YouTube is a platform that boasts immense marketing potential but is frequently overlooked by digital marketers when developing their brand’s social media strategies.
To quickly emphasize the significance of this network for global internet users, it is worth noting that it’s the second-largest search engine and boasts nearly two billion active users. Additionally, approximately 500 hours of content are uploaded on the platform every minute.
Undoubtedly, utilizing YouTube videos for marketing requires a significant level of professionalism. Nonetheless, it could be the factor that propels your business to great heights. Therefore, my inquiry is why not leverage the marketing benefits and exposure that YouTube presents?
Let’s discuss the essential elements of your YouTube marketing strategy that you must consider to achieve optimal outcomes, once you become more attracted to the notion of establishing a YouTube presence.
1. Define what type of campaign you want to run
In order to achieve success with YouTube advertising, it is crucial to determine the specific type of campaign you wish to launch for your company. Without a clear objective, your ad campaign on YouTube is unlikely to be fruitful. Thus, it is important to set targets for your advertising initiatives.
To achieve your goals of generating more leads, sign-ups, or sales, it’s essential to identify the objective of your campaign. Selecting an advertising format that aligns with your objectives can help you achieve your goals.
2. Use a variety of ad types
To achieve success in YouTube advertising, it’s advisable to utilize multiple types of ads. Attempting different advertising formats will help you determine which approach is most effective for your company. Testing out diverse ad types will allow you to identify what generates the greatest level of interaction for your business.
Your business may experience better outcomes with either a brief bumper ad or a longer, skippable ad. The key lies in selecting the appropriate advertisement type for your campaign. To illustrate, if your objective is to augment site traffic, employing a skippable ad would be beneficial as people can visit your webpage as opposed to a bumper ad that only lasts six seconds.
Experiments with various types of ads will keep your YouTube ad strategy up-to-date and guarantee optimal outcomes for your campaign.
3. Know who you’re targeting
To ensure the triumph of your YouTube advertising tactics, it is crucial to identify your audience and direct your ads to the most relevant individuals. How, then, can you determine the target audience for your campaign?
Examine the traits commonly found in your average customer and establish common attributes such as:
- Age
- Gender
- Occupation
- Interests
- Hobbies
- Buying habits
- And more
Once you are aware of this information, it enables you to design ads that are more appealing to your audience. Additionally, YouTube’s ad targeting features can be utilized to attract users who closely resemble your target audience. Taking this approach will enhance engagement and attract more potential customers for your business.
4. Grab your audience’s interest immediately
One mistake that companies often commit in their YouTube ads is delaying the “interesting part” of the ad. Rather than placing it in the initial seconds, it may appear 10 seconds after. This technique will not captivate the audience if you are running a skippable ad.
Your audience will likely skip your non-skippable ad after five seconds if you fail to capture their interest. To prevent this, focus on crafting ads that immediately engage your viewers.
To capture your audience’s interest, start with a stimulating introduction or pose a question right away. By doing so, you can retain their attention and encourage them to engage with your ad throughout. Here is an excellent illustration of how to immediately grab your audience’s attention.
5. Take inspiration from the best YouTube channels
It has been widely acknowledged that YouTube marketing is a challenging feat. In fact, if you are searching for the most effective way to promote your brand through YouTube, you should be aware that there isn’t a single approach that suits everyone.
When introducing your brand to uncharted territory, such as advertising on YouTube, it’s crucial to proceed with caution, allow yourself adequate time to strategize how to best utilize the promotion, brainstorm inventive ideas, and conduct some market research.
In case you are unfamiliar with the concept of YouTube marketing, one way to begin is by studying the tactics employed by the top-performing YouTube channels.
Although there is an abundance of content available, being authentic can be challenging. However, by blending a little bit from different sources and pairing it with your brand’s personality, you can create a distinctive identity.
To begin, it can be useful to examine the videos trending on YouTube and establish similarities in terms of strategy and technique. This process may raise questions such as whether successful videos typically feature captions, how long they typically are, or if any special effects are used.
6. Analyze your YouTube competitors
After finding the YouTube strategies that resonate well with YouTube viewers, it is necessary to refine your searches and analyze the activities of other individuals in your industry who use YouTube, i.e., your competitors on the platform.
By conducting a YouTube competitor analysis, you can identify gaps in your competitors’ content and discover opportunities to meet the needs of YouTube viewers. Although researching competitors on YouTube may be a challenging and time-consuming endeavor, the benefits are well worth the effort. Fortunately, there are numerous tools available for conducting competitive analysis that can make this task much less daunting.
Moreover, in case you require assistance, a brief manual on performing a social media competitive analysis is available for you to refer to when you wish to gather information on your YouTube rivals. Despite it appearing to be a challenging task, fret not as there are numerous YouTube marketing resources at your disposal to aid you during the process.
7. Optimize your YouTube videos
Don’t settle for boring YouTube thumbnails
Next up, we’ll be learning about the techniques involved in promoting a YouTube channel.
Whether we approve of it or not, initial impressions hold significant importance. As users browse through the YouTube dashboard searching for content, they are met with an abundance of options. Therefore, the only way to capture their attention and make them pause scrolling is by presenting an exceptional YouTube thumbnail.
It is crucial to consider your YouTube thumbnail’s ability to entice viewers to click and watch your video if you aim to increase your subscriber count on the platform. As your thumbnail acts as a visual depiction of your video, using close-up imagery and incorporating an attention-grabbing caption could improve your conversion rates.
When developing your marketing plan on YouTube, keep this advice in mind: it is essential that your thumbnails are striking and accurately convey the content of your video. Moreover, if feasible, it is best to design them in a unique way that allows viewers to readily identify your brand.
Remember the importance of YouTube descriptions
Recall the statement we made about YouTube being the second biggest search platform? This implies that utmost attention must be given to filling in the text sections as they hold significant weight.
To begin with, YouTube video titles are crucial. Your YouTube video must have an excellent title to differentiate itself from the rest and catch the user’s attention enough to make them pause scrolling. Moreover, the titles must be strong in terms of SEO.
One of the most vital strategies for YouTube is optimizing your titles for voice search. Consider using popular keywords that viewers often use to search for the topic of your video.
Can you picture yourself performing a voice search on YouTube? Do you prefer a longer or shorter video title? Now, let’s take a look at how to craft a strong YouTube description. When it comes to writing video descriptions on YouTube, the usual SEO rules still hold true.
Commence your YouTube video description with your targeted keywords, but avoid appearing like spam or a robot. Keep the tone of your content natural and conversational.
Make sure to provide succinct and detailed information about the contents of your YouTube video within the 300 character or three-line limit before the “Show More” section. This will help deliver the necessary information about your video to your audience.
Organize YouTube videos into YouTube playlists
Do you need reasons to arrange your YouTube videos in YouTube playlists? Yes, if you want to keep your audience engaged on your channel and encourage them to consume more of your YouTube content.
If you make it easy for viewers to navigate your channel, they’ll value it and potentially increase your views. It’s crucial to check this box when promoting your YouTube channel, as having a well-structured channel can demonstrate your brand’s level of professionalism. Remember this when devising your YouTube advertising plan!
8. Cross-promote your YouTube content
Boost the visibility of your YouTube videos by promoting them on your other social media platforms. It’s important to remember that your YouTube promotional activities should be integrated into your broader social media marketing tactics.
Different approaches are necessary depending on the social media channels chosen for promoting a business, as we are aware. However, it is important to maintain consistency across all social media platforms despite their varying characteristics.
This offers a fantastic chance to promote successful content and broaden its reach through cross-promotion.
Alternatively, if you have recently uploaded content on your YouTube channel and desire to enhance its visibility and attract more views, cross-promoting it on different social media platforms could prove to be an effective strategy.
9. Try appealing with a story or emotion
In order to create an effective YouTube ad, it is important to tailor it to your intended audience. It is recommended to incorporate a catchy opening that captures the audience’s attention and to include elements that prompt an emotional response or convey a narrative. There are a variety of emotions that can be targeted.
An instance would be when you elicit emotions such as happiness, excitement, sadness, compassion, among others, from people through your advertisement. Such an approach compels them to interact with your content. Dove’s ad perfectly showcases this strategy of appealing to people’s emotions.
This advertisement features a forensic artist who produces drawings of women based on their self-descriptions and how a stranger perceives them. The resulting sketches allow women to realize that their own perspective of themselves is more judgmental than an outsider’s view.
Throughout the ad, emotions are high and viewers remain captivated. They yearn to witness the appearance of the sketches and the reaction of the individual featured in them. This compelling commercial enthralls its audience until the very end, as they eagerly anticipate the outcome.
To maintain your audience’s attention for a longer time, design an advertisement that highlights a narrative or elicits emotions.
10. Use a call to action (CTA) that gets people to click
It is essential to have a call to action (CTA) that motivates your audience to engage, regardless of the type of ads you use. Your CTA plays a crucial role in pushing your audience towards the next step, which is the ultimate goal of running an ad.
Not having a clear call-to-action (CTA) can result in your audience being less likely to click. For instance, using a CTA such as “Sign Up” rather than “Click Here” in a campaign aimed at encouraging people to subscribe to an email list will yield more clicks. By selecting the appropriate CTA, you can increase the number of clicks on your YouTube ads.
11. Define the metrics you’ll track
To ensure a thriving YouTube advertisement approach, it is crucial to identify the metrics that you are keeping track of for the campaign. Without monitoring the performance of the campaign, you cannot determine its effectiveness. YouTube ads enable you to monitor various metrics, such as:
- Watch time
- View duration
- Number of views
- Audience retention
- Conversions
By monitoring these metrics, you can gauge the level of interaction between your ads and your audience. This assessment is beneficial in determining the efficacy of your ads, allowing you to decide whether to continue with them or to take measures to increase their effectiveness.
