A YouTube Story

POSTED IN Blog | TAGS : inbound marketing, marketing, social media, YouTube
25.06.2009

Earlier this year we were trying a few new things to increase demand for our Light Emitting Diode (LED) products. After watching a presentation by Mike Volpe of hubspot, we decided that we’d like to try a video. We’ve never done anything with video, but the LED product is pretty visual so it seemed like a good idea.  We didn’t invest in any new  equipment, it only took a few hours to produce and we didn’t really have any expectations for the video, so what did we have to lose?

(Make sure you have the sound on when watching, a friend of mine composed some pretty fun music for the video)

The video got a fair amount of views, about 900+ so far. Nothing special, but at least a few people watched it. Although it didn’t go viral, we did receive some unexpected and very positive response.

A few weeks after the video was posted on YouTube, we began a fairly heavy tradeshow schedule. One unexpected response to the video was about a 40%  increase (average) in traffic to our booth compared to the same trade shows in previous years. Most of these visitors were people who had seen the video on YouTube and were interested in learning more about the product. Also, an industry publication saw the video and asked if they could post it on their site.

Another unexpected response was the return of a very important prospective customer who we had pretty much given up on. We had scheduled a meeting with this prospect before the tradeshow but didn’t expect much. However, during the meeting they told us that a colleague had forwarded them a link to the video, and after watching it they were very interested in the product and  eager to work with us.

It’s easy to publish content and it’s fundamental to inbound marketing. Not only is it easy, it’s also a lot of fun producing content. A word of caution, once you publish the content, it takes on a life of its own. Be smart with the content you publish and produce something entertaining and useful. If you want to start with YouTube, here’s a few  good posts about producing and optimizing your video.

Anyone else have any YouTube stories, good or bad?