With nearly 2 billion active users, YouTube is filled with potential customers for your business. But, how do you reach them?
There are two sides to consider: having a firm foundation and creating a YouTube marketing strategy. When you put these things together, you’ll start seeing results.
Keep reading to find out exactly what you need to do to market your business on YouTube.
Form a Foundation
Before you can jump into any marketing tips and tricks, you need to make sure you have a firm foundation to build on. Without these three essential elements, none of the other marketing strategies will work.
Quality
If you’re not putting out quality videos, then you’re never going to gain any real momentum. You’ll have people clicking initially, but ultimately won’t gain subscribers, likes, or shares when you have low-quality videos.
You don’t need to have the best equipment on the market to make YouTube videos. With proper lighting and a decent camera, you can get by until you can upgrade. Focus on creating high-quality content at the beginning.
Quantity
You also need a large volume of videos if you want to get potential customers seeing your videos. Be prepared to put out a lot of videos!
Be sure that you’re not putting out videos for the sake of having them, though. You never want to sacrifice quality. When brainstorming video ideas, consider breaking up large concepts into smaller videos.
Consistency
When viewers know they can expect a video from you the same day every week, they’re far more likely to tune in to watch it. Viewers love having their expectations met, and doing so is the easiest way to build an audience.
Set up a schedule for yourself and stick to it. It’s best to start with fewer videos per week than you’d like to produce since you can always add extra days later. Try not to cut back on the number of videos you’re making once you start increasing.
Set Up Your YouTube Marketing Strategy
Once you’ve got a foundation in place, it’s time to jump into creating a marketing strategy that will help you get more views, shares, and subscribers. Ultimately, this will help you make more money.
These tips are designed to work for any business, so whether you’re a lawyer or a plumber, you can use these to get more YouTube views.
Know Your Audience
If you haven’t already done this, you need to create a buyer persona for your business. This will help you identify pain points of your audience so you can figure out how to solve their problems.
Once you know what your audience needs, wants, and is searching for, then you can come up with some incredible video content ideas. After all, if you’re creating content that nobody’s searching for, then you won’t be found.
If you have a blog on your website, you can use Google analytics to identify what people are coming to your site for. This will help you get some insight into who you should be targeting and what they’re looking for.
Use Keywords
Speaking of looking for things, don’t forget to use keywords. You should have a keyword in mind for each video based on the topic you picked, or your keyword research.
Be sure to include keywords in the video title, description box, and in the keyword section provided by YouTube. Use a variety of keywords related to your main keyword and the video to have a better chance of ranking high in search results.
Stick to a Topic or Type
Another expectation you want to set up for your viewers is the topic you’ll be covering or else the type of video you make. This may vary depending on the business you’re running.
For example, if you’re running a brick-and-mortar business, you’ll most likely focus on creating videos around that niche. In that case, you can include reviews, demonstrations, and information about that topic.
On the other hand, if you have a broader niche or are running an online business, you may want to stick with a certain video type. Someone who has an online store may only do product review videos.
Set a Tone
Your videos should have a certain tone and style which should match your business brand. Not every video will convey the exact same tone, but you should be overall the same.
Your video tone may be:
- Serious
- Informational
- Funny
- Interesting
- Instructional
- Friendly
Once you set this tone for your videos, stick to it. Those who appreciate it will stick around and become loyal viewers, and those who don’t will move on. You wouldn’t have sold anything to them, anyway.
Steal Views from Competitors
This may seem shady, but hear us out. By placing ads on videos created by competitors, you can essentially steal their views. This type of targeting advertising will give you the best return-on-investment.
To do this, all you need is a Google Adwords account and you can set up a campaign to advertise your videos as a video before another video. Confused? For a great walkthrough, you can read more here.
Create Custom Thumbnails
You can’t judge a book by its cover, but YouTube videos are clicked or not based on their thumbnail image. Now that you can create a custom thumbnail, you can get more clicks and views.
Pick a great image from the video, then add big bold words that highlight what the video is about. More than likely, your keyword will appear on the thumbnail which lets people know exactly what they’re getting when they click on it.
Add Subtitles
We’ve all been there. You’re watching YouTube videos at work or someplace noisy and can’t turn the volume up. So, what happens when you try to watch a video with someone talking and no subtitles?
You click away.
That’s exactly what your potential customers are going to do. They’ll find another video that answers their question which they can read as they watch it in silence. To avoid losing that lead, be sure to always add subtitles to your videos.
Utilize Your Description Box
Even though people may not read the description box, you should use it to your advantage. After all, this is the only place you can really include text with your video along with links.
Of course you want to have some keywords in the description, but that’s not all. You also want links to your website, and possibly even affiliate links. These help send more traffic to your site and can help improve your site’s Google ranking.
Collaborate
Once you’ve got some momentum going, the best way to start bringing in even more potential customers is to collaborate with YouTubers or other businesses. Find channels in the same or similar niches as yours and ask them to collaborate.
Most YouTube collaborations involve creating two videos: one on your channel and the other on theirs. This allows both parties to get themselves in front of a new audience.
When finding someone to collaborate with, it can be tricky to know who would be the best to approach. This is where you should go back to your buyer persona. What types of videos are they watching besides yours? Those are the channels to focus on.
Something else to consider is number of subscribers. A collaboration should be mutually beneficial to both parties. So, if you only have 100 subscribers, don’t try approaching someone with a million subscribers. They’re not likely to agree, so you’re just wasting your time.
Have Strong Calls to Action
This last one goes with all forms of marketing, but is often overlooked when creating video content. However, you should always be telling your viewers exactly what you want them to do next.
Here are some common calls to action on YouTube videos:
- Subscribe to YouTube channel
- Visit main website
- Like video
- Share video
- Comment on video
- Buy a product or service
- Follow on other social media account
You want to try to have one clear call to action at the end of each video. When you give people a list of things to do, they’re less likely to do any of them. So, pick one thing you want them to do in a video, and tell them to do it.
A common strategy to provide a few more calls to action is to include them throughout the video. These pop-up texts should be contextual to what’s being said.
For example, if you’re showing how to do something, you can have a pop-up text letting viewers know that there are links to tools and/or supplies in the description. At the end of the video, however, you may encourage them to visit a written form of the tutorial on your website.
Learn More Marketing Strategies
With these ten tips and tricks, you have the tools you need to set up a YouTube marketing strategy that could exponentially increase your traffic. How you use that traffic is up to you!
To learn more about promoting your business through social media promotion, be sure to check out our blog. We have a ton of articles that you can read to help you market yourself and your business.