If you’re in business, you’ve got to communicate with customers and prospects. It used to be enough for a small business to market its products and services with email, advertising and public relations. Now an increasing number of companies are turning to YouTube, the world’s largest video sharing community. Should you?
To help you decide, here is a case study of Catch a Piece of Maine.
Brendan and John Ready sell shares in individual lobster traps to clients across the country at prices ranging from $59 for a share of one day’s catch to $3,000 for an entire season’s haul. The full-season clients get a minimum of 52 lobsters, shipped with mussels, clams, desserts, bibs and crackers.
The Readys chose the worst possible time to get into the business. 2008 was the year of The Great Lobster Price Collapse.
The lobster grounds of Casco Bay, where the city of Portland sits along its southern edge, had a record 63-million-pound catch in 2008. Partly because of the conscientious conservation efforts of the lobstermen, traps are overflowing. Times are so tough that the famously stolid lobster industry is resorting to some extreme steps to stave off collapse.
The Ready brothers found an innovative way to save their trade.
They use YouTube to rally enthusiasm for lobster among prospects and clients. Videos filmed at Hobson’s Wharf in Old Port show lobstermen bringing in the day’s haul or out at Fort Gorges bringing up orange lobster. Customers receive video email updates, so they can show their friends lobsters that came from their private lobster trap. On camera, John Ready talks about the experience and invites customers to bring their families up to Portland for a harbor tour. This lobster cam video attracted 4,301 viewers.
When Readys’ customers buy into a haul, they’re invited to learn about the actual lobstermen who’ll be doing the hauling. “We’ve decided to develop the lobstermen as characters,” John Ready says. Videos of the eight lobstermen who sell part of their haul through Catch a Piece of Maine are posted on YouTube. They include “The Real Lobstermen of Portland Harbor,” a spoof of “The Real Housewives” reality shows on Bravo.
“The videos help our customers feel a part of the experience,” says Laura LeBrun, marketing director. “The business is so much the experience of Maine. YouTube helps us reach our customers visually.”
The Readys make individual videos, for clients celebrating an anniversary or throwing a huge lobster bake. “It’s worth it; we just email a link and they love it,” says John Ready.
Video links are sent to customers via a monthly newsletter and posted to the company’s Twitter and FaceBook accounts.
LeBrun said that emailing a link is the easiest way. To add a video to the company’s web page or newsletter, she goes to the video she wants on YouTube, and looks for the ‘URL’ box in the “About This Video” section. She copies the URL into the newsletter on a screenshot of the video. When the client clicks image, the video plays from the YouTube page. They also use Photobucket for individual emails.
They direct potential clients to YouTube. They can view Catch a Piece of Maine’s channel, which has 96 videos.
“As long as it sells a few more lobster, it’s worth it,” says John Ready, who has a 5,000-customer base despite the current lobster glut. “If we can’t sell them, it’s us lobstermen who are going to be the endangered species.”
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