What is YouTube marketing?

Summary

YouTube is one of the most well-known platforms, used by millions of users. Some turn to the platform to watch their favorite content, some for work, some to seek advice, and others use it to promote their business. In this post, we’ll show you how to take full advantage of the platform through YouTube marketing:

• How important is YouTube for business marketing?
• Making the most of its potential for effective YouTube marketing
• Conclusion

The power of YouTube

There is no doubt that YouTube is one of the most used platforms in the world today, counting more than 2,000,000,000 monthly active users.

YouTube isn’t just a conglomeration of online video content; it contains the different faces of a constantly evolving form of communication: from product launches to social dynamics, from the powerful phenomenon of viral content, to editorial content, up to the possibility of SEO optimization. It’s a tool that is rich in resources that, when used correctly, can be more than effective in the world of marketing.

In this post, we’ll highlight these resources and recommend the best strategies for effective YouTube marketing. We will do this starting from data.

How important is YouTube for business marketing?

According to the latest data from 2020, in Italy alone, there are 36.2 million regular YouTube users, surpassing even Facebook with its 35.9 million users.

The first video on the platform dates back to April 2005 and was uploaded by Jawed Karim, the first user and founder. After its acquisition by Google, growth of the platform has been continuous, reaching 19.8 billion in 2020. These figures clearly indicate the strength and the great potential that the platform offers, especially in business marketing (Forbes).

In fact, YouTube, thanks to the medium itself, ranks as the tool of choice for marketers to convey dynamic and engaging messages in minutes. In 2019, research by Go Globe showed that 51% of marketers publish video ads on the platform, and 62% of them plan to increase their investments in the next 12 months. YouTube is considered effective for video marketing by 78.8% of marketers, which is 20% higher when compared to Facebook (Go Globe). But what makes YouTube such a powerful tool?

Companies can get more exposure and visibility, broaden their customer base, and by being able to target an international audience, they can reach diverse geographies and attract leads that speak the same language, from all countries.

With a comprehensive profile, the lead, after exploring all the video content, can be redirected to the website to get more details about the product. When used to its fullest, YouTube can be one of the most effective marketing channels. Now, we’ll share some tips that you can use to make the most of this platform.

YouTube marketing: how to make the most of this platform

The growth of a business and its online visibility is not an immediate and automatic process. It’s something that you build gradually, with care and attention, both for your brand and especially for the audience you want to address.

Data YouTube Analytics

The first aspect to keep in mind when opening a YouTube business account is to explore the YouTube Analytics data. Here, you can get a clear and detailed picture when researching your target audience.

Demographic data, such as geographic location, age, and viewing preferences, are informations that help you understand your audience and their tastes, providing a foundation on which to gradually build useful, interesting, and quality content. In addition, to take the first steps, offering surveys, questions, and being attentive and responsive to comments allows you to get more data while encouraging interaction.

Analyze your competitors

To expand the channel, it is essential to analyze your competitors, an integral part of any business strategy. Identify them by searching keywords related to the sector of your business. The goal is to visit their channel and evaluate the salient aspects of their communication, the content that resonates most, how they interact with the public through the comments, all in order to understand their strategy and how they operate on social media.

Detecting the strengths is an essential aspect from which you can derive inspiration for your projects.

How does the YouTube algorithm work?

Another important aspect to take into consideration is the functioning of YouTube algorithm, and how it takes the following into account for each user:

• clicks on videos: this is one of the elements that, weighed together with other factors, allows the system to understand the degree of interest a user has in a certain product;
• watchtime: the system detects the viewing time of each clicked video and the algorithm prefers content that has been watched longer, to the detriment of content that was abandoned after a few seconds;
• survey responses: some users receive a survey asking them to rate the video they have just watched on a scale of 1 to 5 stars, and provide reasons for their response. Videos that scored 4 or 5 stars are considered more useful to the user;
• interactions: comments, likes, dislikes, or any actions performed after watching a video are essential for helping the algorithm understand the user’s behavior, detecting whether his “share” is relevant or not, for example.

The higher positioning of some videos compared to others can be controlled and improved by managing some of the elements that compose them. For example, make sure that video thumbnails or snapshots are recognizable. Screenshots that YouTube chooses from the video, which are often of low quality and irrelevant as a representation of the content it contains, should be avoided.

In addition, optimizing titles and descriptions and using keywords gives your content priority and exposure. Several tools, including YouTube Analytics itself, are useful for finding the most important keywords to include in the description and title.

The right content

This brings us back to the core element: content. Your profile, complete with description, logo, graphics, and a direct link to the website, as well as social pages and a brand trailer that informs the viewer and invites them to subscribe, facilitate user search and facilitate placement.

Posting ads of various kinds, both skippable and unskippable, as well as display ads and overlays or sponsored tabs help the brand reach a wider and more diverse audience, even considering that paid advertising on YouTube is much cheaper than that on Facebook and Instagram.

It’s also useful to evaluate when to publish your content. View the frequency index of the target audience to schedule (also with the support of external tools) your video on a certain day and time, in order to maximize potential views. In this way, the user will know exactly when the video will be released, generating a waiting mechanism.

Finally, creativity is key: tutorials, guides, lessons, and live streaming help the brand rank higher on Google and adding overlays to the videos, such as images or animations at the bottom can help improve brand awareness.

Promote your brand

Successful YouTube Marketing requires that you establish a synergy with the other social channels on which to advertise and repost the published content. In this way, you’re able to reach segments of your audience that prefer other social networks and you can create a path to bring them to your YouTube channel.

Influencer Marketing involves using external figures to whom you entrust the task of promoting your product through their social channels. Using influencers, you can gain access to a wider audience, diversified content, and take advantage of another video content creator. For a few years now, influencers are considered the new “pillars” of social media and, more importantly, customers rely heavily on their advice.

Measure Success

You’ll also need to monitor the progress of your publications through YouTube Analytics. This allows you to better get to know the target audience’s behaviors, and to identify the content that has higher engagement and response rates. With more knowledge about your audience, you’ll be able to create content and products that meet their needs.

Don’t lose sight of trends

Once a product is created, you need to nurture it, to grow it. It’s important to keep track of updates and trends, no matter what industry you’re in. As we mentioned above, we’re living in a dynamic, ever-changing world, so you need to avoid falling into the “seen it before” trap and always stay up to date with current trends.

Conclusion

We hope this post has given you greater insight into how resourceful the world’s most used online video content platform really is! The first step is about using the tools we already have at our disposal in the right way; the rest is about creativity and listening to your audience.

Babelee

Copywriters, video creators, digital marketers and developers: this is who we are! Young, passionate, geeky and very keen on media and technology. Fancy to meet the team? Contact us or submit your cv, we love talented people.