily. Take a look at the following video I made in 3D Box Shot. This was designed to kick start a short discount sale on Video Fun Box, one of our other products. It took me about 5 mins to make and I'm still counting the extra $$$ it helped to generate. You could easily do the same with 3D Box Shot for your products.

 

Yes, this whole video was made in 3D Box Shot, which you can buy for $9.95.

 

The great thing about using video to pass on coupon information is that it makes the whole process of running a short term sale on your site a real no brainer. Just use 3D Box Shot to make a short animated sequence featuring your product box shot, a discount with a time limit, upload it all to youtube, embed it in on your site and watch your conversion rate soar!

 

It's a proven fact that people love discount coupons. They like to feel that they've saved money. By uploading a discount coupon video to youtube you can easily embed the video on your web page within a couple of minutes of uploading it. It's important to put a definitive time frame on your sale and instill a sense of urgency. For example, try running a one day sale and measure the difference in sales. All this will take is a copy of 3D Box Shot and a discount coupon you can display in the video you make.

 

The video element lets you present this in a vastly more eye catching manner than a line of text, or even a graphic banner. Video engages the viewer and gets them interested. Make them work a little to get the coupon number. If they invest some effort they are far more likely to use it.

 

The first step is to fire up 3D Box Shot, click on the 3D Text tab and type in your marketing message.Of course, you don't even have to use a box shot if you don't have one. One of the really nifty features of 3D Box Shot V3 is its ability to animate a background image:

 

Ok, so that's one simple way you can leverage the power of 3D Box Shot on Youtube to increase sales of your products in the short term. So how about using youtube as a method of driving traffic to your site in the long term?

Understanding Youtube and how you can use it.

When you sign up for a youtube account you are given your own youtube "Channel". You can basically do whatever you like with this. All the video you upload to youtube can be found here. You should try and make your channel into a place that people will want to visit. One way to do this is to be highly selective about the other channels that you link to. Good quality link hygiene of this nature will be appreciated by your channel visitors.

How can Youtube help to sell products?

You might as well ask how television adverts help to sell products. In simple terms video works as a sales tool by providing information about a product in an easily digestible manner. Within the next few years it's estimated that video will account for 90% of all web traffic. If you're not already using video to promote your products, you're going to get left behind. For just $9.95 3D Box Shot will give you an easy method of using video to promote your products today.

Recording HD Video For Youtube

If you want to add some real video footage to upload to youtube, it doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg to purchase a HD camcorder. Hand held HD cameras (about the size of an Iphone) are now widely available. As most of these can now shoot 1080P HD, models the only shoot 720P are available for under $100. These include good quality internal mics. With the addition of a tripod and a green screen, you can setup your own video studio with change from $170.

 

Here's a little example movie I uploaded from my Kodak Zi6 Camera that cost me $60 USD:

The Video titles in this video were made in 3D Box Shot. The video itself was produced in a video editing program. While this video doesn't actually have a great deal of relivance to software marketing, it does showcase another new feature on youtube: Audio Swap. You can now replace the audio track on your video with a fully licensed audio track that youtube provide free of charge. The track on the above clip is called "gameshow" by a band called the "Bad Jazz Brothers".

 

If you think you might enjoy movie making and think you could make something that could "go viral" then you'll have an fun time ahead of you! If not, then there's nothing to stop you from creating video tutorials for your products. The screen capture product we use is Cam Studio.

Here's an example of a video I made to promote one of my other products using a green screen and a video editing program with chromakey support:.

 

Key wording

Don't forget that youtube is primarily a video search engine, owned by, you've guessed it... Google. If you start thinking about youtube in this way you'll soon get a handle on what you need to do to optimize your videos so that people can find them. The key to this is key wording. Don't stint on your keywords. Have a good think about this before you start to make your video. This may help to give you additional ideas for the message you convey in the video.

 

Think about the search terms your site ranks well for on Google, check you web logs and work out which keywords work best for you. These are the keywords that draw the most traffic to your site. Use these as the keywords for your youtube video.

Driving Traffic from Youtube

Traffic from youtube provides a clear way of getting people to visit your site. However, time and time again I see video’s on Youtube that are totally wasting this valuable marketing opportunity.

 

Putting it simply, you have to tell people viewing your video where to go. This is yet another way that 3D Box Shot can help your marketing strategy. Because 3D Box Shot has an integrated 3D Text Engine you can easily create a URL Flyby for the end of your video.

 

So what’s a URL Flyby? This is simply the web address of your site, animated in an interesting and dynamic way. You could pay thousands of $$$ to get a professional video production company to produce one of these for you, or you can do it yourself in 3D Box Shot for $9.95 USD. Did I mention that 3D Box Shot costs just $9.95 USD?

 

As always actions speak louder than words so here are a couple of URL Flybys that we created in 3D Box Shot for some of our other products. The great thing is, that once you’ve created them, you can keep the clip on file and append it to the end of every video you upload to your Youtube channel. This helps to deliver a reinforcement of you brand identity and adds consistency to all of the videos you upload to your Youtube channel. It's a bit like adding your web address to your email signature, This applies to training videos as well as marketing material. If you haven't thought about using video tutorials for your product, now's the time to start.

 

 

 

 

While these sort of video's won't attract much attention on their own, if you tack one of these onto the end of every video you upload to youtube you'll soon have a consistent theme that will drive traffic to your site.

 

Embedding Youtube Video in your site

You can of course, also embed youtube videos on your own website. However, if you do do this, make such that you disable the related videos element. This is active by default and will mean that the embeded video on your site become a mini youtube, with lots of related video's shown at the end of your clip. Fortunately you can disable this by adding ";&rel=0" without the quotes to the end of the youtube source url.

 

Youtube Developments

Youtube is continuing to develop rapidly. They have recently introduced support to 720P and 1080P HD videos. 3D Box Shot can export video in both formats. However, due to the screen scraping method it uses to generate video you need a monitor capable of displaying 1080P images at native resolution. In the examples above we encoded the video in XVID format (this is an MPEG4 codec) at 720P resolution.

 

Youtube also support hyperlinks in Video descriptions. Click on any of the videos in this article they take you back to the video on Youtube. As well as the ability to watch the clips in 720P HD, you can also look at the description of the video and you'll find hyperlinks back to this site and the sites the video's promote. Now imagine you have hundreds of videos uploaded to youtube all with there own separate optimized key words all linking to videos that push your product and web address at the viewer every time they watch one.

 

Here's a nice article on Youtube SEO

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/24745.asp

Extract: "Many people are surprised to learn that YouTube is the second-largest search engine. Yep, it's bigger than Yahoo and bigger than Bing, according to comScore. Therefore it is a shock to many search marketing professionals that clients, including large brands, neglect to formulate or act on strategies for YouTube optimization."

 

It's up to you to carve out your own niche market on youtube and drive the traffic straight to your site. If you're interested and want to get started with a video on youtube why not let us do the grunt work for you? For $50 USD we'll make a video of your product for for a similar standards as the above. Alternatively, you can do it yourself with 3D Box Shot V3 for just $9.95.

 

And one last thing. If you're planning to embed youtube video's on your site, don't forget to add:

&rel=0

to the end of the youtube embed url. Unless of course you want you advertise other people's videos on your site.