Recently, someone I know asked for my help in getting a video campaign started. It seems that he was getting tired of actually paying for targeted traffic and wanted to gain just a small portion of the current Youtube / Viral Video frenzy.

Sounds reasonable, right? not always. He, like so many others get blinded by those numbers right below the video. You know… the views. Open up YouTube or one of the other video hosting sites and on the first page you get a list of current videos, many of which have been viewed millions of times. Those ridiculously high numbers seem to blind people to the point of losing all sense of marketing THEIR products.

After spending the day looking through all the videos with viewership in the millions, he decides that the kind of videos he needs to create make use of crazy and outrageous stunts. He states those are the types of videos making the YouTube bigtime and hires a cameraman to shoot the videos. I sat there and watched the conversation about every crazy scenario that either one of them could think of and the following day the cameraman was out and about trying to catch one of these crazy scenarios happening. Hopefully, you can already spot the problems in this marketing campaign, there are many.

After a week of running around the city and not even catching a small fender bender, they decide that the video will need to be staged. At this point, I joined them for a meeting and went over the problems.

For one, with millions of videos out there, getting your first video to the million view mark is akin to winning the lottery. Actually, you may have a better chance with the lottery. But, even if that video did get popular, exactly how will it sell the product? The product in question is not cheap nor is it something that applies to everyone such as food or clothes. The product is related to a certain industry and is a service for a specific occupation. It is not something that most people would ever need. The only thing the video can be used for is branding since the video itself has no relation to the service and even branding is an issue since this is an internet service and not a physical product.

There are some great videos on Youtube for the purposes of branding, the Pepto Audition videos come to mind. There are briliant product demos as well. There is a series of videos called “Will it Blend” or something like that, demonstrating a blender in a series of odd experiments that include blending things like Ipods and cellphones. I somehow doubt that even those very successfull campaigns translated into millions of extra visitors to the companies websites and shopping carts.

You can expect that even on very successful videos only a tiny percent of people would ever take the time to leave Youtube and type in the URL. The millions of Viral video views you worked so hard for may only equate to a handful of extra site traffic. For large companies like Pepto, Youtube may be a great vehicle for advertising and branding but for small business owners and internet marketers that care little about branding and only want a good ROI, Youtube may be a far stretch.

There really is no way to even track how many people came over to the site as a result of the video and you cannot forget the Youtube demographics, a very young audience. My 10 year old and all his classmates live on Youtube, they replay the same videos all day long.

Youtube is great at making regular people into Internet stars and pretty good for marketing other video, social and content sites but for selling specific internet services, you may get more bang for your buck if you took the money you put into videos and put it towards PPC campaigns. Many people see Youtube as free traffic, but its far from free if you take into account the costs involved in video production such as cameramen, equipment, editing, etc.

I have had some success with Youtube videos for content sites where surfers can see more of the same type of video and the Youtube video serves the purpose of letting them know where to go to get more, but as for internet marketing of services and products, I really can’t say I have had much success. Most product demos just aren’t entertaining enough to hit the Youtube jackpot and go “Viral” and like I told my friend, by the time you do get something creative enough to catch, it’s unlikely the cost of production will even be covered by actual Internet sales.

The best course of action if you want video is to create the video to market and demonstrate your product in the most creative way possible and not focus on what crazy stunt is hot at the moment. Focus on what applies to your company and what your customers may want to see. Make videos that you can use on your own site and in your product promos and upload them to Youtube as well. O.K., they most likely will not be in the top 10 list but at least the people who are interested will be able to find them easily and a few new customers sold on your service because you made a great demo is far better than a million views to something meaningless to your business.

My friend listened to what I had to say, but in the end just could not get  the 7 figure “free” traffic numbers out of his head and decided to keep trying.