How to Market in the digital age

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dhaines

Joined
Oct 6, 2010
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I was never a knife nut or grew up with the steel addiction...However, with the advent of YouTube I was able to solve a problem I was having with dull knives. I ran across Murray Carter teaching sharpening techniques that lead me to buy his DVD's and Japanese sharpening stones. I started learning about knives themselves after sharpening and it became a passion of mine. I still have a hard time though finding out who the really good knife makers are because very few have video content, EVEN some of the larger companies. Reading on the forums who is this or that is different than seeing a video than going to a store or purchasing a knife online to try out as you are relying on someone’s opinion and have little visual clues on how the knife may open for example without a video. If I don’t like a knife I send it back, however if I see a video on it before hand I have a lower probability of sending it back because I know more about the product.

Point being guys is the thing that got me into knives was me originally looking for information about how to solve a problem and the majority of new customers will be doing just that.

My day job I work in private equity investing and solve company’s problems by raising venture capital for them because they can’t market themselves out of a paper bag and need help to get off the ground. I have an MBA and more college degrees than I have had dates and they never taught me proper online marketing in school until I had to do it for myself real life. My background education DID give me the nuts and bolts of business, finance, planning and the execution of a plan. I was able to quickly adapt internet marketing to classic marketing theory taught in school. I was able learn a lot quicker than if I had no formal training at all.

What many companies do not understand is that their budget for marketing does not have to be large with the technology today. Unfortunately, a lot of these guys still don’t do anything with video and have a harder time starting up. It is hard for a new business to expand from custom knife making, for example, into mid-tech products and partnering up with the larger companies like a Benchmade or Kershaw until they are very well established. Even the larger companies do little video content and most have antiquated websites designed in the early 2000’s before YouTube took off and the importance of Google keywords in search engines.

I hope this info tid-bit stirs the creative marketing pot for you guys in the forums…e-mail me or post ideas so I can help any of you guys get started. So feel free to pick my brain...
 
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I'm going to move this to our Shop Talk forum. That's mostly the knuts and bolts of knifemaking, but we've had a couple of recent posts about the business side as well.

knife making business forms, licenses, etc
Advanced Photo Manipulation Tutorial *(Part 2 added)
 
Tip 1: The first thing you should do with any video you or someone else makes is use a tri-pod and set it down....many camera's come with video editing software to help you edit the video but most people never have enough light. You can buy a set of lights cheap for 100-150 dollars designed for camera work to make your studio light up better that a Christmas tree and make a cheap camera look a lot more professional as their CCD's are not as sensitive.
 
Thanks for the move, Esav. I for one will be watching this with interest.
 
Tip 2:You don't need an expensive camera...You need a few hundred dollar budget for a cheaper camera with an external mic like the Kodak Zi8 for around a hundred bucks that has HD and a memory card. You will also need a tripod. I like camera's that have memory chips instead of digital film because they can be reused.

The external mic is also recommended for better sound quality. The most important aspects of a camera are the sound and picture quality and you can get professional results with an "average" camera because you can create better light with external lights and better sound. Mic's that come with most camera's are really bad...a cheap $60 shotgun mic is recommended to start... http://www.amazon.com/Technica-ATR-...J04Z/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1292356697&sr=8-1
Later on you might want one that you can clip to your shirt and have a wire to the camera or a wireless set up. You also need someone who can edit the video for you on a computer because you tube only allows you 10 minutes of time per video.

As for lights you can get by with something cheap for 60 bucks like these http://www.amazon.com/CowboyStudio-...YTKA/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1292356662&sr=8-6
Without lights you can't get good quality video as most average camera's have cheaper CCD chips...there is a reason why the HD camera's to film NFL games are 50-75 grand as they have 3 chips and are super sensitive to light and made out of unobtanium!!

So e-mail me if you have any questions on video editing or setting up a lead capture page to track who see's the videos.
 
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