Chances are if you’ve ever found yourself requiring advice on the effectiveness of a product or service, your first solution was a Google search or a YouTube search. This alone should prove the success that YouTube marketing can have as a tool. The video-sharing medium is among the most used online platforms in the world and modern marketers have started to utilize its standing in the video-sharing world.
However, the marketing capacity of YouTube can only be maximized by garnering real views that can be achieved via services offered on certain websites. If you are among those looking to take advantage of this immense marketing tool, you’re welcome to read through this article.
Why You Should Use YouTube as an Additional Marketing Platform
The viewership of YouTube is a popular topic with the platform reporting over two billion logged-in monthly users but what other reasons exist for the use of YouTube as a marketing tool?
Some of the more fascinating stats that aim to prove the worth of YouTube as a marketing option:
- The leader of the global video-sharing community is also the second most visited website in the world. Traffic brings views and the traffic generated by YouTube is second only to Google.
- It is one of the two most used social platforms globally. Social media marketing is a popular niche nowadays and it says a lot that after Facebook, YouTube is the next most used social medium globally.
- 70% of viewers purchased goods or services from brands after seeing them on YouTube.
These statistics may not pay a lot of attention to the specifics, but the overall stats alone should be enough to get you thinking.
Marketing on YouTube
The biggest benefit of YouTube, other than its viewership and traffic, is the fact that it is free. You can create a YouTube account and start building a brand without paying any fees. It can be done with your Google account and is simple to complete.
Completing an account is, however, just the first step to properly utilize YouTube in the development of your brand. One of the key things to watch out for is the nature of your target audience because determining this and the best way to make your content more accessible would go a long way toward ensuring success. Another angle to this would also involve interacting with viewers through the comments section.
Digital Marketing Specialist Damien Hong suggests that more than half of the new customers come exactly because they find the company’s channel on social media first: “YouTube here is even more beneficial than other social media sites, because in your videos you can show your products in details, how they look like, their real colors. This attracts a bigger interest and your viewers decide to try”.
Once you know your target audience and the channel has been created, you can get down to creating the sort of quality informative content that is optimized to garner subscribers while providing viewers with what they need. Josh Fetcher, co-founder of Badass Marketers & Founders mentioned on Quora: “The key for marketers in succeeding on YouTube, ultimately, is to pay attention to how users most enjoy utilizing the platform.”
Sean Cannell in his video also emphasizes that asking yourself a question about your audience and who exactly should be there is your channel’s foundation of success: “The answer can’t be everybody because it doesn’t work”.
Using YouTube to Improve Your Brand
The nature of YouTube makes it as flexible as it is popular. Here are some ways that the platform can be utilized to great effect in brand promotion and development:
- Advertise your products and services. You can reach a larger audience using YouTube ads. The ads can be as long as you wish but it would be better to make them concise and interesting. YT also allows you to evaluate the success of your ads and videos to customize and better place them for more views. The ads can come in multiple forms. These are:
- Bumper ads
- Skippable in-stream ads
- Non-skippable in-stream ads
- Video discovery ads
- Masthead ads
- Responsive display ads
- Create a trailer for your channel. This should serve as an introduction to your channel and, hence, your brand. The trailer should be just long enough to provide reasons for viewers to subscribe but short enough to not be too forceful.
- Posting reviews of products and services. This can be a very useful way of building a personal influencing brand. Many channels focus on this alone and the popularity of such a channel among viewers could result in corporate partnerships and sponsorships. Words of advice though, keep the reviews genuine and helpful. It’s your brand on the line.
- Cooperate with other brands. It is not rare for YT creators to collaborate on projects with other brands. This usually means a larger subscriber base to reach. It is usually best to partner with a brand that offers a product or service that is related to yours but doesn’t have big followership among your viewers. That way, you are improving your chances of racking up new viewers and subscribers while providing your old followers with useful information.
- Make your personality a big part of your content. Expertise is necessary when creating content for your YouTube channel but personality can go a long way towards connecting you to viewers. One of the biggest draws of video-sharing platforms is that they allow you to take centre stage and control the portrayal of yourself. Don’t waste the advantage. Let loose, crack jokes and stay genuine.
- Keep your content optimized. To be optimized for
SEO , it is necessary to fill your descriptions, videos, titles, and tags with the relevant keywords likely to be used in a search. This ensures that the videos and the channel are highly searchable and consequently, increases your chances of getting better views and greater followership. - Always remind your viewers to share, subscribe, and like. This improves your ranking and having viewers who enjoy your content share with their friends can expand your audience. It is a little request to ask for and is mostly ignored but it is quite useful.
- Organize your videos and offer prizes to engage with the audience. Organizing your videos makes it easy for subscribers and viewers to find the videos they need. This little habit of organization makes it easier for them to view what they want and keeps them coming back. Alternatively, you can also employ YT contests as a way of engaging with your followers and viewers and generating more interest.
- Work with an influencer. If you are running a business and you need to develop the brand, you can collaborate with an influencer and leverage his or her popularity in building your brand. YT influencers are quite popular and are one of the biggest reasons for the increasing use of the platform in marketing.
- Interact with viewers and occasionally reply to comments. It is always a good idea to interact with viewers and take into consideration ideas and opinions that are being shared. It helps bring them into the creative process and improves their loyalty to both channel and brand. Interaction can also include answering questions and staying open to video requests.