YouTube vs the Boob Tube

 By Hector Cisneros

Image courtesy Pixabay

If you own a business, you’re always looking for ways to promote yourself, your products, and your services.  One of the most dynamic ways of showcasing all three is via video.  Video allows you to show as well as tell what makes your business special.  It can take viewers inside your operation to get a peek at the people and processes that make your business tick.  In short, video can help you part the curtain that separates prospects from clients by letting them know, trust and like you.  And you can do this in a way that informs and entertains.  Then all you have to do is deliver your message to the masses.

TV vs Web TV – Television has been a viable advertising medium since the 1950s.  For the past seventy years, local businesses have televised their goods and services via commercials, infomercials, and paid appearances on local talk shows.  While effective, the cost to produce and air TV ads has gotten kind of pricey over the years.  If you want to showcase your business on a daytime TV show today, expect to pay upwards of $1,000 per appearance.  Add to this the fact that once the show is off the air, your five minutes of fame is all but forgotten.

When YouTube debuted in 2005, it allowed everyone who knew how to shoot and edit a video the chance to air this content for free.  From the start, the video portal was one of the fastest-growing sites online.  In less than a year, YouTube was ranked by Alexa as the Internet’s 5^th most visited website. According to a July 16, 2006 survey, 100 million video clips were already being viewed daily on YouTube.  Fast forward fifteen years and YouTube broadcasts more than one billion hours of video every single day.  It has more than two billion viewers in more than one hundred countries.  It’s also the second most popular web destination after Google and is both a search engine and a social network.  Literally, 79% of internet users have a YouTube account.  The size and scope of the world’s most popular video portal has allowed it to turn unknown people and businesses into rock stars. Here are a few examples:

1.      Recording artists Katy Perry, Lana Del Rey and Justin Bieber owe it all to YouTube.  At least that’s what VH1 had to say about the three in 2014.  According to the post, “Bieber gained all of his #Beliebers on YouTube. Bieber’s cover of Chris Brown’s “With You” went viral in 2007. Usher caught the vid and signed the kid up to his label. Since then, Bieber has become one of the biggest names in music with hits like “Beauty and a Beat” and “All That Matters.”  http://www.vh1.com/news/52874/10-stars-discovered-on-youtube/

2.      Dollar Shave Club – How did Michael Dublin turn a surplus supply of razors into a billion-dollar business?  By investing $4,500 in a YouTube video, that’s how. Back in 2012, concocted the concept of Dollar Shave Club to help a friend’s father unload a shipment of razors.  After writing a funny video to debut the company, he uploaded it to YouTube.  Within 48-hours they received 12,000 orders.  Four years later, DSC revenue topped $200 million.  That was the same year Unilever bought the company for a reputed $1 billion.

3.      Orabrush – While YouTube made a razor company a household name, that wasn’t the only product that was saved by video. So was a little know tongue brush.  You heard me right.  In 1998, inventor Dr. Bob Wagstaff introduced the world to the Orabrush.  Then he started making the rounds to retailers to try to sell it.  After being rebuffed by virtually every big box store, he invested in an infomercial that failed to light a fire under everything but his wallet.  Short of funds and out of ideas, in 2009, 80-year-old Wagstaff met college student Jeff Harmon, who suggested he shoot a video that he could air on YouTube.  Their first video that featured the product was so funny that it was a hit.  This urged Bob and Jeff onto creating a series of funny videos.  As a result, the company sold more than $1 million of tongue brushes the following year.  They later started a weekly web series called, Diary of a Dirty Tongue.”  The upshot of their YouTube videos was that the company not only managed to make millions selling the Orabrush online, they also got the attention of retailers who put the Orabrush on their shelves. 

Image courtesy Pixabay

Could your business benefit from YouTube? – You bet.  Unlike the cost of typical TV production, YouTube videos can be shot cheaply.  Better still is how easy it now is to generate a huge audience on YouTube.  For pennies a view (as opposed to dollars a click) YouTube guarantees a viewer will watch at least 30-seconds of your video. And unlike TV, once uploaded to YouTube, your video will continue to generate viewers even after you stop buying traffic. Whether you want to focus on your products and services or you wish to deliver a weekly WebTV show to engage your audience, there has never been a better time to jump on the YouTube bandwagon.

If you’re looking to break your company out of the herd, give Hector Cisneros a call at (904) 887-0946 to find out how cost-effective YouTube can be.  He’ll be glad to share stories and videos from clients who have successfully used YouTube to generate viewers and sales of products and services.

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That's my opinion; I look forward to reading yours.

Hector Cisneros is CEO of Working the Web to Win based in Jacksonville, FL. You can connect with him on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. He is also the co-host of Blog Talk Radio’s “Working the Web to Win,” where he and Carl Weiss make Working the Web to Win simple for every business. Hector is a syndicated writer for EzineOnline and is an active Blogger, (including ghost writing). He is a published author of two books, 60 Seconds to success (on sale at Amazon and B&N) and Internet Marketing for the 21st Century which you can get free by clicking on the link at WorkingTheWebToWin.com.