This is a great article from ReelSEO that talks about the ‘Orabrush’ story and how they eventually had one of the most successful Viral Video promotions using a highly effective YouTube online campaign. They originally had no luck using more traditional marketing methods and it was not until they turned to the creative use of YouTube video that their national advertizing really took off. They ended up with an extremely popular YouTube Channel that now includes dozens of videos that make use of humor to introduce their solution to bad breath. The fact that their videos went ‘viral’ was a major component in their subsequent success. Check out the article below for more information on how the story unfolded.
Here is one of the original Videos in their YouTube Channel with over 17 million views currently.
First, For the Un-initiated, The Orabrush Story
Orabrush was recently featured on the official Google Blog about their online video marketing success and being a rather interesting YouTube case study: “The Orabrush story: How a Utah man used YouTube to build a multi-million dollar business.” I recommend checking out that article first for some good insight on the company’s backstory, along with and their video marketing strategy, which is well summarized in the infographic below.
Below is one of their more recent and highly popular YouTube videos from last year’s holiday shopping season. I also recommend checking out their more recent videos on the Orabrush YouTube channel.
I also recommend checking out Greg Jarboe’s interview with the Orabrush guys at Search Engine Strategies New York, and at the SES Conference YouTube Channel.
Our Interview at Search Engine Strategies ChicagoI caught up with the Orabrush folks at this year’s Search Engine Strategies Chicago conference, where Chief Marketing Officer Jeff Harmon and Spokesperson Austin Craig presented on “Screw Viral Videos” – which actually was how online video was at the core of what they call their “reverse marketing model” that lead to their huge business success. I asked CMO Jeff to explain with us why they saw we should “screw” viral videos Learn More.
“Screw Viral Videos” Reason 1: Focus on Distribution
Not withstanding the fact that having “screw viral videos” in your presentation title is more of a provocative way to get people into the room, it speaks to how too many unseasoned marketers today get too carried away with thinking they need a viral video strategy.
“People think that Orabrush is extremely viral [with our YouTube videos],” says Harmon. “Every single news article that we ever get mentioned in says, ‘Orabrush is viral videos.’ But the reality is, viral is just a piece of the equation.”
“There are 48 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every single minute. If you think your one video in one day is going to stand out from the crowd, you’re just fooling yourself. So simply putting a video up on YouTube isn’t going to get you anywhere if you don’t have a way to stick out from the crowd and push it… With us at Orabrush, we’re not going for virality, we’re going for distribution.”
What Jeff is saying is that you need to have a strategy for distributing your videos to multiple social media channels online. This can include multiple video sharing sites (depending on the type of video content you have and how well it matches the site), your Facebook and Twitter accounts, influential bloggers you build relationships with (and give them advance notice of new videos), and anywhere else your target market frequents and participates in.
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This is one of many stories where companies have successfully started to sell their products or services only after they tuned to YouTube to generate an effective online presence. The result is that you are often able to get a huge amount of online exposure for only a fraction of the cost of using more conventional means. For many, video marketing seems to be too expensive, take too long to produce or is simply too expensive – these, so called ‘barriers’ to video marketing are not really valid. You can actually create an effective video production simply by making use of the free software already loaded on your computer. Obviously, it helps if you have a great idea to begin with, and that the final video gets ‘shared’ in a viral fashion.
With the addition of some creativity and flair, you can generate a similar Viral Video success story.