Earlier this year I wrote a post on the differences between [vzaar and YouTube](http://vzaar.com/blog/2009/03/youtube-versus-vzaar) and I want to follow up on this with another YouTube related post. There is a myth that putting your company’s video assets of any description on Youtube is a good marketing strategy. Unless your company is Youtube, I would suggest that this is not a good strategy for your company.
YouTube has over 80 million unique visitors per month and ranks well inside the top 5 most visited websites. YouTube is truly remarkable and a highly trafficked website. It is however a destination site and not a search engine. I say this because the myth stems from the size of YouTube and this blurs the vision of what Youtube actually is. Google, when they bought this company were also blinded by the size and paid billions of dollars for something that will never in its current state turn a profit. Fortunately, Google is a company that can support such a project and let’s hope they continue to do so.
**Let’s talk marketing, YouTube and video.**
Using [video](http://vzaar.com) to market your products online is strong. Using YouTube to market your company is weak.
Let’s take car dealers for example. If you are a dealer and you have video assets that you use on your website to merchandise your cars and your dealerships value or services, that’s awesome. That’s great use of that asset. Now you are thinking that you have this asset how can you leverage it to generate more leads? Where shall you put it? This is good thinking too and its common sense. You clearly want to maximise the return on this asset.
This common suggestion, powered by the myth of YouTube as an effective marketing tool often crops up: upload the video to YouTube and create a YouTube channel. The myth is that this exercise will provide an effective and strong marketing strategy driving traffic to the car dealers website. It won’t, and the reason is simple. As I mentioned, YouTube is a destination site much like the dealerships site, it’s not a search engine. People are not going to YouTube and typing in the search bar “[1968 Cadillac convertible](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8qWVG69Auw)” with the intension of buying one. If they do perform this search it’s to see a video of one.


Let’s assume that this Dealership does in fact upload the video to YouTube and let’s analyse this. The dealership has 200 cars in their lot and for each car they have a video and they are all on YouTube. They even create a channel there called My Car Dealership Channel. How does this help the dealerships Discoverability? It doesn’t, and here is why.


There are two types of YouTube viewers:


1. Viewer one comes to YouTube to watch videos. In most cases its sport or comedy and other genres. It’s not someone looking to buy a car. Someone looking to buy a car goes to Google or to a known online car market such as Autotrader etc.


2. Viewer two views a YouTube video because it was emailed to him. This content is the viral content most online marketers try to manufacture but rarely succeed.
***Note neither of these viewers are looking to buy a car.***


**Summary**


YouTube is a huge repository of content growing larger by the day. The amount of views and traffic this site generates is staggering and this is the cause of the fallacy; where there is traffic there must be business. It is a waste of time uploading your companies videos to YouTube with the intent of driving traffic to your website. They won’t be discovered organically. They will only be discovered if you direct your customers there and that’s a waste, as you want your customers on your website. Sure you can attempt to create a viral video that generates massive exposure for your company or brand and post that to Youtube, but that’s like buying a lottery ticket. Leave that project to the big boys who have big budgets and can absorb the time, money and risk this sort of strategy incurs.


Here are some suggestions on how to maximise your content.


- Have your video attached to your listing if you use aggregators to market your cars in the case of Car Dealerships.
- Add a selected car to your twitter post. If you have a Mustang that you are looking to shift, add this to your daily tweet on twitter. People are actually using [Twitter as a search engine](http://search.twitter.com/).
- Use your video in your companies’ blog. This adds to the engagement of the blog and allows you to show off a car.
- Have an influential blogger or community use your video. For example, if your local community has an online news letter and you advertise your business with them, add your video to that or a link to the video on your site.


Using the video assets is about a cumulative & targeted approach. Use the video in many relevant areas where possible. Dumping them into the abyss that is YouTube will provide you zero benefit. You are better off going to the beach and taking a swim. It would be time better spent.


If are reading this then you are interested in marketing and marketing your products or services online. Here are some tips. Know the limits of video and know what they can achieve and use video where appropriate. In today’s online world you want your customers to come to your site and my advice would be to have a good marketing strategy that focuses on discoverability. Here is a blog I posted earlier this month on [driving online conversions](http://vzaar.com/blog/2009/08/how-do-you-convert-your-web-traffic-from-shoppers-into-buyers-here-are-ten-handy-pointers).
If you want to share your videos with friends, family, and the world then use [YouTube](http://youtube.com), but if you are focused on marketing your website and driving traffic to your website then focus on strategies that work.