Online Video for Small Businesses - Can I afford it?
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It all started with Youtube and Viral marketing. It spread to personal multimedia on websites. It continued with Rovion… For $3,000 you could have a professional nudge on your site bugging all your repeat visitors (but it looks cool). Microsoft’s bought it, and servicemagic has as well. The problem is that it’s really expensive. But, we’re nice people, and we want small business owners to benefit as well.
Want to put video on your site? Here’s a couple of resources:
Yellowpages: Turnhere has partnered with Yellowpages to provide small business owners with a video profile. Their pricing is supposed to be below $1,000. Turnhere uses a network of indpendent videographers to do much of their work. However, if Yellowbook’s use of Turnhere is any indication, online video for local business has alot to learn.
I stand corrected by Morgan from Turnhere. Turnhere has nothing to do with Yellowbook’s platform. See Comments Below.
Many small business owners use it to “say stuff”. “Saying Stuff” doesn’t close sales, being passionate does though. What you should be doing is amplifying the the impact of your already meaningful message by using the video. Here are a couple of questions to ask yourself before the videographer hits you:
- What are my best customers biggest problems? What do they want to hear?
- What makes me unique- why would my customer want to use me?
- Who is my target audience? (Age, How much money do they have? What do they watch? What type of language do they appreciate?)
WellcomeMatt: This site is aimed primarily at real estate professionals who want to showcase the houses they are selling. However, it has an open list of videographers that you can hire to do the videography for you. All in all a great site, that’s very targeted towards the real estate industry.
Two resources for any real estate professional:
- webestate.us - an acquaintances website design service for people showing houses around
- Professional Videographer - A very good videographer with a thorough background in online marketing, web design and more.
Talkmarket: This is really geared towards people that are marketing products, and encourages them to take videos of the product. This is a very unique service geared towards people selling products. The only charge is a 5% commission if someone buys through the video link. However, even if you aren’t going to do videos on their site, they have some great video resources for anyone doing their own video / video editing.
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About Results Marketing is a Los Angeles Internet Marketing Company, assisting both small business owners, as well as non-profits and large corporations with everything from paid search marketing to SEO to Business Strategy.
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Comments
Loved your thoughts…
My name is Tanner Elton and I am the West Coast Director of Sales for Rovion based out of our LA offices.
While our website mainly showcases our larger clients , we offer very aggressive pricing for real estate and other local business.
I’d encourage you to call me at our LA offices to see if we can help you convert prospects into customers/clients.
310-827-5300
Thanks so much for mentioning TurnHere as a solution for small and medium-sized businesses who want to make online video a part of their online marketing effort.
I just wanted to point out that the videos that you linked to are on yellowbook.com, not yellowpages.com. TurnHere does not make videos for yellowbook.com - and did not make those videos that you linked to.
We also don’t make every video for yellowpages.com; just those as part of their premium profile product.
Here are a couple of videos that we’ve made for yellowpages.com:
http://www.yellowpages.com/info-IY245049596/Tint-King-Inc
http://www.yellowpages.com/info-IY83219323/Mass-Bay-Limo?auto_play=true
Thanks again and feel free to let us know if you have any questions about video for small business.
Best,
Morgan
TurnHere
@ Tanner. I’ve been told that you have worked successfully with some small business owners, and are still working on a model to make your product affordable to small business owners. Good luck with that!
@ Morgan. Thanks for the correction. The videos you’ve linked to are a significant improvement to what I’ve seen over at yellowbook. You tell the story of the owner, and it makes me feel connected to the company. Good luck with it.
If you have any visions as to where you see the industry going I’m very interested. This is still an unexplored area of marketing - and has a while until maturity.
Turnhere has an interesting model - where they’ve expanded all over the place from having travel channels, to partnering with yellowpages and a number of other things they are using their network for.
I find the whole topic of video for website marketing fascinating.
A recent Stompernet launch did an experiment where they sent half their list a link to a standard long sales letter and the other half a link to a video of somebody just reading the same text.
The response from the video was way better than the letter - something like 50%, but I can’t remember the exact figures.
And you don’t need to do anything fancy or clever either - just a nice plain background, simple video with daylight.
Awesome!
Lee Duncan
Thanks for asking about our pricing model and if we are geared towards helping small business owners get rich media online. The short answer is yes!
We just launched SpotZero — “Astonishingly Effect Online Video Advertising and Production.” http://www.spotzero.com
We have posted easy-to-understand online video pricing packages ranging from $650 - $2,290 with a few more on the way, that will instantly let business owners see what they are getting for their investment and what their video will cost. We’re trying to provide advertisers with simple, transparent options and the plans include varied features such as creative services, scripts, green screen, spokesperson/actors , voiceovers etc.
We can also take care of both getting the videos on their websites and distributed across the web as well as helping to build a buzz - viral or otherwise.
Business owners aren’t at all limited to the off-the-shelf plans, of course, but there is considerable savings built in to them.
Hope that helps. Contact me with any questions. dm at spotzero dot com.
PS - that’s a great experiment referenced by Lee Duncan!
-Dave
@Lee thanks for the example. Video definitely raises conversion rates dramatically.
@ Dave - It’s great to see a low cost alternative hit the market. I think I may start suggesting clients to use your service! Are you guys national?
Yes! Spotzero is national with our main office on La Brea Ave. in Hollywood, CA.
Dave
http://www.spotzero.com
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