Using video marketing to drive traffic to your web site is an online marketing strategy many small business owners and internet marketers are beginning to embrace, with much success. Having a traditional website only allows you to reach those people who first find your website. However, combining video, social networking and some simple video marketing techniques can drive hordes of qualified visitors to your website.

First, let’s forget the silly videos you’ll find all over YouTube of kids running into fences and demonstrating the newest dance move. While that kind of video can bring in hundreds of thousands of views, it won’t bring the targeted traffic you need.

Instead, consider making a video tightly targeted towards your niche. A real estate agent might make a video introducing herself and showcasing a few of her available homes for sale. A night club might make a video “commercial” with soundbites from partygoers. A software developer might make a video demonstrating his latest application.

Because Google and other search engines are beginning to give videos hosted on sites like YouTube preferential search engine ranking, it’s quite possible your video could end up on the first page of search results for your targeted keyphrase. This is incredibly powerful and not to be overlooked, as this is what will make your video marketing efforts well worth the time you invest in them.

Consider that YouTube itself may not have a huge market of people looking for videos on “Oakland real estate.” But if your video titled “Oakland Real Estate” made the first page of Google search results (again, due to the preferential search results video is receiving in the search engines) you’d benefit from the hundreds of people who search for that term in Google seeing your video as the #1 result and ,in turn, watching your clip.

With the preferential treatment videos are receiving in search results, the question then becomes, “How do I move people from watching my video on YouTube to actually visiting my website?”

This is simple. Bribe them, at the end of your marketing video. What follows are some ideas:

• Offer them something for free at your site (a consultation, a report, free drink, demo version, MP3 download, etc.)
• Poll them or ask them a question they need visit your site to answer. People love to give their opinion. You can combine with the free offer, above, by giving them the freebie upon completion of the poll or question. This is invaluable for market research.
• Leave ’em hanging. Don’t tell the whole story on your YouTube hosted video – instead, tell them just enough to incite curiosity. Then, instruct them to visit your site for the complete story or answer.

Each of these ideas are intentionally broad can be focused indefinitely and molded to fit your target market.

The key here is catching your audience while they’re hot; directly after having watched our video and giving them a reason to continue on to your website. The truth is that if you don’t, most will simply click through to another video or search result. Capitalize on their attention and tell them where to go and what to do next – you’ll be surprised at how many will comply!

Even if you’re no Spieldberg (I know I’m not) you can produce traffic sucking videos with these simple methods.