With the advent of technology and the extensive use of the World Wide Web, marketing strategies have taken a completely new look, opting to attract people online rather than offline. Various online marketing strategies are being used to attract potential customers, one of which is YouTube marketing, which essentially uses videos to market your product or service. Using videos to market your company has been recognized as a great strategy by many, especially because the visual medium is always more effective. Having said that, it is important to realize that video marketing or YouTube marketing, like any other form of marketing is effective only when used properly and in a manner that you are featured in the top ranks of search engines. There are certain basic features that need to be kept in mind while creating videos for YouTube marketing, which are essential to getting higher ranks on search engines.

Title

This is perhaps the most important aspect that should be kept in mind while creating YouTube videos. Always remember that all your videos should be created keeping in mind the search engines. Using attractive and keyword rich titles will help the search engine access your video and rank it among the top ranking videos in that category. It is important that your chosen title is relevant to the topic in question. For example, if you are creating a video on baking cakes, then the title could be “Simple ways to bake a cake” or “easy tips for baking” etc. Apart from being relevant, the title you use should be powerful and attractive and should catch the attention of the viewer immediately, making him or her want to see the video.

Content

Just as you would in an article, it is important to have good and relevant content in a video. It should contain material that viewers find useful or entertaining. It is essential to remember at this point that viewers normally view videos for entertainment or learning and it is essential that your video caters to those needs. Content used in such videos should be keyword rich so as to attract search engines.

Watermarking with URL

It is essential to note here that most people do not read the description box below the video, preferring to see the video and move on. Under these circumstances, it becomes very essential to watermark your video with your URL, which is extremely useful in cases where another copies your video onto his or her website. In such cases, the embedded URL allows you to direct traffic to your website.

Linking

The idea of using YouTube videos is to generate traffic to your website and in order to ensure people who view your video actually visit your site, it is important to provide a link to your site in the description box. This link should be accessible and should take the viewer directly to your site.

Call to Action

It is important to remember that most video viewers will hop from one video to another and this habit will not increase traffic to your website and will render your video marketing efforts useless. In order to change this routine of a YouTube video viewer, it is important that you have a call to action, where you can ask the viewer to click on the link given in the description box and ensure that traffic is directed to your website.

“Cooperative” marketing is a broad term just indicating some sort of cooperative venture between two or more businesses. Whereas host-parasite marketing typically involves some sort of recommendation or formal connection between the two companies participating, affiliate marketing works a little differently.

Businesses sell other business’s products all the time in the brick-and-mortar world of business. Grocery stores market competing products, consignment markets sell products for individuals, auto repair businesses often broker auto sales. These are all variations on licensing other businesses to sell products for each other.

Affiliate marketing is one of the internet’s versions of a license to sell someone else’s product. What happens is that an independent business person (affiliate) markets products for a supplier. On a concrete level, the affiliate places advertisements directing the consumer to the supplier’s site (landing page). This allows the supplier to find multiple sales outlets and approaches at a fixed, risk-free cost. It is fixed because the “commission” is determined as a percentage of the price of the product, and it is “risk-free” because the commission is not paid unless a sale is made. So from the point of view of the supplier there can be substantial benefits. This can be offset somewhat by the lack of control of the marketing process, since it reduces the business’s ability to manage consumer expectations.

From the affiliate’s point of view the arrangement can also be advantageous. It allows an independent business to market and sell products without having to create or produce the product.

Sometimes affiliate programs get a bad “rap.” In my view an affiliate program is simply an alternate distribution method. Every product has marketing costs-the affiliate program simply calls the costs a “commission” which the producer pays to the affiliate. But nothing about the process should suggest that a consumer be any less careful in making his or her purchases. Likewise, an affiliate that wants to stick around must be aware that selling a product is an implied recommendation that is not to be made lightly.

Over the last six to seven years I had begun to pick up that there were people out there making a living off the internet. This interested me with my IT background. Now in South Africa there weren’t too many people around that knew anything about this – a lot of our telephone exchanges didn’t even support DSL! So any web surfing had to be done with a 56K modem which seldom had a data transfer rate faster than 33K, very time consuming and very frustrating.

There was however, an entrepreneur by the name of Peter Carruthers, who also had an IT background. When I first met him he was holding seminars called “How to Crashproof Your Business!” which taught one how to protect yourself from the banks and creditors should your business fail! Peter knew a lot about this, having been down that road, and as they say, “got the T-shirt”. I also subscribed to his newsletter, it was in this newsletter that he talked about Corey Rudl who was probably one of the first internet marketing guru’s, and very successful at it to. Peter had applied what Corey taught to his own business and raved about how it had changed it for the better. I also bought Corey’s guide to Internet Marketing, at first it just sat in it’s box while I attempted other more practical things (or so I thought) to generate an income. I mean whenever you talked about making a living off the internet people looked at you as though you were living in cloud cuckoo land!

The important thing about doing business on the internet is that it is GLOBAL!

What Corey taught was that to make a living off the internet one had to find out what people were interested in and what they were searching for on the internet and cater to that market. One quickly discovered that people are interested in the following; golf, sex, weightloss, weightloss, weightloss, motivation, dating, dog behaviour problems, learn to play guitar, travel, make money online and making money from home! There are other subjects as well, but these seem to be the most popular.

And so I continued trying to make a living doing more practicle things whilst all the while wondering what I could focus on doing on the internet. Then one day I was handed a flyer at a intersection which said “if I wanted to start my own home based business to call this number”, this was one of those light-bulb moments for me. One of the topics that people were interested in on the internet was how to make money from home, maybe I could combine this with the internet – and so I called the number. And that was my introduction to network marketing aka multi-level marketing (MLM) aka referral marketing and recently I came across yet another term, social-level marketing. I have no doubt that there are many more terms referring to this type of marketing.

What is Network Marketing?……

Lets start with a definition. The DSA’s (Direct Selling Association) definition is, I quote, “Companies that manufacture and distribute goods or services through Direct Sellers also referred to as distributors, consultants, sales agents, independent contractors and by other various names, directly to consumers in a face to face manner away from a fixed retail location” end quote. AMWAY Copyright© 2009 introduced the concept some 60 plus years ago.

The goods distributed vary from household detergents through to nutrient supplements (very popular at the moment – everyone is into the “wellness industry”). Services cover legal aid/advice, also very popular is insurance; covering anything from funeral policies to cash back hospital plans.

My goal was to do this via the internet, and this meant I had to find a product that was global by nature – you can sell legal aid or a funeral policy that is dictated by the laws of one country in another, you can sell household detergents, vitamin supplements etc. in different countries but you now have a transport component (ie you have to get the product there) so my search began for the perfect product.

Value Driven Marketing – The Only Way to Attract Leaders into Your Home Based Franchise

There’s been an ongoing battle online from those trying to figure out exactly HOW TO market their home based franchise.

Constant spamming, in-your-face marketing, and unwanted solicitation has led industry giants to make drastic changes to their terms of operation, only to give those that truly understand value driven marketing a harder time to give their value to those seeking online.

As with any marketing campaign, we MUST understand the need of our target audience and provide them ONLY with value and not force them into investing into something without having full understanding.

Being a home based franchise entrepreneur has opened my eyes to the REAL wants of individuals. The facts that drive someone to purchase or acquire what YOU are promoting WITHOUT you having to force it upon them is what true Value Driven Marketing will provide for anyone.

Now let’s go through some simple techniques YOU can use to begin implementing value driven marketing into your portfolio.

What Will Define Your Value Driven Marketing

There are many ways for a business owner to apply value driven marketing to their marketing efforts, but only a few that actually give the results you will need to become successful.

Freely, I’d like to give you a specific strategy to use RIGHT NOW to begin implementing a marketing campaign that will allow you to become a valuable resource to your specific target audience within your home based franchise. Begin with:

1. Any content you create MUST have exceptional value – As you are choosing your steps towards creating unique content to attract your target audience, remember that ALL of your efforts should have exceptional value. The more value you offer FREELY, the more return on investment you will receive towards driving up your profit margin.

2. To increase your income, you MUST increase your personal value to the world – Being seen as an authority online is the ONLY way of achieving success in ANY business. An increase in income from your online marketing efforts is a direct result of your value to the business world.

How to Begin Applying Value Driven Marketing

There are four basic steps to increase your personal value BEFORE you begin to apply value driven marketing. These four basic steps are:

· Learn (scholastic) – Begin to increase your knowledge and begin to increase your value. It is well know that those that ARE successful have an enormous knowledge database (fancy word for library) by which they have acquired the skills necessary to be considered for leadership.

· Apply (experimental) – Begin to apply the knowledge you are acquiring and experiment with what specific skill has given you the greatest results. Then begin to master this specific skill in order to become a true asset in value driven marketing.

· Teach – Immediately apply what you have acquired by GIVING AWAY this knowledge freely to those seeking it. Be considerate to those looking for answers regarding your specific product or service and give as much information as possible. This will prove to your target audience your level of commitment to them and also their level of satisfaction.

· Rinse and Repeat – There’s really no explanation for this step. It’s all about repeating this very process over and over until you are seen by no less than an elite leader in your industry.

The information I just shared with you came directly from one of my business partners and top earning industry leaders who openly shared this information with not just me but several others in our recent home based franchise Master Marketing events.

To receive the highest level of value marketing training and to further increase your specific value to the online community, be sure to register for my e-mail updates regarding an opportunity to get not only my but also my personal coach’s training in becoming a 3% leader in the network marketing and direct sales industry.