Are you searching for new ways to advertise your business online? Consider this: YouTube is one of the biggest and most used websites globally, making it an incredibly effective marketing platform.

Image Source This beginner’s guide to YouTube marketing will teach you:

• If YouTube aligns with your business and marketing goals
• How to develop a YouTube video marketing strategy
• How to kickstart your strategy with video tips and ideas
• Effective management of your YouTube channel
• Optimizing your videos for YouTube’s search engine

Should you use YouTube marketing for your business?

As mentioned, YouTube is a giant among websites – to be precise, it’s currently the second most popular website globally. While many don’t see YouTube as a search engine, it’s a primary function for most visitors. YouTube holds the impressive title of the second most popular website and search engine, second only to Google. This translates to immense potential reach for your business. However, YouTube’s popularity also means significant competition. According to Statista, as of July 2015, 400 hours of video are uploaded to the platform every minute. Therefore, success on YouTube demands consistent, high-quality content creation, requiring time and resources. In essence, you’ll need a solid YouTube marketing plan. Another compelling reason for YouTube’s marketing appeal lies in its video-centric nature – and video marketing is incredibly popular right now. Video consistently ranks high in engagement among content formats. Moreover, YouTube videos can be repurposed for your other social media profiles, email campaigns, website, landing pages, and other platforms you utilize.

Creating marketing videos is less daunting than it seems. It doesn’t require a massive budget or expensive equipment; you can even produce quality marketing videos from home. To summarize: Is YouTube the right choice for your business? In most scenarios, yes (the numbers speak for themselves). For product-based businesses, it’s a fantastic way to showcase and promote their offerings and applications. B2B companies can leverage the platform for expanding reach and generating leads.

Creating a YouTube marketing strategy

Marketing on YouTube mirrors other social platforms: it begins with a strategy. Defining your goals is the first step in crafting your YouTube marketing strategy.

Clearly outline your desired outcomes, such as:

• Clicks/traffic
• Engagement
• Reach/subscriber growth Utilize the SMART model – specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound – to develop effective objectives. This ensures your goals are specific, have a deadline, and are achievable. Accurate progress measurement is crucial. During the strategizing phase, identify your KPIs (key performance indicators) to effectively gauge your results.

Committing to a schedule

Consistency is key for continuous channel growth on YouTube. Similar to blogging, greater content volume increases the likelihood of reaching a wider audience. Most successful YouTubers adhere to a strict publishing schedule. They also promote new videos across their social media platforms, ensuring even non-subscribers are aware of upcoming content. When developing your YouTube marketing strategy, determine a realistic posting frequency you can maintain. After deciding on your posting frequency, consider the timing of your video releases. According to Oberlo, peak YouTube viewership occurs in the evenings and on weekends. Posting your content in the early afternoons during the week or early Saturday and Sunday mornings allows for indexing before your potential audience starts searching.

Image Source Furthermore, note upcoming holidays and events relevant to your audience to capitalize on special content opportunities.

Exploring different marketing video styles

With your goals and publishing schedule set, the next question is: what types of videos can you produce? Content variety is essential for keeping your audience engaged and returning for more. Early experimentation with different video styles will help determine what resonates best with your audience. Here are a few initial ideas:

• Listicles: Listicles are popular as blog posts and media (videos, images, infographics). Create listicles highlighting your products or services – such as “10 Innovative Uses for (Your Product)” – or focus on educational, informative, or entertaining topics. Remember, align your lists with your audience’s interests and business niche.
• How-to videos: How-to videos are effective due to their high viewer value. For instance, if you sell social media software, create how-to videos demonstrating Twitter marketing basics or growing a Facebook following. Utilize popular blog posts as inspiration or plan a recurring series. JetBlue offers a humorous “Flight Etiquette” series showcasing travel faux pas:

• Behind-the-scenes videos: YouTube is, after all, a social network, with an emphasis on “social.” Humanize your brand by offering behind-the-scenes glimpses. For example, Sprout Social features a collection of videos starring their team members:

• Product videos: Video excels at showcasing products or services. Create product videos demonstrating features, highlighting updates, or announcing new offerings. Mailchimp frequently releases videos discussing their products:

• Case studies: Video case studies featuring your clients effectively promote your business, products, or services. These case studies can go beyond your product, focusing on client origin stories, accomplishments, or future plans. Hootsuite showcases their work with various brands through videos:

• Interviews: Interviews with well-known experts and influencers within your niche attract new viewers. By promoting the video, these individuals can drive traffic to your channel, leveraging their existing following.

YouTube channel management

With a defined strategy and video ideas, focus on managing your channel. Engagement is paramount on YouTube, requiring timely comment responses and proactive engagement strategies. Consider utilizing tools for streamlined account management. Agorapulse allows for comment pre-moderation, centralized comment management and responses (with team collaboration and task assignment), and YouTube brand mention monitoring in videos and comments. Other helpful features include saved replies (for quick responses) and a social CRM tool to track subscribers and connections.

VidIQ is another valuable channel management option, enabling comment tracking and responses, team collaboration, and keyword/tag discovery for video optimization. Here are additional YouTube tips for enhancing engagement and viewership:

• Respond to comments promptly by checking them daily
• Monitor for brand mentions to identify engagement opportunities
• Encourage comments by posing questions in videos and descriptions
• Utilize the “Community” tab (on your channel’s main page) to post images, GIFs, video previews, and polls. For example, Evan Carmichael regularly engages subscribers through polls about desired content for upcoming videos:

Understanding YouTube video SEO

As previously mentioned, YouTube’s status as a top search engine makes it an enticing promotional tool for businesses. With nearly two billion monthly users, the potential reach is staggering. Simply put, consistent, high-quality video content optimized for search can significantly amplify your chances of reaching a large and relevant audience. So, how exactly does YouTube SEO work? Several factors influence your search result ranking. Some are within your control (e.g., keyword selection and usage) while others are less so (e.g., immediate post-view subscriber count).

Here are crucial video ranking factors to understand:

• Channel keywords: Use relevant tags to inform YouTube about your channel’s focus.
• Video headlines and descriptions: Conduct keyword research to understand your audience’s search terms and incorporate these keywords into your video headlines and descriptions (placing the keyword closer to the headline’s beginning is generally more effective).
• Video tags: Supplement keywords with relevant tags, researching their performance for optimal selection.
• Video transcript: Including a transcript enhances searchability by bots and improves accessibility for viewers who may need to check spelling, can’t listen to audio, or prefer reading.
• Watch time: Total video watch time (minutes/hours watched) contributes to ranking; longer watch times are favorable.
• Thumbnail image: Your thumbnail, visible in search results, should be both compelling and relevant to entice clicks.
• Engagement: YouTube considers channel engagement metrics, including likes/dislikes, comments, and shares.
• Subscriber numbers: This encompasses both your total YouTube subscribers and the number of people subscribing immediately after watching your videos. This indicates your video’s relevance and value to viewers. TubeBuddy stands out as a powerful SEO tool due to its comprehensive video SEO features:
• YouTube keyword research tools for identifying valuable long-tail keywords

• Tag explorer for discovering popular tags for your channel and videos
• Keyword rank tracking for monitoring video ranking and performance
• A/B testing for videos
• View and copy video tags for analyzing competitor strategies This last feature, allowing you to analyze video tag usage, proves particularly useful. By examining popular, high-ranking videos relevant to your niche, you can glean insights into effective tag strategies. When embedding YouTube content on other channels or your website, prioritize video placement for optimal ranking. Search engines may not find videos buried within a page, and Google typically indexes only the first video. Video content optimization is crucial for your YouTube marketing strategy, even during the initial stages. Leverage keyword research to generate video ideas. Before creating new videos, research relevant keywords and align your content creation accordingly.

Achieving YouTube marketing success

Used effectively, YouTube is a powerful tool for boosting brand awareness and reaching potential customers. Follow these key steps for a successful YouTube marketing strategy:

• Plan your YouTube presence and video schedule in advance to ensure regular, consistent content publication
• Create diverse video content to appeal to a wider audience
• Prioritize subscriber and viewer engagement, striving to boost engagement with each video
• Optimize your channel and videos for YouTube’s search engine to maximize reach