YouTube has grown into an integral part of our daily lives. As of now, YouTube holds an audience base of 30 million people – a massive market for you to tap into. Videos are far more eye-friendly compared to texts and images. And owing to their engaging nature, they keep people glued to screens for longer. And such lengthy on-page time signals Google your site is relevant and useful, thus, ranking it higher.
You’re far more likely to show up first page of Google if you have a video embedded on your website. About 90% of the internet users own a smartphone and use it to watch YouTube – making YouTube the best way to reach mobile users. If you’re trying to get more, YouTube is the solution.
Step-by-step: How To Start A YouTube Marketing Campaign
Research and determine your audience
A target market – the bunch of people sharing similar needs or features your business serves – are most likely to buy your product. You target these people basing on their demographics, behavioral patterns and lifestyle. When it comes to business, there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to marketing and sales. Marketing should follow the basic rule of economics – supply on demand. Only then, you can progress towards running your business.
The #1 way to determine your target audience is to see who your competitors are targeting. Look for common characteristics and interests of your present customers. The selection can be done on the following characteristics:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Income
- Education
- Marital or family status
- Occupation
- Lifestyles
- Personality
- Attitude
- Values
- Interests/hobbies
- Ethnic background
- Behavior
Some other things to consider when researching your market are:
- What drives your potential customer to make a purchase?
- Are they capable of availing your product or service?
- Is there enough people under your target audience?
Create value-crammed content regularly
Your first video hits YouTube and you are getting some views on YouTube – things are well and good. People are learning about your product and services. They want to learn and know more about your brand. The only problem is – you haven’t made any more Videos.
If you upload a video on December 1st by Christmas, people will forget your company and move on. The most successful YouTube marketers suggest coming with something new every few days to maximize sales. Regardless of your marketing platform – consistency is essential when creating content. Without consistent original content, you’re leaving content marketing on the table, thereby, sales and profits too.
Producing consistent, high-quality content helps brands establish themselves as leaders in the industry. Putting out more content helps you generate more traffic to your videos and more likely for a potential customer to find you. Remember, the consistency also has a direct impact on your credibility. The greater the content, the greater the reputation. Having team who works exclusively to create content for your YouTube marketing campaign can help you keep your existing customers while making new ones. We’ve also created a post here detailing tips to improve your video marketing, make sure to read it as well.
Utilize annotations
Annotations of YouTube are small boxes that the creator can customize to inform or push content to their viewers. It creates a small box at a certain time interval on the video. YouTube Annotations are an effective method for increasing the marketing capacity of a video by helping it increase audience interaction, increases video views, while offering a clear reference funnel by clickable links inserted in the content.
It is a great way to hold your customers in your videos and keeping them engaged. Further, annotations inspire people to stay glued to YouTube videos longer and/or send such traffic to outside landings by integrating additional information into videos and creating an interactive experience.
If you want to incorporate CTA(s) into YouTube videos, annotations are super effective. YouTube content producers may increase the likelihood from “Learn More,” “Purchase This Item,” “See Similar Content,” and “Upgrade” annotations by including an eye-catching annotation at the right time. For marketers, a strategically placed annotation might attract qualified leads and guarantee enhanced brand exposure.
Add contacts and invite people
The direct messaging and video sharing features of YouTube are great ways to connect businesses and channel owners directly to their subscribers, video watchers, and fans. Start sharing a link to your invitation, build a list of contacts and promote your latest videos. YouTube also offers many social networking and messaging services for registered users.
Every YouTube user can subscribe to video channels, send and receive private messages, as well as add other users as contacts. YouTube attaches connections by adding the YouTube username of the requested link to the address book. One way to use the features on YouTube for direct messaging and video sharing is to promote new videos to your contacts with YouTube.
Conversations that are better managed through a private message, send them a link to your invitation and invite them to continue the conversation with a direct message. This can be a great way to resolve issues arising in your Community tab or Discussion tab comments, as well as in your videos.
Social network is one of the most powerful and profitable advertising platforms you can use to maximize the visibility of your business. You reach out to targeted prospects using social media ads, increase your conversions, and ultimately get a higher return on investment. Your profile is like an advertisement for your YouTube Videos. Anyone seeing your posts and comments can tap on your username and be taken to your YouTube page directly.
Your bio and posts are the main source of information there. By placing the reference in your social media profile, you can automatically let new followers know about your YouTube channel to get more likes.
A new social media posts should be created to promote any new video. You can use a thumbnail of your video, a screenshot, or a completely unrelated image to make your social media followers interested in your YouTube Video. Share the YouTube link with a brief description of the video that leads them to their YouTube page.
Giveaways are an effective way to grow your social media platform. At the same time, grow your YouTube channel by holding a giveaway. Host it on social media, but require fans to sign up for your YouTube channel to win.
Submit Videos To Social Linking Sites
Social linking sites are where Internet users share their websites, articles, blog posts, pictures and videos. Such submissions come with a number of advantages.
The more users you have access to your content, the more likely your content will be popular. These sites will also help index your YouTube video faster and increase traffic on your page. Such sites will also allow people to search your videos more easily and increase your YouTube page traffic. Some of the popular social linking sites are Dribble, Pocket, Digg, Reddit, Slashdot, scoot.it and so forth. Our team at themarketingheaven.com can help you out with that as well.
Simply by posting links, pictures and material with your profile, you will have bookmarked them theoretically on the website forever until you delete it.
Leverage SEO
If you want to get search rankings on your YouTube videos, you need to SEO it just like blog posts. If you have good quality videos, share it to get more views, write effective titles, click-friendly thumbnails and so forth.If you’re marketing to other business, it might be worth it too check our best strategies for b2b companies on youtube. This is a good foundation to build any future promotions.
Conclusion
YouTube Advertising is a key strategy for taking advantage of the massive shift in content on the internet from text to video. That’s why studying and checking some techniques and getting help from doing the right research is so important. The best way to start a successful YouTube marketing campaign is to know your target audience, be consistent to your content, utilize annotations, add contacts and invite people, leverage your social media accounts, submit videos to social linking and leverage your SEO for more video views.