The outcomes of video marketing are undeniable—52% of marketing professionals worldwide list video as the type of content with the best returns. For many businesses, the most stress-free part about making a video is choosing where to post it.
As the most trending video hosting website by far, choosing to upload your video to YouTube is a discernible choice. However, even with all of the amazing benefits of video marketing, only 9% of small businesses are on YouTube. It’s the second largest search engine behind Google and is used by 1.3 billion people across the globe. The number one reason business owners give for not having a YouTube content plan is that they unassumingly don’t have enough consideration of how to produce video content.
Here are the tips to improve YouTube marketing strategy:
- Do Your Research
This is, for sure, the first step to any content marketing strategy. Just like you wouldn’t write a blog before understanding what your audience wants to read about or how blog writing goes, entering the video content stage without any information isn’t the niftiest idea.
The best thing to do when crafting your YouTube marketing strategy is to see what your competitors are doing. What kind of video content are they generating? How fruitful is their video content? Are there gaps in the content they make?
- Create Useful, Creative Content
When creating content for YouTube, it’s essential to consider why people are engaging with video content more than any other type. It’s because they find video to be more subjective and interactive than blogs, whitepapers and e-books, and are looking for the amusement value of video paired with the utility of conventional formats.
The number one thing to keep in mind is that you must keep your content intriguing. While people would choose to watch a video tutorial, if you create a boring video of someone droning on about how to use a product, the customer will likely end the video, and in some cases, not use the product.
- Partner With Others
YouTube is dominated by a distinctive form of celebrity that has only been around for the past few years—the YouTuber. These stars develop huge followings around their channels, which can gather millions of followers and billions of views.
While there’s a frequent misconception that YouTubers draw only the millennial audience, thousands of popular content creators steering towards older individuals would disagree. There are YouTube stars for every interest—while the stereotypical YouTuber vlogs about beauty, video gaming or fashion, many of them make videos about home organization, parenting, car repair and everything else that could strike the curiosity in a consumer.
Try and contact a YouTuber that makes videos about your industry, or one who echoes with your desired customer. This is an extremely efficient way to bring attention to your brand and content, and is a win-win for both parties involved. When you join hands with someone who has a similar audience to yours, the cross-exposure is both organic and valuable.
- Link Back To Your Website
While this may sound naive, it’s actually one of the best ways to attract traffic to your website. This can be done in two ways—you can add a footnote within your video that will take users to your site once they click on it, or you could add a link in your explanation box below the video.
- Create Calls-to-Action
While inserting traditional button CTAs isn’t an option in YouTube marketing, you still need to make calls-to-action for your users. What are you requesting them to do at the end of each video?
Well, the answer should rely on which stage of the funnel the video is geared towards. If it’s an introductory video, ask them to like and subscribe to your page for more such substance. If it’s a demo video, ask them to check out your website for more details.
Lastly, consistency doesn’t end with how frequently you post videos—you also have to be consistent with their eminence. If you start off posting well-produced, thoughtful videos, and soon begin to post poorly filmed and crafted content, you’re going to see a drop in your following. When you post your first video, make sure other videos maintain, if not enhance, the initial quality. In order to develop a following and see results, you absolutely must be consistent.