Y o u T u b e M a r k e t i n g
Chapter 1:
Introduction
Established in 2005, YouTube is one of the first global social networks around, and its relevance continues to do nothing but grow. The video content posted, viewed, and shared on YouTube can be watched on desktops, laptops, notebooks and smartphones—any time of day or night. YouTube attracts a larger range of demographics across all ages, hobbies, interests, and careers than any other social media platform—and YouTube videos can generate high search engine page rank. If that’s not enough, the combined audio/visual makes content more memorable than plain written text.
The Numbers Speak for Themselves
As the demand for quality video content increases, YouTube continues gain more subscribers. Below is a closer look at some of the benefits to creating an organic video marketing strategy.
Worldwide, YouTube has over 1 billion users (yes, a billion) and a whopping 30 million of them watch videos every day. An astounding 5 billion videos are viewed each day, totaling in over 500 million hours of daily viewing. Over 300,000 new videos are uploaded daily. 80% of people ages 18 to 49 regularly watch YouTube videos. Over 50% of YouTube videos are viewed on mobile devices. The average mobile viewing session lasts 40 minutes, so there’s an amazing
opportunity to connect with your audience there. 38% of users are female and 62% are male.
So clearly the general stats and demographics are there and by themselves they warrant using YouTube as a marketing channel, but the marketing-related stats are even more compelling.
Today, around 87% of online marketers use video content. One-third of online activity is watching videos. 92% of mobile video viewers share the content they watch. When given the choice, 59% of executives will choose video content over written articles. Video drives a 157% increase in organic traffic from SERPs. The click thru rate of emails with videos is 96% higher. Content retention increases from 10% to 95% when comparing video to text. Users spend 88% longer on websites with video. Blog posts with video attract 3x more inbound links. Adding video to ads increases engagement by 22%. And 85% of businesses have in-house staff who curate video content, which shows you how important all your competitors think video marketing is. That settles it. You obviously need to be marketing on YouTube. Next up, we’ll talk about establishing YouTube marketing goals.
Chapter 2:
YouTube Marketing Goals
Establishing marketing goals is critical to the success of your YouTube marketing. Countless entrepreneurs and businesses have setup an YouTube presence, made a few posts, and then let it sit untouched for months or even years. This is usually due to a lack or absence of goals. So, before you even begin establishing any sort of YouTube presence or strategy, you need to establish clear marketing goals.
Your goals should be specific, measurable, and attainable. They can be long term, short term, or a mix of both. Deadlines and milestones can be helpful as well. “I want to increase my social following” would be an example of a bad goal that will likely result in your marketing efforts petering out after a while because there are no specific milestones. “I want to gain 1,000 likes by Christmas” is an example of a good goal. It’s specific, measurable, and certainly attainable. Below are some examples of the various goal categories you might be interested in.
Traffic to Website (Sales, Leads, Content)
Probably one of the most popular goals of YouTube Marketing is to funnel your YouTube traffic back to your own web properties. After all, most businesses don’t do business “on” YouTube. You’re leveraging YouTube to obtain traffic and convert that YouTube traffic into brand-followers, leads, prospects, and customers. So maybe your goal is to get people to a landing page with a free offer where they can subscribe to your list and become a lead. Maybe they’re being sent to a sales page or an eCommerce store. Maybe you just want to do some content marketing and send them to your blog. Whatever the case, the end goal for a lot of businesses will likely be bringing YouTube traffic AWAY from YouTube and over to their own web properties.
Social Following (aka YouTube as Autoresponder)
In this goal category, your aim is to build a large number of followers. The reason we also refer to this as “YouTube as Autoresponder” is because the main sought-after benefit here is to increase the number of people who will see your uploads in their feeds. In this sense, your YouTube posts become similar to sending out email broadcasts via your autoresponder. If you grow a large enough community, this can be very beneficial and if your content is engaging enough to get a lot of traction in the form of likes, comments, subscribes and shares, you can significantly increase the range of your organic reach into people’s feeds.
Passive Presence
Some businesses might have purely passive goals. Simply being present and discoverable inside YouTube is a benefit that has wider appeal and greater utility than you may think. In many cases, a company’s YouTube presence might supersede or at least augment what was once the role of a blog, assuming most of your content can be conveyed in the form of or attached to videos. When people come across this content of yours and look at your account they can see some basic info about your brand or business and you can get some traffic to your website. This same approach can also be used for events, communities, and brands.
Brand Awareness
Another goal that’s less thought about might be spreading brand awareness and recognition. If you’re just starting out, there’s a good chance your brand might be in need of a jumpstart. If nobody’s ever heard of you, a great way to increase recognition is to simply create and share unique, helpful, or entertaining content and get your name, logo, and overall brand identity in front of as many people as possible as many times as possible. If this is your goal, you want to avoid being salesy in the beginning. Ensure you’re focused almost entirely on posting helpful, relevant, or entertaining content.
Expand Existing Audiences
If you’ve already got an audience, your goal might be to make it bigger. This can be done via several social marketing methods. Sharing viral content, either curated or created yourself, can lead to a huge increase in your YouTube audience. Although creating your own viral content like that can be great, if you don’t have the time or means to do so, you can simply leverage existing content that’s already proven itself to be viral by curating/re-sharing it with your own comments or angle added to it. Obviously, you don’t want to actually steal and re-upload someone else’s videos. We’re talking doing a little video review or commentary about a content piece. Also, a few humorous videos can’t hurt either. Other ways to expand existing audiences can include contests, sweepstakes, and gamification. Assuming your offers/prizes are compelling enough, incentivized sharing, liking, and subscribing can be very effective. Just ensure your methods are permitted by YouTube’s Terms of Service.
Enhancing or Repairing Public Relations
Do you want to set your company apart in the public eye? Do you want to associate your brand with feelings of good will and community involvement? Was your business recently involved in a controversial incident that requires damage control?
It doesn’t take a humiliating public catastrophe to make PR enhancement a good idea. This is a goal that any business can engage in. Non-sales related campaigns can include videos that foster positive values and goodwill or even involvement in social movements (be careful not alienate half your prospects) and noble causes. Did your business recently donate to a charity, build a school in a third world country, serve food at a local pantry? These are all things to post about. These don’t necessarily need to be about things that your business participated in. They can be content about general things like a heart-warming video about helping the poor or caring for the elderly. Special holidays like Christmas,
Thanksgiving, or Mother’s Day also present opportunities to leverage emotions, foster goodwill, and enhance your PR.
Market Research
A hugely beneficial goal of YouTube marketing is market research. If you’re just starting your business or going down a new path, YouTube can be an excellent place to learn more about your audience and your market.
This can be done in a structured way with things like mentioning surveys and questionnaires at the end of videos and linking to them in the description, or in a less structured way by simply engaging with your audience, commenting, asking questions, and so on. Also, lurking or conversing in YouTube channels or the comments of videos related to your industry can teach you a ton about what your customers want and who they are. Beyond that, you can monitor your competitors’ accounts and posts to see what their customers like and what they’re complaining about so you can adjust your business accordingly. Creating your own account, posting, and engaging within it is another great way to get a constant stream of market/audience data flowing into your business. Ultimately, your goal should be to come up with one or two ideal customer avatars that you can then base your marketing and product development on.