Step 1: Decide what outcome you want to achieve with the videos.

Choosing some topics with your objectives in mind is much easier than picking topics to see whether they can fit. Here are some ideas of what your marketing purposes might be:

• Build general buzz and branding
• Sell products and services
• Boost search-engine rankings
• Educate the marketplace

Step 2: Buy some hardware.

Purchase some video equipment based on the amount of video you plan to shoot and the quality you want to produce for your target audience.

• I keep things simple with a Flip Camera (which I’ll discuss later in this chapter), Sony video camera, and lights.
• Other people have green screens,teleprompters, high-end lighting, microphones, and much more. It comes down to your use. For everyday use,simple equipment is fine.

Step3: Shoot your videos.

I prefer to use settings other than an office. You will find videos of me and my team on airplanes, at parks, on boats, and even at fast-food restaurants. The trick with shooting videos is to make them stick. This is why we shoot in unique landscapes. Talking about marketing can be dull. Relating marketing to Big Macs spices it up a bit!

Step 4: Edit the video,as needed.

I prefer to do very light editing, if any at all. Rougher-cut videos are better perceived by prospects and do a better job of creating relationships with your viewers.

• Intro
• Outro
• Add your unique landing page link at the bottom of the video
• Music
• Adjust lighting and sound if needed

Step 5: Set up video accounts with some of the major players:

• YouTube
• Vimeo
• MySpace
• vSocial
• VideoEgg
• Dailymotion
• Brightcove

Step 6: Sign up for a service like www.TubeMogul.com or www.TrafficGeyser.com.

These tools will allow you to submit your videos to multiple places at the same time. TubeMogul is free, whereas Traffic Geyser is a paid service. Traffic Geyser

continues to add new services and tools to help you take full advantage of your videos.

Step 7:Use video everywhere.

Here are some examples:

• On your home page as a welcome video
• As a press release
• To describe a product and your services
• On thank-you pages
• To gather opt-ins
• For FAQs
• As video walk-ons (a person appearing on the user’s screen)

Step 8: Get your video ranked in the top of the search engines.

Google loves video.It’s one thing to get your Web site ranked in the top of the search engines,but it’s another thing to get a double ranking with your business occupying two spots.To do this,simply do the following:

• Shoot a great video on a controversial topic.
• Upload the video to YouTube.
• Insert keywords into the title,tags,keyword tags,
• and description.
• Write at least 25 articles and blog posts that also contain the keywords and point them back to the YouTube page,not your Web site.When you have a large number of links pointing to the video, Google sees it as a more popular page andranks it higher.

In both up and down economies there are a set of tools and tactics that we employ regadless.  These tactics are referred to as Guerrilla Marketing.

As a certified Guerrilla Marketing coach, I bring the entire Guerilla Marketing philosophy to our company in our online and offline efforts.

In fact, Guerrilla Marketing Online has recently been even more impactful then our offline efforts from an ROI standpoint.  We’re able to get a much quicker response by leveraging the power of the web.

If you’re not familiar with Guerrilla Marketing – check out their site, it will change the way you think about marketing forever (click on Guerrilla Marketing).  Boiled down, Guerilla Marketing is low cost, high impact.  Rather then using a ton of money, you use time, energy and imagination.

Online Marketing doesn’t need to need to cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars.  In fact, most of it can be done free of charge!

Here are six examples of Guerrilla Marketing Online in Action:

• A fan of the social networking site Ecademy hosting a virtual Anti-Facebook Party
• A media firm hosting it’s holiday party on secondlife.com and inviting their customers
• Gary Vaynerchuk starting a blog from the ground up voying to make an impact on his audience. He crush’s it by posting a vast amount of useful, transparent and thoughtful content.  To date, he has a massive loyal following and some pretty exciting deals taking place.
• Starbucks launching Starbucks Ideas to get FREE Ideas on how to grow their business
• Zappos.com using Twitter to give special twitter online offers
• Matthew Ferry giving away his famous webinar worth over $500 to support his loyal followers (and rocking in over 1000 registered people)

There are millions of ways to practice Guerrilla Marketing Online, it’s all about getting creative and putting a little bit of sweat into the process.  I promise you, now is the time to really kick your marketing up a notch, you can’t afford not to!

You’ve got less than a month left to make some money during this holiday season.

Here are 6.5 Guerrilla Marketing Ideas to use in the next 30 days:

• Offer a gift subscription with the purchase of one.  For example:   Join our member site that will change your life.  Even better, if you do that, you can gift a subscription to a friend for free!
• Bring in Santa to your stores and offer FREE photos — I’m sick of seeing $50 for photos for Santa, come on now
• Offer a no payment until after the holidays.  Look we understand you need to save your cash now, don’t pay us until next year
• Anti-black Friday specials.  Look, the web is the best place to sell things, hands down.   You should be telling people NOT to go out on black friday and instead buy from your web site
• Change your web site to red — get into the holiday spirit.  Stop being a scrooge
• Offer a different discount or promotion during the entire month of December
• 6.5 (for the daring marketer)  Invite your customers to YOUR holiday party.  (Just don’t get too toasted)

The question I pose to you: Is your product or service one of those holiday items?  If not, is there a way to at least tie it in somehow.

Here are some random examples of how I would tie it in:

• A zoo: Come see Santa’s Raindeer before it’s too late
• A car wash: Make sure your car is detailed for the holidays
• Cell phone company: Give the PERFECT holiday gift this year
• Carpet cleaner: Is your house ready for the holidays? Get rid of those unwanted stains before your guests see them

I could go on, and on and on, you get the picture.

Here are 7.5 practical holiday marketing tips you can use right away:

• Offer discounts and incentives for the holiday season — consumers are price sensitive, at least make them THINK they are getting a deal
• Change your copy and promotional materials to reflect the holidays
• Offer no payments until AFTER the holidays are over
• Play on the family element… this is when families come together
• Change the colors of your business cards, promotional materials and so on for 3 months
• Run a holiday contest and give away an amazing prize.  No 10% off won’t cut it
• Bring in Santa to your store
• Give free Egg Nog (with special spirits)

Let’s make this holiday success a marketing success!

As guerilla’s, we know that 70%+ of our marketing efforts should be directed towards our current clients.  Are you doing this or are you still focused on marketing to the world?

How are your marketing towards your current clients?  Simply poping out a few emails?

Crazy times call for some crazy measures.  With the economy in a downtime it’s the best time to get creative in our marketing efforts.  As a certified Guerilla Marketing coach this has never been clearer then the present moment.

Here are some ideas we’re using at Taz Solutuons, Inc. as well as aiding our clients in implementing:

• Postcard marketing campaigns offering  free consultations — 4 in the series all driven to a specific landing page
• Gift baskets to current clients
• Leveraging a service like send out cards for various holidays
• Joint Venture arrangements
• Virtual realty presentations — using sites like secondlife.com

Pick one tactic and test it out! The key is tracking and testing. If you cant track the efforts what is the sense in trying it out?

Go get em guerilla!

Where do you think I’m going to go eat next time?  Where do you think I’m going to send people to eat?

The crazy thing about this situation is – I didn’t leave my address!  I put my name on the comment card and someone manually looked up my address and took the time to send me a handwritten letter.  Now that is an awesome Guerilla Marketing Tactic!

A simple thank you does go a long way!

How many times do you thank your customers?   Hopefully more often than not.

In a recession or a downturn,  we typically focus most of our efforts on using Guerilla Marketing Tactics . These tactics are cost effective and focus heavily on using time, energy and imagination as opposed to money.  That’s the core definition of Guerrilla Marketing.

Being a certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach, I’m advising my clients to take a very good look at their current marketing methods.  Are they spending most of their money marketing to the entire universe or are they being more strategic and focusing on their current clients and prospects?

The best source of sales are your current clients.  What else can you sell them?   Rack your brain (and your teams brain)  to come up with some ideas!  You’ve got to conserve some of your cash in a situation like this, every penny you spend on marketing needs to be well thought out.

Visit our Guerilla Marketing Tactics page on the web to check out some other ideas! 

Keep your heads up, we won’t be in a recession forever.