By Holland Cooke
Consultant
As listener attention and advertising dollars continue to go-digital, stations now sell more than spots, to monetize advertiser demand that will otherwise be satisfied by other vendors. With you or without you, local retailers need/want to be seen.
Many local businesses are already on YouTube. And whether their video is polished or embarrassingly amateurish, they crave traffic. Stacks of research demonstrate that NO other companion medium drives online traffic better than radio. We train station reps to ask prospects with online assets: “Unless we tell our listeners, how will they know it’s there?” And if your station web site is content-rich and properly promoted, your traffic runs rings around theirs.
Low-hanging fruit: Local service retailers, explaining. Example: A bicycle shop demonstrates how to change a flat tire. Doing so identifies the business as helpful and helps sell spare tires and patch kits. One video I saw so thoroughly explained the process that it left me thinking I’d let them do it! 😉
How-to-do-something videos are among YouTube’s most-watched. Second-only to entertaining videos. Tips, based on what’s up at stations I work with, and sources cited:
• Keep ‘em short, based on viewing data which demonstrates that people stop watching after two minutes, if they watch that long (the first five seconds is critical). And so, you can sell the advertiser a series of videos.
• From YouTube Marketing by QuickStudy.com: Create videos that solve [the advertiser’s] customers’ problems. Each video should address one concern, narrowly focused on one problem end users face and how to overcome it. Doing a series invites viewers back to see that series of episodes.
• Depict advertisers demonstrating their expertise, so consumers are confident that your client is the right choice; and to personalize the business.
• Use keywords that the viewers you want would likely search, in your self-explanatory title (“How to change a flat bicycle tire”) and in the video’s Description and Tags.
• Early in your YouTube Description copy, include a link to more information, i.e., “Step-by-step instructions: example.com/flat.pdf”
• Research from Kinetic: More than half of viewers watch without sound. So, consider how you can get your message across without it.
Holland Cooke (HollandCooke.com) is a consultant working the intersection of broadcasting and the Internet. He is the author of “The Local Radio Advantage: Your 4-Week Tune-In Tune-Up” and “Close Like Crazy: Local Direct Leads, Pitches & Specs That Earned the Benjamins” and “Confidential: Negotiation Checklist for Weekend Talk Radio.” Follow HC on Twitter @HollandCooke and connect on LinkedIn