YouTube Marketing: How Can It Help Your Business?

With "going viral" being the holy grail of marketing, many marketers are exploring how to use YouTube as a way to gain exposure for their business. This can be anything from uploading video testimonials to creating videos demonstrating how to use your product to creating highly-shareable branded content.

Why should your business use it?

YouTube is one of the few truly global sites – the site has users from all over the world. For this reason, it can be an incredibly useful tool for increasing brand awareness and reaching a wide range of potential clients.

Additionally, because YouTube is part of Google's overall algorithm, videos will often rank highly in search engine results. This means that if you're able to produce videos that get picked up by influencers or go viral, your site will start appearing in even more search results pages.

This isn't to say that traditional marketing methods are no longer effective – but YouTube marketing can help enhance your current strategy. For example, you might have a website already that people are visiting, but once they've had a look around, they might not find what they're looking for. This is where YouTube videos come in – try creating tutorial-style videos that show users exactly how to do something.

YouTube marketing has become increasingly popular over the last few years and shows no signs of slowing down. If you want to stay above in a competitive market, then now is the time to start taking advantage of this medium.

How can you create a successful YouTube marketing campaign?

The first step of any campaign is to define your objectives. What exactly are you trying to achieve? How will you measure success? This will help give your video direction and determine the type of content you should be looking to create.

Once you've figured out your objectives, it's time to move on to creating the actual video.

You'll want to create a script that explains your product or service but keep it light and fun. Nobody wants to watch an overly-serious sales pitch. If you're selling a product, try demonstrating how it works, but with a hint of humor. Or, if you're selling a new service, talk about how it can help people and how it will make their lives easier.

Also, consider that most users watch videos on mobile devices, which should be kept in mind during filming and editing.

Finally, once your video is ready for publishing, start promoting it. This can be done in a variety of ways, but remember to keep your audience in mind. For example, if you're targeting millennials, you'll likely want to promote your video on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

A great way to market your videos is by coming up with creative titles that will encourage users to click on your video. You can also try to collate your videos into themed playlists, which will make it easier for users to find the content that's relevant to them.

You should never underestimate the power of influencer marketing. If you can get a well-known personality to endorse your brand, people will definitely take notice. This might be something as simple as proposing someone with an influencer account on Instagram to re-post one of your videos. Or it could be working with a well-known YouTuber to create a unique video together.

How do you measure the success of a YouTube marketing campaign?

You might initially start off by looking at how many views your videos get, which will allow you to see what specifically is performing well with users. Once these become available, you'll also be able to see where the majority of people who watch your videos come from. This could be social media channels, such as Facebook and Twitter, or it might be coming directly from search results pages.

Once you've got a few videos published, take some time to look at the analytics page of each individual video. This will show you how long people are watching for and where they're dropping off. This way, you'll be able to identify which videos are the most engaging and what titles people are clicking on.

Next, you should check your comments to see what viewers are saying about your videos. This will give you some awareness of how they feel about the content, so you can continue producing high-quality, engaging content in the future.

It's also imperative to consider whether or not your YouTube marketing campaign has resulted in any sales. If it hasn't yielded any results, then you'll need to go back to the drawing board and make some changes; if your campaign is successful, then great! Try tweaking it a bit and seeing what sort of new results you can get from it in the future.

Tips for optimizing your videos for Search Engines

1. Add a transcript to your video

It's actually possible to include subtitles within your videos. This allows you to create richer content that will help boost engagement levels – plus, it'll make your video more accessible to all users, regardless of whether or not they're deaf. There are a few ways to generate subtitles for your videos, such as uploading a pre-existing transcript yourself or working with a professional company.

2. Use annotations to draw attention to important information

Annotations are those little pop-ups that appear on the corners of videos and allow you to highlight specific parts of the footage. You can also use these links to point viewers to a particular website or platform, such as a social media channel.

3. Include an intro and outro video

Have you ever watched a video with an intro at the beginning? This is usually where the creator will explain what the video's about and why viewers should be interested. You might also see an outro at the end, where the person will give a final message and remind viewers to subscribe.

Adding intro and outro videos to your own channel can help boost engagement levels by bringing users back for more. This is specifically true if you're creating a series of similar videos – it'll be easier for people to keep track of what's going on if they know there's a particular order in which to watch things.

4. Choose an eye-catching thumbnail

When you add a new video to your YouTube channel, you'll be asked to select an image thumbnail. This is the still image taken from your footage and displayed on platforms such as YouTube. It's how people can identify what they're watching when they look through different entries, which means it'll need to stand out to grab attention.

So how do you know if your channel's thumbnail is eye-catching? Well, it should be clear, attractive, and easy to read – plus the images should reflect what viewers are getting themselves into. If you're using an image or an animated gif for this, ensure that they're no smaller than 1080 x 1080 pixels in size.

Summing It Up

Understanding how YouTube can help your business is a great first step. From there, you can develop a plan that will reach the people who matter most to your company. As long as there is an objective set out before any digital strategy starts, success may not be too far away.

Also, consider how you can make your videos more useful and informative, rather than relying on flashy visuals. Don't forget to always provide value for viewers and optimize for search engines. Try these things out and see how they work – you might be surprised by the results.