Denise Cowan & Lea Glover from our Digital Marketing team at The Web Bureau recently presented a Digital Strategy Masterclass to members of Women in Business Northern Ireland. 

The Masterclass, sponsored by Invest NI highlighted top tips to online success and provided valuable insights into social media marketing, email marketing, search engine optimisation, content marketing and digital marketing strategy.  To wrap up the masterclass, we ran a raffle prize draw for all the ladies who attended, with one lucky winner picking up the top prize of a tailored content marketing package by The Web Bureau to the value of £1,000.

Content Marketing is the art of creating, curating and distributing valuable content online to increase awareness, lead generation and customer acquisition.

And the Lucky Winner is....

YouTube is now considered to be the second largest search engine after Google. With over 90 million unique monthly visitors and an average monthly view time of 54 hours per user, this platform is better for marketers than ever before.

It’s therefore surprising that YouTube is sometimes overlooked by businesses when considering an Internet Marketing strategy. Videos only take a few minutes to upload and the results can be significant yet many businesses in Northern Ireland seem to be missing out on YouTube’s online marketing value. YouTube can visibly promote your product or service in a creative way, but it is also a valuable tool for Search Engine Optimisation and analytics:

Search Engine Optimisation Value

Google puts high SEO importance on video content. With little effort your videos can easily out-rank competitor websites, top directories and article sites, often appearing on the first page. Google owns YouTube, so this alone increases its SEO value but there is also much opportunity to include links, tags and keywords in the description section.

YouTube Ads

The promoted video feature on Youtube brings the power of search advertising with keyword-based targeting. YouTube Promoted Videos work on the same basis as Google Adwords but are much better value for money. Target your video campaign with keywords and pay only when someone clicks to watch your video. This will drive potential customers to your videos where a ‘call to action’ overlay will link back to your website.

Analytics

Take advantage of YouTube’s Insights, an analytics tool that provides information such as demographics, abandonment rate, re-winds and fast-forwards. YouTube Insights will identify the exact point viewers leave your video and which scenes within the video are proving to be most popular.

Going Viral

48 hours of video content is loaded to YouTube every minute, therefore viral video marketing is in fact very difficult to achieve. Forget ‘going viral’ and think quality, not quantity. It’s important to focus on targeting your video to the correct market. A high number of visits isn’t as important as reaching the right customers. 

If you’re serious about using YouTube as an internet marketing tool, then do your research. Find your niche, discover what’s hot, identify current video trends and recognise good ideas for video content.

Online Market Research

Test your audience before your video goes live by running two different unlisted videos backed by search ads to determine which one gets the best response. An unlisted video will not appear on any of YouTube’s public spaces. Only people with a link to the video will be able to view it.

The comments box below your video can be used as online focus group testing. These comments will provide valuable insight into the products or services you’re promoting. Interact with viewers by answering comments or enquiries about your videos. This will not only create creditability but also encourages viewers to return leaving new comments, ratings and more views.

For more information on YouTube marketing and seo, contact us on info@thewebbureau.com

Today I will summarise some top tips we took from two other presentations of the day on how to write good copy and handle the media.

Copywriting for radio

The presentation entitled ‘how to write killer ad copy’ was delivered by freelance copywriter, Brian McArdle who produces copy for sales letters, web content, radio commercials, jingles and blogs.  Brian used some practical examples to illustrate how to write good copy.

Using a radio advertisement launched in 1995 for the NI Blood Transfusion Service (written by Brian) which leads in with the tagline, ‘But hospitals don’t run out of blood’ by an hysterical mother in a hospital (sound familiar?), he explained that the ability to create a good tagline is one of the key skills a copywriter needs to capture the attention of an audience.  The effectiveness of this ad is evidenced by the fact that it is still being re-run today in times of blood shortage.

Brian advised that the ability to convey your whole message in a short space of time is important as often you only have a short timeframe, which could be as little as 20 seconds.  He recommended that you should read your copy out loud as it takes longer than when you speed read it in your head!

He also demonstrated how background sounds can be included alongside the voice to create images in the mind of the listener to tell the story, using a promotional radio advertisement for Sperrins Tourism as an example.  This incorporated sounds such as a bicycle bell and traditional music to convey the Sperrins as an idyllic setting for a short break.

Handling the Media

Moving on, our next presentation was delivered by Peter Melly, a former BBC employee and founder of REDmast MEDIA who describes himself as a BioBroadcaster, film maker, video journalist and journalism trainer.  Peter captivated his audience with his tales of how journalists entice information from the unsuspecting public and advised that often the best response to give is ‘NO COMMENT!’

Responding to an enquiry as to how businesses could use the media for marketing value, a tip he offered was to send in your press releases at the weekend when there is less competition for print space – sometimes this can get you coverage you wouldn’t have achieved mid-week when journalists are inundated with stories.

If you would like support to write good copy or produce video marketing for your website or online marketing campaigns, contact us on info@thewebbureau.com