With over 6.2 billion active users and more than 5 billion watched videos daily, YouTube is clearly ruling out many social media platforms. After Google, it is the second largest search engine across the globe. This shows that YouTube can give vast exposure to its users, no matter what their goal is.
From finding how-to’s and watching videos for entertainment to promoting various stuff, nowadays every individual makes use of the YouTube platform. Its massive user base is enough to know the potential of marketing your business brand on this platform.
With no signs of slowing down, leveraging YouTube is considered one of the most effective tools for marketing. Countless organizations and companies are already utilizing this platform to run marketing campaigns. Not only do you get massive exposure on this platform but can manage campaigns at a reasonable cost.
But first, let’s learn what YouTube marketing actually means.
What is YouTube Marketing?
YouTube marketing is the practice of leveraging the YouTube platform to promote a business using video content. This marketing technique includes both crafting and advertising videos on a specific business YouTube channel.
Here are some of the examples of YouTube marketing:
Partnering with top influencers to magnify brand awareness and reach.
Creating and posting video ads on YouTube to attract potential customers.
Using SEO to improve the ranking of videos for specific keywords, terms, and phrases.
However, just using this platform doesn’t help businesses in reaching their goals. Even if you have the most profitable business idea to promote on your YouTube channel, without effective marketing techniques, it will remain unnoticed. So, utilizing this platform correctly matters more than just posting video content on your channel.
Is YouTube marketing worth it?
YouTube is used in more than 100 countries in over 80 languages. More than 1 billion hours of video content are accessed and watched each day. It is expected that by 2026, the number of active users on YouTube will cross 1 billion. Many start-ups introduced their products on this platform and have earned double their expectations.
If you have not utilized this platform, then let’s introduce you to some of the major reasons why investing in YouTube marketing is worthwhile.
Wider reach: YouTube has a vast active user base which makes it the best platform to reach your target audience. You can tap a massive number of people and connect with them directly with compelling video content.
Great engagement: Videos are comparatively more engaging and preferred over text content. People spend lots of time watching videos on YouTube, you can capture their attention and keep them engaged on your channel with your content.
Improved searchability: As YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world, you can increase your brand visibility among people who are searching for similar products/services as yours. You can find many potential clients using YouTube marketing.
Brand building and awareness: Video content is not only engaging but easy to understand. You can showcase your offerings in video content. This helps in magnifying brand awareness and increase trust among the audience.
Measurable results: With the help of YouTube analytics, you can track your channel performance and improvise on shortcomings. This way you can make data-driven choices about your posts and optimize your YouTube marketing for better outcomes.
Cost-effective method: Creating a video and posting it on your YouTube channel is a comparatively less expensive marketing method than running ads on TV, radio, or print advertising.
Multipurpose use: YouTube is a versatile platform that can be used for multiple things including entertainment, awareness, inspiration, education, and much more.
Now you know the importance of investing in YouTube marketing. Let us introduce you to 13 smart tips to create an effective marketing plan and yield innumerable advantages from this platform.
1. Know your target audience
This is the real task that has to be done prior to deciding on and creating video content for your YouTube channel. You need to thoroughly research who your audience is and what they like watching most.
If you already have a channel, you can use the analytical tab on the YouTube Studio. This feature gives insights into your target audience and their preferences.
You can also visit your competitor’s YouTube channels. Analyze which type of content is getting more thumbs up or vice versa. Once you have the data with you, craft compelling video content aligning with your audience’s interest and your business brand.
2. Analyze your competition
No matter what type of business you own, one of the best ways to grow rapidly on YouTube is by analyzing the competition in your niche. Here is the list of pointers that you need to analyze about your competitors.
>Views on each video.
>Number of subscribers.
>Quality of videos.
>Comment and feedback on each video.
>The topic of content.
>Likes or dislikes on videos.
The primary goal of your YouTube channel is to grow your audience base and get a lot of subscribers. So, once you have your findings, create a video after analyzing these questions.
>Why that specific video became popular among their subscribers?
>How are they setting up the video?
>What ideas I can extract from their popular videos?
>How uniquely they are presenting their content?
>How can I make my content unique?
3. Create gripping videos aligning with the audience’s interest
This goes without saying, to make your channel successful and popular, your video content should align with your audience’s interest. There are zillions of videos on YouTube and to get brand visibility in the crowd, you have to work hard on making your content ‘the most unique.
Have a clear understanding of your business’s long and short-term goals and your target audience. Analyze what things can set you apart in the crowd. Identify the likes, dislikes, and requirements of your target audience. This will greatly help you in crafting content that will entice more and more users.
Half of YouTube users visit the very platform to understand and learn something. Choose a topic that aligns with your marketing goals. The starting 10-15 seconds of video is very critical, so make it the most captivating part of the content to keep people hooked till the end. Keep your videos very precise, avoid making them too long.
4. Optimizing the video content
There are innumerable YouTube channels and countless videos on YouTube. To increase the visibility of your video and get it to the user’s attention, you need to optimize it with the latest trends.
Your content on YouTube will be visible to the user when Google recommends it for a specific query. Here is the list of pointers to consider for optimizing your video on YouTube.
Keyword research and addition: Keywords are the words and phrases that people use to look for something in search engines. There are several tools in the market that help you find the right keywords. Once you know which keywords people are using the most, add them to the title of your video, tags, and description to get visibility.
Timestamps: If your video is lengthy then consider providing timestamps to offer ease to your subscribers to skip and jump to their favorite part. This will persuade more and more people to watch your video as they can do it on their terms.
Description: People like to know everything about the video before watching it. You need to cater to this requirement and provide all the major highlights and what is discussed in your video. You can also add links for your social media profiles and website in the description part.
Responsiveness: YouTube is a social network. Once you start getting comments on your video, be responsive to answer them each. This shows that you value people’s feedback and time.
Compelling thumbnail: Thumbnails help in attracting users’ attention and persuade them to watch a video. Make sure you create a striking and engaging thumbnail that entices visitors to click on your video.
5. Optimize your YouTube channel
Just optimizing your video is not enough to lure your audience to get more clicks on it. Although a YouTube channel helps in grabbing users’ attention, you need to optimize it as well. Optimization helps in making your channel search friendly for users.
You need to identify the correct ways to optimize your YouTube channel to drive more traffic through your videos. Here are some of the top ways to optimize your YouTube channel.
>Insert the targeted keyword in your YouTube channel name.
>Concisely describe what you do on the ‘About Us’ page.
>Include search-friendly metatags in your channel.
>Update your channel trailer with a 30-60 seconds compelling introduction video.
>Publish both long and short form of videos on your channel.
>Include social sharing buttons in the banner.
>Create a playlist for your content videos.
>Make the first 15 seconds of your content ‘the most enticing’ to engage users.
>Make sure that keywords are pronounced in the video content.
>Host webinars, Q&A sessions, demos, and contests using live YouTube videos.
6. Satisfying the YouTube algorithm is essential
Creating compelling content is undeniably vital. However, your target audience will watch your content only if they discover it on the YouTube search engine. Here, the YouTube algorithm plays a vital role in making your content hit or flop.
Convincing the algorithm comes much before satisfying your customers. Once you learn the tricks to satisfy the YouTube algorithm, your video visibility will automatically be augmented among your target audience.
To make your video aligned with the YouTube algorithm, consider the following methods.
>Include catchy video titles and descriptions.
>Add relevant keywords.
>Use your business logo, smilies, or vibrant colored arrows, circles, etc. to grab your audience’s attention.
>Add closed captions on each video.
>Keep CTA’s clear, concise, and simple.
7. Make use of YouTube shorts
YouTube launched YouTube shorts back in September 2020. It is a short video that lasts from 15 seconds to 1 minute. The long form of content takes a lot of time to produce each day. Uploading fresh YouTube shorts doesn’t require more effort. YouTube shorts is quite similar to Instagram reels and TikTok videos. It was reported that short videos received 3.5 billion views on YouTube.
With such great potential and huge reach, many marketers are leveraging YouTube shorts to promote their products and services. You can cater to this preference with compelling YouTube shorts. This way you can increase brand awareness and earn great exposure among YouTube users.
All you need to do is optimize your YouTube shorts. Optimizing YouTube shorts works similarly to optimizing YouTube videos which we have covered in the previous point. The best part of YouTube shorts is that they are permanent in nature. Once you create YouTube shorts, it is always going to be there on your channel.
8. Use influencer marketing
More than 60% of YouTube users bought the product and services that were featured on this platform. You can utilize influencer marketing and introduce your offerings to a wide audience. Influencer marketing is all about approaching a YouTube creator who has a good number of subscribers to advertise your product or services in their channels.
Whenever you plan to leverage influencer marketing, there are a few points that you need to consider before partnering with any of the content creators.
>You need to find a creator or channel that creates videos similar to your offerings.
>Check that the content they offer is of high quality and compelling enough to entice the users.
>Once you have found someone whose channels and videos parallel your brand offerings. Team up with them and promote your products and services in the most effective manner on YouTube.
9. Learn from successful channels
There is a massive number of YouTube channels that are doing great in their domain. The success of these YouTube channels is the top-notch content, catchy thumbnail, creative channel art, striking presentation, top-end video VFX, and much more.
Jot down the name of the YouTube channels that you like the most. Evaluate what things are more attractive or fetched your attention. Learn from it and incorporate it into your videos. This way you can improve the quality of your YouTube videos and earn a lot of subscribers. Extract all the key points that made a particular channel or video successful and incorporate them on your own.
However, you need to be very careful while integrating the changes in your video. It should not look like an exact copy of any video. This is because people will not like watching alike content again and again. They might feel bored and shut down your video before even putting the right message across to the viewers. Consider maintaining uniqueness while creating any YouTube content for your audience.
10. Utilize YouTube ads
Every business seeks organic growth on its YouTube channel. However, this doesn’t work as expected due to the existence of mounting competition. If you are looking for quick results, you can utilize YouTube ads. You can easily select the type of ad you want to share with your audience.
The charges for ads depend on the choice of ads. Here is the list of types of ads you can pick on YouTube.
>Skippable stream ads.
>Non-skippable stream ads.
>Video discovery ads.
>Non-video ads.
However, getting results from paid YouTube ads is not that easy. You need to be strategic and draft a solid plan to avoid wasting your money on the ads. Know your audience well, optimize your YouTube channel, add a compelling description, etc. Before opting for YouTube ads, post 8-10 videos on your channel to make your visitors know what you exactly do.
11. Upload relevant videos consistently
YouTube gives you the option to upload the video instantly or schedule them to post it later. After analyzing the best time and date for uploading the video, you can post the content accordingly. However, your content should not be solely promoting your offerings, rather it should add value. Offer something that your viewers don’t get anywhere else, it can be tips, video tutorials, demos, collaboration, etc.
You need to be very consistent when it comes to posting videos on your YouTube channel. Consistency keeps people coming back to your channel or makes them your subscribers. This practice not only increases your subscriber count but also projects you as a credible channel.
To get more views on your long and short YouTube videos, you should analyze the best time to post your content. You can do it during special events, holidays, and other occasions where you can find a huge number of people online.
12. Utilize Marketing tools
You can reorganize and simplify your workload with the help of marketing tools. There are several marketing tools in the market that help in strengthening social media campaigns. Whether you have just started with YouTube marketing or looking to grow your user base, the right management tool can help you immensely.
A good marketing tool can help you in researching, crafting, and scheduling videos and posts. Not only this, you can track your performance, brand mentions, and social media metrics using this tool. From offering data enrichment services to helping eCommerce marketing campaigns, there are various types of tools that can fit your unique business needs.
Such tools can help you optimize your content and add value to your YouTube marketing campaign. However, before choosing a marketing tool for your business, keep the following points in check.
>Jot down the list of features you expect from the tool.
>Shortlist at least 4-5 marketing tools that align with your needs after thoroughly reviewing customer feedback and the descriptions.
>Narrow down your list based on the budget you have. If your preferred software is a little expensive, see if it is a one-time investment kind of deal. Also, see if will you have to pay extra money for additional features in the future.
>Check if a tool can be solely utilized for YouTube marketing or other social media channels as well.
>Lastly, make sure you thoroughly review the security features as you will add all the sensitive data to it.
13. Analyze performance and make improvisations
Working on feedback is key to a successful YouTube marketing strategy. YouTube offers an in-built tool called ‘YouTube Studio’ to analyze the performance of your channel. Utilize this feature and keep a constant check on your performance. YouTube’s in-built performance reports help you in:
>Finding the source where your audience is coming from.
>The activity of your subscribers.
>Watch duration for a particular video.
>The number of your subscribers.
>Top-performing videos in a specific timeline.
>Click-through rate.
>Impression of your YouTube channel or a specific video.
Keep a tab on your channel’s performance by checking what your audience is watching, their interest, what they like most, etc. Once you have the report, the next step is improvisation. Work towards the betterment of all those areas which require attention. Track your progress and make adjustments to each YouTube marketing strategy accordingly.