Many of us are not comfortable being on camera. This is true even when talking about our expertise, insurance, what we do every day, how we make our living.

Face-to-face with the client we’re as confident as a peacock. Effortlessly working clients and prospects through the process of better understanding the insurance products they’re looking to buy.

But put us in front of a camera, and we become shy insecure, stuttering amateurs, who look and sound as if it’s our first day on the job. The more brazen of us, firmly plop our butt down in front of the camera, lock our jaw and set out to deliver a monotone diatribe on some obscure technical aspect of an insurance policy.

Unfortunately, for as much as I want to commend you for taking the leap and adding YouTube to your content marketing mix, these type of videos are not going to yield the results you’re looking for.

Why YouTube Marketing Works

YouTube is truly an amazing platform for marketing our insurance agencies… here are several reasons:

#1 Exposure

YouTube is the second largest search engine on the Internet and is also given preferred ranking in standard Google search.  By using YouTube video to market your business your message has the greatest opportunity to be placed in front of the consumers who would ultimately purchase your product.

#2 Emotional Connection to Audience

Whether you realize it or not, many of your consumers actually prefer to consume content via video versus an audio format or text-based blog post. There are a few different reasons for this, but the most significant has to do with psychology. As human beings we’re all wired a little differently and there is a portion of us who are influenced and make decisions based on their emotional connection to a person, brand or product. Video allows us to convey emotion to our consumers.

Here is a very simple video The Murray Group created to evoke emotional from our local community:

 #3 Quick Concise Message

Many of us do not have the time to read through blog posts, whitepapers and e-books to find information that we need in order to make a buying decision. Videos allow us to deliver educational, entertaining, actionable content in a very short amount of time. In most cases we want to keep our videos between two and five minutes long. If someone is interested in the product that you’re offering there’s a very good chance they will be willing to give you five minutes or less.

#4 Easy to Share

People love to share good videos and YouTube makes it very easy for them to do so. Remember Google owns YouTube, Google wants people to visit and view their YouTube videos. So Google has made YouTube videos extremely easy to share and embed anywhere on the Internet.  In addition, YouTube videos can be added to most email marketing services as well so they’re easy to consume and easy to customize fashion.

What Type of Content Works in YouTube Marketing?

This is probably the most common question I receive when speaking to audiences about YouTube marketing. And unfortunately I’m going to give you a really crappy answer…

… success on YouTube is less about the specific content you’re talking about and more about the human connection you can make with your audience during the video. So a better question would be how do we make a human connection through video?

• Don’t try to be corporate or professional.  Nothing kills someone’s desire to watch your videos more than when you sound like a machine.
• Use local or common vernacular and references in all your videos. You want your audience to feel like you are one of them.
• Include some of your mistakes including umms, pauses and slips of the tongue in the video.  You don’t want your audience thinking you spend their insurance premiums on $10,000 marketing videos.
• Be self-deprecating. You’re not perfect, your audience isn’t perfect, nobody’s perfect. Don’t take yourself too seriously.
• Give shout outs whenever possible. People love to see the name in lights.
• Occasionally make references to personal interests or personal events. This type of information even at a 30,000 foot level makes you more relate-able.

Then just keep trying things to figure out what works.

YouTube Marketing Take-Away

You’re going to create videos that are awesome and you’re going to create videos that completely stink, but you can’t make the awesome videos if you don’t make the stinkers as well. Don’t be afraid to fail.

Here’s a quick video on integrating YouTube and Google Plus:

Thank you and Good luck,

I am Ryan Hanley.

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