The Internet is a great marketing and public relations tool for business owners and public relations professionals. It is a converged medium where you can get access to audio, video and text quite easily. One of the fastest growing websites in recent times has been YouTube, the video sharing website. YouTube allows anyone to upload videos on any topic they want.
Here are three reasons why you might want to consider uploading YouTube videos as a proactive PR activity for your business.
Television is less and less popular- You can no longer rely on television advertising to reach your target audience for a number of reasons. Television is becoming less popular with a wide variety of target audiences, and new technology means that many viewers will be able to ignore your ad more easily anyway. Digital recorders like Tivo allow you to fast-forward through announcements. Watching videos online is becoming more and more popular. If you come up with something that is interesting and informative, you will be able to find an audience online.
You don’t need to appeal to the masses. To be effective, mainstream media advertising generally depends on you trying to appeal to the masses. Your message has to go to the lowest common denominator to try to be relevant to as many people as possible. This means that you’ll probably end up reaching no one, since your ad won’t really speak to anyone. It’s also worth noting that mainstream media advertising is extremely expensive. It costs a fortune for small business owners, and it’s almost impossible to get a measurable result.
You can make different YouTube videos for different target audiences. By contrast, videos that can be posted online are extremely cheap to make and free to upload. As such, you can easily make more than one video, each with a message that is more directly aimed at each of your potential target audiences. For example, if you’re in telecommunications, you might want to see different ads for different niche markets. For example, you would need a different message for an accountant than for a merchant. They are not going to be influenced by the same things.
Online video advertising is a great opportunity for all small business entrepreneurs and it makes much more sense than using TV advertising. Conventional media just don’t work.
