What is YouTube marketing?
The practise of advertising a company, product, or service via YouTube is known as YouTube marketing. It can include (but is not limited to) the following tactics:
- Producing natural promotional videos
- Collaboration with influencers
- Using the platform to advertise
Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a large organisation, you need to generate what your target clients desire to sell your business on YouTube. Isn’t it straightforward? It is, as long as you know what your clients really want, not just what you assume they want, as far too many firms do.
In addition, you must ensure that the right individuals see your videos. Because YouTube is a search engine, you’ll need to optimise your content for its algorithm, just like you would for Google SEO.
Without further ado, here is your comprehensive, step-by-step guide to promoting your business on YouTube.
Step 1: Set up a YouTube channel for your company
First and foremost, you must create a YouTube channel.
Because YouTube is owned by Google, you must first create a Google account before creating a YouTube channel. You can utilise an existing account or establish a new one solely for business management.
Here’s how you can get started:–
- Sign up for a Google account.
- Create a YouTube account with that information.
- Sign up for a YouTube account and create a channel for your brand.
Using a Brand Account to manage your YouTube channel instead of your personal Google account is a great practise. A Brand Account allows various people from your company to manage and update your YouTube channel. It enables you to grow your business in the future by adding more YouTube channels.
Next up: Pretty it up.
Add your:
- “About” information.
- Channel art (the “header” image and profile picture).
- Social media and website links.
Step 2: Learn about your audience
What are the true desires of your target audience?
You’ll need to answer two questions to figure this out:
- For whom are you creating videos?
- What are they watching on YouTube right now?
To begin, it’s helpful to have a basic understanding of YouTube demographics. YouTube has over 2 billion subscribers, and 72% of internet users in the United States utilise it on a regular basis. YouTube is used by 77% of persons aged 15 to 35, and unlike other social media sites, there is no significant drop-off in that percentage as users get older. YouTube has over 100 localised versions for countries all around the world.
Spend some time on YouTube to see who your target demographic already follows. What kind of videos do they like to watch?
There are a couple of ways to do this:
- Check out your Analytics page if you already have a YouTube channel.
This will provide you with useful information on the demographics and interests of your target audience. You can monitor how many people are discovering your videos through search, suggested feeds, or other methods.
- To locate your target audience, use social listening.
What is the most effective method for forming long-term relationships with others? Of course, by spying on them from afar.
Social listening allows you to scan social media channels, including YouTube, for mentions of your company or specific keywords on a constant basis.
You can find out what people want to know about you or your industry by looking at what others are saying about you or your industry, and then utilise that information to generate video content ideas.
Step 3: Research your competition
The quickest method to expand your YouTube channel is to discover out what works for your competitors and then duplicate it… but better!
You might begin by searching for channels from competitors you are already familiar with.
Analyse your competitors for the following:
- Number of subscribers
- Average views per video
- Posting frequency
- Overall video quality
- What people are saying in the comments
- The primary themes they discuss
Then consider the following:
- What are the most popular videos on their channel?
- What kind of image do they project?
- What is the tone of their brand?
- How can I set my company apart from theirs?
- What fresh content ideas may I obtain from this channel?
Put all your notes into a SWOT analysis.
SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
Step 4: Learn from your favourite channels
You should also learn from your favourite YouTube channels in addition to your competition. These don’t have to be industry-related channels.
You can learn a lot about what’s working by watching YouTube videos, especially since it’s constantly changing.
For example, did you know that good audio quality is more significant than good video quality? It’s true: poor audio can deter viewers from watching or subscribing to your video. Making YouTube videos that people want to watch requires a lot of effort.
Pay attention to the following when watching others:
- Video thumbnails
- Channel art
- Other creators’ links to posts or items
- Video thumbnails
- Channel art
- Other creators’ links to posts or items
- Other creators’ editing techniques, such as text popups and other special effects
Step 5: Optimise your videos to get views
Every day, YouTube’s 2 billion viewers watch around 1 billion hours of video content. So, how do you stand out from the crowd and get your videos to be seen by YouTube’s algorithm?
If you’re familiar with SEO and Google’s algorithm, you’ll see that YouTube operates similarly, with one major difference: personalisation.
When you use Google to search for a phrase, you’ll get roughly the same website results as other individuals. I say « approximately » since some outcomes vary depending on where you are.
However, if you and a friend sat in the same room, connected to the same Wi-Fi, and searched for the same term, you’d get the same results.
On YouTube, however, this is not the case.
When YouTube displays search results, it considers the keyword and other factors that Google considers: how popular a video is already, keywords in the title, and so on. However, YouTube takes into account your viewing history as well as the types of videos you like to watch. As a result, no two YouTube homepages or search results will be identical.
Personalisation helps, but you’ll still need to do all of the other YouTube SEO stuff to have your videos seen.
Here are the 6 ways you need to optimise your videos to get more views:
- Do keyword research
You need to know what you’re optimising for before you can optimise your video. Keyword analysis reveals the phrases people use to find content, allowing you to include them in your own.
For keyword research, you can utilise Google Keyword Planner. Also, observe what shows up when you type your topic into the YouTube search field. All of these are items that an individual has looked for. This can help you come up with new keyword suggestions.
- Add your keywords to your video
You should have one main keyword and a few additional ones for each video. Here’s where to add them:
- The video title (main keyword)
- The video description (main keyword + 1-2 related keywords)
- Use the main keyword within the first 3 sentences
- The video’s tags
- According to YouTube, this has minimal impact, but use your keywords as tags anyway. It only takes a second.
- Use timestamps
YouTube timestamps act as a chapter break for your video. It enables viewers to jump to the areas of the video that they are most interested in. This improves the likelihood that they will view the rest of your video.
- Make a thorough description of the video.
Each video should have its own part in the description with a few phrases stating what it’s about. However, you can save time by creating default descriptions for the areas of each movie that you want to see.
Here’s what you should mention in your summary:
- A link to your website
- Links to your other social media profiles
- A call to action
- Links to your products or services featured in the video
Create an engaging video thumbnail
Custom thumbnails are so important for views. Besides your title, it’s the only other thing users have to decide if they want to watch your video or not.
Respond to comments
Responding to viewer comments shows you’re there to build a community, not to push out self-promotional content. It also boosts your video’s status to the algorithm.
Step 6: Upload and schedule your videos
You can directly upload your finished video to YouTube and post it straight away or schedule it for later.
There are a few factors to bear in mind when it comes to scheduling:
- How frequently will you post? Make a daily, weekly, bimonthly, monthly, or other schedule and stick to it.
- Consider the best day to post for your target audience. When do you think they’ll be watching your content?
Step 7: Optimise your channel to attract followers
Although we’ve discussed optimising individual videos, you must also optimise your entire channel. Ensure that your channel art and profile photo are consistent with your brand.
YouTube offers various built-in elements that make it easier to attract more subscribers, in addition to visual branding:
- Sort your videos into playlists based on their subject matter.
- Make a channel trailer, which is similar to a commercial that describes your channel.
When you’re watching a video, do you notice how the creator always tells you to « like and subscribe? » There’s a reason for that: it’s effective.
- Request that others subscribe to your channel and like, comment, and/or share your videos in your videos.
- Have a clear call to action.
- Engage with your audience.
For example, mention how audience questions inspired the
current video.
- Use a custom end screen to direct viewers to other videos of yours to keep them on your channel longer.
- Add closed captioning. You should prioritise accessibility in all your content, and captions include Deaf and/or hard-of-hearing people in your potential audience.
- Uploading your own captions will ensure accuracy and is something you can easily outsource.
- YouTube also offers free, automatic captioning but it often gets words wrong.
- You can even add translated versions of your captions to better serve a multilingual audience or earn more international views.
Step 8: Try YouTube advertising
Not growing fast enough? Try YouTube ads.
Most YouTube ads are videos but you can also place banner ads, either in videos or on the website. You can also make your video ads either skippable after 5 seconds, or unskippable.
As a Google company, YouTube ads operate through the Google Ads platform. Running successful ads requires a strategy of its own, which we detail in our guide to Google Ads.
Besides the campaign strategy, before you try out paid ads, make sure you have:
- A rock-solid understanding of who your audience is.
- Optimised your YouTube channel’s visual branding and description.
- Upload at least 5-10 videos so your new visitors can get a sense of what you’re all about.
Step 9: Try influencer marketing
Every year, the number of YouTube influencers increases. The number of artists earning more than $10,000 per year increased by 50% year over year, while those earning more than $100,000 increased by 40%.
YouTube remains a high-performing medium for companies, even as new social networks emerge all the time and become the « hot » place to promote, such as TikTok in 2021. YouTube will be used by nearly half of all firms that plan to use influencer marketing.
YouTube is a traditional sponsorship channel for a reason: 70% of viewers have purchased a product after seeing it advertised on the platform.
You can’t just leap into an influencer collaboration without doing some preliminary work, just like any other paid advertising or marketing campaign:
- Know your audience, know your goals… you know this part already.
- Play by the rules — and not just YouTube’s rules. Follow FTC rules for disclosing paid or sponsored content. Ensure your creator partner uses the hashtags #ad or #sponsored, as a minimum.
- Choose an influencer who aligns with your brand and who you trust to produce high-quality content.
- Analyse your results after the campaign and learn what to do differently next time.
Nike’s campaign with “What’s Inside?” shows what’s possible when you let your creator take the lead. Famous for cutting everyday items in half to see what’s inside, the aptly-named channel created a series of videos for Nike to promote a new shoe.
The most popular video of the series is where they cut the new shoe in half, which earned over 7.1 million views.
Step 10: Analyse and adapt
You should monitor your YouTube metrics at least once a month, just like you do with any other marketing. Use YouTube’s built-in reports to find out what your audience is watching, what their favourite videos are, where your traffic is coming from, and more.
You may also use analytics to track the growth of your channels. Monthly, keep track of the following figures:
- Subscribers
- Views
- View duration
- Top videos
- Watch time
- Impressions
- Your click-through rate (CTR)
This YouTube marketing plan will give you a leg up on the competition when it comes to leveraging YouTube to grow your efforts and attract more viewers, subscribers, and customers. The next stage is to put it into action.
I recommend breaking it down into manageable chunks. Don’t feel compelled to complete everything at once; if you do, you may never begin. Move on to the next YouTube marketing strategy method once you’ve completed one stage.
After that, you’re all set to rock ‘n’ roll.
