Top tips for an effective YouTube marketing strategy

In this blog, we’re going to show you how to create an effective YouTube marketing strategy!

 

Social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat have no doubt redefined how users engage with visual content. However, with over 400 hours of videos uploaded every minute and a billion hours watched daily, YouTube still leads the pack, ahead of even Facebook and Netflix combined.

 

If you’re planning on creating a YouTube marketing strategy anytime soon, you’ll need to understand the best way to go about it. There are currently over 50 million active content creators on YouTube so you should be ready to deal with competition. Understanding what works and using the right approach should ideally help take your YouTube content marketing game to the next level.

 

The following explores some of the best tips you should consider in order to develop an effective YouTube marketing strategy in today’s visual content landscape. You can also expect to find some practical reasons on why YouTube is still king when it comes to content marketing today.

The web is full of infinite resources promising to help you get the best from your YouTube marketing endeavors. However, not all of them are still relevant or will apply to you. Let’s explore the 12 best tips for developing an effective YouTube marketing strategy.

Whether going live on YouTube is your plan or uploading pre-recorded videos, you need to ensure that you get a good camera or recording equipment. Your efforts need to be helped not hindered. When passing on a valuable message, poor video and audio can distract viewers and lose their attention. What you say needs to be heard, so give it the best chance.

Similarly, if you’re using animations, you may want to invest in a course to improve your skills. Great animation is attractive, but bad animation is awful. Use a reliable mic to do your voice overs. The whole idea here is to appear as professional as possible in order to increase viewer confidence while also commanding respect from them.

 

Although viewers would most likely engage more with videos that feel personal, this is no excuse for poor recording. The following highlights some key ways to get the best recordings.

• Use HD cameras.
• Get a Mic.
• Learn the basics of video recording at least.
• Brush up your video editing skills.

You’re probably wondering why this is such a great tip? We’ll tell you why! You already have a personal YouTube account that you can use, but you need a business account too. With personal YouTube channels, you can only login using one Google account. Imagine if you had to give your gmail password to your marketing team members just so they can access the YouTube channel. Not so cyber smart, is it?

When you create a YouTube channel using a brand account, you’re able to authorize multiple Google accounts to login simultaneously. This allows people to manage different aspects of your YouTube content marketing. The good news is that if you currently have a personal YouTube account, you can create a brand account and transfer your videos and views. You should however take note that not all video types can be transferred.

 

Again, here are highlights on why you should create a YouTube business channel.

• Be recognized as a YouTube brand account.
• Assign admin or moderator roles to different marketing team members.
• Change ownership if you sell your business.

Is your brand stylish, goofy or a bit plain? With so many competitive options to choose from on YouTube, this is a very important tip.

Before setting out to populate your YouTube channel with videos, you’ll need to do some soul searching. Explore and discover which tone and content style works best for you, your channel and the audience you intend to cater for.

While this may be slightly influenced by your niche, your primary audience will most likely determine the tone and style of your content if you’re looking to be successful. You need to use this style and tone throughout your YouTube marketing strategy.

 

Will you take a formal approach throughout? Will your content be casual or conversational or will it be a mix? In order to do this, you’ll need to do some vital market research. Make a conscious effort to understand your audience, their demographics and what they’re interested in. For instance, it would make no sense to be all formal with your tone and style when your viewers’ age range is from 15-19.

If you already have a YouTube channel, you can easily gain valuable insights into your existing audience by checking your analytics page. The Analytics panel should give you details regarding your viewers’ demographics, including their age and location, thereby informing your decision regarding your channel’s tone and style.

This goes without saying. Your YouTube marketing strategy should feature consistency from top to bottom. It’s a well established fact that many businesses find it harder to maintain a YouTube channel than a blog.

This is understandable as the costs of producing YouTube videos can quickly rack up. Just like other marketing channels, it should be given the attention and consistency it deserves with a killer YouTube marketing strategy.

If you made an introductory video for your channel for instance, and announced how often you’d be posting videos, it’d be ideal for you to try to stick with this frequency. The same applies if you’ve built a rhythm over time. 

 

Consistency also applies to the quality of your YouTube videos. Guess what would happen if you went from publishing high quality videos in the past and suddenly dropped the quality of your production or recordings? That’s right, you should expect to experience a steady decline in viewings.

By being consistent, viewers will most likely trust you more as they know when to expect new content from you. Digital platforms like Design Wizard can help you remain consistent in creating high quality videos regularly.

 

It’s fair to say that without consistency, you’ll struggle to get any tangible results with your YouTube marketing strategy. In your quest for consistency, you may want to find answers to the following questions.

• How will you open and close your videos?
• Will you incorporate humor in your content?
• Who will be in charge of creating video content for you? Yourself, a team member or an agency?
• Will you bring in guests in all your videos, some or none?
• What kind of video content will you publish via your channel? For instance, tutorials or general discussions.

With tens of millions of active content creators on YouTube, you need to stand out. One of the most efficient ways of getting the best out of your YouTube strategy is by building a community. There’s a high chance that someone else is already producing content that’s similar to yours.

Building a community can help you really own your audience, ensuring that they keep coming back to your channel and feel obliged to trust your brand.

 

You can use private groups, social media threads or the comment section on your YouTube videos to do this. You’ll need to think up encouraging ways for your audience to interact with each other and to feel like they’re part of one big family; your YouTube channel.

 

By building a loyal and dedicated audience, you’ll not only be engaging your audience, but helping them become part of a highly engaged community. This will lead to more traction for your brand, especially in terms of your viewers following through on the recommendations that you offer in your videos and trusting you more.

YouTube is considered the second biggest search engine globally, only surpassed by Google. If you can imagine anything from surfing tutorials to business consulting advice, you’re guaranteed to find it on YouTube.

If your marketing strategy will stand any chance of being successful, you’ll need to make the most of this. While success is mostly attributed to the quality of videos (and rightly so to a large extent), visibility when users search is probably the next most important factor. 

Include proper keywording, alt text and tags in your YouTube marketing strategy. This will give you the best chance of succeeding with search.

 

Imagine uploading a high quality gaming tutorial and labelling it as a pancake making masterclass. Terrible, right? Not only will your audience be unable to find this video, the ones that do would find it grossly useless and irritating.

 

The following are some of the things you can do to optimize your content for the YouTube search engine.

Before uploading your video, do some research into the relevant keywords that work best for that category. Include at least one as part of the title. This is important for your brand as it ensures that when potential viewers search for your content, you stand a chance of being introduced to them.

When you make any search on YouTube, one of the first things you see that influences your decision to open the video or not is the thumbnail.

For instance, you search for a canoe paddling tutorial and hundreds of search results come up, your choice of video will be greatly influenced by the thumbnails or previews that you see. 

To get the most from the search results that you appear in, select the most captivating thumbnail or one that mostly showcases what the video is about.

Just like search engine optimization for the web, YouTube relies on meta data to function effectively for users. Tags are an integral part of YouTube’s metadata and they allow users find what they’re searching for. By writing proper tags with keywords, you’ll be giving yourself the best opportunity to increase exposure for your videos.

When it comes to optimizing your YouTube videos, descriptions are key. They play a vital role in the success or failure of your YouTube marketing strategy. Just like thumbnails and titles, your audience can preview your descriptions in their search results before deciding whether to open your video or not.

 

Since descriptions also contribute to your search ranking on YouTube, you should attempt to be as detailed as possible and include your keywords when writing them.

 

You can even include links to your other social accounts and your website!

According to Google, three out of every four adults report watching YouTube at home from their mobile devices. With more than 52% of web users accessing the internet from their mobile devices. If we look at trends, more YouTube users will access the platform from their mobile devices in the future. Mobile is King remember? This important stat cannot be ignored in your YouTube marketing strategy.

You’ll need to ensure that mobile users are getting the best experience when they view your videos to avoid losing them. Mobile users are also more likely to pay more attention to your video content than TV or web users. They’re less likely to be distracted by other activities while watching. 

The following pointers should help you ensure that your videos are optimized for mobile.

• Record videos that can be watched with or without audio as 85% of web videos are watched without sound.
• Short videos consume less mobile data.
• Don’t sit too far from your camera to improve visibility on mobile.
• Use a microphone to improve the quality of your recorded audio.
• Surprisingly, the average mobile viewing session on YouTube is over an hour.

The power of paid YouTube advertising in boosting a brand’s growth cannot be ignored. If you have the budget, YouTube advertising offers a great way to place your brand’s content in front of a relevant audience. 

 

By using YouTube advertising, you’ll also be in a better position to fully understand how to target your content as well as monetize your channel if necessary.

There are three categories of YouTube ads that are either skippable or non skippable:

1. TrueView ads: These allow YouTube channel owners to only pay when users interact with the ads. For instance, after watching the ad for 30 seconds, clicking a call to action button or watching the entire video. TrueView ads could either be video discovery or in-stream ads.
2. Preroll ads: Ads like this are designed to be non-skippable and can appear at any point before, in the middle or after the main video in short or long form.
3. Bumpers: These are very short and allow you to use videos that last for about six seconds. Although these may not provide a clear picture about your brand, they’re ideal for product launches and may point users towards your brand’s product page.

Even the biggest businesses learn from other relevant industry players. When it comes to executing your YouTube strategy, this should not be left out. Just as researching your audience is important for understanding how to target them with your video content, it’s equally important to observe and learn from your favorite YouTube channels. 

Checking out other relevant YouTube channels will help you understand what’s working well for them. But it will also show some of the areas that are under performing.

 

For instance, by researching other relevant channels, you’ll be able to see how their videos are doing. With the added bonus of gaining insights into the gaps that exist in their content. The following questions should ideally prompt you towards doing better research about other YouTube channels.

• Are there video types that are outperforming others?
• Can you find gaps in their current content, tone or style?
• What type of videos do they currently produce?
• Do they get enough or inconsistent interactions?

Imagine recording a stunning video without a call to action. The end result is that your audience will either watch and leave, or potentially end up feeling stuck, not knowing the next move to make. A call to action (CTA) is perhaps one of the most important weapons in your YouTube marketing strategy. 

It offers viewers your recommended line of action after watching the video. You can ask users to subscribe to your channel or clicking a link in your video description. A CTA is an effective way of making the most of your viewers’ attention which you already have before they get distracted by other things.

 

Regardless of your YouTube marketing goals, a call-to-action helps you define the key actions you want viewers to make. So, the next time you’re creating a video, remember to include a CTA at any point of the video.

Here are some examples of strong CTAs:

• Visit our website at (insert website here).
• Subscribe to our channel for more amazing videos like this.
• Call us today (insert phone number)
• Follow us on social media (insert handles)

They say no man is an island and this applies to brands too. No brand can effectively exist on its own and as a result, it’s important to find other YouTube channels you can collaborate with. There is a YouTube vlogger for any industry you can think of and finding one with an audience that’s interested in your content is similar to striking gold.

Collaborating with a YouTuber that creates videos for your industry is a win-win situation for both sides in the long run and is a great way of attracting more viewers to your channel. Here are some collaborative ideas to get you going:

 

• Invite a YouTube influencer and do a video with them.
• Reach out to a YouTuber to see if they’d be willing to make a video with you on their channel.
• Reach out to other social media influencers on other platforms and link back to your channel.

If you’re looking to grow your YouTube channel, one of the best places to start is your social media. If you’ve already built a healthy amount of followers on social media, it means they already trust your brand and are interested in what you’re offering.

 

By sharing your videos on social media, you’re giving your followers an opportunity to connect with your YouTube channel. Here are some of the ways you can share your YouTube videos on social media.

• Sharing your videos on platforms like Twitter and Pinterest.
• Creating previews of your videos, posting them on Instagram and Facebook and linking back to YouTube for the full video.
• Add your YouTube link to your social media bios.
• Engaging in relevant blogs and linking back to your videos.

For marketers and brands seeking to grow an audience of prospective buyers, YouTube has proved to be an excellent tool and platform. Video marketing has long been established as a reliable marketing channel and YouTube continues to dominate in this area. 

We strongly believe that YouTube marketing should form an integral part of your digital marketing strategy, but don’t just take our word for it. Let’s explore the best 5 reasons why you should have a YouTube marketing strategy.

If you were thinking video marketing on YouTube is a new venture, snap out of it. 54% of B2B organizations are already using YouTube as a core part of their digital marketing efforts.

 

Studies have shown that the platform ranks highly among B2B firms when it comes to content marketing. Businesses now realize the importance of having a YouTube marketing strategy and that value of using videos to attract new clients.

 

Customers love engaging videos. From testimonial videos to highly detailed tutorials and even product launches and demos, there is really no limit to what you can do with a well crafted YouTube marketing strategy. It essentially allows B2B companies build a loyal base of subscribers that will turn to loyal customers.

From singing dogs to alleged UFO sightings, there’s probably every kind of video available on YouTube. The platform has grown so large that it’s ranked the second largest search engine globally, only next to Google. The prominence of the video streaming platform has shown that people prefer watching a few minutes of video content to reading text.

 

As a result, owning a YouTube channel is as important as owning a website nowadays.

If YouTube was a country, it’d be the third largest in the world, only next to India and China. Let that sink in for a minute. With around two billion users who login every month to the service, YouTube is Google’s most popular service (with even more users than gmail).

 

Consequently, the chances of reaching your potential clients while using the service are pretty high.

As the volume of content uploaded to YouTube continues to grow, so will the value it offers to users. It is continuously being made more relevant to brands seeking to market their services on the platform.

 

Videos are far more engaging than other forms of media. Businesses as well as consumers consistently create and consume content, so its importance to digital marketers will continue to grow.

 

There are hundreds of hours of videos being uploaded every minute to YouTube, including those from your competitors. You’d be doing your brand a great disservice if you do not include a YouTube marketing strategy as part of your overall digital marketing strategy.

When your potential clients search for you online, there’s nothing more reassuring than a couple of videos about your brand.

By uploading your videos to YouTube, you’d be giving potential clients the opportunity to view and evaluate your brand’s products and services. Without this credibility, potential clients will find it hard to understand or trust your brand, and without trust you’ll struggle to turn them into customers.

Credibility will come from ensuring that your potential clients have access to relevant information about your brand. Nothing speaks better than a video highlighting what you do.

 

Trust on the other hand can be earned by building rapport with prospective customers. An easy way to achieve this trust via YouTube is by posting videos that show customer engagement. Video testimonials can help you build trust by showing potential value in a much more relatable way than text or voice can portray.

Although YouTube is accessible to users from a wide range of locations, it is sadly unavailable in some. Content from some countries are also restricted in other locations due to copyright reasons. Even accessing your own content or analytics page from a restricted country could sometimes prove problematic, but all hope’s not lost.

 

Using a VPN can effectively help you bypass these restrictions on YouTube and enjoy the full experience from anywhere in the world. Whether you need to access competitors’ content or upload videos while overseas, reliable VPNs can help reduce your headaches by masking your real IP address and replacing it with one from your home country or location of choice. If you’re developing your YouTube marketing strategy, you should definitely consider adding a VPN to your toolbox.

Video content marketing has evolved and the question is no longer whether it’s effective, but more when you’re planning to dive in. YouTube remains the leading platform for video content marketing and it’s no wonder why businesses are scrambling to amplify their digital marketing efforts with a YouTube strategy.

 

Stay ahead of the competition by joining millions of other brands worldwide who are already tapping into the immense benefits associated with YouTube marketing.

 

By incorporating the tips explored here, you can make the most of your YouTube marketing strategy to the benefit of your brand.