YouTube can be a powerful promotional tool in the right hands. You'll need to create and share relevant content, promote your videos and channels, and optimize your videos for search and clicks. You can also use paid YouTube ads to show across the platform. Because of its reach as the most popular video hosting service, and its popularity, YouTube is a great way to market your brand. Think of it as a way to express your brand’s personality, interact with a community, provide useful information and help spread the word about your business through customer’s sharing your content.
The most important thing is your content; without quality content there’s no point in investing the time into building up your channel. Thinking of the kind of content you want to provide can be daunting, so here's a list of types of content that you can provide. Keep in mind that the best videos are funny, useful or a little bit on the quirky side.
- Create an FAQ: Compile a list of questions and answer them on the video itself. Get creative and answer the questions in a fun and engaging way.
- Product launches can be shared on your YouTube channel to reach all your viewers.
- Tutorials or instructional videos on how to use your products and get the best out of them can be a great way to engage viewers. With some comments from your audience, you can create a useful discussion.
- Introductions: If you’re new to YouTube, you can announce your business in style with an introductory video that sets expectations for viewers on what kind of content they can look forward to.
- Customer reviews and testimonial videos can help viewers become customers. Seeing what other people think and feel about a product is how a lot of people make their decisions on what to buy.
- Behind the scenes videos can help viewers get an understanding of the ethos of your business, to see how individual processes work and see the roles and responsibilities of employees. This is your chance to show the tone of your company that viewers can relate to.
It’s not as simple as creating great content. You need to promote it too. Remember you can learn a lot from other videos, so watch the most successful ones and take note of the things they do well. Check out the keywords and tags they use to boost their rating in searches. If they’re relevant, you can even copy some so your video is more likely to show up as related videos. Boost your channel by sharing it on your other social media channels, blogs and your website. It’s important not to forget that YouTube is a social network. You can add friends, message users, join groups or create your own to interact with the larger community. Email your YouTube link to your contacts, friends or previous customers. Piggyback off successful videos by posting relevant videos as responses to them. Create playlists using keywords for the title and include relevant videos within. You can use other people’s videos in this as well to boost the exposure to your own. Promote your videos to promote your brand.
Your video is great, but how do you turn viewers into customers? We’ve got some more great tips to help you do this:
- In your video description, include the link to your website. This will give viewers who are looking for more information a direct way to click through to your website.
- Use multiple calls to action, like 'please rate this video', 'check out our website' and 'explore our channel'. This has proved to be an effective way of getting viewers to follow up on your video.
- You’re going to the soft sell: Most people aren’t ready to make a purchase after watching a video. So there’s no point in asking them to. Lead them on a journey to your website, blog or other social media accounts.
- YouTube offers great reports that you can use to see how people interact with your videos. This can allow you to make the most of your videos and see what’s working and what’s not for your target audience.
You can use paid options to extend your reach and transform any video into an ad. These ads show across the whole platform and can be seen before other videos as well. It’s important to know your target audience as YouTube offers a number of targeting options, like age, gender, location etc. Remember these points in the creations of your ads:
- Keep your ads short - one minute or less is the recommended time.
- You’ll need to grab someone’s attention in the first few seconds, so make sure to captivate them in this time with a hook.
- Remember your unique selling propositions.
- Always have a purpose in mind, this allows you to measure the effectiveness of your ad.
- Include a call to action relating to the purpose of the video. For example, if you want to drive traffic to your site, you should ask viewers to visit it.
YouTube is a powerful promotional tool that can reach a massive audience. If you follow the above tips you can get the most out of it to help boost your brand and as a result, grow your business.