One way that you can make more money by creating videos is to actually stand in front of the camera yourself and promote the product that you are offering to the viewer. This can literally be the equivalent of meeting every one of your website visitors face-to-face, and it can range from a simple webcam video up to a full scale movie-quality production. Creating this sort of video can serve as a replacement for a traditional sales letter, and may help you to boost your direct sales of your product.

It is important during this process to be honest with yourself, because there are many of us for one reason or another that might not be comfortable standing in front of the camera. If this is the case, there are some great alternatives such as creating a Powerpoint presentation on the topic of your video and then narrating the video yourself. It is possible that you do not even want to use your own voice for the video, in which case you could outsource this part by writing a transcript and hiring a professional multimedia company to create the audio.

In terms of your actual video format, Flash is the most popular format for displaying in web browsers as well as for submitting to video sharing sites. You can also use the Quicktime MP4 video format, as this video format will also play on your web pages and be acceptable for other video sharing sites. Remember that all of your videos will be compressed for the internet, so some of the original quality of the video will be lost in the data compression process (to make the video play faster).

Remember that there are two main ways to use your videos: You can embed them into your own web pages to create content for your website and build a relationship with your viewers, or you can distribute them to video sharing sites in order to bring new visitors to your website or blog. Remember to include a number of links to your own website each time post one of your videos on a video sharing website, and you will gain the long-term benefits of link building as well as brand recognition.

Basically, long tail brand promotion uses special keywords and phrases on your website that potential buyers might use as search terms to find what they are searching for. They are the niche terms that will bring the most dedicated-to-purchase web surfers to your site. We will explore some specifics to give you a better idea.

Imagine you own an online flower shop. You can ship flowers all over the country, and you have your shiny new website living on a new server to handle the waves of traffic, and you are ready for the orders to start rolling in. But it is not that easy.

When someone searches for “send flowers,” what happens? Big sites and bigger companies that have the brand promotion resources to purchase paid search listings and advertising, such as Teleflora, ProFlowers, or 1-800-Flowers, dominate the search results. They constantly battle against each other to win that number one listing on Google and the other search engines. Your little flower shop and shiny new website does not have the resources to compete with these players on standard searches. So how would anyone ever see your site in the regular search results? The best answer is long tail brand promotion.

The problem is when people perform a search for terms like “send flowers” or “credit cards” or “new laptop,” they will find whoever could throw the most money and energy at online brand promotion. It is not necessarily the best site, or the exact thing they are looking for. So they continue to research until they find exactly what it is they need.

So when someone searches for terms like “Toshiba Satellite Pro L670,” or “credit card double points no fee U-Promise,” they know what they are looking for. They know when they type in “laptop,” they will not find what they need. But by being more specific, they may find the smaller website that offers just what they are looking for.

Those are the people you want at your flower site. So if you provide keywords with great specificity — the long tail brand promotion keywords — it is most likely the buyers who are using those keywords to show up at your site.

What does this have to do with our flower business? You know that with the flower giants, you cannot compete with them on terms like “send flowers” or “flower delivery.” You need to focus on long tail brand promotion keywords to beat the mega sites at their own game. Some online businesses have even changed their entire focus of what they do and sell just to focus on long tail brand promotion.

What if you offered a particular variety of flower that is fairly uncommon? Something the big flower stores do not carry. You could create special keyword phrases like “Angel Kiss rose pink” or “rare Japanese orchid” to set yourself aside from the big websites. Now your long tail brand promotion can gain a foothold, because you offer something the big sites do not offer.

You can then identify and build a variety of different long tail keywords for your brand promotion. While the mega sites fight to win the 98 percent of searches for regular flowers, you can win the other 2 percent of the searches by focusing only on the people who want the rare Japanese orchid, or the pink Angel Kiss rose.

By focusing on long tail brand promotion, you can build up a series of those 2 percent searches. Eventually, if you win enough long tail searches, you can run a fairly successful business that does not have to rely on big budgets and common search terms for its brand promotion. You fill the niche that a smaller dedicated customer base will rely on you for.

When running a digital promotion you must be covered for several reasons. Because it’s easy for marketers to miscalculate or underestimate their promotion costs, redemption coverage helps them know their costs before their digital promotion campaign ever hits the market. This way, if someone tries to overspend or overextend the contest, the redemption coverage will keep those costs in line with the original budget.

For example, if your company ran a “hole-in-one wins you a new car” contest, you can be fairly sure that no one will win. Your campaign costs are limited to the cost of the promotion. But what do you do if, against all odds, someone actually wins the car? You could be out $20,000 – $40,000 with the swing of a club. It is easy to think you are safe, until someone actually wins the car. Then companies running these campaigns find themselves in the hole, worrying about how to pay for the car.

Even in a digital promotion campaign, something can spin out of control, costing you thousands of dollars. Your free song giveaway may suddenly go viral, and thousands of downloads turns into tens of thousands of downloads. This is why redemption coverage should be your first step in your digital promotion campaign.

Another advantage to getting redemption coverage to accompany your promotion campaign is, it stops the overexposure of redemptions. For example, there is no overspend or underspend because you know the exact contest cost and guidelines. Redemption coverage gives marketers the “you have a chance to win” cushion to base their digital promotion campaign expenditures.

This is a great safety net for those talented marketing agencies that are used to only wearing their creative hat instead of their accounting hat. Instead of worrying and trying to calculate the odds of someone winning, just make sure you have redemption coverage.

The biggest advantage to this insurance, also known as promotional risk coverage, allows your company to launch bigger digital promotion campaigns and give away larger prizes than you might originally have done.

In all reality, using redemption coverage with your digital promotion campaign is more than smart and strategic. These strategies are exactly what builds a great brand and customer loyalty. Customers will work to win your prize, telling their friends, spreading the word. You’ll build fans, increase sales, and ultimately boost your ROI. This way, everyone will be successful, and you’ll rest easy knowing you’re not going to lose your shirt.

Many experienced businesspeople are still married to traditional marketing and business promotion techniques. They still think in terms of advertising in broadcast and print media. They still think about eyeballs, open rates, and CPMs (cost per thousand views). They’re thinking about impressions, drive time, and prime time. But business promotion has grown beyond traditional marketing and advertising, and moved online.

Why Is Business Promotion Changing?

It’s because of Generation Y and the explosive growth of social media. There are 82 million members of Generation Y (compared to the 78+ million Baby Boomers), and 96% of them are on a social network of some sort. Whether it’s Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or other networks, these online tools have reshaped business promotion as we know it.

If you want to reach Generation Y through business promotion, consider social media as your best bet. It costs less than traditional advertising, can be targeted to reach only the people you want, and can easily be measured. The problem with traditional advertising is that you can’t effectively measure whether it was your TV commercials or billboards that resulted in increased sales, and even if one of them was more effective.

How Can I Use Social Media for Online Business Promotion?

Social media is all about communicating and building trust through relationships. By speaking to your customer base on their terms and their turf, you can earn their trust a lot more easily, which can make your business promotion much more effective. Generation Y spends a lot of time online, getting their news and entertainment from the web. They communicate via text messages on their cell phone. And they are the biggest consumer of mobile videos of any generation.

Social media is becoming more popular and widespread. The biggest demographic on Facebook may still be Generation Y, but the fastest growing one is women 50 and over. If that was your biggest customer base, how would you reach them? You could advertise during shows that women over 50 typically watch, but you’re not going to necessarily reach them. Plus, you need to repeat those ads many times, which will get expensive. But with Facebook, you can create fan pages and groups specifically for your target audience. You can even purchase ads that are served only to women in their 50s. You can’t do that with traditional advertising.

Your online business promotion campaign should consist of Twitter, Facebook and/or MySpace, and blogging. Set up accounts, fan pages, blogs, and communicate with your potential customers about the things they want to talk about. Don’t tell them what you do, talk to them about what they do, like, and enjoy. Become a resource for their interests by forwarding articles, providing tips, and telling people about other resources that meet their interests and needs.

Whenever possible, use online business promotions to support your offline promotions as well. If you’re attending a trade show, are sponsoring a special event or team, or are still using traditional marketing, tell people about it through your social networks.

If you’re at a trade show, encourage people on Twitter to stop by your booth. If you’re sponsoring a special event, talk it up on your Facebook fan page. Or if you’re sponsoring a sports team, consider setting up a fan page for that team. Put your Twitter account and Facebook URL in your advertisements, and encourage people to follow you or become fans. There’s no reason these two business promotion methods have to be separate.

While we’re not predicting the death of traditional marketing methods, we are encouraging you to add social media as a big part of your business promotion toolbox.

Let’s just get that out of the way. We’re normally not supposed to start articles like this on a down note, but you need to know what doesn’t work before we can really talk about what does.

Generation Y — those born between 1977 and 1994 — don’t respond to regular promotions. They don’t watch TV, they don’t read billboards, they don’t do direct mail. But they’re such an important target to marketers, that most marketers are looking for any kind of promotions to reach Gen Y.

So why Y?

Because they’re a consumer power that actually outnumber the Baby Boomers. There are 82 million Gen Yers, give or take a few, and only 78 million Boomers. Generation Y are 26% of the population, and their spending power is more than $200 billion, plus they influence another $300 – $400 billion. According to some reports, Gen Yers influence over 50% of their family’s car choices.

Tantalizing, huh? But if you can’t reach them with traditional promotions, how do you do it?

That’s where online and digital promotions become important. Generation Y is online. That’s where they grew up, that’s where they get their information. When asked where they get their news, most Gen Yers said “Yahoo.” They watch YouTube videos on their phones. They communicate through texts, and use Facebook.

In short, Generation Y wants you to communicate with them, not market to them. So what are some promotions ideas you can use?

First, you need to go where they are. Before you start any sort of Gen Y promotions campaign, get to know them. Figure out who your target audience is, and where they like to hang out, what they like to do, where they get their entertainment.

Vans Shoes, makers of the famous skateboard shoes, built skateboard parks in California and Florida. They sponsor a skateboard team. When their customers need to buy new skateboard shoes, they buy the ones they see at the skate parks, or on the shirts of the team from the skate competition.

Tampax sponsors a social network for young girls, without blatantly marketing to them. They place their logo discreetly on the network, while young girls connect with each other and discuss whatever young girls discuss. The logo just sits there. Then, when it’s time to go shopping for feminine products with their moms, they choose the product they see on their network.

Brands like Mountain Dew, Nokia, Coca-Cola, and Chrysler are paying video game developers for product placement promotions inside video games. Tony Hawk’s Ride, EA’s NBA “2K10,” and Need for Speed: Shift are just a few of the games that include ads. Whether it’s billboards, vending machines, or traditional sports advertising venues (like sponsor signs inside an arena), video game promotions are an excellent way to reach Gen Yers. Remember, Gen Y influences more than half of their family’s car purchases, so putting car ads in video games makes great promotions sense.

Text clubs are another form of digital promotions. Since most Gen Yers are communicating with each other via text, they’re a great way for local businesses like restaurants and clubs to reach Generation Y. Text clubs are opt-in marketing efforts. A restaurant can use text clubs to advertise hidden specials — “free appetizers with dinner, tonight only” — or a club can send out sneak previews about bands or drink specials.

When you’re creating your B2C marketing campaign, make sure you give digital promotions a good, hard look in order to reach the elusive Generation Y. With their spending power and large population, it’s important to connect with them now, so as they grow older and their spending power increases, you have earned their brand loyalty and top-of-mind awareness.

Digital brand promotions continue to spur billions of dollars in annual sales for product suppliers. By offering promotional incentives, through mobile promotions, online promotions, music download promotions, and skins promotions, companies can tap into a vast pool of consumers that would otherwise be all but unreachable.

Generation Y is responding to digital promotions.   They are defined as the 10-30 year olds with more discretionary spending than their parents have, according to Author Kit Yarrow of Gen BuY: How Tweens, Teens and Twenty-Somethings Are Revolutionizing retail. On NPR this morning, she noted the average number of text messages sent by a teen, during a given month. The number was 2,273 text messages. They communicate in email, but chat more often, and they are active users of social media and video. Gen Y uses search engines daily. Schools introduce interaction with web 2.0 applications as early as elementary school and access to the internet is a requirement in secondary education. They are comfortable online and have chosen to use the medium over any other form of communication. If you are working in marketing, you can not afford to miss this generation which Yarrow coined Gen BuY. Online marketing has changed. This new generation expects you to communicate with them.

Promotional Currency brings a powerful combination of promotional incentives, entertainment promotions, music download promotions, ringtone promotions, skins promotions, mobile promotions, online instant win games and artist licensing – offering brand partners the first one-stop source for all online promotions, wireless and digital promotions.

Promotional Currency’s integrated approach incorporates cutting-edge promotional marketing strategies and the latest digital currencies with a complete backend management system that includes delivery, hosting, co-branding and fulfillment. The turnkey promotional marketing solution also features a proprietary promotional risk coverage service, enabling them to offer brands the budget certainty they require.

Incorporate these affordable digital brand promotions into your promotional marketing strategy today and watch your customer database soar!

Despite the growing popularity, a lot of brand sponsors and product suppliers fail to fully appreciate the potential of launching targeted marketing promotions. They see digital promotions and promotional incentives merely as a way to increase sales. In reality, their potential extends much further and remains largely untapped.

Introduce New Products By Launching Marketing Promotions

One of the core challenges for brand marketers and retailers trying to launch a new product is to encourage consumers to try the product. Doing so requires consumers to modify their shopping behavior, which few are willing to do without an incentive. Marketing promotions can incentivize your target audience and motivate them to try the product or brand you’re promoting.

For example, think back to the last time you visited a large warehouse store, such as Costco or Sam’s Club. Strolling through the aisles, you probably saw several new items that offered generous coupons or other incentives upon purchase. In the food section, you likely saw employees giving out free samples of new foods and drinks. These are examples of marketing promotions that are designed to introduce new products to the marketplace. And they’re merely scratching the surface of the potential of promotional incentives.

Marketing Promotions Improve Brand Awareness: An Example

On Black Friday, Target launched a series of exciting marketing promotions for their customers. The marketing campaign was designed to extend their brand, build excitement in the marketplace, and generate a surge in holiday sales. It began with a $10 gift card given to every shopper who spent $100 during Black Friday. This was followed by their Giftacular Sweepstakes during which $200,000 in gift cards were awarded. Lastly, a Target Give and Get Sweepstakes offered consumers a chance to win a $10,000 grand prize.

These marketing promotions, in addition to generating excitement and triggering sales, thrust Target’s brand to the forefront of consumers’ minds. In doing so, the promotional incentives became a key component of Target’s ongoing customer loyalty programs.

Use Marketing Promotions To Attract Customer Data

Besides introducing new products, improving brand awareness, and building customer loyalty, you can use marketing promotions to attract valuable customer data. This data can be leveraged for future marketing campaigns.

For example, suppose your brand includes products in multiple categories, such as shoes, clothes, and cosmetics. Chances are, your customers will be receptive to buying related products from you within the same category. They’re also likely to remain loyal to your brand across categories. That is, those who buy your shoes may also buy your clothes and cosmetics (with the right promotional incentives). Consider the potential…

Marketing promotions can trigger an immediate response from your audience, providing you not only with customer contact information, but sales-related data. If you mine this data correctly, you can segment your customer base and design marketing campaigns that target specific customers. The tighter your targeting, the better the response.

Key Factors To Consider For A Successful Campaign

The success of your marketing promotions is measured by whether you meet your objectives. Brand managers often launch digital promotions and customer loyalty programs without having a clear idea regarding their goals.

For instance, if an increase in sales is your objective, quantify it by dollars or percentage increase. If your goal is to build a customer database for future marketing promotions, determine the database’s target size and breadth of data. If improving customer loyalty is your aim, success can be tied to an increase in sales volume by customer segment.

Also, depending on the type of marketing promotions you’re planning to launch, you should consider using promotional risk coverage. Doing so will protect your budget in the event of a larger-than-expected redemption rate. It’s also a cost-effective way to offer your customers the chance to win enormous cash prizes.

Marketing Promotions: Tapping Into A Massive Revenue Stream

Brand sponsors, marketing experts, and retailers have discovered that marketing promotions give them a unique way to reach a huge pool of consumers. In doing so, they tap into a lucrative revenue stream. But, that is merely the beginning. When you offer exciting promotional incentives to consumers, you’ll build brand awareness, increase sales, and attract valuable customer data. And if you harness those things properly, they can drive lasting sales with increasing momentum.

Digital music is a powerful promotional incentive because there is never a shortage of desired content. New artists rise to the top of the charts on a perpetual basis. That allows you to tap into an endless supply of popular music to build your brand, acquire new customers, and drive ongoing sales.

With the number of portable media devices at an all time high and growing due to the large number of new music capable mobile phones, music promotions have a broader reach than ever before.

Music download promotions can be delivered via a secure code and url. The codes are well-suited to a number of delivery methods, such as on-pack or in-pack, handed out via cards, or delivered via email. The landing pages and download sites can be customized to reflect the full personality of a promotion sponsor.

With over 3000 music download promotions successfully executed, Promotional Currency is a promotional partner you can count on to deliver. Promotional Currency’s integrated approach incorporates the latest digital currencies with a complete backend management system that includes co-branding, delivery, hosting, and fulfillment. These turnkey mobile promotions are created with a proprietary promotional risk coverage element, enabling them to offer brands response-based tactics within a fixed budget.

Incentive customers to respond through music download promotions with promotional risk coverage.

As cell phones, PDAs, and other mobile devices have flourished, they have created a new marketing platform from which you can engage your audience. Below, you’ll discover how to use mobile promotions, such as SMS promotions, mobile coupons, and ringtone promotions, to capture valuable mindshare within your market. Once you catch the attention of consumers in a way that excites them, motivating them to take action becomes far easier.
Mobile Promotions Leverage Affordable Digital Incentives
Even if your profit margins are healthy, every marketing budget has inherent constraints. It is critical that you offer incentives to your audience that are as affordable as they are engaging.

Mobile promotions are delivered digitally to consumers’ mobile devices. As a result, the cost of delivery is extraordinarily low. This is the case whether you’re allowing consumers to download songs, play instant win games, enter sweepstakes, or redeem mobile coupons. Because mobile promotions are comparatively inexpensive, you can launch them while continuing to leverage conventional marketing platforms, such as print and DOOH signage.

How Mobile Promotions Motivate Customers To Respond

The right incentives can drive market participation regardless of your product. The key is to offer incentives that your customers find immediately appealing. This is one of the unique advantages of launching mobile promotions. Consumers can download digital content (e.g. songs, games, images, etc.) instantly to their mobile devices. They can enter contests and sweepstakes for a chance to win alluring prizes.

When you launch mobile promotions to your audience, you’re not only offering consumers attractive incentives, you’re giving them an opportunity to enjoy instant gratification. Those two levers complement each other. In doing so, they trigger a response from your customers.

Mobile Promotions Capture The Mindshare Of Your Audience

If there were no other demands on your customers’ time and attention, motivating them to buy your product would be simple. The reality is that your audience is inundated with a constant torrent of offers and solicitations. Consumers instinctively erect a mental wall that deflects them. That means there’s a high likelihood your market is unaware of your product or uninformed with regard to its benefits. Mobile promotions offers a seductively simple solution.

Free song downloads, instant win games, and mobile coupons can quickly penetrate the mental wall your market has built to block other companies’ offers. These digital incentives tap into your audience’s desire for instant gratification. They are irresistible. They capture mindshare and engage your customers. As a result, your customers become attentive to your message, and far more likely to purchase your product.

Leveraging Mobile Coupons And SMS Promotions

While mobile promotions increase brand awareness, attract customer data, and educate consumers about your product, mobile coupons lift sales and improve customer loyalty. For example, you can use them to reward loyal customers with discounts, thereby driving repeat sales. You can also use them to entice consumers to try a product that you have recently launched. You can leverage these type of mobile promotions to temper the impact of price increases, or to move excess inventory.

Mobile coupons can be delivered to your customers’ cell phones and PDAs through text messages. You can communicate the offer, expiration date, and any other relevant information through short, targeted SMS promotions. Consumers can redeem your coupons at the point of sale in-store or online. Plus, because these mobile promotions use redemption-based incentives, you can easily control the financial risk.

How To Take Advantage Of Mobile Promotions

You have access to a broad menu of engaging and affordable mobile promotions that you can leverage to tap into your market and trigger a response. Ringtone promotions, free music downloads, instant win games, and sweepstakes are attractive to consumers on an instinctive level. They are seductive because they offer instant gratification. As a result, mobile promotions help you capture valuable mindshare, delivering your message to an attentive audience.

By capturing your customers’ attention, you can educate them about your product and its benefits. You can motivate them to purchase, and collect opt-in data for future CRM campaigns. And in the process, you can improve the loyalty they feel toward your company. Mobile promotions can propel your brand ahead of other companies struggling to reach your customers. In today’s competitive environment, that edge can be priceless.

–Cynthia Walker, Promotional Currency

Digital promotions can take a number of different forms, whether it’s an online gift certificate to your customers’ favorite online or brick-and-mortar retailers, free music downloads from iTunes, or even a real plastic gift card to an online store.

The cost of digital promotions is much lower than the other promotional incentives, because your cost is basically the value of the item you’re giving. If you give $10 online gift cards, your cost is $10 per card. This is a welcome change to promotional incentives professionals who would have normally spent a lot of money on graphic design, production and printing, and mailing and distribution.

Whatever form your digital promotions take, it’s an effective way to increase awareness for your brand, and track sales as well. With digital promotions like an online gift card, you can track who received your card, when they redeemed it, what product they were interested in (useful if you’re giving away several different kinds of music), and even if they purchased the actual product you were selling.

Do you have users who only redeem your digital promotions, but don’t actually buy anything? You can drop them from your incentive promotions campaign, and find a new batch of potential customers. Then start tracking and dropping until you’re only giving your digital incentives to a group of people with a high purchase percentage.

So how can you use digital promotions to gather valuable data about your customers? Not only are you able to track individual customers, but you can ask them for additional information like a working email address (you have to email them the digital promotions cards, right?), what products and brands do they usually buy, and what kinds of products they use.

For example, a music producer has several artists on his record label. He uses a digital promotions campaign to promote each of his artists, and offers a free track from any of his artists. For a user to take advantage of these digital incentives, she has to fill out a survey that tells the producer what kind of music she likes, how much she spends on music, and where she usually purchases it.

The producer can then aggregate the data from these digital promotions and see that most of his customers are between 18 – 24, like R&B, and purchase their music on iTunes. Now, he knows he needs to find more R&B artists, and promote them on iTunes rather than trying to produce and distribute CDs to various music stores around the country. Without using and tracking his digital promotions, he would never have access to this kind of information.

Now let’s take it one step further. Armed with this information, the producer can send out future digital promotions that are individualized to each customer’s tastes and preferences, rather than sending out a bunch of generic information and hoping the customers will take the bait. He can create digital promotions that use variable data to customize the offers, so each customer will see the music that he or she likes, and will receive offers that are more likely to be accepted by them.

Let’s recap: if done correctly, digital promotions can be a great way to market your product for a lower price than regular promotional incentives, to track customer responses, and to customize further digital incentives, to increase response and purchase rates.