HEROweb’s Marketing Director Mike Brown explains how to make your products appear on top shopping search engines like Shopzilla, NexTag, and PriceGrabber. Watch this video to learn how to gain exposure to millions more active shoppers through comparison shopping management.

Video on the web is looking to have a breakthrough year in ’09. Improvement in connection speeds and web video streaming technologies, as well as a growing demand from users to get richer web data all combine to make this a big year for web video deployments.

So, as an ecommerce site owner how you can proceed with a video strategy? Here are a few ideas to get you going:

1. Start simple. Set your sights on producing a short, simple 20-30 second video prototype. With a minimal investment, you can get your feet wet and decide if you can make your own videos or need to leave it to the experts.

2. Come up with a concept. Are you going to give information on specific products? Educate your potential users? Do something entertaining? You need to do some creative thinking and come up with an idea for your video that will be interesting (and reasonably easy to produce.)

3. Assess your equipment, budget, and resources. You can buy a video camera for less than $100. The quality will be marginal, but it could be enough for you to get your feet wet and develop a feel for what you want to do.

4. Create a simple “studio environment” for your videos.  It could be a corner of your shop, or a room in your home. I don’t think it needs to be fancy, but you do need reasonable decent sound and lighting. Perhaps you will just do voice-overs and the visual images will be generated on the computer or taken “on-location” in a setting related to your business. If you are going to do some on-site footage, think through the logistics and the setup required to do your shoot.

Here is an awesome set of video tutorials from the folks at videomaker.com that will cover all the basics you need to know. If you can wade through the barrage of advertisements, there is a wealth of information to be had.

5. Are you ready to be a star? Likely your video will need a narrator, presenter, or voice. Are you up to the task? If not, can you cajole your spouse, employee, cousin, or someone else to do a dynamic presentation.

6. Write a script, or at least a storyboard, for your video. Keep it short and sweet. Several sentences and a visual demo of a product would be great and shouldn’t be too hard to put together. Humor can score big points – particularly on YouTube. You don’t want your products to be perceived as a joke. But you do want to have fun with what you are doing.

7. Be ready to edit. Both Windows and Mac have free or low-cost video editing software packages. You will need to do some editing of your video. Consider creating a simple lead-in and ending slide or animation that reinforces your brand message and directs users to your website.

8. Create a YouTube account. It is easy and it is free.

9. Post your video. Once you have your YouTube account, posting your videos just takes a few minutes. You likely want to set your video as private before unveiling your work to the world. First get some helpful input from friends and trusted advisors. Adding a YouTube video to your website is quite simple. YouTube provides some code that you can paste into any of your web pages.

10. Now that you have been successful with your initial video, it is time to map out your future. Can you produce more videos on your own or do you want to enlist the help of a local video guru? We recommend coming up with a set of short video ideas. Perhaps you can produce them all at once and release them over an interval of several months.

We will be developing our support and deployment of video throughout ’09. Let us know your ideas and experiences with integrating web video with your website.

Readers of this blog know that I’ve always been a big fan of John Jantsch and his Duct Tape Marketing Blog. I think John is a great resource for small business owners looking for an expert for resources and ideas. I’ve written about him before, regarding his tips for shortcuts to content creation on your website or blog, using RSS feeds to automatically add content through bookmarking, and strategies for clarifying your business identity.

John has a community for small business owners and marketers that he calls the Workbench. It’s a place where members can go to get ideas and tips and share their ideas with others. Recently on John’s blog, he asked his readers to share their business stories through video or audio, which he would then upload to the Workbench. A lot of business owners have joined John ‘s Workbench and added their videos and podcasts, article marketing tips and ideas to their community.

This seemed like an idea worth sharing with our blog readers, and especially our MightyMerchant customers, as I know so many of you have very interesting stories behind your businesses and have a lot of personal interests that drive your success. Check out some of the other business inspiration videos and consider adding yours to the site.

Your video doesn’t have to be fancy. You can just point the camera at yourself and start talking! Share your story, ideas, or your passions and John will upload it to his Workbench so that others can view it. You’ll get some video you can use elsewhere on your site or blog, post to YouTube perhaps, and get a little traffic from the folks who drop by John’s Workbench.

How do ordinary people nurture their ideas into multi-million dollar enterprises? That is the question author David Vinjamuri attempts to uncover and understand in his new book, Accidental Branding: How Ordinary People Build Extraordinary Brands.

Vinjamuri spends time with the people behind such successful brands as Columbia Sportswear (Gert Boyle), cragigslist (Craig Newmark), J. Peterman (John Peterman), Clif Bar (Gary Erickson), Baby Einstein (Julie Aigner-Clark), Burt’s Bees (Roxanne Quimby), and The Art of Shaving (Myrian Zaoui and Eric Malka). Some of our best-known brands were born after what may seem like little more than luck, but after getting to know these people through Vinjamuri’s observant prose, we can begin to think the way they did when they experienced their business epiphany, and hopefully distill their wisdom into a strategy that can be used in developing our own brands.

Vinjamuri befriends each of his subjects, spending weekends at their home and shadowing them on the job. We get a sense of their business acumen as well as their mistakes and how they learned from them and used them to become stronger. One chapter focuses on John Peterman, the founder of the J. Peterman Company. He built his mail-order business into $70 million in sales and reinvented the catalog as we know it, with a catalog wasn’t called a “catalog” at all.

Peterman referred to it as an Owner’s Manual, and it was sized differently than other catalogs of the day. These are just two of the “rules of marketing” that Peterman intentionally broke. Rather than the usual product specs, the Owner’s Manual described the items in romantic and exotic settings, almost as characters in their own short stories. This approach resonated with the people who actually owned the items, and was an attractive source of novelty to people who discovered the catalog through word of mouth or Peterman’s direct mailings, which only served to increase their popularity.

Peterman and his small but cultishly popular catalog business was forced into the mainstream by the buffoonish caricature of him as Elaine’s boss on the TV show ‘Seinfeld’ starting in 1995. While most business owners can only dream of getting that kind of publicity, ironically it damaged him in a fundamental way. In 1999, Peterman went bankrupt at a time when millions of people heard his name each week during prime time television. Through conversations with Peterman, Vinjamuri helps us understand that this happened for the very reason that his company did not follow the “traditional” model of what a business was supposed to do and how it was supposed to grow. We also come to understand how Peterman was able to quietly restore his lost cachet and rebuild the empire he lost

What we come to realize is that the people behind the brands were ordinary people just like us, who didn’t follow the rules. For the most part, they had no formal business training so they didn’t know what they were “supposed” to do to market their fledgling companies. They weren’t following the advise of marketing focus groups and big-ticket PR firms, they listened to their own advice; they were the consumers and focus group participants, and they put all of their energy and resources into meeting a specific need they felt needed to be addressed.

Many entrepreneurs got lucky, and took many risks that some people might not be comfortable with. For instance, Gert Boyle gambled her home and her mother’s home to get money for Columbia Sportswear. But the wisdom that leaps off the page for each of these “accidental brands” is that for the most part, these entrepreneurs were convinced that they were going to be successful, and didn’t let any perceived failure stop them. If they didn’t get the idea right the first time, they readjusted and started over.

For anyone interested in how brands are built this is a must-read book. For other small business owners seeking inspiration on how to think for yourselves, follow your own rules, and develop a strategy that might seem to be outside the norm, I highly recommend reading this book.

David Vinjamuri is Adjunct Professor of Marketing at New York University and President of ThirdWay Brand Trainers. Find out more on his website, AccidentalBranding.com.

Adding video to your site doesn’t have to be a difficult proposition. In fact, it isn’t! I have written about adding video before: in a recent blog post about adding multimedia, and in an article in MightyMerchant’s October 2006 newsletter, SiteBeat, about adding streaming video content.

To those of you who have never utilized the services of Google Video or YouTube, the process might seem intimidating. I’m here to tell you that it’s actually quite easy, so if you have ever had the idea to add some video content to your website or blog, there should be nothing holding you back. Let’s take a look at how the process works and why you might want to use video.

Adding Streaming Media

Streaming video or audio files are sent in compressed form over the Internet. The file is played as it arrives, in almost real time. With the advent in recent years of large web content providers such as YouTube and Google Video, the equipment and infrastructure necessary to serve huge quantities of video and audio at little or no cost is in place and provided free for the general public to use in almost any way they like. [Note-As I write this, I just learned via TechCrunch today that Yahoo has relaunched Yahoo Video with some changes to the service. Instead of offering only user-generated content, Yahoo Video is now displaying videos from other Yahoo properties music, movies, TV, news and sports.]

Here is how the process works:

1. Set up an account with a streaming media provider, such as Google Video, Yahoo! Video, or YouTube.
2. Create a video, using basic video recording equipment. For marketing purposes, the video should be of as high a quality as you can afford.
3. Upload your video to your account, using the service’s terms of use. There will be instructions to guide you through the upload process. It’s usually just a click or two, no different than uploading a jpeg image.
4. The service provider will typically review the video for appropriate content, resulting in a short delay before the video is made available to you to post publicly.
5. Some services allow the videos to be set to ‘private,’ so only users you invite can view the videos. In order to post your video on your website or blog, you must allow the video to be public, to be shared, or to be ‘embedded.’
6. The streaming media provider will generate a code or URL to display your video stream. This code can be pasted right into your WordPress blog through the ‘upload video’ feature, or added to your website for other uses.
7. There is a little bit of setup work involved on our end to include the video stream on your website, but typically, it can be accomplished in less than 30 minutes

One of our clients, DenLorsTools.com, sells automotive tools and supplies and mechanics equipment. They created a series of videos which are viewable on YouTube and on their site. Over the past 6 months, their video “Bench Bleeding a Master Cylinder” has been viewed more than 6,000 times. Check it out for yourself by going to YouTube.com and doing a search for “DenLors Tools.” Other videos include Volt Tester Tool, and Using the Robinair 34700 A/C Machine.

On DenLorsTools.com, the videos are placed in the “Tech Articles” category, where one of the most-watched videos is “Honda and Acura Timing Belt Tips, Crank Pulley Tool.”

Marketing benefits of video

Obviously, the primary benefit is free advertising! Each time someone views DenLors’ videos, they’re getting a message like, “Free shipping $99 and up at DenLors Tools.com.” or information about the various products they sell and pricing. This is permission-based marketing at its best. The people viewing his videos are choosing to watch them, they’re interested in the subject already, and all DenLors Tools owner Dennis has to do is put the message in front of them.

Dennis explained some of the benefits he has seen from including video: “Customers do mention the videos when they call and we have noticed an increase in sales on some of the products featured in the videos. We even had a salesman from the manufacturer of the Honda crank pulley tool (Powerbuilt) contact us to say he saw it on YouTube and that it was a great idea.”

Ideas for integrating video into your site’s content

The popularity of video sites like YouTube can’t be underestimated. People turn to videos for entertainment and information. There are lots of ‘how to’ type videos on YouTube already, so it’s natural that people would check there for ‘how to’ information on auto repair and tools, like what Dennis has created.

What can you offer? A tour of your facility? The making of a hand-crafted object? How to use or install one of your products? Before and after project images?

The possibilities really are endless.

Reading David Meerman Scott’s book The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing & Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly, was like having a long lunch date with a helpful PR expert who answered all my questions. Scott, a Boston-based marketer who blogs at www.WebInkNow.com, developed New Rules from the ideas in his free e-book, The New Rules of PR. He patiently explains how the online marketplace has changed and why the old strategies don’t work anymore. Companies no longer need to hire expensive PR firms to reach their target market. The new rules of marketing and PR allow you to take your message directly to the buyer, by leveraging new tools such as blogs, vlogs (like a blog but with video entries) and podcasts. He gives inspiring examples of how real businesses have used new media, and his examples work for any type of organization that seeks to increase their online profile, from churches to rock bands to non-profits to commercial enterprises both large and small. Early chapters focus on case-studies and overviews of each technology that he covers. In later chapters, Scott delves into the how-to of integrating the technologies into your own online environment.

In addition to explaining the benefits and differences of these new marketing tools, Scott explains the etiquette behind them, such as how to handle comments you leave on other people’s blogs or respond to comments left on yours. After reading this book, the convergence of online technologies will seem less confusing, and will hopefully leave you with the feeling that these are things you can actually do and not just think about doing.

Though I am already immersed in the world of online marketing, I learned a thing or two. For instance, I will never again ignore an opportunity to send a press release, and I added a link to this blog in my email signature. Why had I never thought of that before? I’m sure you will come away from this book with a fresh perspective on your business, too. If you read it, or if you’ve already read it, please leave me a comment and let me know what ideas you’re ready to try!

Chances are you’re aware that even print publications like newspapers and magazines utilize audio and video on their websites. Search for “New York Times” and their website returns the title, “The New York Times – Breaking News, World News & Multimedia.” So, when serving only written content isn’t enough for even a print publication, maybe there’s some substance to this idea of utilizing audio and video to create a more engaging website.

I’m not talking about starting a viral marketing campaign with some wacky interactive game or videos of your employees in chicken suits doing the Macarena, but if you wanted to take your marketing in this direction you certainly could. (If you do this, make sure to send me a link, I want to see it! lol)

What I’m talking about is simply harnessing the power of video or audio clips to provide more incentive for your customers to buy your products. I can think of a number of ways this would be beneficial.

• A product that is complicated to use or install-post a video of the process. Even if you think a product is simple to use, it may not be for other people, and a visual of the process helps provide confidence to buy.
• A product that is adjustable for the user’s size-post a video of the process.
• A product that is meant to be used in conjunction with another product-post a video of the process.
• Demos of just about any type of product.
• Walk people through a more detailed description with up close images of almost any product-you guessed it, post a video.
• Are you an artist or craftsman? Post a video of yourself making your art.
• Do you sell handmade items? Post a video of the person making the item and talking about it.
• Post video of real testimonials about your products.
• How about a walking tour of your facilities? Yep, post a video!

Audio and video enrich a website and if used correctly can engage your customers on a deeper level than the written word alone. (But sites that automatically begin playing audio or video are often more annoying than effective.) Here’s an example of a site, LifeBites.com, that uses video and audio effectively. From the left-navigation menu, click on ‘Daily Bite,’ and you are rewarded with a sound clip. LifeBites.com posts video interviews, and features change. Another site, Cervelo.com, sells engineered racing bicycles. The site was not designed by a professional so it is not as polished as you would expect for a highly successful company, but a large part of their success lies in their effective utilization of thorough product descriptions, historical archives, blogs, video and images.

Have you seen any examples of good use of video on a site? If so, please share them!