Micro-Entrepreneurship For Dummies
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Instead of employing telephone sales (cold calls) to generate sales for your micro-entrepreneurial business, try video cold calling (video marketing). With video marketing, your prospects either view your video or not. But if they like what they see, they’ll click your link and jump right to your website or blog and that special sales page you’ve designed.

Regardless of the result, creating a video is easier than doing a live sales presentation or a cold call. You can’t talk about video marketing and selling without mentioning YouTube. If you create a good sales video and post it on YouTube, you can reach potential customers. Using YouTube is a great way to sell.

Anyone with a digital video recorder or flip camera and a point of view can create a video and post it on YouTube. If some guy in a gorilla suit walking and falling off his roof can get a huge viewership, then you can, too. Explore creating your own video and consider doing a search for “video marketing” to see tons of videos done by others.

You can embrace YouTube as a sales tool and make your own video sales message. Here are some tips for doing it:

  • Make it easy to find you. Remember that prospects (millions of them) go to YouTube every day to find videos of interest. Use YouTube’s ability to add keywords and a complete description to accompany the video.

  • Look at lots of videos. You don’t have to start from scratch. No matter what you’re selling, you can probably find a ton of videos about that niche or category. Look at many videos to see how others are doing it and ask yourself how applicable it is to what you want to sell. See how others are doing it well and not so well.

  • Do the AIDA formula. The AIDA formula also works well for creating a sales video. When you view other videos that are selling products or services, examine them to see the extent they successfully apply the formula. Then, figure out how you can apply it to your sales videos.

    The AIDA formula of sales copy writing involves the elements of attention, interest, desire, and action. A video can use the AIDA formula to grab the reader’s attention, interest, and desire, while finally spurring them to action.

  • Be short and to the point. Videos don’t have to be a major motion picture production. They should be definitely less than ten minutes long, preferably less than five minutes. Today is the age of the short attention span, so keep your videos interesting and succinct to avoid losing your prospective customers’ interest.

  • Get feedback from others. Have some trusted folks view your videos before they go public and get feedback on the quality of the video. YouTube gives you the ability to do private videos, which you can make public when you’re ready.

  • Provide good content. Give your prospects good information to justify them viewing it. If you don’t provide compelling content, they’ll quickly start viewing something else. For example, if you’re selling skin cream, give some good tips on skin health.

  • Integrate social media. Use Facebook and Twitter to help you gain viewers. For example, you can set your Youtube channel to automatically send a message to your Twitter followers to alert them about your latest videos.

  • Place ads in your videos. You can add HTML links in the video. Prospects can link back to your sales page or website if they’re interested in finding out more information or purchasing something.

  • Add a call to action. The last step of the AIDA formula is action. When viewers are finished viewing your video, prompt them to do something, such as click to something else, like your sales page, blog, or website.

    For example, if you did a sales video on gardening, tell them they can find more information by either subscribing to your YouTube channel or clicking on the link in your description (to go to your sales page on a gardening product or service).

Doing sales videos is a great form of selling in today’s marketing environment. In addition to YouTube, you can check out the following resources to help with your video cold calling:

About This Article

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About the book author:

Paul Mladjenovic is a certified financial planner, micro-entrepreneur, and home business educator with more than 25 years' experience writing and teaching about financial and business start-up topics. He owns RavingCapitalist.com and is also the author of Stock Investing For Dummies.

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