Successful online marketing requires that you keep your marketing and website fresh. One of the best ways to do this is with new and innovative, and interactive, marketing techniques. Currently, one of the growing mediums is the use of video to interact with and engage potential clients. Here are 5 great ideas to use this fantastic medium.

1. Give away free video tutorials

What's better than visiting a website that can show you how to do something useful? For example, imagine that you have a website that sells mediation supplies. Cushions, altars, music, books etc...one great marketing video idea is to provide your website visitors with a quick video demonstrating how to use a product you sell on your website. Even better would be to create a video that demonstrates a popular meditation technique.

Another example might be a website that sells information about pet training. The video could be an image of an expert using a superior training technique to train their dog or bird an interesting or useful trick. For example, teaching a dog to sit might be useful but demonstrating how to teach your dog to grab a beer from the refrigerator might me more interesting and exciting. It all depends on your target market and their needs.

2. Video testimonials on your website.

Credibility is extremely important to a business. If you're considered an expert in your field, product or service, you don't have to seek customers, they seek you. Credibility can be enhanced by a variety of tools including but not limited to testimonials.

Let me just ask you this question, which would you spend $500 on, a product you thought was a good product or a product you knew was a good product because relevant and quality testimonials, success stories, and endorsements were available for you to review? Personally, I'm much more likely to spend my money on a product with evidence to back it up. Video is a useful tool to provide this credibility.

For example, you can ask customers to send in video testimonials, create a contest out of it to make it more fun. Now it's both a marketing campaign and an excellent credibility tool. You can also take the time to visit some of your biggest fans and record testimonials. Case studies and success stories are extremely motivational. They enable your prospective customer to not only see how successful they can be but to also connect with your customer on a personal level. Speaking of connecting with your customer on a personal level, let's move to the next great way to use video.

3. Video welcome message.

Many businesses are enhanced by connecting on a personal level with your customer. For example, if you're selling a consulting service, a coaching service, or any type of product or service that helps people improve their personal lives, it can be extremely beneficial to share some of yourself with them. An easy way to do this is to connect with them via a video welcome message.

It doesn't have to be long, just a 60 second spot where you're sincerely welcoming them to your site and inviting them to take the steps they need to improve their lives. It provides reassurance that you're a real and genuine person and encourages them to take the next step whether that is to make a purchase, make an appointment or simply to inquire and ask for more information.

4. Interview an expert.

Interviewing an expert is an excellent tool to draw traffic to your website. You can offer the interview as a free giveaway in exchange for their email address. You can promote the interview as a limited time offer when they make a purchase. You can simply use the interview with an expert as a way to improve your company's credibility. There are many, many uses for a video interview with an expert. You can even use a portion of it to create a video advertisement.

5. Create an advertisement.

Advertising is a great way to market your business and video makes it easy. You can create an ad and post it on YouTube. You can also create a You Tube video and embed it on your site or pay others to post it on their site. When creating a video advertisement, there are a few things that sell well. They are:

· Humor
· Talent
· Celebrities
· Special effects
· Animal/pet tricks
· Cute kids
· Spoofs

The key to any advertisement is to make sure it is both memorable, unique, and that it communicates the benefits of your product. A good video advertisement will be forwarded and shared amongst fans thus generating a viral effect.

Videos must be quality or they will hurt your image rather than enhance it. There are numerous tools available on the web to create quality videos. YouTube is one of the most commonly used. This is because it is fairly simple to use.

The steps to create a YouTube video are:

To first make your video. In order for your video to be viewable via YouTube, it video has to be taken with a digital device like a digital camcorder, a digital camera, or a cell phone. I've taken movies of my dog with my cell phone and depending on your cell phone's camera, they can be very good quality.

To upload it from a digital camera or camcorder, it is important to know that any video uploaded into YouTube must be less than 10 minutes long, smaller than 100MB, and in an acceptable format, .AVI, .MOV, .WMV, and .MPG file formats.

Once you have your video in the right format, simply get online and go to the YouTube site. Click "Upload Videos" in the upper-right-hand corner of the page and enter the video's title, description, tags, and category to make it easy for people to find your video, and forward to others. Set your video to Public Click the "Upload a Video" button and then select the file you want to upload by clicking the "Browse" button.

That's it. You have now created a highly interactive and viral marketing tool that you can use to build your business.