YouTube is one of the best marketing channels that we have today.
Using video as a content medium allows you to boost your brand and bring some creativity to the marketing process. Thanks to YouTube, we’ve got a free platform to promote this content and get immediate feedback from viewers.
There are right ways and wrong ways to do it, however. In this post, we’re going to look at 9 tips for successful YouTube marketing. Running a small business is all-consuming, so there’s a good chance you’ve never had the time to integrate video into your marketing strategy, but it’s time for a change.
Get the right team in place and you can take your marketing strategy to a completely new level with YouTube. Let’s dig in.
1. Starting Your Channel
If you’ve got multiple employees that are going to need access to your YouTube account, make sure to open a Brand account on Google. Creating a page with your regular Google account will mean that only you will have access to it, but a Brand account will allow multiple people to log in when necessary.
It’s important to have some marketing strategy in mind before you get started. What do you want to accomplish with your YouTube channel? Is it to bring in a younger audience or to more accurately showcase some of your products to your viewers?
While it’s important to be able to adapt when you start getting feedback from your videos, you should begin with a clear objective in mind. Those first few videos will help dictate which direction you should be going in.
2. Research Your Audience & Competition
You can take creative inspiration from researching your competition and looking at some of your favorite YouTube channels (regardless of theme). For one, you’ll be able to see what your closest competitors are doing, ie where they’ve gone right and what you think they’ve done wrong.
When you’re looking at your favorite channels, make note of what it is that you like about them. What about the video causes you to watch the whole thing and what keeps you visiting time and time again?
You can glean a lot from paying attention to successful YouTubers, regardless of their niche. This research will help you figure out what brings in viewers, subscriptions, and engagement, which are the most important metrics.
Once you get a few followers on your channel, you can also begin to look at some insights into their behavior. YouTube has an analytics section that gives you a lot of great information about your videos, but it also has a demographics section where you can really get inside the head(s) of your subscribers and make better decisions.
3. Making Your Videos
Now you have to produce the actual videos. There are a few specific kinds of marketing videos that you’ll see small businesses make:
How To’s
How-to videos that help the viewer understand how to use a product or service. For example, if you were a web development service, you might create a how-to video to show the viewer how to make a website with your site builder app.
Product Videos
Product videos are similar to how-to’s, but they’ll place special focus on a specific product and its many features. They’re basically a sales pitch in video form.
BTS
Behind-the-scenes videos usually showcase interviews with some of the employees and give a tour of the establishment. They’ll also go over the origin story of the company and lay out how and why you do what you do.
Testimonials
Testimonials/case studies are videos that turn the focus on to the customers. You often see these with medical products or products that help someone grow their own business, like a site builder or a POS service.
Of course, you don’t always have to stay within these boundaries, they’re just some examples of what you see other small businesses doing. When producing your videos, it’s best to keep them under 5 minutes and put a special focus on the content. People want to watch short, informative videos that answer their questions.
4. Optimizing with Titles, Descriptions, and Thumbnails
As the owner of a small business, you probably know a thing or two about the importance of SEO. The same things are true of both blog posts and videos, you need to optimize them for the search to get the most value out of them.
First, you need to choose an enticing title. Use relevant keywords and always make sure that the title accurately reflects what’s happening in the video. Try to keep it short and catchy, whenever possible.
A video description should be a concise blurb explaining what the video contains. You’ll want to include links to your social media accounts and your website at the end, then whatever hashtags you deem appropriate. Keep important keywords close to the beginning of the description and include timestamps so your viewers can find things easily within the video.
Lastly, pick a good thumbnail that’ll draw in viewers. You can either pick a frame from your video or create a separate thumbnail for the video. We recommend creating a separate thumbnail and maintaining a consistent thumbnail motif, as it’s better for branding.
5. Keep It Brand Focused
Branding is everything these days. If you can’t build a recognizable brand, you’re going to get pushed out by a bigger better company that can. Your YouTube page will have a lot to do with your brand, moving forward.
You can start by making your page attractive and injecting it with your logo and company colors. It should be consistent with your website and your social media accounts so that when visitors arrive, they know that it’s the same company.
In terms of the videos themselves, try to maintain a consistent voice in each one. All of the videos should look and sound like they’re coming from the same source, which you can work on with your video production team.
6. Call To Action
A call to action helps you create engagement and produce immediate results through your content. However, if you overuse them or use them incorrectly, you’ll run the risk of sounding pushy and people will stop watching your videos.
If you’re making quality videos, they’ll sell the products and services that you’re advertising. Use the call to action to try to increase engagement and grow your list of subscribers. The more comments, ratings, and subscriptions you have, the more people you’ll eventually have coming into your shop or ordering your products.
7. Sharing…
Simply publishing the videos won’t really get you anywhere. You need to promote them via other channels so that your social media followers and blog readers know that they exist. This is especially important in the weeks and months after you launch your YouTube page.
Every time you schedule a video, schedule posts on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook that either link to the video or promote it in some way. You can do the same by embedding your videos in your blog posts when it’s appropriate to do so.
Sharing is the best way to get your videos noticed. Once you’ve got a dedicated audience on YouTube, your videos will start to show up on people’s main feed and in the suggested videos section.
8. Influencer Marketing
If you really want to boost your videos, you can start engaging in influencer marketing. YouTube is one of the more popular platforms for influencers, as evidenced by the sheer number of YouTube personalities you see these days.
Some studies show that around 60% of YouTube subscribers trust their favorite personalities, so you can certainly work that in your favor. The only problem is that it’s going to cost you. It’s no different than a huge soda or beer company hiring a big-name actor to be in their commercial.
9. Analyze & Make Changes
Let’s get back to the analytics of it all. Creating YouTube marketing videos that actually help build awareness around your brand and sell your products is all about adapting to what your viewers are telling you. This is the most important tip to remember.
YouTube does a great job of telling you how your videos are performing. They give you view counts, average watch time, generated revenue, and the interaction rate for your videos. These are a few of the metrics that tell you how you’re doing.
As you move along with these insights, you can grow your page by checking in on your subscriber count, any changes in your audience demographics, and what devices your videos are being watched on.
Oh, and make sure to read your comments. These come directly from the people watching your videos, so they can help you develop your strategy moving forward.
Successful YouTube Marketing Can Take You Over the Top
Allocating a good chunk of your marketing resources towards creating great video content will give your business the marketing boost that it needs. Successful YouTube marketing has worked for some of the world’s biggest companies, so it can work for your small business too. Create your page and start posting videos ASAP.
For help with your YouTube marketing, as well as other digital marketing channels, visit us at Go Florida SEO.
