Every business – no matter what type and what size – relies on a carefully planned marketing strategy to promote their company online, including writing blogs, creating a social media presence, running competitions, and setting up effective email campaigns. One technique of digital marketing is sometimes left out, however: that of creating online videos.

So what are the main points you need to consider when creating an effective marketing video?

1. Include Video In Your Existing Marketing Campaign

Due to your usual marketing, you will already know the demographics of your current clients, so tailor your video to these types of people. You’ll also need to decide what kind of video you want to make: examples include product demonstrations, interviews with employees, testimonials from clients, and a general overview of how your company works. Choose your objective and your target audience and create a plan for your video that will slot in with your existing marketing campaign.

2. Focus On Quality

uality is key. This may mean hiring a producer to film your video, or investing in some professional equipment if you plan to make several marketing videos in the future. If you do purchase your own set of tools, ensure you buy all of the accessories as well as a top-quality camera; a tripod is essential to stop amateur-looking shaky camera work, lights will ensure good visual quality, and microphones will help with the audio. If doing everything by yourself, you’ll also need to invest in some top-quality editing software if you want to give your video a polished look. Also, consider shooting in HD for a quality picture, and make use of close-ups for people who will be watching your video on a small screen.

3. Include A Call To Action

Like with other online marketing methods, you should always include a call to action in your video (or written underneath) to tell people what the desired next step is. Even if this is obvious – if you’re promoting a single product all throughout the video, for example – giving people a link or a specific instruction on what to do next is the best way of ensuring a sale, a mailing list sign up, or whatever else you wish the user to do.

4. Market Through Social Networks And Other Channels

Once your video is ready to go, it isn’t enough to simply upload it to your business website and wait for people to see it. Like with any marketing material, you need to distribute it through as many different channels as possible. By all means, place it on your website and on your company blog, but include social media badges and share buttons to encourage interaction on social media websites. Put the video on YouTube and post the link to your Facebook fans, your Twitter followers, your blog readers and on any other social media site you use.

You can also promote your video in printed publications; just add a QR code so that people can instantly watch the video on their phones or other mobile device.

By Chelsey Evans

Follow @AmpheonLtd

Social media marketing is nothing new, and neither are social media sharing badges, but how do you utilise these links to make the most of what you’re trying to promote? A lot of it, of course, depends on your type of business, but if you use a blog for SEO or other marketing purposes, knowing when to – and when not to – use social media badges can help you to attract more readers to your website.

By Chelsey Evans

Follow @AmpheonLtd

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is important to all business websites, but when you have an ecommerce site, there are several reasons why you might not be getting a high search ranking. Here are a few tips to consider when optimising your online shop for popular search engines.

1. Be Aware Of Duplicate Content

One of the biggest issues for ecommerce sites is that of duplicate content; it can lower your search rank and present a big problem for owners of online shops. This can happen when products in the store are linked via multiple distinct URLs. Fortunately, there are many ways you can combat this issue.

Canonicalization – if your website does include identical or similar content over several pages, you can tell Google your preferred (canonical) URL. You can do this by setting your preferred domain, using 301 redirects, featuring your canonical URLs in a sitemap, or by specifying the preferred link for each version of a page.

If your content is actually being used by a third party on a different site, against your permission, you can ask for the page to be removed by Google. This will come under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

2. Make Quality of Content A Top Priority

With the introduction of Panda (an update to Google’s search algorithms), the popular search engine now discriminates against pages written specifically for spiders (such as relying on keyword density). This means that the content of a website has to be both unique and of a good quality. If you’re having trouble making your ecommerce site unique, it can be easily achieved by asking customers to provide comments and reviews of your products and services that are specific to your company.

3. Prioritise Your Products

Visitors generally don’t spend too long on ecommerce sites if they can’t find what they’re looking for. Therefore, you should put all of your most popular products in a clearly visible place on your homepage. Put most of your marketing effort into promoting the few items that regularly sell well, and if there isn’t room to include them on your homepage, make sure you link to those products directly.

4. Get Social

As with any business, expanding your brand to social media websites will help to reach out to a wide range of potential customers. Getting a discussion going on your Twitter or Facebook page can help you to engage with and attract new customers, and it will also give you the chance to interact with people on a personal level. In terms of SEO, Google+ can help you with your search rankings; users are able to see images and other content from their friends as they are actually integrated into their search results.

5. Promote Your Physical Store

If you have a physical store, then make the most of promoting it online using Google Places. By including your business address, hours of trade, photos of the outside of your shop and more, you can use Google to not only drive virtual traffic to your website, but also physical traffic to your actual store. Google Places allows visitors to rate and recommend their experience, enabling discussion and allowing your business to stand out from the rest.

By Chelsey Evans

Follow @AmpheonLtd