Is YouTube Your Next Big Thing?

YouTube as part of your marketing mix? Maybe yes…and maybe no.

I’m often asked whether or not home improvement companies should post videos on YouTube, Google’s wildly popular video-sharing Web site. If you haven’t seen YouTube yet, “enormous” doesn’t begin to describe how big a phenomenon it’s become, particularly with the younger demographic. To provide some perspective, YouTube has more viewers every day than the three major TV networks…combined.

So should you use YouTube to generate leads? On this point, I sit squarely on the fence—there is a good case to be made for YouTube, and a good case against it. Allow me lay out the pros and cons:

Location, Location, Location: It Matters–Even on the Internet

Does your location have anything to do with how many online leads you get? Absolutely.

I had lunch last year with a couple who ran a good-sized home improvement company in Northern Michigan. I’m talking the deep north. Lots of ice fishing, but not a lot of people.

They asked me a good question:  Does our location have anything to do with how many leads we’re supposed to get from the Internet?

My answer was “Absolutely.”  And then they asked: “Why?”

From our perspective, the areas of the country that produce the most leads online share three traits: