YouTube marketing can be a game changer for any successful marketing strategy. Despite the many benefits that it can bring, many businesses fail to utilize the content marketing powerhouse that is YouTube. A primary goal of marketing is to reach customers where they are so there’s no reason you shouldn’t be employing this marketing tactic.
Whether you’re starting a new business and need an outlet to reach your audience that has more traffic than your brand new blog, or you’re running an established enterprise and are looking for a new spark to take advantage of your brand and reach new heights, YouTube will be an excellent resource. Reach out to Nxt Era Marketing and learn about our content creation services.
In this guide, we’ll cover several topics to help you get started with your Youtube marketing strategy and elevate your brand. These topics include:
- Benefits of YouTube marketing
- How to set up a YouTube account
- Types of YouTube videos to publish
- How to optimize your YouTube content
- How to promote YouTube content
- Common YouTube marketing mistakes to avoid
Benefits of YouTube Marketing
As we said, regardless of the size of your business or how far along you are in operations, adding YouTube marketing to your business strategy will provide a multitude of benefits. Here are 7 benefits of YouTube marketing:
- Strengthen your sales pitch
- More captivating and compelling content
- Improves search engine optimization
- Reaches wider audience
- Improves credibility
- Boosts sales qualified leads (SQLs) or “qualified” traffic
- Repurpose video content throughout website and social media
No digital marketing strategy can be complete without some balance of YouTube content. Being able to integrate this strategy and even repurpose old content is a great way to get ahead of your competition.
How to Set Up a YouTube Account
Creating a YouTube account is the first step on this long but likely lucrative journey. To start your account, first you’ll need a Google account (preferably with your business email to help maintain organization). Once that is set up, simply go to YouTube, sign in, and then click “Your Channel” in the settings menu. From there, select “Use a Custom Name” so you can name it after your business as opposed to your own name on the Google account. Oh and don’t stress too much- you can always change the name again later on.
After that is set up, it’s time to customize your account to make it more visually appealing and informative to your audience. Remember, the more effort you put into the details, the more your audience will appreciate and enjoy their experience- and isn’t that what marketing is all about? Make sure you have a clean and memorable profile picture- such as your company logo. Take some time to write a thoughtful and informative channel description (bio). An interesting feature you should utilize is customizing how your YouTube channel appears to both subscribers and non-subscribers. Use this to your advantage and really plan out how you want to be perceived. Remember, first impressions can often be lasting impressions and sometimes they can even be the only impression, so be memorable.
Types of YouTube Videos to Publish
Once your channel is set up and ready to go, you can now start publishing videos and reaping the rewards of your content strategy. There are an endless amount of videos you can publish which is a great benefit of content creation but it also can be overwhelming when you first begin and are trying to develop a content calendar. And, oh yeah, don’t forget to make a content calendar! The difference between a successful YouTube strategy (really just any content strategy) and one that fails, is often just making a detailed plan of what you’re going to post, and then sticking to it. Consistency is everything. The more your audience and brand grow, the more will be expected from your channel (which is a good thing!). So with this understood, here are just a few examples of videos you can publish to get your campaign started:
- Introduction to the business
- Product or service demonstrations
- Customer testimonials
- How-To’s
- Frequently asked questions
- Meet the team (staff member introductions)
- Product or service comparisons
- Interviews and thought leadership
Again, these are but a few examples to help give you an idea of where to start and where to go with your content. The important takeaway here is that you should be creative, thoughtful, and always memorable.
How to Optimize Your YouTube Content
Once your video is set but before you begin promoting your content, it’s necessary to properly optimize your videos to help attract as much organic traffic as possible and also allow viewers to reach your site and eventually convert. Search engine optimization plays a huge role in Youtube marketing for two main reasons- the first is that a properly optimized video will rank highly on Google and other search engines which attracts more traffic. The second is that YouTube is actually the second most popular search engine in the world.
It may seem odd to view YouTube as a search engine because it sometimes seems like a social media platform or just a broad content hub. But when you consider what YouTube actually does- helps consumers find information and entertainment that they are searching for or a like- you understand that YouTube is indeed a search engine, second only to Google (who own YouTube).
So how do you optimize videos for SEO on YouTube? There are many ways to achieve optimization so we’ll cover some of the more important ones. First, include metadata in your videos. Sometimes called “schema” or “structured data”, this is how you let search engines understand your content by adding a title, description, keywords, tags, subtitles, etc. Now you can even specify what is known as “clip schema” wherein you mark which sections of a video are the most relevant to certain search queries.
For example, if we post a video about “how to optimize YouTube content” we could specify a certain clip of at least 30 seconds that explains “how to add clip schema to a video” and on Google, our video would likely be one of the first results for that query with the specified clip already marked and presented to the searcher so they could easily jump to that section of the video.
Another way to optimize your video is to include transcripts, subtitles, or closed captions. YouTube has advanced recently so that they can automatically generate a transcript if you aren’t able. Just be sure to always review it before publishing.
Utilizing key features such as pop-up links and captions is also a great way to boost engagement. This can allow customers to go directly to your website or even just navigate related content through your channel. Either way, customer engagement will always be a plus.
One final tip is to always include a link to your website on your channel’s page and always include a link to relevant content on your website in the video description. For example, if you post a video showcasing a product or service, provide a link to that page in the video description so customers can easily access it.
How to Promote YouTube Content
After publishing your content it’s finally time to start promoting it and gaining as much traffic as you can. Though there are several paid outlets you can utilize to promote content, we’ll cover some of the organic ones to help you gain traction for free so you can really boost that ROI (return on investment).
Website & Blog
This one should be obvious. Using your own tools and platforms is a fantastic way to control the narrative and the engagement around your content. Besides that, including video content on your website is great for both SEO and customer engagement! By simply embedding your videos on landing pages or blogs, customers will be more likely to interact with your site and stay on it longer.
Social Media
Social media is without doubt the best way to promote your content for free and reach millions of potential customers instantly. Aside from your own website, using your social media platforms to promote your content is the best way to tell your story and boost engagement. Knowing how to optimize for each platform is key and understanding the audiences and demographics is huge for organic growth.
Email Marketing
A tried and true method of digital marketing that isn’t going anywhere. By offering an (opt-in, never opt-out) email subscription you can not only promote deals, products, and stay fresh in customers’ minds, you can also include video content to increase engagement and bring traffic to your YouTube channel and website.
Collaborate and Cross-Promote
Finding fresh and entertaining ways to collaborate with others is a great way to generate new, compelling content as well as leverage each other’s audiences. Whether through guest posts or producing videos together or simply promoting one another’s content through social media, collaboration will lead to success.
Common YouTube Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
The last thing we want to touch on is common mistakes to avoid. As you progress through your campaigns, grow your channel and audience, and take on new challenges, it’s important to remain focused and not overlook the details. As we mentioned, one of the worst mistakes you can make is failing to create and remain consistent with a content calendar. Besides that, here are a few common YouTube marketing mistakes that you’ll want to avoid.
- Lack of purpose
- Each video and campaign should serve a business objective. Never post content for the sake of posting content- you’ll quickly lose your audience.
- Neglecting SEO
- Always follow SEO best practices for your videos to ensure you achieve the full potential of organic growth.
- Not Tracking Metrics
- KPIs or Key Performance Indicators are how you measure a video’s or campaign’s success. There are many to choose from so be sure to evaluate your business goals when deciding how to measure your results.
- Poor Audience Research
- Knowing your audience is one of the most important factors in all aspects of running a business and YouTube marketing is no different. Know your audience and know how to reach them- the first step to success.
- Inconsistency
- We’ve already discussed the importance of a content calendar and remaining true to it. But consistency in YouTube marketing is more than just scheduling. Also consider who is creating the content? Is the voice and brand the same throughout your posts? What is the established budget? These are all important factors in consistency which cannot be overlooked.
Contact Nxt Era Marketing Today
Generating ideas, putting a team together, creating content, publishing and promoting it all while still running all the other aspects of your business can be stressful and time consuming. Why not reach out to a talented group of content creators to help you scale your business and master YouTube marketing? Nxt Era Marketing is highly experienced in content creation and video production and can take your business to the next level. Schedule your free consultation today and find out more!
