YouTube for Small Local Business Marketing Is a Useless Waste of Time and Money . . . Unless

As I wrap up this section on Social Media and its connection to Google Places and Google+, I come to YouTube. Yes YouTube is Social Media, and is becoming ever more so.  But should you use it?

That's right!  I am going out on a limb here and going against what you are hearing from everyone else.  The claim is that YouTube has the highest ROI of any type of marketing available to day for small businesses.  But I'm saying that YouTube is a waste of money for small local business…unless you are:
    ✓    A retailer
    ✓    A service provider
    ✓    A manufacturer
    ✓    An importer
    ✓    A restaurant

Or……….

If you do YouTube marketing without following the basics. 

So, I'm thinking that gas stations, convenience stores, and wholesalers might not be able to make money on YouTube marketing.  Sellers on online commodity items without differentiation might not be able to take advantage of the power of YouTube.  I might be able to think of a few more areas like investment guru's who cater to folks with a portfolio over $1m. 

Here are the basics. 

1.  You have to do a lot of them (30 - 50 a year)
2.  Therefore you want them to be inexpensive to produce
3.  The material needs to prove your value
4.  Spokesmen need to be "authentic" and appear highly knowledgeable
5.  The videos need SEO and promotion through blogs, websites, and social media

If you follow those basics, you will generate traffic and you will see a huge ROI. 

You may already know this, but I try to get 30 - 50 videos of my clients per year.  The hardest part is getting the shy ones to do so.  The cost is minimal.  The results are amazing.

Send me an email if you would like to see examples of our work.  There are, of course, examples of my videos that generate half of my incoming calls in the columns of this blog.  There is one example here in this post. Call me if you want to discuss our services.  310-910-1848.  I answer the phone.